Spring 2020 Courses
UCRL 100E Interpreting Literature
ENGL 210 Business Writing
ENGL 211 Writing for Pre-Law Students
ENGL 220 Theory/Practice Tutoring
ENGL 271 Exploring Poetry
ENGL 272 Exploring Drama
ENGL 273 Exploring Fiction
ENGL 283 Women in Literature
ENGL 287 Religion and Literature
ENGL 288 Nature and Literature
ENGL 290 Human Values in Literature
ENGL 293 Advanced Writing
ENGL 303 Grammar: Principles and Pedagogy
ENGL 317 The Writing of Poetry
ENGL 318 The Writing of Fiction
ENGL 319 Writing Creative Nonfiction
ENGL 322 Chaucer
ENGL 327 Studies in Shakespeare
ENGL 328 Studies in Renaissance
ENGL 338 Studies in Romantic Period
ENGL 343 Victorian Period Studies
ENGL 344 Studies in Modernism
ENGL 355 Studies in Literary Criticism
ENGL 381C Comparative American Literature
ENGL 384C African American Literature Post-1900
ENGL 390 Advanced Seminar
ENGL 392 Advanced Creative Nonfiction
ENGL 393 Teaching English to Adults
ENGL 394 Internship
ENGL 399 Special Studies in Literature
UCRL 100E Interpreting Literature
Section: 001 #4631
Instructor: P. Randolph
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 9:20–10:10 AM LSC
This is a core course that will teach the fundamentals about critical thinking, reading, and writing with multi-cultural texts. This year in UCLR we will be reading poetry, prose, and plays from a Norton Anthology. In addition, we will read some short stories from contemporary authors along with classics, such as William Faulkner’s Barn Burning. We will discuss the six essential elements of fiction: Plot, Narration and Point of View, Character, Setting, Symbolism, and Themes. Some of the authors we will read include: Sherman Alexie, William Shakespeare, Langston Hughes, Jhumpa Lahiri, and many others. When you leave this class you will have mastered key literary terms and be equipped with multiple critical lenses.
Section: 002 #4632
Instructor: V. Popa
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 11:30 AM–12:20 PM LSC
Stranger Things
This foundational course in literary studies will require students to read closely and analyze a representative variety of prose, poetry, and drama; master key literary and critical terms; and explore a variety of core critical approaches to the analysis and interpretation of literature.
For this course we will read and dissect literature of a fantastical, or magical bent: fanciful voyages to the moon, epic battles between frogs and mice, English lords who can live for centuries, or teenage barons who rebel against their parents by living out their entire lives in the canopies of trees. Along the way, we will discuss various modes of reading these texts, as well as ways to interpret their meaning and intent.
Section: 003 #4633
Instructor: E. Bayley
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 11:30 AM –12:20 PM LSC
This is a Leadership for Social Change Community course, which means that there will be out of class activities that you are required to attend. This also means that this class will focus on the ideas of leadership and social change in literature. This is a foundational course that explores a variety of critical approaches to the analysis and interpretation of literature. In particular, we will be looking at the topics of dying, death and grieving, how concepts of leadership and social change coincide with these ideas, and discuss how these ideas are depicted in a number of different poems, plays and short stories. These topics are often difficult to discuss and yet, they are inevitable realities in each of our lives. Thus, we will use texts, by a number of different American authors, such as Jane Kenyon, Mary Oliver, Annie Proulx, Moises Kaufman, and more, to explore what dying, death and grieving might consist of, not only personally, socially and politically. The method of assessment will include quizzes, papers, outside classroom experience/s and classroom participation.
Section: 004 #4634
Instructor: J. Fiorelli
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 12:35–1:25 PM LSC
Home
This foundational course in literary studies will require students to read closely and analyze carefully a representative variety of prose, poetry, and drama; master key literary and critical terms; and explore a variety of core critical approaches to the analysis and interpretation of literature. This course will also explore important conceptual questions about literature and its study, to help students develop the skills of analysis and interpretation needed to approach literature in a sophisticated manner.
Our course focus will be literature about home/homes. Our readings will raise questions such as: How do we define “home”? What does home do for us, and what does it do to us? How can conceptions of home change? What happens when we leave one home for another? What is the relationship between notions of home and domestic space, and systems of oppression? I plan to have us study Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel Fun Home and attend the Loyola theatre performance of the musical version of this text; other texts will be drawn primarily but not exclusively from multiethnic twentieth-century American literature. Among other things, we will study texts that focus on gender inequality and on migration and immigration. Course requirements will include active reading, written homework and quizzes, class participation, and two literary analysis essays.
Section: 005 #4635
Instructor: L. Goldstein
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 12:35–1:25 PM LSC
Ecological Utopias and Dystopias
In this course, we will read, discuss and write about texts that explore how humans imagine utopias and dytopias, with a special focus on both environmental and social ecologies. We will be exploring science fiction novels, short stories and a film of Afro-futurism, Elizabethan and Contemporary plays, and weird poetry. You will be introduced to multiple strategies to approach and interpret challenging texts, and writing original essays with your unique point of view using the material to prove your points. Materials include: short stories by Octavia Butler, the African film Pumzi, a novel by Richard Brautigan, Othello by William Shakespeare, and the poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Harryette Mullen, Cecelia Vicuna, Khadijah Queen and other contemporary poets. There is a strong focus on race and gender in this course.
Section: 006 #4636
Instructor: P. Sorenson
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 12:35–1:25 PM LSC
Over the course of the semester, we will be exploring three principal literary genres: fiction, poetry, and drama. We will emphasize the historical contexts in which these stories, poems, and plays were written, and we will examine a variety of critical postures with which to interpret these texts. Students will also be asked to establish their own claims by way of shorter responses and longer formal essays. As we read, we will always ask why literature matters: Why do we choose to read? What can stories or lyrics teach us? How does literature participate in the building of our cultural and individual points of view? Our class’s theme will be “Remembering/ Dismembering.” We will read works—such as Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Alice Notley’s The Descent of Alette—that suggest the links between truth, memory, forgetfulness, and our bodies. We will explore how literature can act as a form of remembering, a way to reassemble ourselves. Ultimately, we will investigate how literature puts us together and takes us apart.
Section: 007 #4637
Instructor: R. Peters
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40–2:30 PM LSC
UCLR 100 is a foundational literary studies course at Loyola. This class will require students to closely read and analyze a representative variety of prose, poetry, and drama, master key literary and critical terms, and explore a variety of core critical approaches to the analysis and interpretation of literature. This course involves several short essay assignments, as well as a midterm and seminar essay. The theme for this section of UCLR 100 is Dystopian Fiction; students in this class will read texts that stretch across the 19th, 20th, and 21st Century. Course authors may include T.S. Eliot, Octavia Butler, Caryl Churchill, Cormac McCarthy, Margaret Atwood, and others.
Section: 008 #4638
Instructor: E. Wheatley
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 11:30 AM–12:20 PM LSC
This course requires students to read and interpret Gothic literature and its predecessors in three genres: poetry, drama, and fiction. Students will learn close reading skills and literary terminology necessary for analyzing literature. The course will include works by such writers as Shakespeare, Keats, Wilde, Henry James, and Toni Morrison. Active class participation is required and will be an important part of the final grade. Other methods of assessment will include quizzes, papers, a mid-term exam, and a final exam.
Section: 009 #4639
Instructor: J. Hastings
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00–2:15 PM LSC
This course focuses on satire as a lens through which to explore the relationship between literature and the cultures that create, transmit, and receive it. The course will also introduce students to the critical vocabulary necessary for literary interpretation. The works we will cover include Aristophanes’s Lysistrata, the Old English poem Judith, Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath’s Tale and The Manciple’s Tale, Lady Margaret Cavendish’s The Convent of Pleasure, Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock, Nella Larsen’s Passing, and Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments.
