Loyola University Chicago

Department of English

Fall 2013 Courses

Interpreting Literature (UCLR 100)

Section: 03E #4381
Instructor:  T. Boyle
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 9:20 – 10:10 AM LSC

This is an introductory course designed to explore literary works. We will cover works of poetry, prose and drama from at least two different time periods; pre-modern and modern. Since this course is part of the multi-cultural learning community, there will be a specific emphasis on Irish Literature.

Section: 04E #4382
Instructor:  M. Delancey
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 10:25 – 11:15 AM LSC

This is an introductory course designed to help you understand what to do with literary texts. Martin Heidegger observed (in a rough paraphrase) that thinking about what other people consider worthy of being thought about is just what thinking is.  This is what all authors do—and then too, of course, what their readers do. But Heidegger is a philosopher, and the way philosophers think differs from the way authors of literary texts think; and in turn the latter’s style of thought depends on what genre they’re working in—whether they’re thinking as poets, dramatists, novelists, and so on.  Finally, the style of thought in any given genre depends on the materials that history has made available to the author to think about.  So thinking about literary texts is evidently a complex affair.  We will look at texts in a number of different literary genres (including philosophy as a literary genre) and historical periods in an effort to engage that complexity and provide some means and methods of  thinking about it.

Texts: Gabriel Garcia Marquez: “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings.” Friedrich Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil. Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness.  Robert Frost: The Poetry of Robert Frost.  William Shakespeare: The Tempest. John Donne: John Donne’s Poetry. John Milton: Selected Poems. Cormac McCarthy: Blood Meridian.

Section: 05E #4383
Instructor:  K. Quirk
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 11:30 – 12:20 LSC

The 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 combine formal with thematic analysis, examining the way literary techniques create meaning and shape the reading experience. We will begin with poetry, move on to short stories, a novel, a few works of drama, and perhaps a film. Assignments will include quizzes, exams, and two short papers.

Section: 06E #4384
Instructor:  M. Bradshaw
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40 – 2:30 LSC

This foundational course in literary studies will require you 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. In this course we'll explore important conceptual questions about literature and its study, for example: 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?

Section: 07E #4385
Instructor: S. Weller
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40 – 2:30 LSC

Section: 08E #4386
Instructor:  S. Masello
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00 – 11:15 LSC

In this introductory course, we will read a wide and varied selection of fiction, including poetry, short stories, short novels, and drama. Our readings will extend over a span of roughly two centuries of primarily English and American literature, with additional selections from other major European writers and the Greek tragedians, as well. We will read acknowledged classics from the past, as well as contemporary works. We will discuss, analyze, and write about these works, focusing on how each work engages and excites the reader intellectually.

Section: 09E #5068
Instructor:  J. Kerkering
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:30 – 12:45 LSC

In this foundational course students will encounter established works as well as more recent writings in the genres of prose fiction, drama, and poetry. Texts will be drawn from different periods in order to establish how these forms were both responsive to their historical moments as well as recognizably persistent over time. Students will write two papers and take a mid-term and final exam.

Section: 10E #5069
Instructor:  TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00 – 2:15 LSC

Section: 11E #5070
Instructor:  D. Chinitz
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 – 3:45 LSC

This introductory course will develop students’ ability to analyze and write about literature at the college level. The texts we discuss will vary across genres (fiction, poetry, and drama) and historical time periods. Some will come from well-known writers, others from less familiar figures. The close-reading skills we practice will cultivate students’ critical thinking, understanding of literary texts, and appreciation of the craft of writing.

