We all experience losses in our lives in various ways. The question arises: Are we truly mourning these losses or are we, perhaps, repressing our pains as a means of survival? Within the chaos of such experiences, is there room for hope and healing? If so, to what extent can writing contribute to this process? This course is designed to delve into literary texts within the context of our contemporary world, which regrettably abounds with various forms of loss.

 

By examining a range of literary genres, we aim to explore the diverse facets of mourning depicted in these texts, particularly within the digital realm. Through this exploration, we seek to gain insight into how the human mind and soul grapple with damage, and whether literature can emerge as a therapeutic tool.

 

 

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.

 

 

For this course, we will read and dissect literature of a fantastical, or magical bent: fanciful voyages to the moon, strange islands with societies vastly different from our own, 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.

 

Learning Outcomes:

 

At the conclusion of the semester, students will demonstrate the ability to:

 

Whether you were told them as you fell asleep at night or you watched and re-watched every Disney film version until you knew them by heart, you have probably been reading and interpreting fairy tales most of your life. In this foundational course, we will closely read a representative variety of prose, poetry, and drama; master key literary and critical terms and explore a variety of core critical approaches to the interpretation of literature through constructing and de-constructing various iterations of numerous fairy tales. Together, we will explore, analyze and reflect upon a variety of important conceptual questions about the intentions and impacts of literature through critical and creative modalities, and (perhaps) live happily ever after as well.

 

 

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 concepts of vulnerability in the midst of illness or a pandemic. We will discuss how these concepts are depicted in a number of different poems, plays and short stories. These topics are often difficult topics 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 Amanda Gorman, Mary Oliver, Annie Proulx, Moises Kaufman, Essex Hemphill and more. The method of assessment will include pop quizzes, classroom participation, an in-class writing on poetry, a midterm and a final.

 

 

This foundational course in literary studies will require students to read closely and carefully analyze a representative variety of prose, poetry, and drama, master key literary and critical terms, and explore a variety of core critical approaches to 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. This course satisfies the first tier of Loyola University’s core Knowledge Area requirement in “Literary Knowledge.”

 

The main structure of the course works through dialogue. We will work with each text in turn, looking at the inner structure, how the voice is produced, and the ways prior work impacted each. There will be a generous amount of time for us to debate and discuss interesting ideas. There will also be examination of texts closely. You will be encouraged to use a close-reading strategy to examine and write about parts of the works.

 

 

 

In this section of Loyola’s foundational course in literary studies we will focus on both chivalry and virtue in medieval poetry and Shakespeare, and the revival of chivalry from the 19th century onwards. What did the conventions of chivalry and the Arthur legend give readers in the 19th century? What is the relationship? How have Feminist writers, Queer writers, and African American writers used these conventions to tell different stories? We will look at how this literature fashions ideals of virtue, gender expression, national identity, class, and race, grapples with social and cultural issues, and interrogates masculine and Eurocentric codes of conduct and governance. Texts will include works by the Gawain/Pearl Poet, Thomas Malory, William Shakespeare, Alfred Tennyson, Wilfred Owen, Jessie Pope, Rupert Brooke, Vera Brittain, T.H. White, Tracy Deonne, and J.K. Rowling.

 

 

The foundational course of literary studies will require students to read closely and analyze carefully a representative variety of prose, poetry, and drama, master key literary and critical term, and explore a variety of core critical approaches to the analysis and interpretation of literature. The readings will cover various historical periods, ranging from the Ancient Greece to the 21st century. Course requirements will include in-class quizzes, short in-class essays, and exams.

 

 

 

In this foundational course in literary studies, we will explore the ways in which writers address the very task of writing in their work by exploring a range of poetry, prose, and plays. Writers’ fascination with writing often permeates their work, and writing functions in literary texts in numerous, convoluted ways. It appears as a mode of personal expression, a colonial tool, and a means of instigating social revolution, to name just a few examples. In class, we will raise questions such as: What are the ramifications of writing (and reading)? How does the act of writing also coincide with world-making? Do writers shape the worlds they construct in their own image? How do writers use their creative work to critique or alter the world they live in? How do the formal elements of prose, poetry, and drama each uniquely contribute to the construction of a particular narrative and the world it describes? We will consider these questions and others through a survey of writers from the 19th century to the contemporary moment. Some of the writers we are likely to encounter during the course include Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Chinua Achebe, Octavia Butler, and Victoria Chang.

 

 

UCLR 100E is a foundational literary studies course at Loyola. This class will require students to closely read and analyze a 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 and literary fiction. This course involves several short essay assignments, as well as a midterm and seminar essay. The theme for this section of UCLR 100E is Dystopian Fiction; students in this class will read texts that stretch across the 19th, 20th, and 21st Century. The section will explore works by Octavia Butler, T.S. Eliot, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ursula Leguin, Cormac McCarthy, Stephen King, and others.

 

 

 

In this course, we will read, discuss, and write about texts and films that have been crucial to providing a voice for communities throughout English literary history and create an astute social commentary on the present state of the world. The units in the course have a special focus on experimental literature that has explored social ecologies based on racial and gendered hierarchies. We will be reading short stories, and poetry, and viewing films. You will be introduced to multiple strategies that approach and interpret challenging texts through lectures, class discussions, group work, and short responses. Materials include short stories by Octavia Butler, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Carmen Marie Machado, the film Pumzi by African filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu, and the poetry of Khadijah Queen, Douglas Kearney, Hala Alyan, and Timothy Yu.

 

 

 

As part of the university core, UCLR serves as an introductory course to the conventions of literature, exposing students to drama, fiction, and poetry. Throughout the semester, students will learn key literary and critical terms, and explore a variety of core critical approaches to the analysis and interpretation of literature.