Section: 010 #4640
Instructor: B. Rebarchik
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45–3:35 PM LSC
In this course we will be reading texts from the Renaissance period through to our own contemporary moment with a focus on the themes of rebellion, uprising, and social and political revolution.
This foundational course in literary studies will require students to read closely and analyze carefully a representative variety of prose, poetry, and drama, master key literary and critical terms, and explore a variety of core critical approaches to the analysis and interpretation of literature.
This course will also explore important conceptual questions about literature and its study. What is literature? Why does it matter? How has it been conceived in different times and places? How do we envision the relationships among author, text, and reader or audience? What is the difference between reading a literary work in its historical context and in the light of our own contemporary time? Where does meaning come from in literature? What is literary interpretation and what role does it have in the production of literary meaning? How are literary works related to culture and society and how do they reflect – and reflect on – questions of value and the diversity of human experience? Exploring these questions will help students develop the skills of analysis and interpretation needed to approach literature in a sophisticated manner.
Section: 011 #4641
Instructor: J. Hawkins
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45–3:35 PM LSC
The theme of this course will be human and animal entanglements, or the spaces where people and other living creatures meet. Expect to see dogs, horses, cats, and birds interacting with people in graphic novels, short stories, plays, and novels, even as we attend to politics, family, love, and other subjects we think of as purely human.
This course aims to give you tools to better read and understand fiction, poetry, and drama in the context of your social moment. It is designed to develop these skills toward engaging the world around you in more meaningful and ethical ways. Literature can make you a better listener and open you to questions you might never think to ask; it can also challenge your view of yourself or offer you a place where you feel understood. Through close reading, discussion groups, and cultural study, we will learn reading strategies to access the aspects of literary writing that can help you throughout your life.
Section: 012 #4642
Instructor: R. Kietzman
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 8:30–9:45 AM LSC
The Fae, the Unhuman, and the Liminal
Flittering at the edges of civilization, the Fae and the Inhuman haunt our dreams, torment our sensibilities, and force us to examine and define what it actually means to be human. “Fae” is a catch-all term used to describe human-adjacent monsters, the Good Folk, the members of the Courts Under the Hill. “Inhuman” is an even broader term encompassing all those creatures who wear our face and yet are not one of us. “The Liminal” is the between, places of transition, where the rules of reality do not apply in quite the familiar way.
Examining literature of the Fae and the Inhuman is valuable because it examines how we define humanity. How we meet with and confront the unhallowed Other shows what we fear, value, and desire as humans.
This course will involve works from the 16th century, Romantic and Victorian eras, and the Modern Era. We will read poetry, plays, short stories, and novels.
Section: 013 #4643
Instructor: J. Chamberlin
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 8:30–9:45 AM LSC
This foundational course in literary studies will require students to read closely and analyze carefully a representative variety of literary forms and genres, master key literary and critical terms, and explore a variety of core critical approaches to conceptual questions about literature and its study.
We will focus in particular on works of literature that explore what it means to be human—and also, implicitly, what it means not to be human. Drawing from a diverse body of writers from across time periods, we will read texts ranging from Marie de France’s medieval werewolf poem, Bisclavret, to Amy Bonnaffons’ recent short story about a woman transforming into a horse. We will also explore the ways in which our understanding of humanity is complicated by race, gender, disability, and animality through works like Louise Erdrich’s Last Report of Miracles at Little No Horse and Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones. We will ask questions such as: What does language and our identities as readers, writers, and speakers have to do with being human? How does transformation complicate what we understand to be the human form? And finally, how do critical approaches to literature enable us to frame these questions in different and compelling ways? Students will complete four major assessments—a midterm, a final, and two papers—in addition to short assignments such as reading responses and collaborative quizzes.
Section: 014 #4644
Instructor: J. Eighan
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00–11:15 AM LSC
In this course, we will read and analyze works of fiction, poetry, and drama to gain a better understanding of what constitutes literature. We will observe how authors utilize literary techniques, which will serve as the basis of our analyses of the texts. While we will read a variety of different works, our course will fundamentally explore “the Monster” in literature. In particular, we will examine character psychology, and consider how themes of identity and the “monstrous body” contribute to our overall understanding of these texts.
This foundational course in literary studies will require students to read closely and analyze carefully a representative variety of prose, poetry, and drama, master key literary and critical terms, and explore a variety of core critical approaches to the analysis and interpretation of literature. This course will also explore important conceptual questions about literature and its study. What is literature? Why does it matter? How has it been conceived in different times and places? How do we envision the relationships among author, text, and reader or audience? What is the difference between reading a literary work in its historical context and in the light of our own contemporary time? Where does meaning come from in literature? What is literary interpretation and what role does it have in the production of literary meaning? How are literary works related to culture and society and how do they reflect – and reflect on – questions of value and the diversity of human experience? Exploring these questions will help students develop the skills of analysis and interpretation needed to approach literature in a sophisticated manner.
Section: 015 #4645
Instructor: J. Stayer
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00–11:15 AM LSC
This is a foundational course of literary studies: an introduction to college-level thinking about various literary genres, including fiction, poetry, and drama. This section of the course covers the American experience from 1850 to the present, including minority experience: women, African-American, Asian-American, Latinx and LGBTQ. Since literary interpretation is an art rather than an exact science, the bulk of the course is devoted to close readings of the text that lead to reasonable interpretations.
Literature is an art form that addresses all aspects of the human experience—the emotions, the body, the spirit, love, ambition and despair, suffering and joy, bravery and self-deception, cultural roles and inner longings. So no matter what your major or your interests, the material in this course will be relevant to all who seek meaning and purpose in their lives.
Section: 016 #4646
Instructor: J. Cragwall
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30 AM–12:45 PM LSC
Why should we care about literature?
We’ll start historically: who before us has cared about literature, and why? We’ll study the pressure texts put on their historical moment, and how they’re shaped by it in surprising ways: for example, our discussion of Shakespeare will start with the formation of “Shakespeare” as a figure, often at odds with the “evidence” of the poems, of canonical standards throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a program that affected even the spelling of his poems. We’ll read some authors who were white, male, and rich (and some who weren’t): how has literature been used to promote a series of questions and assumptions that they may have shared (sometimes called “the canon”), and how has it, even in these same authors, blown apart all the stereotypes and orthodoxies we’d expect to find? We’ll watch the invention not only of English (and then British) culture, but of the English language itself, its twists and triumphs, detours and degenerations—and most importantly, we’ll watch as language, especially literary language, is fashioned into the greatest vehicle of social and aesthetic contest.
We’ll read novels and poems, plays and pornography, ranging from 1600 to around 1900. We (well, you) will also write papers, take exams, and be flogged—the entire range of academic abjection, in one convenient course.
Section: 017 #4647
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30 AM–12:45 PM LSC
Section: 018 #4648
Instructor: F. Staidum
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30 AM–12:45 PM LSC
Interpreting Literature, Interpreting Society
Humans have long committed their desires, hopes, fears, and beliefs to oral and written text, and as a result, any meaningful study of literature is more than a simple study of the “make believe” but an interpretation of the broader human condition (i.e., the state of humanity, how we treat each other, our relationships to love and violence, etc.). In this section of UCLR 100E, we explore the relationship between literature and society, especially how literary works engage the social problems of racism, sexism, and economic inequality.
As a foundational course in literary studies, students will survey an illustrative body of prose, poetry, and drama; apply fundamental literary and critical terms; and practice introductory analytical methods. In addition to sampling so-called “canonical” literature, this section especially emphasizes key works by women and people of color, such as Phillis Wheatley, Kate Chopin, Charlotte Perkins Stetson, Amy Tan, Sherman Alexie, Richard Wright, and Sandra Cisneros.