Section: 62E #4387
Instructor:  J. Janangelo
3.0 credit hours Lecture
T 7:00 – 9:30 PM WTC

In our course, we will cover a range of literary theories (including Marxist and Psychoanalytic approaches) and apply them to selected literary texts. You will gain practice in literary analysis and critical writing. There will be papers and exams based on our course texts and class discussions


Business Writing (ENGL 210)

Section: 60W #2432
Instructor:  M. Meinhardt
3.0 credit hours Lecture
W 7:00 – 9:30 PM LSC

This business writing course offers various techniques, priorities, and strategies for effective and efficient business writing and communication. Through the establishment and refinement of purpose, we will explore group project dynamics, professional personal documentation, organizational agency, and a wide range of genre documents such as memos, executive summaries, and reports, amongst others.

Section: 61W #3944
Instructor:  J. Janangelo
3.0 credit hours Lecture
R 7:00 – 9:30 PM WTC

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 in 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 class presentation.


Theory Practicum Tutoring Writing (ENGL 220)

Section: 01W #3263
Instructor:  A. Kessel
3.0 credit hours Lecture
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. A writing center is an organic intellectual community, in that tutoring involves an impromptu meeting between two students who think together about clear expression. In this course you will not only learn how to help others improve their writing, but you will improve your writing and critical thinking skills as well. You will become part of a vibrant community of fellow peer tutors while gaining experience that will serve you in a variety of careers. The service-learning component consists of approximately 20-25 hours of observation and tutoring in the Writing Center.


Exploring Poetry (ENGL 271)

Section: 02W #2738
Instructor:  J. Jacobs
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45 PM – 3:35 PM LSC

Section: 03W #2739
Instructor: C. Kendrick
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00 – 2:15 PM LSC

 

The course will be a survey of British and American poetry, especially from the Romantic movement on, especially of lyric kinds. Class discussion will generally focus on the form and sense of individual poems, and will in general be about poetic ways of meaning, and individual poets' understandings of what poetry is and what it is to do. Two papers, some journal writing, some short exams, a midterm, and a final.

 

 

Section: 067 #2740
Instructor:  L. Goldstein 
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45 – 3:35 PM LSC

This course is dedicated to the study of poetic forms ranging from traditional forms forged in literary history through contemporary ones focused on experimentation that challenges the limits of linguistic expression. The course materials will include: Ovid and the fragments of Sappho, the advent of the sonnet and its mastery by Shakespeare, the significance and prevalence of rhyme and line break, the subsequent play and departure from these established forms by experimental and conceptual poets of the 20th and 21st century such as O'Hara, McCaffery, Stein, Mullen, Bok, and Goldsmith, hybrid works by authors such as Harryman and Suzan-Lori Parks, a slew of samples of contemporary writers and publications, and even digital and interactive literature.

Students will gain an understanding of the vocabulary of the genre, how far poets can stretch each of these terms in their work, and what that means to our understanding of language and our world.  Class discussions will be focused on discussion and interpretation of the work. Students will then be asked to use their skills of interpretation and their new vocabulary to draft midterm and final essays about the poetry from the course that they particularly decide to explore.

Section: 068 #3580
Instructor: J. Frey
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 8:30 AM – 9:45 AM LSC
Intro to Poetry: Go Big or Go Home; Reading the Epic

 

The readings in this course will trace the historical development of the genre of epic poetry, beginning with Homer and ending with contemporary works. In so doing, we will examine how the form and content of epic poetry changes over time and also how literary texts respond to their predecessors. This approach will enable us to trace both a history of aesthetics within in the genre as well as a history of cultural values and ideas represented within the poems. In addition to learning about the history of epic poetry, students will also learn develop a vocabulary of poetic devices and formal features in order to discuss the formal aspects of poems. Readings will likely include: The Odyssey, Beowulf, Paradise Lost, and Omeros.