 

This section of UCLR focuses on expressions of faith and doubt in modern and contemporary American literature. We will critically examine literary texts that deal explicitly and implicitly with religious belief, experience, and identity, considering how these phenomena are inflected by the dynamics of race, gender, class, and cultural identity in American society in a “secular” age — what Charles Taylor has described as “a move from a society where belief in God is unchallenged and indeed, unproblematic, to one in which it is understood to be one option among others, and frequently not the easiest to embrace.” Analyzing drama, fiction, and poetry by a diverse selection of 20th and 21st century American authors/poets/playwrights including James Baldwin, Marilynne Robinson, Jericho Brown, Gish Jen, and many others, this course will consider how literature in its various forms can help us to confront the problems of belief in modern society and examine the sometimes-fraught relationship between the questions, “Who am I?” and “What do I believe?”

 

 

This foundational course in literary studies will address global ecologies and environmental justice through close reading and careful analysis of a representative variety of fiction, poetry, and drama that feature, among other things, pet elegies, apocalyptic tales, and folklore about seals, bees, and other non-human animals. Students will be expected to master key literary terms and to explore a range of core critical approaches to the analysis and interpretation of literature including ecofeminist, ecogothic, postcolonial and decolonial ecocritical approaches. How do literary texts represent the natural world and how do these representations inform our relationship to the land, to the sea, to non-human animals, and to one another?

 

We will examine texts from the early nineteenth-century and from the present day to see what literature can tell us about environmental crises, race, gender, social class, global capitalist economies, and animal rights. Authors will include: Mary Shelley, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Seamus Heaney, Jesmyn Ward, and Edwidge Danticat.

 

 

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.

 

 

 

In this foundational core course in literary studies, we will investigate representations of crimes and criminality in prose, fiction, poetry, and drama from the 19th century to today.  How does race, gender, class, and culture inform how we demarcate between the “guilty” versus the “innocent”? How has criminality been constructed and legislated? And why are we so attracted to consuming stories about true crime, who-dun-its, murder, and detectives?

 

We will read authors such as Edgar Allen Poe, Agatha Christie, Oyinkan Braithwaite, Cornelius Eady, William and Ellen Craft, and David Heska Wanbli Weiden. We’ll also investigate literature’s connection to broader cultural issues, from analysis of sites like the Eastern State Penitentiary, to digital prison records, to narrative study of true crime podcasts and crime media. Students will be introduced to key literary terms and critical approaches to close reading and analysis. Students are expected to communicate insights about each text through writing, analytical and creative projects, and in-class discussion.

 

 

This section of Loyola’s foundational course in literary studies will focus on the portrayal of college and university life in fiction, drama, and poetry. Our class will be centered on representations of student life, but we will also explore works told from the perspectives of narrators who are professors, would-be students, or former students. This version of UCLR 100E will analyze writings by Elif Batuman, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ling Ma, David Mamet, ZZ Packer, William Shakespeare, and Wendy Wasserstein.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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 conceptual questions about literature and its study.

 

This section will focus on ideas concerning gender as understood across a large swath of time in England and America (1375 to 2005). Our readings will include a Shakespearean tragedy (where the “unruly woman” is painted as a paramount threat to the social hierarchy), pieces that take up Victorian ideals (and men and women’s “proper” places within the domestic and public spheres), as well as more contemporary pieces that demonstrate the enduring effects of these problematic ideologies and how they intersect with issues of race, sexuality, religion, etc. We’ll see how these ideologies have been used as tools to dominate and subjugate women and other marginalized groups (propagating various forms of violence), as they result in naturalizing unequal and abusive relationships. We’ll come to understand that literature often pushes these problematic ideas as well as critiquing them, and how it offers us unique ways to dissect these problems and many others.

 

 

The foundational course in literary studies will require students to read closely and analyze carefully a representative variety of fiction, 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 relationship between author, text, and reader? 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.

 

 

The foundational course in literary studies will require students to read closely and analyze carefully a representative variety of fiction, 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 relationship between author, text, and reader? 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.

 

 

 

A word that means “the life-cycle of an insect” also conveys some of human beings’ deepest desires and anxieties about transformation. This course will explore the role of metamorphosis in literature, and its core idea of people changing into plants, creatures, cyborgs, or various other “nonhuman” forms. We will investigate how these transformations will reflect various sociopolitical imaginations about class, race, sexuality, gender, and home. We start with the classic myths of metamorphosis in Ovid, and then spend more time exploring the resurfacing of this tradition in later authors such as Kafka, Octavia Butler, Hang Kang, and Franny Choi. The use of metamorphosis in these texts will invite us to consider the following concerns among others: Is change liberating? Can we control it? Why are we so frequently tempted to represent it through nonhuman metaphors? And what ethical responsibilities do we have when we try to represent change in these ways? By the end of the course, our goal is not only to have some interpretive answers but also to think of creative adaptations as a vital part of literary metamorphosis. Our texts will at times be challenging but not too long, and they will always be provocative! Most of them will be made available online but a few will be required in a specific edition, available online or through the university bookstore. Further details of units, assignments, and recommended book editions will be made available in the syllabus.

 

 

This foundational literary studies course will introduce students to the art of close reading. Over a series of readings that will include poetry, fiction, and drama, we will build up analytical stamina, putting pressure on texts from the level of the individual word on up to overarching thematic continuities in works across time and space.