Section: 019 #4649
Instructor: B. Ahad
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00–2:15 PM LSC
Social Justice and Literary Studies
The mission of Loyola University Chicago is “to expand knowledge in the service of humanity through learning, justice and faith.” In this introductory course, we will explore literature as a form of social justice, specifically with respect to race, class, gender and environmental inequities. We will address the following questions: What is literature and why does it matter? How does literature deal with issues of social justice, and how do literary texts function as tools for social justice? To explore these questions, we will read a range of genres including novels, poetry, drama and non-fiction.
Section: 020 #4650
Instructor: D. Chinitz
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00–2:15 PM LSC
This course will develop students’ ability to analyze literature at the college level. The texts we discuss will vary across genres (fiction, poetry, and drama) and historical time periods. Authors likely to appear on the syllabus include Jane Austen, LeRoi Jones, James Joyce, Flannery O’Connor, Bernard Shaw, Tennessee Williams, Robert Frost, and Sharon Olds. The close-reading skills we practice will cultivate students’ critical thinking, understanding of literary texts, and appreciation of the craft of writing.
Section: 021 #4651
Instructor: K. Quirk
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 9:20–10:10 AM LSC
Section: 022 #4652
Instructor: J. Wexler
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00–2:15 PM LSC
Literature in a Secular Age
The theme of this course is literature in a secular age. We will examine the ways authors responded to the loss of a consensus of belief by studying examples of poetry, fiction, and drama from the nineteenth century to the present. Using appropriate literary terms, we will analyze textual evidence to construct critical arguments. We will consider fundamental questions such as: What is literature? Why does it matter? Where does meaning come from in literature? How are literary works related to culture and society and how do they reflect – and reflect on – questions of value and the diversity of human experience?
Section: 023 #4653
Instructor: I. Cornelius
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30–3:45 PM LSC
This course is an introduction to literature and literary studies. We read poetry, drama, and prose fiction from a diverse range of social and historical contexts, and we develop skills, concepts, and strategies for responding to and interpreting this literature. As students in this class, you will learn how to pay attention to literary texts and how to assess interpretations of them (what should an interpretation do?). We explore the nature of doubt, certainty, and belief, the experiences of discovering, wanting, or opposing something, and relations between self and community. Texts include Homer’s Odyssey, Sophocles’s Oedipus the King, Beowulf, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Cervantes’s Don Quixote, and Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Section: 024 #4654
Instructor: K. Quirk
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 10:25–11:15 AM LSC
Section: 025 #4655
Instructor: F. Staidum
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30–3:45 PM LSC
Interpreting Literature, Interpreting Society
Humans have long committed their desires, hopes, fears, and beliefs to oral and written text, and as a result, any meaningful study of literature is more than a simple study of the “make believe” but an interpretation of the broader human condition (i.e., the state of humanity, how we treat each other, our relationships to love and violence, etc.). In this section of UCLR 100E, we explore the relationship between literature and society, especially how literary works engage the social problems of racism, sexism, and economic inequality.
As a foundational course in literary studies, students will survey an illustrative body of prose, poetry, and drama; apply fundamental literary and critical terms; and practice introductory analytical methods. In addition to sampling so-called “canonical” literature, this section especially emphasizes key works by women and people of color, such as Phillis Wheatley, Kate Chopin, Charlotte Perkins Stetson, Amy Tan, Sherman Alexie, Richard Wright, and Sandra Cisneros.
ENGL 210 Business Writing
Section: 20W #1576
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MW 2:45–4:00 PM LSC
ENGL 210-20W is a writing intensive class.
Section: 21W #4656
Instructor: M. Mangoubi
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30–3:45 PM LSC
Effective communicators, no matter what industry, are always in demand. English 210-21W is a writing course focused on building your professional profile and developing business writing experience. It aims to help sharpen your professional writing, organization, and verbal communication skills, giving you a competitive edge in the job market.
Our classroom simulates a business environment, incorporating appropriate projects and applications via oral presentations, peer reviews, collaborative writing activities, and materials from current or recent professional positions. This environment requires punctuality, dependability, cooperation and teamwork. My goal is to help you develop better business writing and interpersonal skills by the end of the semester.
Section: 60W #2306
Instructor: J. Janangelo
3.0 credit hours Lecture
T 7:00–9:30 PM LSC
Our course covers the rhetorical principles of effective writing, focusing on particular types of discourse practiced in business and professional settings. You will gain experience reading and writing texts pertinent to business communication including memos, proposals, letters, and resumes. There will be individual and collaborative projects; you will also give a group presentation.
ENGL 211 Writing for Pre-Law Students
Section: 62W #1577
Instructor: D. Gorski
3.0 credit hours Lecture
M 7:00–9:30 PM LSC
In this course, students will learn to develop the writing skills used by law school students and attorneys to prepare case briefs, office memoranda, and pre-trial motions. Students will also learn how to answer essay examination questions of the type given in law school and on a state bar examination. In class, students will develop the verbal abilities necessary to take a legal position and defend it with statements of fact and conclusions of law. Realistic hypothetical fact patterns will be analyzed using the IRAC method: issue, rule, application, and conclusion. Learning how to cite to legal authorities is a central part of the course. Readings include judicial opinions, state and federal statutes, and law review articles. The course is taught by a practicing attorney, and assumes no prior legal studies by the students.
Section: 63W # 2902
Instructor: D. Gorski
3.0 credit hours Lecture
W 7:00–9:30 PM LSC
In this course, students will learn to develop the writing skills used by law school students and attorneys to prepare case briefs, office memoranda, and pre-trial motions. Students will also learn how to answer essay examination questions of the type given in law school and on a state bar examination. In class, students will develop the verbal abilities necessary to take a legal position and defend it with statements of fact and conclusions of law. Realistic hypothetical fact patterns will be analyzed using the IRAC method: issue, rule, application, and conclusion. Learning how to cite to legal authorities is a central part of the course. Readings include judicial opinions, state and federal statutes, and law review articles. The course is taught by a practicing attorney, and assumes no prior legal studies by the students.
ENGL 220 Theory/Practice Tutoring
Section: 1WE #2307
Instructor: A. Kessel
3.0 credit hours Seminar
TR 2:30–3:45 PM LSC
English 220 is a seminar designed to prepare students to serve as tutors in the Loyola University Chicago Writing Center. This course is open to students from all majors who have a passion for clear written communication. We will explore the theory and practice of peer tutoring through reading and discussion of research as well as through practical experience. In this course you will learn how to help others become better writers while improving your own writing and critical thinking skills. You will become part of a community of fellow peer tutors and gain experience that will benefit you in a variety of careers. The service-learning component consists of approximately 20-25 hours of observation and tutoring in the Writing Center. The writing intensive component includes several short essays and a group research paper. Students who wish to be enrolled in this course must obtain a short recommendation from a faculty member who can speak to the student’s writing ability and interpersonal skills. Recommendations should be emailed to Amy Kessel (akessel@luc.edu). Those who excel in the course will be eligible to work as paid writing tutors. ENGL 220-1WE is a srevice learning writing intensive class. This class satisfies the Engaged Learning requirement in the Service Learning category.
ENGL 271 Exploring Poetry
Section: 01W #3072
Instructor: V. Bell
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40–2:30 PM LSC
Taking inspiration from Paul Celan’s definition of a poem as a “message in a bottle,” this course is about you, about exploring your reactions to poetry, how you make sense of poetry’s cryptic “messages” and then how to write about your reactions. To be able to discuss and write about poetry, you will read critical essays and learn basic terms that describe the formal properties of poetry, as well as poetic content. Authors may include William Shakespeare, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Fatimah Asghar, Jacob Saenz, A.E. Stallings, Tyehimba Jess, Cathy Park Hong, and more.