 


Exploring Drama (ENGL 272)

Section: 04W #3022
Instructor:  V. Foster
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 10:25 – 11:15 LSC

In this class we will read and discuss a variety of plays by dramatists from the Greeks to the present:  Euripides, Shakespeare, Molière, Ibsen, Glaspell, Brecht, Williams, Beckett, Churchill, and Parks.  Topics will include the relationship between text and performance, dramatic genres (tragedy, comedy, tragicomedy), dramatic conventions or forms (realism, expressionism, epic theatre, and theatre of the absurd), themes such as love and marriage,   and issues of race, class, and gender.  The class will include discussion, videos, in-class performances, and, since this class is writing intensive, writing workshops.  We will attend a performance of Twelfth Night in the Newhart Family Theatre (LSC).  Requirements:  three essays (3 pages, 5 pages, and 7 pages; two drafts of the first two essays); class participation; ungraded in-class writing; in-class performance with one-page report; midterm and final exams.

Section: 05W #2114
Instructor:  E. Wheatley
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30 – 12:45 PM LSC

This course surveys English, American, and Anglophone drama from the Middle Ages to the present, along with some plays and drama theory from beyond the Anglophone world that influenced writers in English. Special attention will be paid to literary, social, and historical innovations and conventions that have defined the genre, its performance, and its reception in various periods. The final grade will be based on class participation, essays, and mid-term and final exams.

Section: 069 #2808
Instructor:  T. Boyle
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40 – 2:30 PM LSC

This course of studies will include texts that actively critique the importance of religion on the creative imagination, in particular Catholicism. The quest for meaning, whether religious or secular, can lead to some interesting works of drama. Modernist theater, for instance, with its quest for newness, has sought to dramatize the problems associated with religious faith (Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot). While the depictions can sometimes be sympathetic, sometimes skeptical, there is an underlying affirmation, and legitimization of the immense influence religion has had on forming our understanding of life. In this class we will also explore the movement away from the classical form of drama towards what Brecht calls ‘epic theatre’.

Exploring Drama covers literature from 19th C, 20th C and 21st Century


Exploring Fiction (ENGL 273)

Section: 070 #3024
Instructor:  S. Lahey
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 9:20 – 10:10 AM LSC

Southern Belles. Colonial mansions. Slavery and segregation. Stereotypical notions of the Deep South often define the region, which has enjoyed an unusual role in American history. A once-revolutionary territory that attempted to secede from the Union, the South still exists in contemporary U.S. culture as a sort of wayward sibling. In this course, we will examine popular literary representations of the South in order to identify and challenge its dominant stereotypes, many of which portray the region as “backwards” or provincial. We will pay specific attention to the literary techniques used by each author, gaining a general appreciation for the art of fiction while enjoying some classics in regional literature.

This course will feature work by Kate Chopin, Margaret Mitchell, William Faulkner, and Carson McCullers. Requirements include attendance and participation, two formal essays, informal reading responses, a midterm and final exam.

Section: 071 #3025
Instructor:  K. Quirk
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 10:25 – 11:15 AM LSC

Novels as Autobiography/Novel Autobiographies

The origins, history, forms, and social uses of the novel and autobiography overlap and intersect. Many classic novels take the form of fictionalized autobiography, while autobiography has always employed what are often labeled “fictional” techniques to tell a life story. In this course we will read autobiographical novels and a few innovative autobiographies in order to study the ways writers use fictional and autobiographical forms to examine the individual self, interpret experience, explore identity, and negotiate one’s place in society. Class discussion and writing assignments will often ask students to perform fairly traditional literary analysis. However, we will also “practice” the arts we study. In other words, writing assignments will include creative exercises in which students write both autobiographical and fictional pieces, many of which will be ungraded. The assumption underlying this is that we discover more about the forms we study by actually trying our hand at those forms. Assignments will be many but generally short. Readings may include work by Jeanette Winterson, Tim O’Brien, Norman Mailer, Alexander Hemon, Alison Bechdel, Maxine Hong Kingston, Frederick Exley, Sylvia Plath, and others.