 

The course will feature literature that engages with the nonhuman – literature where animals, plants, machines, supernatural beings, or other radical others play a central role. How, from antiquity to the present day, have we told stories about these entities, and why? How do we understand them in relation to ourselves, or use them in order to delineate what it is to be human? Can we ever truly write about the nonhuman in a nonhuman-centered way, or will we always just be writing about ourselves? With the advent of AI writing, what claims can we stake for human literature? Readings will range from the ancient Epic of Gilgamesh to Shakespeare to contemporary poems and short stories.

 

 

 

In this Business Writing (ENGL 210) section, explore modern business communication's adaptability to diverse audiences, evolving contexts, and technology's influence in a post-COVID, AI-driven world. Analyze various business writing artifacts (emails, chats, proposals, presentations) across platforms (Outlook, Gmail, Teams, Slack) to master rhetorical choices. Learn to craft effective messages for success in remote, chat-based workplaces. Expect in-class activities, individual assignments, and group projects to hone your skills. Join me for a tech-savvy syllabus that's both impactful and relevant to mastering business communication!

 

Note: This course description was edited with ChatGPT 3.5. To see the original course description and learn more about rhetorical-based prompt engineering, sign up for this section.

 

 

 

Business Writing will train you to approach any professional writing task by first assessing the rhetorical situation. You will learn to analyze genres and styles of writing commonly used in business (such as job ads, memos, letters, proposals, reports, and instruction) and compose your own writing based on your assessment of audience and persuasive goals. Collaboration and working effectively in groups are essential skills to mastering professional communication; assignments and class activities therefore will text your ability to incorporate and respond to your peers’ ideas and work in class.

 

 

 

Our course covers the rhetorical principles of effective writing, focusing on specific types of discourse practiced in business and professional settings. You will gain experience reading and writing texts pertinent to business communication including press releases, customer reviews, and resumes.

 

Our course is writing intensive. We will use a process approach to writing, emphasizing problem-solving, prewriting strategies, and editing and revision skills. You will plan and share some of your writing with me in draft conferences. That gives you a chance to raise ideas, ask questions, get assistance, and receive feedback on your work.

 

 

 

ENGL 210 offers students who want to improve their professional writing, or are considering careers in business, training and practice in various forms of business writing, such as memos, instructions, letters, resumes, proposals, and reports. Business Writing will train you to approach any professional writing task by first assessing the rhetorical situation. You will learn to analyze genres and styles of writing commonly used in business (such as job ads, memos, letters, proposals, reports, and instruction) and compose your own writing based on your assessment of audience and persuasive goals. Collaboration and working effectively in groups are essential skills to mastering professional communication; assignments and class activities therefore will test your ability to incorporate and respond to your peers’ ideas and work in class.

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

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 Brandiann Molby (bmolby@luc.edu). Those who excel in the course will be eligible to work as paid writing tutors.

 

 

 

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 Brandiann Molby (bmolby@luc.edu). Those who excel in the course will be eligible to work as paid writing tutors.

 

 

This is a second-tier literature course, building on the interpretive moves learned in UCLR 100. Entirely devoted to the glorious genre of poetry, we will focus on British authors: John Donne, Shakespeare, John Keats, Anna Barbauld, William Wordsworth, William Blake, T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, Dylan Thomas, and others. The contemporary poetry we read will focus on the experience of Black British authors: Raymond Antrobus and other spoken word poets such as Deanna Rodger, Isaiah Hull, and Warsan Shire. 

 

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. It will change your life.

 

 

The word poetry derives from an ancient Greek word meaning ‘to make’. English and Scottish poets were once called makers. What do poets make and what is their material? In this course we approach poetry as artwork made from language. We read a selection of narrative and lyric poetry in English and we explore the ways poets create their art through selection, arrangement, and presentation of linguistic materials. Topics include English speech sounds, rhythm, meter, words, sentences, punctuation, visual presentation, and performance. Assessment is by quizzes, midterm and final exams, and a class presentation.

 

 

Why does anybody read, write, study, or even (imagine this!) love poetry? In an era when film, television, music, and social media dominate the cultural landscape, what relevance does poetry still have? In this class, as we familiarize ourselves with the history of poetry and some of its most significant works, we will also attempt to ask and answer a very fundamental question: why does this artform even exist? What are its roots in human psychology? Why has it persisted for thousands of years? Why do we turn to it in times of crisis? When we're in love? When we grieve? How might poetry help us to understand the world and ourselves in deeper and more essential ways? In this class you'll read, discuss, analyze, and even write poems.

 

 

This course will act as an introduction to poetry in English, from the Romantic to the contemporary period. We will discuss the conventions and patterns poets often follow, and I will provide you with the standard terminology used to describe these conventions, such as line, stanza, measure, rhythm, lyric, etc. Perhaps more importantly, you will learn how to critically approach these texts. We will discuss how these poems work, what they might be arguing, what they suggest about the historical moment in which they were written, and how they relate to or comment on other texts. We will also examine the critical literature that surrounds these poems. Our course’s theme is “Nature, the Natural, and the Unnatural.” Through our readings, we will discover how poets engage with nature. For example, we will consider the sublime, apostrophes to nature, and nature as a source of metaphor. We will also discuss how poets, especially in more contemporary contexts, have sought to displace, distort, or contest the meaning of “nature.” Finally, and as a feature of this section’s “writing intensive” designation, we will discuss the expectations for strong academic writing, and you will be required regularly to compose low-stakes in-class journal responses and some higher-stakes single-page responses. You will also write two high-stakes three-page responses and one final five-page essay near the semester’s end.