The course is discussion-based and everyone is expected to participate by sharing reactions, raising questions, working in groups, and experimenting with writing a few poems of your own. Course requirements include exams and several short papers, one longer argument paper, and attending a live poetry reading.
Section: 02W #3073
Instructor: J. Biester
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 8:30–9:45 AM LSC
This class will provide an introduction to the understanding and analysis of poetry through the study of a wide range of poems in English. We will consider various motives for writing and reading poetry, and various methods of reading it. Because this course is writing intensive, there will be frequent brief writing assignments, both in and out of class. Requirements will include participation in class discussions, several papers, a midterm, and a final.
Section: 03W #3783
Instructor: J. Stayer
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00– 2:15 PM LSC
This is a second-tier course, building on the interpretive moves learned in UCLR 100. Entirely devoted to the glorious genre of poetry, we will look at the tortured, agonized sonnets of John Donne, the sexually explicit poetry of Shakespeare, the fevered odes of Keats and Anna Barbauld, the love sonnets of Elizabeth Browning, the haunting work of T. S. Eliot, the high oratory of Dylan Thomas, the understated snark of Philip Larkin, and the charming felicity of W. H. Auden.
Instead of granting poems a special status beyond language or normal human communication, we will look at poems as instances of a rhetorical occasion: who is speaking, to whom, and to what purpose? Once we see how poems act like ordinary speech genres (curse, blessing, invitation, warning, cry, lament), we no longer need to fear poetry as an arcane game of hide-and-seek with meaning. How could you not sign up for this course?
Section: 04W #5334
Instructor: J. Biester
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30–3:45 PM LSC
This class will provide an introduction to the understanding and analysis of poetry through the study of a wide range of poems in English. We will consider various motives for writing and reading poetry, and various methods of reading it. Because this course is writing intensive, there will be frequent brief writing assignments, both in and out of class. Requirements will include participation in class discussions, several papers, a midterm, and a final.
ENGL 272 Exploring Drama
Section: 05W #3074
Instructor: R. Peters
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 10:25–11:15 AM LSC
English 272 focuses on the understanding, appreciation, and criticism of drama; extensive readings and several critical analyses are required in this class. This section of English 272 offers a rigorous study of numerous significant 20th and 21st Century dramas. Course texts will include works from Tennessee Williams, Margaret Edson, Tony Kushner, August Wilson, Tracy Letts, and several others. ENGL 272-05W is a writing intensive class.
Section: 06W #5335
Instructor: R. Peters
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 9:20–10:10 AM LSC
English 272 focuses on the understanding, appreciation, and criticism of drama; extensive readings and several critical analyses are required in this class. This section of English 272 offers a rigorous study of numerous significant 20th and 21st Century dramas. Course texts will include works from Tennessee Williams, Margaret Edson, Tony Kushner, August Wilson, Tracy Letts, and several others. ENGL 272-06W is a writing intensive class.
ENGL 273 Exploring Fiction
Section: 002 #5362
Instructor: J. Kerkering
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MW 4:15–5:30 PM LSC
This course examines works by important U.S. novelists from the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. Class discussions will address formal and thematic features of these writings. Based on these discussions, students will write papers that draw upon the readings to support original and consequential interpretations. Readings will include works by Henry James, Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, and William Faulkner.
Section: 003 #5369
Instructor: L. Le-Khac
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30–3:45 PM LSC
Growing Up "Different": Coming-of-Age Stories in a Diversifying America
This course explores fiction centered on young people of color finding their places in America and changing the nation in the process. We’ll examine the diversity of American coming-of-age stories from 1960 to today, a period when many minority groups struggled to claim their places in the nation. We’ll follow extraordinary writers of color as they narrate the possibilities for young people of different backgrounds to develop in contemporary America. And we’ll equip you with the analytical tools you’ll need to appreciate their artistry in fiction.
Section: 07W #5359
Instructor: W. Romero
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 2:45–3:35 PM LSC
This course focuses on the understanding, appreciation, and criticism of prose fiction. Upon completion of ENGL 273, students will be able to demonstrate understanding of fiction as a means of exploring human experience and understanding the creative process, and be able to use the technical vocabulary necessary for understanding fiction.
This particular section of ENGL 273 will engage with the themes and characteristics of road trip fiction written in the U.S. during the 20th and 21st centuries. As a class, we will track these various literary journeys—journeys to and from prison, journeys to a post-apocalyptic shelter, journeys to say goodbye, and many more—and analyze what patterns emerge. What do people search for when they travel? What motivates them to leave in the first place? How do they change along the way? We will reads texts by William Faulkner, Jesmyn Ward, Cormac McCarthy, and others.
As this course is writing intensive, students will be expected to complete several written assignments, both formal and informal. Course time will be dedicated to drafting, brainstorming, and workshopping written assignments.
Section: 08W #6215
Instructor: L. Craig
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 11:30 AM–12:20 PM LSC
Nineteenth Century Manners, Race, and Cultural Encounters
Throughout the long nineteenth century (1789-1914), the social class of Western individuals was believed to be recognizable based on their visible grasp of manners. Gradations of cleanliness, dignity, grace, and restraint were all part of a class performance, observable in behavior and conversation. In particular, lower-class people were assumed to be dirty, drunken, and lacking in cultural refinement, leading to efforts to “improve” their outward appearance and activities. If an individual refused to conform to various Anglo-American middle-class standards for conduct, they often risked incurring judgement, exclusion, and hostility, especially when being of a different race and/or abiding by the standards of another culture. Visitors to various colonial locations often reported back negatively regarding their experiences with local populations, while members of such communities and countries viewed Anglo-American expectations for their manners and obvious views on race as limiting, incorrect, and discriminatory.
Students in this writing-intensive course will originate and complete a semester-long essay project centered around the primary source archives of the Nineteenth Century Michalak Collection in University Archives and Special Collections, Cudahy Library, second floor. Acting as time-traveling detectives, students will examine original documents and texts on the subject of manners and race; some of these pieces will be academically investigated for the first time. These projects will endeavor to understand a few of these documents and texts (travelogues, memoirs, books of humor, cartoons, advertisements, cooking books, etc.) both in terms of how they might have been received by initial audiences and the ways in which contemporary readerships could and did react to nineteenth century conduct standards. Ultimately, these projects will make an argument regarding how at least one aspect of manners acted to exclude (or include) others from different classes or races. Additionally, there will be in-class discussions of various short readings from theoretical articles and longer works by diverse authors on manners, race, and cultural encounters; short activities and short essays will be assigned based on these readings.
Section: 09W #6216
Instructor: J. Glover
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30–3:45 PM LSC
Why do people enjoy reading stories about made-up characters? This course is an introduction to prose fiction as a mode of literary representation. It will aim to acquaint students with the historical development of fictional characters, as well as the many techniques authors use to make fictional worlds, including the creation of perspectives, the description of setting, and the rules of genre. Most of our energy will be devoted to reading and discussing short stories and novels, but we will range across genres from realism to science fiction.
Section: 602 #5370
Instructor: J. Janangelo
3.0 credit hours Lecture
R 7:00–9:30 PM LSC
Our core course will focuses on studying and critiquing prose fiction. We will explore major critical approaches and apply them to a range of literary texts, both short and long, with a focus on what comprises and compromises celebrity, social class and wealth. Our course will help refine our critical thinking and analytic abilities. To that end, we will work on close reading, focused discussion, and effective writing. To develop our critical acumen, we will write several essays, as well as an exam. We will also give a group presentation.