Section: 072 #2741
Instructor:  N. Jung
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 11:30 – 12:20 LSC

In an age defined, so it is said, by globalization, nation-states and their underlying ideologies are increasingly subject to question, while paradoxically strengthening their grip as normative models of social organization. And yet, despite their very real consequences, narratives of the nation-state and globalization are functional fictions; they organize social, political, and economic actions into stories, and as a result, use a wide range of literary devices to present themselves as paradigms of global development. Understanding trends in the contemporary world, then, requires the training in critical analyses of figurative language (its uses and consequences) offered by literary studies. This course accordingly takes the “Exploring” in “Exploring Fiction” as both verb and noun: taken as a verb, the course offers methods for thinking and writing about fiction; taken as a noun, it concerns texts and other narratives that “explore” competing forms of social arrangement and identification. Specifically, we will examine texts that try to think beyond national categories, while not forgetting or denying the persistence of such categories, and especially their ties to class, gender, and race. We will also analyze relationships between fiction, history, and contemporary geopolitics, and the mediums through which new global publics are inscribed and transmitted. Course materials include novels and other materials, such as films (Jia Zhangke’s The World), comics (Persepolis), and critical articles. Novels by Edwidge Danticat, Michael Chabon, Junot Diaz, and Michelle Cliff will likely be on the syllabus. Course requirements include: attendance and participation, group discussion leads, one short paper (4 pages), one long paper with a research component (8 pages), a midterm, and a final.

Section: 073 #3023
Instructor: E. Stogner
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45 – 3:35 LSC

Exploring American Gothic Fiction

This course will explore nineteenth-century American Gothic fiction, covering tales of mystery and terror by writers like Washington Irving, Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and others.  We will study elements of fiction like structure, character, symbolism, and point-of-view and will specifically discuss the motivations and strategies underlying authors’ use of the Gothicmode. In addition, we will focus on how fiction is interpreted, asking what kinds of meanings are lurking beneath the surface of some of the nineteenth century’s best-known fiction. Requirements include reading all primary texts and critical works; writing two essays and intermittent response papers; and taking occasional quizzes, a midterm, and a final exam.

Section: 074 #5046
Instructor: A. Welch
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 8:30 – 9:45 AM LSC

In this course, we’ll explore how literature engages our senses—how reading reflects and amplifies and complicates the experience of having a body and living in the world. Words help us to make sense of our senses, and to unify our sensations into coherent experience. But words also generate new sensations, in the process changing how we think and feel. Along these lines, we’ll try to apprehend the literary text as an archive of sensations deposited by another mind. How do texts stimulate our bodies, and how do texts challenge and resist corporeal perception? These questions can encourage us to rethink the relationship between textual worlds and the world of everyday life. How does reading shape how we see, hear, feel, and think?

Our reading will include Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats, Edgar Allen Poe and Emily Dickinson, Jorge Luis Borges and Virginia Woolf, William Gibson and Mark Haddon. This course features several short writing exercises, two papers, and an exam, and will require consistent participation.

Section: 603 #3431
Instructor: J. Hastings
3.0 credit hours Lecture
W 7:00 – 9:30 PM WTC

The relationship between the United States and Canada is a complicated one.  That the two nations share the world’s longest international border signals certain contiguities between the “Fifty-first State” and “Eleventh Province.”  There are, however, many key differences between both nations.  This course will seek to explore both cultural symmetries and divergences by focusing on three contemporary Canadian women authors: Margaret Atwood, Margaret Laurence, and Alice Munro.

Books:

Atwood, Margaret.  MaddAddam: A Novel.  New York: Talese/Doubleday, 2013.  Print.

-----Oryx and Crake.  New York: Anchor Reprints, 2004.  Print.

-----The Year of the Flood.  New York: Anchor Reprints, 2010.  Print.

Laurence, Margaret.  The Stone Angel.  Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1993.

Munro, Alice.  Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories.  New York: Vintage, 2002.  Print.

-----Selected Stories.  New York: Vintage, 1997.  Print.