 

 

Drama is meant to be performed: spoken aloud, acted out, staged, directed, and responded by an audience. Performance is what separates the dramatic form from other literatures, though dramatic literature may overlap with other poetic and narrative forms. At its core, drama is social. A play is the sum of many interpretive choices made in collaboration with many different artists, including actors, directors, musicians, stagehands, and more. We go to the theatre not only to witness the written words of a play spoken aloud, but also to interact with others, to have shared experiences and discuss them afterwards. Not surprisingly, drama has been at the heart of cultural, religious, and political controversy across centuries.

 

This class will offer an overview of drama as an art form beginning with its origins in the classical tradition. In addition to reading the plays as literature, we will also consider their history of performance and enduring influence. Students will write a series of response papers and two major course essays.

 

 

 

 

This course will expose students to fiction as a means of exploring the breadth and depth of the human experience. Students will also learn the technical vocabulary necessary for understanding, analyzing, and discussing fiction. This course will focus on the terms, themes, and issues of prose fiction as they apply to the American short story. Through course texts, podcasts, lectures, class discussion, group activities, and various writing assignments, students will consider the elements of fiction and learn how the short story has developed.

 

in America since its inception in the 19th century through today. We will also explore the historical context informing these narratives to understand the dialogue between art and reality. Finally, by centering historically marginalized voices, this class will interrogate America as a concept and examine how our authors have navigated the complex terrain of this country via the Art of the Story.

 

 

 

The final girl is one of the most popular horror tropes. She is the last girl standing at the end of the movie, the girl who fights her way out, and the girl who represents, or challenges, society’s most prized values. In this course, we’ll explore nineteenth-century precursors to the contemporary final girl. In particular, we will examine the ways final girls and their texts express cultural and social anxieties, comment on the creation of identity and subjecthood, and represent societal views on gender, sexuality, and race. Through our discussions, students will be able to demonstrate understanding of fiction as a means of exploring human experience and be able to use the technical vocabulary necessary for understanding fiction. Texts may include Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

 

 

We will explore major critical approaches and apply them to a range of literary texts. Our theme: what comprises and compromises 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.

We will also explore and apply a range of theories (including Post Colonialism, Gender, and Marxism) to our course texts. Each class, we will discuss our readings together. That gives you opportunities to share ideas and raise questions. We will have two exams, two papers, a group presentation, and an in-class reading journal. Our readings include Guy du Maupassant’s “The Necklace,” Charles Perrault’s “Bluebeard,” James Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice, and Scarlett Bermingham’s Big Boy Pants.

 

 

This is a writing-intensive course in which we will read works of fiction that are particularly concerned with the themes of crime and punishment. Possible texts may include novels such as Richard Wright’s Native Son and James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice, and short stories by Joyce Carol Oates, Flannery O’Connor, and Isabel Allende. We will also watch some film adaptations of one or two of our fictional works. In our readings, discussions, and writing, we will examine the nature of crime and criminality, as well as questions about punishment, guilt, forgiveness, morality, and knowledge. There will be three short analytical assignments and a longer final assignment.

 

 

 

 

Shakespeare was the most-produced playwright in the United States last year and has been every year since anyone was keeping track. Why? How do plays that were written over 400 years ago, in another country, and sometimes in something that can feel an awful lot like another language, keep being at the top of the charts? In this course we will explore several possible answers. To do that, we will read a half-dozen or so plays. We will see plays, both live and recorded. We will talk about how the plays work, starting with the language and working through the way they are constructed. But we will also talk about audiences and theaters. Why do theatres keep producing Shakespeare and why do audiences keep going? And why do they sometimes choose not to go? When we love Shakespeare, what is it that we love? When we hate it, what do we hate?

 

 

This course will survey African American literature from the 1900s to the present. We will read novels, poetry, and nonfiction with a critical attention to the following questions: What is the relationship between African American literature and political struggles for rights and freedom? What constitutes an African American literary aesthetic and how has this aesthetic sensibility changed over time to meet the political demands of its historical moment? How does contemporary literature published by recent African immigrants to the U.S. change our ideas of what it means to be "African American" and the literary tradition associated with this identity? Possible authors include W.E.B. DuBois, Nella Larsen, George Schuyler, Gwendolyn Brooks, Toni Morrison, and Teju Cole.

 

 

 

The African American literary tradition is steeped in the lived experience. It is a literature of presence, challenging us to identify, articulate, and enact values of agency, autonomy, and advocacy throughout our readings, and to consider our own histories critically and creatively. In this class we will explore the entirety of the tradition, from enslavement to the present, widely reading in fiction, memoir/personal narrative, poetry, drama, and rhetoric. Particular focus will be on the work of African American women writers, along with an exploration of the recurring themes of the tradition against the backdrop of U.S. culture and history. As a writing intensive course, we will pay particular attention to how strong skills and work in literary analysis can provide the foundation for inquiry and communication in any field.

 

 

 

English 283 focuses on the representation of women in literature in diverse cultural contexts. In section 01W, we will focus on the exploration of writers, most of whom identify as women, who use “borrowed forms” to dialogue powerfully with other texts, forms, discourses, and ideas.

 

Poets and writers often “borrow” non-literary forms such as magazine quizzes, recipes, border interrogations, job applications, etc., and transform them into poems, essays, and stories. Like hermit crabs, they steal these homes and re-purpose them for their own needs, desires, questions, and arguments. This literary “shell game” produces a powerful examination of identity in relation to the body, history, nationality, ethnicity, and constructions of race, socio-economic class, sexual orientation, and gender identity. 