ENGL 283 Women in Literature
Section: 004 #5371
Instructor: S. Weller
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30 AM–12:45 PM LSC
Secrets, Sex, and Silence in Contemporary Memoir
Memoir, as a literary genre, has garnered much critical attention in the last decade (both positive and negative). But what exactly is memoir? What characteristics does it have that are different than fiction? Do these genres ever intersect? If an author is writing from memory, and oftentimes memory is hazy, or at least subjective, what is the “truth” in memoir? These are some of the general questions we will address during the semester while reading a selection of creative non-fiction memoirs by a wide range of contemporary writers including Patricia Hampl, Maxine Hong Kingston, Kathryn Harrison, bell hooks, Bassey Ikpi, Alison Bechdel, Chanel Miller, Anne Fessler, and Jeanette Winterson. We will more specifically consider how societal attitudes towards gender roles and expectations relate to the taboo nature and cultural silencing of women’s voices in identity, sexuality, and reproductive issues.
Cross-listed with Women's Studies, English 283 is designed to meet the "literary knowledge and experience" requirements of the Loyola Core. Focusing on literature written by 20th century women authors, this course is designed to help students gain knowledge of women's lives and writings; to show them the difference gender makes to the writing, reading, and interpretation of literature; to train them in the analysis of literature; and to teach them how to describe, analyze, and formulate arguments about literary texts. This course fulfills the multicultural literature requirement.
Section: 005 #5372
Instructor: B. Bouson
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00–2:15 PM LSC
“If women have learned many of the ways they interpret their lives from the narrative schemata of novels and stories,” writes Joanne Fry, “they can also gain from fiction new insights into the narrative processes of constructing meaning.” Crosslisted with Women’s Studies, English 283 is a writing intensive Core literature course designed to meet the “literary knowledge and experience” requirements of the Loyola Core. Focusing on literature written by 20th- and 21st-century women authors, this course is designed to help students gain knowledge of women’s lives and writings; to show them the difference gender makes to the writing, reading, and interpretation of literature; to train them in the analysis of literature; and to teach them how to describe, analyze, and formulate arguments about literary texts. Analyzing representative works of fiction written by women authors, this course will investigate the important cultural and gender scripts and psychological dramas encoded in the works read, paying special attention to the various ways the authors represent coming of age, the female body, romantic love, mother-child relationships, female friendships, and female aging in their works. The authors covered will include Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood, Jamaica Kincaid, Toni Morrison, and May Sarton. There will be quizzes, papers, a midterm and a final exam.
Section: 006 #4662
Instructor: P. Caughie
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30–3:45 PM LSC
This course focuses on the feminist avant-garde, women writers and artists of the early to mid twentieth-century who produced experimental works and challenged conventional notions of gender. Our purpose will be (1) to learn to read texts (verbal and visual) in relation to their social and historical context, especially contemporaneous notions of gender, and (2) to analyze literature in terms of its narrative techniques. How do we read women’s literature that doesn’t provide a linear plot, stable characters, or positive images of women? What effect do these artworks have on our notions of ourselves as gendered subjects? What are the political implications of such radical texts? We will read Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, and Djuna Barnes from the first half of the century, and Angela Carter, Jeanette Winterson and Harryette Mullen from the second half. We will also read Nella Larsen, a more conventional novelist whose writing was indebted to Stein and has radical implications for our understanding of gender, race and class. And we will discuss visual artists as well. This course makes a case for why aesthetically difficult writers and artists like those considered “avant-garde” still matter. Requirements include frequent quizzes, two essays, and a final exam.
Section: 10W #5373
Instructor: S. Bost
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 11:30 AM–12:20 PM LSC
Special Topic: Gender and Illness
I have chosen the topic of illness since it is a frequent motif in literature and since it highlights several important themes for Women’s Studies and Gender Studies. Illness is often stigmatized as a sign of weakness or invoked as contagion to justify fears of outsiders. Our experiences of illness are shaped by cultural expectations, gender norms, eroticism, and spiritual beliefs. Women have a particular relationship to illness through their stereotypical roles as sufferers and caregivers. We will explore these themes, among others, in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” The Diary of Frida Kahlo, Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals, Virginia Grise’s Your Healing Is Killing Me, Nancy Mairs’s Carnal Acts, Aurora Levins Morales’s Kindling, and Susan Bordo’s Unbearable Weight. Assignments will include three papers, one paper revision, regular in-class exercises, and an in-class presentation.
This writing intensive section is cross-listed with Women’s Studies and Gender Studies.
Section: 11W #6217
Instructor: B. Bouson
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30–3:45 PM LSC
“If women have learned many of the ways they interpret their lives from the narrative schemata of novels and stories,” writes Joanne Fry, “they can also gain from fiction new insights into the narrative processes of constructing meaning.” Crosslisted with Women’s Studies, English 283 is a writing intensive Core literature course designed to meet the “literary knowledge and experience” requirements of the Loyola Core. Focusing on literature written by 20th- and 21st-century women authors, this course is designed to help students gain knowledge of women’s lives and writings; to show them the difference gender makes to the writing, reading, and interpretation of literature; to train them in the analysis of literature; and to teach them how to describe, analyze, and formulate arguments about literary texts. Analyzing representative works of fiction written by women authors, this course will investigate the important cultural and gender scripts and psychological dramas encoded in the works read, paying special attention to the various ways the authors represent coming of age, the female body, romantic love, mother-child relationships, female friendships, and female aging in their works. The authors covered will include Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood, Jamaica Kincaid, Toni Morrison, and May Sarton. There will be quizzes, papers, a midterm and a final exam.
ENGL 287 Religion and Literature
Section: 12W #5375
Instructor: M. Clarke
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30–3:45 PM LSC
This course will introduce students to important works from various historical periods and cultures, works that speak to us through time of essential questions and that offer insights into the human spirit and the idea of the holy. Assignments will consist of a mid-term, term paper, and final examination, as well as multiple short writing assignments designed to give practice in the essential elements of good writing and literary analysis. ENGL 287-12W is a writing intensive class.
Texts: Shadow and Light: Literature and the Life of Faith, ed. Tippens, et al., 3rd edition.
ENGL 288 Nature in Literature
Section: 13W #3076
Instructor: E. Bayley
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 12:35–1:25 PM LSC
In this course we will use a number of different Ecocritical approaches, with a particular focus on Ecofeminism to explore and interpret pieces of fiction. Literature provides a vast account of how the natural world is represented, treated, understood, and further, misused or abused. In response to this, we will explore the question: is there is a direct correlation between the treatment of nature and the treatment of humans, and in particular, women and children? Therefore, this course will focus heavily on the connections between the treatment and abuse of women, children, and nature. Assignments in the semester will include writing papers, quizzes/in-class reflections, and classroom participation.
ENGL 290 Human Values in Literature
Section: 007 #5376
Instructor: P. Jacob
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40–2:30 PM LSC
Hoards and Other Stuff
Tablets, trinkets, pompoms, puzzle pieces, and plastic bags. We use objects to encode memories, reflect our identities, signal social status, provide haptic experience, and order our world. But we are also utterly overwhelmed by things: collections devolve into hoards, and the ocean spins trash through its currents. In order to better understand human values, tendencies, and systems, we will examine the many categories of object—relic, commodity, rubbish, keepsake, and fetish—as they appear in literature. The object has a critical place in literary history, from realism’s attempt to capture everyday life to the sensory pleasures of imagist poetry. We will discuss how we attribute meaning to things, but also how things escape our attempts at meaning-making. What do objects signify, if anything? How do things help us remember, and what do they allow us to forget? Why do we accumulate so much, and how has that tendency transferred into the digital age? Readings will include case studies of hoarders as well as Marie Kondo’s bestselling decluttering guide; the novels Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe, and The Museum of Innocence, by Orhan Pamuk; poetry by Christina Rossetti and Jorge Luis Borges; nonfiction by Brian Thill and Teju Cole; and the films Wall-E and Finding Vivian Maier.