Exploring Shakespeare (ENGL 274)

Section: 06W #3027
Instructor:  J. Biester
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 11:30 – 12:20 LSC

In this course we will study several of Shakespeare's plays, including plays from a variety of genres--comedy, history, tragedy, romance--and from various stages of his career as a playwright. We will consider the plays in relation to the intellectual, political, and social contexts in which they were produced, the theatrical practices and conventions of the age, and Shakespeare's own development as a playwright. We will also explore ways in which the plays allow for a variety of interpretations and kinds of performance, and consider various critical approaches. Because this course is writing intensive, there will be frequent brief writing assignments, both in and out of class. Requirements will include papers, response papers, a midterm, and a final.  Please note: English majors should take English 326, not English 274.

Section: 075 #5047
Instructor:  D. Wallace
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 8:30 – 9:45 AM PM LSC

In this course, we will read a selection of eight plays from the Shakespeare canon, representing the four genres of comedy, tragedy, history, and romance. Discussion will focus on the plays in their historical setting, in an effort to understand how contemporary interests and events inform our understanding of Shakespeare's drama. I will assign reading quizzes, group work, critical essay summaries, a research paper, and a final exam. You may also be required to attend a live performance.

Section: 07W #3026
Instructor:  J. Biester
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40 – 2:30 LSC

In this course we will study several of Shakespeare's plays, including plays from a variety of genres--comedy, history, tragedy, romance--and from various stages of his career as a playwright. We will consider the plays in relation to the intellectual, political, and social contexts in which they were produced, the theatrical practices and conventions of the age, and Shakespeare's own development as a playwright. We will also explore ways in which the plays allow for a variety of interpretations and kinds of performance, and consider various critical approaches. Because this course is writing intensive, there will be frequent brief writing assignments, both in and out of class. Requirements will include papers, response papers, a midterm, and a final.  Please note: English majors should take English 326, not English 274.

Section: 08W #3028
Instructor:  J. Knapp
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30 – 12:45 LSC

This section of English 274 will offer an introduction to the major genres of comedy, history, tragedy and romance.  The course will place Shakespeare’s treatment of these dramatic genres in historical context.  Shakespeare’s England was a period shaped by a tumultuous religious reformation, the emergence of modern science, and shifting economic and political realities.  We will examine the development of Shakespeare’s art beginning with some early plays, including Twelfth Night, which we will see in performance at Loyola’s Newhart Theater (a course requirement).  Taking such early, and generally more conventional plays as a starting point, we will go on to look at how Shakespeare complicated the dramatic conventions he inherited.  In addition to Twelfth Night, we will read the comedy Measure for Measure, the history Richard II, the tragedies Hamlet and King Lear and the romance The Tempest.  The primary text will be David Bevington’s edition of the Complete Works of Shakespeare, 6th edition.  As a writing intensive course there will be numerous writing assignments in addition to formal papers.  There will also be a midterm and a final.

ENGL 274-08W is a writing intensive class.

Section: 15W #5682
Instructor:  M. Shapiro
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00 – 2:15 LSC

The course will cover a representative sampling of 7-8 plays, chosen to illustrate early, middle, and late phases of Shakespeare’s work in comedy, history, tragedy, and romance. We will look at such matters as language, poetry, historical contexts, and sources, but there will be a consistent emphasis on the plays as texts for theatrical performance. That is to say, we will discuss stage history and adaptations and look at video clips of recorded productions. Students will be required act in one in-class workshop production of a short scene. The primary text is The Necessary Shakespeare (Pearson/Longman). There will be quizzes, papers, a midterm, and a final. Inasmuch as this course is designated as Writing Intensive, there will be occasional writing exercises, some discussion of writing issue during class, and required revisions.


African-American Literature (ENGL 282)

Section: 09W #5840
Instructor:  B. Ahad
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00 – 11:15 LSC

Rather than provide a broad historical survey of the African American literary tradition, this course will focus on three distinct "periods": the past (historical and contemporary representations of slavery); the present ("post-black" literature); and the future (afro-futurist/speculative fiction). Though you will read works by major and soon-to-be major authors in the field, the focus of the course will examine how particular writers address the themes of race, citizenship, freedom and love to construct a discourse around slavery, subjectivity, and the future of "race." You will be required to write two formal essays (5-6 pages), participate in a class-structured "book club," produce several short informal (1-2) page papers, and construct a final group presentation.