Course texts include work by Layli Long Soldier, Fatimah Asghar, Laura Esquivel, Patricia Lockwood, Gwendolyn Wallace, A.E. Stallings, Nicole Sealey, Kim Adrian, and more. As a writing intensive section, course requirements may include first and final drafts of critical essays, midterm and final exams, asynchronous discussions, and a podcast project.

 

 

 

This course will focus on the representation of women in literature as explored through a variety of literary texts. We will read texts that range from the nineteenth century to the present, looking closely at how their thematic content and formal features work to construct, perpetuate, and challenge certain representations of women across various historical periods and cultures. In order to achieve the Writing Intensive aspect of the course, we will also dedicate time and attention to the writing process itself and write regularly as a means of thinking through course material. Authors likely to appear on the syllabus are Charlotte Brontë, Nella Larsen, and Alison Bechdel, and assignments for the course will include reading quizzes, regular short writing assignments (such as discussion forums), three response papers, and a final paper.

 

 

 

 

Memoir, as a literary genre, has garnered much critical attention in the last few decades (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 female writers. In terms of content, we will specifically consider how societal attitudes towards gender roles and expectations relate to the taboo nature and cultural silencing of women’s voices in regard to sexuality and reproductive issues. Authors will include Maxine Hong Kingston, bell hooks, Allison Bechdel, Mira Jacob, Anne Fessler, Chanel Miller, Carmen Maria Machado, among others.

 

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 introduces the range of Asian American literature from its earliest works around the turn of the twentieth century to its proliferation in contemporary literature.

 

The recent resurgence of anti-Asian racism in the U.S. revives a long-standing question in Asian American experience: where do Asian Americans belong? Their myriad histories include movement and continued connection across oceans and continents; subjection to laws and regulations that have restricted their movement into and within the U.S.; and, in the case of many Pacific Islanders, changes to their homes driven by colonialism. Their social positioning has also been various, whether labeled as the “model minority” or rejected as racial others, unassimilable foreigners, and potential threats. Thus, their literary productions often grapple with notions of place. Our examination of Asian American literature will explore various spatial scales – for instance, local community, island, nation, and globe – that have been sites of belonging, constraint, political investment, and conflict. We will examine a range of literary forms and styles, including poetry, drama, and prose fiction, to consider how Asian American authors have used aesthetic means to illuminate and critique conditions in America and in the world.

 

This class is Writing Intensive; therefore, in conjunction with our study of this literature, we will give significant attention to the writing process. Course requirements will include active reading, written homework and quizzes, class participation and writing practice, a group presentation, and literary analysis essays.

 

 

 

 

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. This course is cross-listed with WSGS and is writing intensive. 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? Therefore, this course will focus heavily on the connections between the treatment and abuse of humans and nature. Assignments in the semester will include writing papers, reading reflections, and classroom participation.

 

 

 

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. This course is cross-listed with WSGS and is writing intensive. 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? Therefore, this course will focus heavily on the connections between the treatment and abuse of humans and nature. Assignments in the semester will include writing papers, reading reflections, and classroom participation.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

Tablets, trinkets, pompoms, puzzle pieces, and plastic bags. We use objects to encode memories, reflect our identities, signal social status, 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 and systems, we will examine the many categories of object—relic, commodity, rubbish, and keepsake—as they appear in literature. 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: Ruth Ozeki’s novel, The Book of Form and Emptiness; nonfictional essays by Karl Ove Knausgaard, Teju Cole, and Brian Thill; Marie Kondo’s bestselling decluttering guide; the television programs Storage Wars; the films Wall-E and Finding Vivian Maier; and Julio Torres’s comedy special My Favorite Shapes. Assignments will include creative exercises, close analysis of the readings, and exams with short answer questions.

 

 

 

 

 

This class looks at one cultural myth—the zombie-- that appears in the West in the collision of slavery and the Industrial Revolution, as a figure representing stolen wages, stolen bodies, and stolen lives. The Zombie appears first as the “monstrous Eve,” of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, then as a figure of slavery, racist fears, and unrelenting labor. Reworked as a creature of devouring 1970s consumerism, then figured as the dispossessed New Orleans underclass after hurricane Katrina, zombies now suggest the faceless horde of forgotten workers under late capitalism, marking the end of individualism, citizenship, and “civilization” as we know it. Recent manifestations of the zombie highlight issues of identity and survival, race, gender, sexuality, and disability. What can zombie survival teach us about being human, and about the changes we need to make in our world and in ourselves?

 

 

This course considers problems in the world around us as the basis for writing in a variety of outward-facing modalities, including op-ed pieces, funding requests, promotional writing, multimodal presentations, and grant writing. We will consider, and practice, the power of writing as a tool for social justice, addressing community concerns through the Jesuit rhetorical practice of eloquentia perfecta: thinking, acting, and reflecting. Individual students or groups of students will partner with a local community organization, applying techniques and practices learned in the classroom to support the organization's goals. This work will then be used to create an e-portfolio of sample writing for nonprofits that can be used in professional job searches.

 

 

What is a passive verb? Why is this a fragment? Does a comma go here? We use the English language, but do we really understand how it works? The goal of English 303 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 principles that govern language use but also as a means of clearly conveying meaning. This course will examine the most important 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 materials, 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.

 

Digital Humanities offers unprecedented access to literature by early twentieth century women writers, allowing us to explore and compare versions of their works, read from their letters and diaries, contextualize them within literary and artistic networks through network visualizations and interactive timelines and maps, and in some instances even see them on film, or hear recordings of their voices. In this course we will use digital archives and projects to both deepen our understanding of familiar authors, such as Willa Cather and Virginia Woolf, and to access out of print and mostly forgotten women authors, like Georgia Douglas Johnson and Winnifred Eaton (Onoto Watanna). Course texts will include novels by Cather and Woolf, poetry by Johnson, Carrie Williams Clifford, Marianne Moore, and Mina Loy, and journalism and short stories by Eaton, Cather, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Our readings of their works will be enriched by digital projects such as Mina Loy: Navigating the Avant-Garde, Women Writers of the Early Harlem Renaissance, The Willa Cather Archive, Woolf Online, The Marianne Moore Digital Archive, and the Modernist Journals Project.