Fulfils multicultural requirement.
Section: 008 #5377
Instructor: H. Mann
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00–11:15 AM LSC
Non-Western Voices
Adopting an international and cross-disciplinary perspective, this section of English 290 will examine the portrayal of human values in modern and contemporary works by selected non-western writers from Africa, the West Indies, South Asia, and USA. Our main aim will be to examine the extent to which the societies under study (and the individuals who constitute them) share universal values and the extent to which these societies and their values are predicated upon culture specific norms and expectations. To this end, we will consider the role of nationalism, tradition, religion, race, ethnicity, gender, and class/caste in the conception and practice of such values. In addition, we will analyze the cultural bases of contributing literary techniques, including structure, language, narrative focus, and characterization among others, to arrive at comparative assessments of the portrayal of human values in modern world literature.
This course satisfies 3 credits of the Core Curriculum Tier-II requirement in Literary Knowledge & Experience; counts as a 200-level elective for both the English major and minor; and meets the 3-credit multicultural requirement of the English major.
Section: 14W #5378
Instructor: X. Hohman
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 8:15–9:05 AM LSC
East-West Encounters
Throughout 2018 and 2019, a trade war with China has loomed large over the U.S. economic landscape, yet, in 2018, Crazy Rich Asians, a film portraying the Singaporean elite of Chinese descent, grossed $238.5 million at the box office. What accounts for these vastly different responses to China and people of Chinese descent among the American public? Who or what shaped the current US relationship with East Asia, and what role did the literature of the 20th and 21st centuries play in that shaping?
In this writing-intensive section of English 290, we will examine the ways in which US writers and poets have engaged with Eastern culture, focusing particularly on US encounters with China and considering the roles that nationalism, xenophobia, cultural appropriation, translation, gender, race, class, and politics have played in shaping the US-China relationship. As this course is focused on the study of human values, our study of these works will include an in-depth look at the ways in which value systems are formed and the roles that both literary and economic events play in that formation. Readings will include works by Ha Jin, Li-Young Lee, Langston Hughes, Amy Lowell, Ezra Pound, and Marianne Moore, and Lisa See, among others.
ENGL 290-14W is a writing intensive class.
Section: 23W #5379
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 4:15–5:30 PM LSC
ENGL 290-23W is a writing intensive class.
ENGL 293 Advanced Writing
Section: 15W #3786
Instructor: M. Meinhardt
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 4:15–5:30 PM LSC
This advanced writing course explores the dynamic forms and structures of composition beyond the classroom toward the purposes of professional publication and presentation. Composition offers a wide array of exciting forms, styles and structures beyond the academic essay, and this course develops an appreciation and capability for students’ choices of essay types in creating several for personal, professional and hybrid writing, and the accompanying professional documents necessary for the publication or presentation process. As a community of writers we research, draft, comment and prepare for submission together. We will explore relevant readings from composition theory and pedagogy to inform our writing projects, as well as how we conceive of the writing process. Engaging, supportive and challenging, this course is ideal for writers in any discipline who wish to become better writers and to enjoy the process as they do.
Section: 20W #5477
Instructor: L. Goldstein
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MW 4:15–5:30 PM LSC
Advanced Writing: New Media
The focus of this Advanced Composition class will be Writing with/in New Media. From Instagram to Facebook and beyond, we will practice writing in and across modalities and technologies that are both “old” and “new,” familiar and unfamiliar. We will consider how communication is mediated and remediated in the digital age, and we will draw connections between historical moments of print culture with that of contemporary technological advancement. We will spend time considering, for instance, the many ways that technology has shaped the way we read and interpret (and, indeed, are ourselves read and interpreted). This is a Writing-Intensive course.
ENGL 303 Grammar: Principles and Pedagogy
Section: 009 #1899
Instructor: E. Weeks Stogner
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45–3:35 PM LSC
We use the English language every day, but do we really understand how it works? The goal of this course is to analyze the structure of the English language, to learn and appreciate its intricacies, quirks, and demands. We will explore English grammar not only as a list of rules and regulations that govern language use but also as a means of clearly conveying meaning. This course will examine all elements of English grammar from parts of speech and how they function in a sentence to punctuation and how it enhances clear and precise prose. Course requirements include reading all assigned material, doing all assigned exercises, taking regular quizzes and tests, and giving a short teaching presentation. This course is required for students planning to teach high school English, but it is open to others and recommended for anyone who studies texts written in English.
ENGL 317 The Writing of Poetry
Section: 010 #1351
Instructor: P. Sorenson
3.0 credit hours Seminar
F 2:45–5:15 PM LSC
This course aligns poetry writing with the reading of poetry and the exploration of poetic practices both old and new. Through outside reading, students will question their relationships to contemporary modes and cultures. Thus, students will further develop their own voices, styles, and methods of production, and they will begin to situate their craft in the larger poetic world. Weekly class meetings will center on discussions and presentations of outside materials, in-class writing and writing experiments, discussions of student-generated poetry, and collaborative writing. In addition to regular writing assignments and in-class presentations, students will develop a portfolio by semester’s end.
Section: 011 #1352
Instructor: J. Sitar
3.0 credit hours Seminar
T 2:30–5:00 PM LSC
This course aims to give you some footing as you begin to explore the writing of poetry. We will read widely with the goal of becoming proficient in the genre as readers, critics, and of course as poets. Our class will often involve group discussion, from broad conversation about forms and styles, to line-by-line examination of individual poems. Your responsibilities are to read carefully, complete each assignment earnestly, participate often in class, try to guide and improve each other’s work, and write and revise your writing a lot. In return, I will expose you to a wide variety of poetry, guide class discussions, ask questions to challenge you, and create assignments that will help your development as a poet.
Section: 012 #5380
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Seminar
M 2:45–5:15 PM LSC
ENGL 318 The Writing of Fiction
Section: 013 #1353
Instructor: D. Kaplan
3.0 credit hours Seminar
M 2:45–5:15 PM LSC
Students will be introduced to the art and craft of writing fiction through (a) reading master writers such as Sherman Alexie, Joyce Carol Oates, Annie Proulx, Haruki Murakami, Donald Barthelme, and others, to analyze their craft; (b) writing three original short stories; and (c ) having these stories discussed and critiqued by the instructor and by fellow students in a supportive workshop environment. Class participation is emphasized. Fulfills a Core Expressive Arts Requirement.
Section: 014 #2310
Instructor: D. Kaplan
3.0 credit hours Seminar
W 2:45–5:15 PM LSC
Students will be introduced to the art and craft of writing fiction through (a) reading master writers such as Sherman Alexie, Joyce Carol Oates, Annie Proulx, Haruki Murakami, Donald Barthelme, and others, to analyze their craft; (b) writing three original short stories; and (c ) having these stories discussed and critiqued by the instructor and by fellow students in a supportive workshop environment. Class participation is emphasized. Fulfills a Core Expressive Arts Requirement.
Section: 603 #2311
Instructor: M. Hawkins
3.0 credit hours Seminar
W 7:00–9:30 PM LSC
In this fiction writing workshop students will read, write, revise and critique short fiction with the aim of becoming better writers and readers. Workshops will be rigorous and respectful, with the understanding that analysis of other writers’ craft teaches us to hone our own.