Section: 10W #5841
Instructor:  B. Ahad
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30 – 12:45 LSC

(See above.)


Women in Literature (ENGL 283)

Section: 076 #3589
Instructor:  M. Bradshaw
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 9:20 – 10:10 LSC

This section of Women and Literature will focus on divas. Revered and reviled, imitated and appropriated, divas are perhaps the most visible women in our culture.  On the one hand, as a woman who stares down cameras and sings loudly and unabashedly, the diva represents empowerment: she is loud, courageous, and often outrageous.  On the other hand, the diva is also a figure of extreme appropriation: consumed and absorbed into people’s lives, she is the object of obsessive fandom.  In shaping her own identity, the diva often serves as a vehicle for shaping others’.  Through fiction, drama, biography, autobiography, film, and performance theory, this class will explore the paradoxes and problems of the “woman with a voice” and her place in contemporary conceptions of femininity.

Section: 077 #4723
Instructor:  S. Bost
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 – 3:45 LSC

Special Topic: Illness and Gender

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 as familial (as opposed to professional) caregivers.  We will explore these themes, among others, in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony, Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals, Cherríe Moraga’s Heroes and Saints and Waiting in the Wings, Nancy Mairs’s Carnal Acts, and Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.  Assignments will include three brief papers, regular in-class exercises, and a final exam.

This section is cross-listed with WSGS and fulfills the multicultural requirement for the English major. 

Section: 11W #3286
Instructor:  M. Clarke
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 12:35 – 1:25 LSC

This course will focus on influential writings by women, beginning with contemporary writers and moving back through history to trace the origins and evolution of a woman's intellectual tradition. We will read poets ranging from Stevie Smith to Phyllis Wheatley; fiction writers ranging from Flannery O'Connor to Elizabeth Gaskell; and essayists ranging from Virginia Woolf to Mary Wollstonecraft. Our textbook will be The Norton Anthology of Literature in English by Women.

As “writing intensive,” this course incorporates a variety of assignments that are specifically designed to help you become a better writer. Assignments include reflection papers (some to be written in class and others at home), a mid-term essay examination, a final examination, and one critical paper, to be written in stages with draft submissions.  ENGL 283-11W is a writing intensive class.

Section: 12W #2115
Instructor:  M. Clarke
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45 – 3:35 LSC

This course will focus on influential writings by women, beginning with contemporary writers and moving back through history to trace the origins and evolution of a woman's intellectual tradition. We will read poets ranging from Stevie Smith to Phyllis Wheatley; fiction writers ranging from Flannery O'Connor to Elizabeth Gaskell; and essayists ranging from Virginia Woolf to Mary Wollstonecraft. Our textbook will be The Norton Anthology of Literature in English by Women.

As “writing intensive,” this course incorporates a variety of assignments that are specifically designed to help you become a better writer. Assignments include reflection papers (some to be written in class and others at home), a mid-term essay examination, a final examination, and one critical paper, to be written in stages with draft submissions.  ENGL 283-12W is a writing intensive class.

Section: 13W #2742
Instructor: P. Caughie
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00 – 11:15 LSC

By examining a variety of texts, primarily literary works, we will explore the cultural production of “woman” in 20th-century American and British culture. We will look at the representations of gender in novels, plays, poems and essays to better understand what social functions these representations perform, what needs they respond to, and what desires they create. We will learn how to analyze narratives, and how to read texts in terms of their historical and social contexts. We will learn the critical vocabulary for analyzing narratives, beginning with the basic distinction between story (the organization of events) and narration (the organization of their telling). Temporality, focalization, and narrative agency are some of the components of fiction we will learn to identify, appreciate, and assess in our writings on the literature we study. Texts may include Emma Goldman's "The Traffic in Women," Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, D. H. Lawrence's "The Woman Who Rode Away," Sigmund Freud's "Female Sexuality," Nella Larsen’s Quicksand, and Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber. We will also read historical and critical essays by feminist scholars. Requirements include weekly responses to the readings, a series of short formal essays, and a final exam.