 

 

 

 

Literature by US Latina/o/x/e writers often features spectral beings: ghosts real and imagined, historical and ideological. This class will explore various ways in which ghosts haunt, queer, and trouble contemporary literature, visual arts, and film from Chicanx, Puerto Rican, Dominican American, and Cuban American writers. I will encourage discussion, divergence, and collaboration throughout the semester. Assignments will include three brief papers, regular in-class exercises, and a final “paperless” research project. The authors we will study include Gloria Anzaldúa, Arturo Islas, Cherríe Moraga, Ana Castillo, Junot Díaz, Carmen María Machado, and Siliva Moreno-Garcia.

 

 

 

 

This course examines literatures in English from South Asia and the South Asian diaspora. Focusing primarily on the issues of modern-day colonization, independence and partition, decolonization, and globalization, this course also investigates the representation of multiple nationalities, ethnicities, classes and castes, religions, linguistic traditions, gender and sexuality, migration, and "terror" in the writings under study. In addition, the course assesses the role of the English language and the authors' locations and target audiences in determining the reception of the literatures both at home and abroad; and it analyzes the cultural bases of contributing literary techniques, including structure, language, narrative focalization, and characterization among others. Finally, the course addresses the disciplinary and pedagogical practices underwriting the study of South Asian literatures in English in the western academy. Readings will include novels written by authors from India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka (and residing in India, Pakistan, USA, UK, or Canada) as well as some supplementary essays.

 

 

This course centers poetry as an individual and collective project. Through outside reading, students will question their relationships to contemporary modes and cultures while also working to develop their own voices, styles, and methods of production. Thus, students will begin to situate their craft in a larger poetic conversation. 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 twenty-page chapbook by semester’s end.

 

 

In this class, we will give a great deal of attention to the unique challenges and opportunities facing beginning poets as we first seek to channel our ideas and life experiences into poetry, to find and then develop our own voices in relation to not only our own impulses but to "the tradition" and the aesthetically diverse and fascinating world of contemporary poetry. The poems you write will be carefully read and critiqued by both your classmates and the instructor. The culmination of the course will be to compile a portfolio of the work you have written over the term.

 

 

“Basic” Poetry: An Experimental Workshop

Poetry is a craft that requires reading, exploration, practice, and sharing. Each week we read a unique work of contemporary poetry, mostly by POC and queer writers, to form a framework for discussion about vulnerable points of view and innovative forms. From there, students are encouraged to find their own process, form, and voice. In our sessions, we experiment with language together to discover and foster creativity and delight by creating work both as a group and on our own. The course also includes prompts for writing in between sessions and presentations of student poetry for review by the full group or small groups. Finally, students spend several weeks compiling and reviewing their own final collections of poetry for a self-published chapbook and give a reading of their work at the end of the semester.

 

 

Starting a story is not unlike standing at the edge of a cliff. Both can be terrifying. There are many reasons to not dive into that project. My ideas are terrible, one might think. Or I don’t know where to begin. Or is this really a good time to start something new? In this course, we’ll hold hands at the cliff for moral support but also to push each other off (gently). Some might tiptoe. Others might cannonball. And still others might swan dive into that abyss. But no matter our varying degrees of fear, we will, without a doubt, leave that ledge and land on our feet as better writers and better risk-takers. For the first few weeks, we’ll analyze notable beginnings and ask questions, such as: What propels the story forward? What stings us? What questions are being raised that can’t be easily answered? Then we’ll write five propulsive and perhaps unrelenting beginnings of our own. The goal isn’t only to practice the “art of diving” but to have five projects in free-fall, so we’ll have things to work on, long after the course’s end. Following weeks will be focused on developing one of those beginnings into a fully developed story. Final weeks will be focused on revising toward a final draft of publishable quality. So the question is: Is this a good time to start something new? The answer is: always.

 

 

The course presents an advanced exploration of the principles of fiction writing through a combination of brief lectures, craft and response exercises, targeted assigned reading, in-class reading, critical workshops and multiple opportunities for discussion. One must be a good reader to be a good writer, so accept the fact that we need to read everything assigned for the class! But this is a writing course; students will be writing both critically and creatively every day. The course is both aggregate and recursive, meaning we continue to use and understand earlier concepts and techniques even as we progress, most notably through student critical awareness and creative writing. The course first establishes a general critical sensibility of fiction writing, history, technique, and purpose using established writers’ work and perspectives on craft using Flash Fiction. This critical foundation prepares students to guide their own writing as well as to engage and constructively assess that of their fellow students. The course then establishes an advanced sense of genre, structure and style using both established and student writing using the Short Story. The final stage of the course focuses wholly on student fiction writing, drafting and work-shopping using the student’s choice of either a second Short Story or the beginning of a novel; the healthy and productive workshop atmosphere and etiquette is modeled and utilized to address creative development as opposed to simply appeasing the writer’s ego or comfort. The class will learn and prepare for publication potential, including viable outlets, contact protocols, and invaluable research tools. Topics include: recognition of fiction elements; recognition and prioritization of craft elements; appreciation for creative expectations and obstacles; stimulation of identity within drama and conflict; and attention to concrete sensory detail, plot or setting structural considerations, internal and standard dialogue, characterization, opening and ending considerations, revision considerations, and fiction stylistics expected of publication-worthy work.