Every week we will read and discuss short stories by master writers; most weeks students will read and discuss each others’ stories, too. Every week students will write. In addition to three completed stories assigned as homework, students will do in-class writing exercises designed to create momentum, generate ideas and explore technique. Class discussions will focus on craft as well as concept, with particular attention paid to structure, character development, dialog, voice, tone and imagery. Again and again, we will ask of each other and ourselves: What works, what doesn’t, why and how can it be made better?
ENGL 319 Writing Creative Nonfiction
Section: 015 #1900
Instructor: H. Axelrod
3.0 credit hours Seminar
R 2:30–5:00 PM LSC
Section: 028 #6395
Instructor: N. Kenney Johnstone
3.0 credit hours Seminar
W 2:45–5:15 PM LSC
The Importance of the Personal Essay
Personal essays allow writers to share unique experiences while communicating universal truths. They also have the power to spark important conversations and foster awareness. In this class, students will study and write five different forms of the personal essay. By reading and analyzing contemporary published models, students will deepen their learning of traditional and innovative creative nonfiction methods. Students will then write creative nonfiction pieces and participate in workshops of their classmates' writing.
ENGL 322 Chaucer
Section: 016 #5384
Instructor: I. Cornelius
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 4:15–5:30 PM LSC
Geoffrey Chaucer is one of the great literary innovators in the English language. Writing at a time when English commanded little respect as a language of literature, Chaucer crafted a unique and compelling poetic voice, surrealistic fictional worlds, and an inclusive vision for literary fiction. In this class we read many of Chaucer’s most important poems, including his unfinished masterpiece, the Canterbury Tales. For the Canterbury Tales Chaucer created a diverse cast – women and men, poor and rich, profane and devout – who regale one another with boundary-pushing stories that explore class, gender, sexuality, faith, honor, and fiction. Assignments include a critical commentary, two essays, weekly responses, and a final exam. This course fulfills the pre-1900 English major requirement.
ENGL 327 Studies in Shakespeare
Section: 017 #5385
Instructor: V. Foster
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MW 4:15–5:30 PM LSC
The Reception of Shakespeare’s Plays on Stage and Screen
In this course we will discuss selected Shakespearean plays focusing especially on both close readings of the texts and the history of the plays’ critical and theatrical reception. Plays will include The Taming of the Shrew, Henry V, The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and The Tempest. Students will write a short paper (4 pages) comparing the interpretation of a particular moment or character in two film versions of a Shakespearean play and will give a class presentation on a specific stage production of a Shakespearean play in its cultural context, leading to a research paper (8 pages) on the topic. Students will also participate in a performance group, offering the group’s own interpretation of a short scene or part of a scene (one-page paper to be handed in). We will attend the McElroy Shakespeare Celebration on Thursday, Feb. 13 in Galvin Hall (one-page paper to be handed in). The final exam will enable students to demonstrate their ability to read closely and interpret selected passages from the plays.
ENGL 328 Studies in Renaissance
Section: 018 #1658
Instructor: C. Kendrick
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 12:35–1:25 PM LSC
Donne, Jonson, and Seventeenth-Century Lyric
The course will be a survey of the major poets in the first half of the seventeenth century, mostly their lyric productions, beginning with John Donne and Ben Jonson and winding up with Andrew Marvell and Katherine Philips. We will especially discuss the way the major poets depend on and define themselves against one another; the invention and evolution of lyric genres; and the way the lyric records and responds to some of the main social and cultural changes under way
ENGL 338 Studies in Romantic Period
Section: 019 #4673
Instructor: J. Cragwall
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30–3:45 PM LSC
Romanticism and the Hazards of Romance
The term “Romantic” was coined to describe the unprecedented demand in England, from about 1780 to 1830, for literary romance: stories of elsewheres and once-upon-a-times, packed with damsels and distress, banditti and crumbled castles, bloody ghosts and the spice of “Oriental” palaces. We’ll take the pleasures of romance—its promise of imaginative, national, and historical displacements—as our subject: we’ll tour the Mediterranean gloom of Ann Radcliffe’s seminal gothic novels, meet the “mad, bad, and dangerous to know” heroes of Lord Byron’s Childe Harold and his “Eastern Tales,” and ponder the femmes, fatales and sometimes just fated, of John Keats’s Lamia, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Isabella. But we’ll also be interested in the ways romance interrogated the modernity it escaped, as it becomes a privileged form for treating public and private violence, the politics of sexuality and gender, the possibilities for religious belief in a disenchanted world, and the materiality of reading, writing, and publishing its fantasies. As we’ll see, the lure of romance may be its thrill of hazard: who, after all, wouldn’t want to read Percy Shelley’s Zastrozzi, A Romance, after its first reviewer diagnosed it as "one of the most savage and improbable demons that ever issued from a diseased brain"? Exams, papers, substantial readings in murderous monks, dark necromancy, and queer camp. Satisfies the English major’s literature from 1700-1900 or before 1900 requirements.
ENGL 343 Victorian Period Studies
Section: 020 #3788
Instructor: M. Clarke
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30 AM–12:45 PM LSC
The Novel
The novel is at once work of art, interpreter of culture, and influential voice in the public sphere. In this course we will read six novels. Class discussions will be devoted to close readings and students’ varying interpretations of the text, examination of the biographical and historical contexts that inform the novels, and a brief introduction to the theory of the novel.
Texts: William M. Thackeray, Vanity Fair, 1847. Norton; Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, 1847. Norton; Charlotte Brontë, Villette, 1852. Penguin; Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, 1860. Norton; George Eliot, Mill on the Floss, 1860, Norton; Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd, 1874. Norton
ENGL 344 Studies in Modernism
Section: 021 #5386
Instructor: J. Wexler
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00– 11:15 AM LSC
When History is a Nightmare
Twentieth-century literature is often interpreted as an expression of new theories of the individual subject, but it was also a response to social upheavals. This course will ask how the new forms of the early twentieth century represent the political violence of the period. Like James Joyce, many writers spoke of history as a “nightmare.” This metaphor suggests the unimaginable quality of events as well as the difficulty of describing them. The problem of representing violence in a secular age is addressed in the primary texts of the course: selected poems and novels including Heart of Darkness, Death of a Hero, All Quiet on the Western Front, Women in Love, The Waste Land, and A Bend in the River.
ENGL 355 Studies in Literary Criticism
Section: 022 #5388
Instructor: S. Bost
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 10:25– 11:15 AM LSC
Theory Out of Bounds
Literary Theory is often criticized for its specialized jargon and conceptual difficulty, but what logics underlie theoretical writing, itself? This course will approach theory as a genre of literature, highlighting works of theory written in unexpected forms like poetry, graphic novels, memoirs, manifestos, performance, and even coloring books. We will consider how these works that fall outside conventional “criticism” use language, form, and space to develop deconstructive, feminist, queer, ecocritical, posthumanist, Marxist, and critical race theories. Required texts will include Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera, Sedgwick’s A Dialogue on Love, Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals, Bechdel’s Fun Home, Ahmed’s Living a Feminist Life, Rankine’s Citizen, and Grise’s Your Healing Is Killing Me. Assignments will include regular in-class exercises, two exams, and a final paper.