Section: 14W #2302
Instructor:  J. 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 designed to meet the “literary knowledge and experience” requirements of the Loyola Core.  Focusing on literature written by 20th- and21st-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, and female friendship in their works.  The authors covered will include Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood, Jamaica Kincaid, and Toni Morrison.  There will be reading quizzes, papers, a midterm and a final exam.


Religion in Literature (ENGL 287)

Section: 078 #5048
Instructor:  M. Murphy
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 9:20 – 10:10 AM LSC

This course has a twofold objective: 1) to explore the many ways which religious ideas and practices appear in various genres of literature, and 2) to examine how literary texts serve as a basis for religious inquiry. By contemplating ancient, classic, and contemporary works, students will encounter a broad array of literary art shaped by the religious impulse, imagination, and vision. Though weighted toward texts inspired by Catholic Christianity (as this is the professor’s scholarly competence), the course will offer comparison pieces in the Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu traditions. No specialized knowledge of these traditions is presumed; the necessary background will be presented in the lectures. The course will also provide an introduction to theories in the interdisciplinary field of religion and literature.


Nature in Literature (ENGL 288)

Section: 079 #2744
Instructor: L. Wyse
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 8:15 – 9:05 AM LSC

In this course we will examine a wide range of literary representations of the natural world and develop critical tools for thinking and writing about the presence of nature in literature. In addition to works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, primarily from the U.S.-American literary tradition, we will engage with contemporary ecocriticism as a critical approach, considering a number of tropes (e.g. pastoral, wilderness, and dwelling) that underpin our cultural conceptions of nature. We will also take advantage of opportunities offered by Loyola’s Institute of Environmental Sustainability to increase our awareness of environmental issues around the world and in the Chicago bioregion, contemplating the impact such awareness might have on us as responsible readers of environmental texts, broadly defined. Assignments will include several short papers and one longer, final research paper.

Section: 080 #5049
Instructor: M. Delancey
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 9:20 – 10:10 AM LSC

“Nature” as we typically use the term is a relatively recent invention. Something like our current notion of Nature first came into being as the counterpart of the “self” or “I” of Modernity (the historical period, beginning very roughly around 1600, which brings the Middle Ages to a close and which continues to define our lives even in our own “Postmodern” reaction against it). This course will look beyond Modernity to consider first a series of texts representing some of the most important ways in which cultures and historical periods different from our own have construed “Nature.” We will also consider a series of texts that can be seen as inaugurating, falling within, or responding to “Modernity.”  Our first aim will be to understand these various constructions of  “Nature” in their specificity—what they are in themselves and how they differ from one another. We will also try to understand how they are related to one another. Finally, we will ask whether and in what sense our own notion of nature may be understood as developing out of the earlier notions of nature. The general aim of the course is to put ourselves in a position to reflect intelligently on what we and other cultures and historical periods mean by “Nature.”


Human Values in Literature (ENGL 290)

Section: 081 #2745
Instructor: S. O’Brien
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 8:15 – 9:05 AM LSC

Who are you? How do you know? Our understanding of who we are takes shape in relation to our physical, cultural, political, and technological surroundings. This course will explore the ways globalization and technology are affecting how we construct identities, communities, and meaning in our contemporary world. The fiction we will read spans a variety of 20th- and 21st-century geographical, cultural, and political contexts around the globe, allowing us to compare and contrast experiences of globalization and of questions of identity. Course requirements include daily reading and participation, a discussion lead, a midterm, two short papers (5pp each), and a long paper (9pp).