 

 

This course explores the art and techniques of writing fiction; how and why it succeeds in capturing the imagination of readers, and how those skills can be channeled successfully to craft new and original work. This course will include a combination of craft lessons and workshop critique. We will investigate the output of a diverse cast of authors, from Francois Rabelais and Laurence Sterne to Denis Johnson and Danyial Mueenuddin. From these works, we will then distill valuable lessons about the writing of fiction, such as character development, dialogue, plot, and tension, which students will then apply to their own compositions. Assignments include two original works of short fiction (either short stories or novel excerpts) and a final portfolio (which will include revisions of workshopped assignments).

 

 

In this fiction writing workshop students will read, write, revise, and critique short fiction with the aim of becoming better writers and readers. Each student will write and workshop three short stories for the class. Workshops will be rigorous and respectful, based on 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, students will free-write responses to in-class prompts designed to create momentum, generate ideas, and explore technique. Class discussions will focus on craft as well as concept, with attention to the following topics: structure, character, dialog, voice, tone and imagery. Again and again, we will ask each other and ourselves: What works, what doesn’t, why and how can it be made better?

 

This is a workshop course in creative nonfiction. We’ll focus on personal essay and memoir, learning how to write about moments, activities, and relationships in your lives that have given you pause, stayed with you, and left you with questions. Among other craft elements, you’ll learn the distinction between I-narrator and I-character, exposition and scene, and how to move from the situation—the facts of what happened—to finding insight and meaning through story.

 

In class, we’ll read, analyze, and discuss the works of creative nonfiction writers as models for your own writing. This is a workshop, so you’ll hear from each other what’s working on the page in your own writing and what isn’t—which will help develop your ear as you read and your instincts as you write. You’ll also learn to offer thoughtful commentary on the work of your classmates. The goal is for you to become a better reader and writer of creative nonfiction.

 

In this course we learn to read English from more than 1000 years ago. English has changed so much since this early period that speakers of Present Day English (PDE) must approach Old English as if it were foreign, by learning grammar and vocabulary and even some new letters. Yet the languages remain close enough that speakers of PDE learn Old English quickly. Learning to read Old English gives a fresh perspective on PDE (for instance, why ran and feet, not runned and foots?) and unique access to a rich body of literature: about 30,000 lines of English poetry survive from the period between 600 and 1200 and more than ten times as much prose (including sermons, historical narratives and chronicles, Bible translations, philosophy, and medical writings).

 

In the first half of this course we learn the basic grammar of Old English and some core vocabulary and learn to translate short texts. In the second half, we sample the diversity of literature in Old English: readings become longer and more challenging and class discussion becomes more interpretative. Secondary readings introduce us to the history and culture of early medieval England and contextualize our study of language. In the last two weeks we read Beowulf in Seamus Heaney’s translation, with dips into the original Old English. Assessment is by quizzes, midterm and final exams, and a class presentation.

 

 

Though often thought of as the quintessential English author, Shakespeare regularly set his plays in the context of cultural exchange and conflict. In many cases foreign encounters in Shakespeare’s plays serve to disguise commentary on explicitly English issues. But even when using other cultures to better represent or comment on his own, Shakespeare highlights the challenges spurred by ethnic, racial, regional, and religious difference. This course will explore Shakespeare’s representation of cultural conflict both for how it reveals the concerns of his historical moment and how it can inform the performance of Shakespeare’s plays today. We will read selections from works of geography, ethnography, and travel that circulated in Shakespeare’s England as well as current debates over the casting and setting of productions in the 21st century. Plays may include The Merchant of Venice, Othello, Titus Andronicus, Cymbeline, Pericles, The Tempest, and Antony and Cleopatra. There will be papers, presentations, and exams.

 

 

This course will focus on the relationship between literature and science in the English Renaissance. This period witnessed the emergence of modern science after a medieval period in which knowledge was concentrated in the church and dominated by a scholastic tradition that emphasized textual authorities over empirical observation. What the poet John Donne called the “new science” would eventually usher in an Age of Reason as precursor to the Enlightenment. We will examine how the emergence of modern scientific methods of observation and experimentation made their way into the early modern imagination of writers including John Donne, Margaret Cavendish, Hester Pulter, Isabella Whitney, Francis Bacon, John Milton, and Andrew Marvell. There will be exams, projects, and short papers.

 

 

The novel is a house of secrets. Blackmail plots, illicit love affairs, hidden identities, and stolen inheritances lurk in its pages, waiting to be deployed. In this course we will peek into the guilty heart of the nineteenth century, discussing how Victorian literature grapples with the evils of imperialism, the effects of urbanization, the legal realities of marriage and accompanying fear of bigamy, and the evolution of a modern concept of privacy. We will read detective, sensation, and Gothic fiction built around the unfolding of mysteries, as well as traditionally realist novels in which secrets continue to play a pivotal role. Indeed, this course treats the secret as the defining unit of the novel, the tinderbox from which narrative springs. Considering the literary techniques like suspense and theoretical terms like opacity, we will explore how the novel draws the reader into its secrets—and how, sometimes, it keeps its secrets to itself. Texts will include Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone, Charlotte Brontë’s Villette, Helen Oyeyemi’s “if a book is a locked there’s probably a good reason for that don’t you think,” and Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle.