ENGL 381C Comparative American Literature
Section: 024 #5389
Instructor: J. Glover
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00– 2:15 PM LSC
Literature and Fascism in America
Many Americans have thought that fascism could never come to the United States. In the ironic words of Sinclair Lewis, “It can’t happen here.” But could it happen here? And how would it? This course will consider novels and short stories that portray the fascist takeover of the US. We will explore how literature about alternate universes can help us think about the dangers facing democracy in the real world. Writers from some literary traditions have in fact been quite alert to the threat of fascism in America. African American writers from the Jim Crow South, for example, saw parallels between homegrown white supremacists and Europe’s fascist brownshirts. Europe émigrés fleeing Hitler pointed to signs of incipient totalitarianism in America’s postwar order. And North American writers working in popular genres, such as science fiction, keenly contemplated what would happen if the US collapsed. This course will therefore take a comparative perspective, bringing together writers from many different traditions to consider the fateful problem of how American democracy could succumb. Our readings will include works such as Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition (1901), Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here (1935), William Thomas Smith’s The Black Stockings (1937), Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle (1962), George Steiner’s The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H. (1982), Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), and Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America (2004). We will also consider essays by writers such as Ida B. Wells, George Orwell, and Hannah Arendt, as well as by contemporary figures such as Jason Stanley, Timothy Snyder, and Masha Gessen. This course will satisfy the post-1900 requirement for the English major.
ENGL 384C African American Literature Post-1900
Section: 025 #4675
Instructor: B. Ahad
3.0 credit hours Lecture
T 2:30–5:00 PM LSC
Toni Morrison
This course is an advanced introduction to the works of novelist and critic, Toni Morrison. In this course, we will trace Morrison’s literary legacy chronologically beginning with her first novel The Bluest Eye (1970). Some of the central themes we will discuss are the ongoing legacy of slavery in the Unites States, the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality; the significance of time. (specifically the past, present and futurity), among others. In addition to performing analyses of Morrison’s literary texts, we will discuss her important critical works to better understand her vision of American and African American literature, particularly the role of the writer. This course fulfills the post-1900 and multicultural literature requirements.
Content warning: This class will occasionally ask you to read, hear, view difficult material. Your language, tone, questions, and comments must be respectful and considerate of all other participants in the class.
ENGL 390 Advanced Seminar
Section: 16W #2126
Instructor: J. Kerkering
3.0 credit hours Seminar
MWF 1:40–2:30 PM LSC
Nineteenth Century American Literature and Politics
In this course we will discuss the relationship between nineteenth-century American literature and politics. We often think of literature as enduring—as relevant to us today—precisely insofar as it rises above matters of mere politics to address perennial concerns. This thinking implies a particular understanding of both what it means to be literary and what it means to be political. But how might our understanding of particular works of literature, and of what it means to be literature at all, be affected by situating those literary works in the context of political debates contemporary to their publication? Similarly, what does it mean for us now, and what did it mean for the authors we read, for an issue to be political at all—as distinct from religious, ethical, personal, or familial? If there is, for us today, a “politics of…” just about anything, was this so in nineteenth-century America, or did nineteenth-century American authors employ a more delimited sense of the political? Our discussions will address important literary works in relation to compelling political concepts (such as communitarianism, liberalism, conservatism, and sovereignty) and urgent political issues (such as immigration, slavery, voting rights, and gendered “spheres”): how, we will ask, does an awareness of these concepts and issues affect our readings of the nineteenth-century American works that address them? We will also examine whether there is a politics that follows from an author’s choice of genre (fiction, poetry, drama, or oratory) and whether genres themselves carry certain political implications. To accomplish all of this, we will read nineteenth-century American literature alongside recent historical scholarship on nineteenth-century American politics and recent literary criticism on the ways authors participated in nineteenth-century political debates.
Section: 18 W #6396
Instructor: M. Werner
3.0 credit hours Seminar
W 2:45–5:15 PM LSC
The Seasons of Dickinson’s Desk
Between 1854 and 1886 Dickinson composed more than 1800 poems and 1050 letters along with fragments in prose and verse. From her desk—at once an 18 x 18 inch square cherry writing table and the infinite space of her mind—she engaged the world, composing work for readers as near as a hedgerow away and as far as another time/world. In this seminar, “The Seasons of Dickinson’s Desk,” participants will be drawn into the material, social and literary structures of Dickinson’s poetry, letters and fragments by first exploring the scope and trajectory of her writings and then by engaging these writings by intellectually imagining and re-creating Dickinson’s desk and the trajectories of its activities in and across time. Working individually and collaboratively, seminar participants will gather and interpret the many materials—flower specimens and seeds Dickinson was studying, books and periodicals she was reading, letters she received from others, and poems and letters she was composing—that lay upon her the desk in a given time frame. By transforming Dickinson’s desk from a static object into an animate scene of production, participants will illuminate the temporal and deeply layered nature of literary production as well as the complex relations between message, medium and culture.
ENGL 392 Advanced Creative Nonfiction
Section: 17W #3789
Instructor: H. Axelrod
3.0 credit hours Seminar
F 2:45–5:15 PM LSC
ENGL 392-17W is a writing intensive class.
ENGL 393 Teaching English to Adults
Section: 01E #1379
Instructor: J. Heckman
1.0-3.0 credit hours Field Studies
MTWR 5:30–7:00 PM LSC
Engage with Jesuit values and meet our neighbors. This course offers an excellent opportunity for service learning and practical experience in tutoring adults in written and spoken English at the Loyola Community Literacy Center, located in Loyola Hall, 1110 W. Loyola Avenue, 2nd floor conference room, across the street from Mertz.
While the Literacy Center offers community adults an opportunity to improve their skills, it also gives student-tutors the chance to serve their community and to engage with their Jesuit education. One student tutor said, “The Literacy Center has taught me the true value of giving, and this is perhaps the most valuable lesson I’ve learned at Loyola.”
No previous tutoring experience is necessary. When taken for 3 credit hours, this course satisfies the Core Engaged Learning-Service Learning Internship requirement. The course is open to second-semester freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors, although incoming freshmen are always welcome to tutor as volunteers and take the course at a later date.
Students tutor adult learners, most of whom are immigrants, refugees, or international visitors whose skills in their native language range from their being highly educated professionals to being perhaps illiterate, even in their own language, and who may know some English or no English. Students also tutor some native English speakers preparing for the GED or improving their literacy skills.
The Center is open for tutoring M-Th evenings during the fall and spring semesters from 7-9:30 pm when the university is in session. 1 credit hour students tutor one evening per week; 2 and 3 credit hour students tutor two evenings a week. In addition, there are 5 class meetings scheduled at 5:45 pm, just before tutoring hours; 3 credit Core students meet for a 6th session.
If students have never tutored at the Center, they must attend one evening of orientation. Students keep a weekly journal to reflect on their experiences and respond to assigned readings; examine a textbook and journal articles concerned with literacy, language, and adult education; submit ten of their journals and five short papers throughout the semester; prepare a final paper or project; and, for 3 credit hour students, read and report on one additional text of their choice related to the work of the Center, to adult literacy, to the culture of their learners, or to any topic suggested by their tutoring experience.
Students who have taken this course have found it to be a challenging and exciting experience, even life changing as they help neighborhood adults improve their skills. Another student-tutor wrote,
"Tutoring at the Loyola University Community Literacy Center was easily one of the best experiences I have ever been granted at Loyola University. That is coming from a student who has studied abroad three times, has volunteered elsewhere, and has had a number of internships. Never have I felt so connected to my own values. Tutoring at the center reminded me of my passions and allowed me to help others and make friends in the process… I am truly privileged to have learned about my learners’ cultures and personal experiences. They’ve taught me to not judge cultures from an American standpoint and to instead take every culture at face value."
More information can be found at www.luc.edu/literacy. Follow the links to "tutoring" and then "course credit tutoring" for a complete description of English 393/Honors 290.
ENGL 394 Internship
Section: 02E #1381
Instructor: J. Cragwall
3.0 credit hours Field Studies
Time and location TBA
Please contact the Undergraduate Programs Director in English for consent at (773) 508-2259.
This class satisfies the Engaged Learning requirement in the Internship category.
ENGL 399 Special Studies in Literature
Section: 027 #4679
Instructor: J. Cragwall
3.0 credit hours Supervision
Time and location TBA