 

 

This is a survey course on theories of subjectivity and their enduring impact on literary studies. The subject is a part of speech (the subject of a sentence) as well as a political category (a subject of the nation). By examining key texts from philosophy, critical theory, and literary criticism on subjectivity, our class will develop tools for reading and interpreting literature as both an aesthetic and political scene of representation. Theoretical readings will include important contributions from Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis, post-structuralism, Indigenous studies, critical race studies, and queer studies.

 

This section of ENGL 375 is a study of selected works of early American literature against the backdrop of changing ideas about race, gender, and geography from the early 1600s to 1865. As modern-day political conflicts and natural disasters raise crucial questions about immigration, gentrification, displacement, environmental racism, and defacto segregation (i.e., who belongs where?), it is of the utmost importance to understand the way race and gender have historically influenced our understandings of and engagements with space, place, landscapes, political boundaries, environment, and natural resources. In North America, these contestations over who belongs where have raged since the seventeenth century.

 

The course introduces the basic principles and methods of geocriticism, critical race theory, and feminist criticism. Using these methods, the course encourages students to explore how early American literature varyingly represented geographical space—both physical and metaphorical—as Indian, white, Black, feminine, masculine, “normal,” and/or Other. The course is organized into 4 main units with each focusing on a different type of racialized and gendered space that was central to the development of “America”—the frontier, the plantation, the home, and the factory. The course will appraise the social, political, moral, and aesthetic values attributed to each of these socially constructed places and interrogate the human (and nonhuman) relationships these conceptions of geography allowed and did not allow, encouraged and discouraged (i.e., spatiality). Beyond simply identifying and describing literary setting, the course encourages you to be attentive to the composition and manipulation of scale, movement, proximity, distance, borders and boundaries, and ownership.

 

 

 

This course will offer a view of modernism through questions of movement. We will consider ways of reading modernism as a dynamic area of literature, full of aesthetic experimentation, cultural interactions, and collisions between ecology and technology. However, we will also investigate how modernist texts respond to forced displacement such as migrant labor, houselessness, and the creation of refugees through nationalist violence. As we read a range of authors from Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot to Claude McKay and Anita Scott Coleman, we will find texts explicitly critiquing or embracing the material conditions that produce movement. Sometimes, we will dig deeper to connect observations on movement (such as walking, gymnastics, or birds) to questions of power. Finally, we will look at ways in which the field of modernist studies itself is driven by a tendency to shift its own boundaries, in an attempt to dismantle an elite set of famous modernists. Thus, we will circle back to the original tension around movement as an exciting tool of liberation on the one hand, and a painful product of power on the other.

 

 

In this advanced workshop in creative nonfiction, we’ll develop a keen sense of craft by reading each other’s work and the work of some of the finest writers in the genre, including Joan Didion, Hisham Matar, Maggie Nelson, Eula Biss, Olivia Laing, and Leslie Jamison. We’ll pay particular attention to questions of voice, narrative distance, narrative immediacy, personal research, hybrids, concept essays, dialogue, and story. We’ll also have Skype visits from established authors working in the field, who will be willing to answer your questions about everything from writing habits to publishing. Through writing, reading, and workshopping, we’ll work to build a common vocabulary and orientation in the genre, and you’ll also be working to develop your own individual orientation, so that you become more comfortable and innovative as a writer.

 

 

Engage with Jesuit values and meet our adult neighbors who come from many cultures.

 

This course offers an excellent opportunity for service learning and practical experience in tutoring neighborhood adults in written and spoken English with the Loyola Community Literacy Center. Our in-person tutoring location is Loyola Hall and we hope to return someday, but in Spring 2024 it is likely we will continue tutoring only online.

 

No previous tutoring experience is necessary. English 393 can be taken for 1, 2, or 3 credit hours. When taken for 3 credit hours, this course satisfies the Core Engaged Learning-Service Learning Internship requirement. It is open to second-semester freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors. Incoming freshmen are always welcome to tutor as volunteers and take the course at a later date.

 

Requirements: Only UCWR 110 or its equivalent.

 

The Center is open for tutoring M-Th evenings during the fall and spring semesters 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 times convenient for all students; 3 credit/Core students meet for a 6th session.

 

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.

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 and Honors 290, combined courses.

 

 

 

 

 

Much of writing is made up of obsessions. We might use our obsession as catalyst and fuel, something that gets us writing and, if lucky, keeps us writing. And sometimes we write about our obsession directly, hoping (perhaps futilely) to be purged free of it, once and for all. Susan Sontag, while talking about writing and the writer’s life, said it simply: “You have to be obsessed. It’s not something you’d want to be—it’s rather something you couldn’t help but be.” In this course we’ll explore “obsession” from two main angles: personally and textually. On the personal level, and as a way to get us started, we’ll discuss and identify subjects we keep returning to—from harmless infatuations to downright obsessions. Is Kendrick Lamar, Lizzo or the soundtrack from Mama Mia playing nonstop on your headphones, for example? Is there a painting you keep seeing in your mind’s eye? What exactly is your relationship with a well-made cheeseburger? What is the chronic conflict of your life? On a textual level, we’ll read stories, essays, and books that deal with obsession in one form or another or reveal the linguistic obsessions the author held while writing them. This class is for serious writers who are unafraid of taking real risks, unafraid of true rewrites, unafraid of working hard toward turning a good story into a great one. 

 

 

 

Students arrange for this course on an individual basis by consulting a faculty member who agrees to supervise the independent study. When the student and the faculty member have agreed on the work to be done, the student submits the plan to the director of undergraduate programs for approval and registration. Usually students will work independently and produce a research paper, under the direction of the faculty member.

This class requires department consent. Please contact Dr. Cragwall at jcragwall@luc.edu or (773) 508-2259 for permission.