Section: 082 #5050
Instructor: S. Eilefson
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45 – 3:35 PM LSC

Strength and Honor: Martial Spirit and Masculinity in Contemporary Literature and Film

War is an experience that separates the men from the boys, or so popular culture suggests. This course will examine the relationship between martial spirit and masculinity in war literature and films from World War I, World War II and Vietnam as well as more recent conflicts.

Fiction will include Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room, William March’s Company K, James Jones’ The Thin Red Line, and Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. Films will include David O. Russell’s Three Kings, Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker and Deborah Scranton’s documentary The War Tapes. We will analyze texts with more emphasis on the “how” and “why” of narrative rather than on the “what” of the plot, and we will learn to contextualize representations of masculinity in their particular political, ethical, social and technological era.

Requirements include two short (4 pp) papers, one long (8 pp) final paper, which will have a small research component, and a midterm.

Section: 083 #5051
Instructor: M. Shapiro
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00 AM – 11:15 AM LSC

The literary works we will read and discuss in this course offer a variety of perspectives on what happens to human values in times of social conflict. Sometimes the perspective is that of an individual or family caught in the maelstrom of intra- or inter-societal violence. Sometimes the violence is entirely or largely below the surface and may not erupt into open adversarial confrontation. In each situation the conflict and the fate of human values are of course different, complicated by a host of historical and political circumstances.

Readings will include a novel by James Welch, Fools Crow, which imagines how Native Americans responded to threats to their civilization represented by the intrusion of European Americans and a play by Athol Fugard, Master Harold and the Boys, which is set in South African during the time of apartheid, or strict racial segregation. We will also read Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz, his account of his years in a Nazi concentration camp, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, set in 19th century tribal Nigeria, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which explores issues of slavery and racism in 19th-Century America, and Palestine’s Children, a collection of short stories by Gasson Kanafani, a Palestinian writer, which explore the current conflict in the Middle East.

There will be three papers, a midterm and a final exam, and occasional short quizzes.

Section: 084 #5052
Instructor: F. Fennell
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00 – 2:15 LSC

 

To live, to be fully human, is to make choices that reveal who you are by showing what moral codes guide your behavior. Whether it is balancing justice and mercy, or thinking through the implications of political decisions, or exploring the connection between love and sexuality, or weighing conflicting duties, we find it difficult to know how to act. Literature has always been one of our greatest resources for exploring these tensions. Using a mixture of novels (e.g. Joseph Heller's Catch 22), plays (e.g. Shakespeare's Measure of Measure), and poems (e.g. Browning's "Porphyria's Lover"), we will try to understand better what it means to be human. Two papers, two exams.


South Asian Literature & Civilizations (ENGL 292)

Section: 16W #5053
Instructor: H. Mann
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00 – 11:15 LSC

 

This course will introduce South Asia and the South Asian diaspora through a study of its colonial and postcolonial history and of its English-language literature. Briefly reviewing the history of pre-colonial Mughal India, the British colonial era, Independence and Partition, and post-Independence history, we will study the makings of the modern nations of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. Next, we will move to discussion of the literary texts, noting that while the beginnings of English-language literature on the Indian subcontinent date back to the mid-nineteenth century, it was the anti-colonial movement in the early- to mid-twentieth century that saw this literature come into its own; and that it is the postcolonial and immigrant experiences of South Asians that have underwritten much of its excellence since then.

 

Focusing primarily on the issues of modern-day colonization, Independence and Partition, and globalization as depicted in selected novels, then, the majority of the course will investigate the portrayal of nationality, ethnicity, class and caste, religion, linguistic traditions, gender and sexuality, and migration in contemporary South Asian literature. In addition, the course will analyze the cultural bases of contributing literary techniques, including structure, language, narrative voice, and characterization among others, before we conclude with an examination of the role of South Asia on the modern world stage.

 

This class fulfills the multicultural requirement.


Grammar: Principles & Pedagogy (ENGL 303)

Section: 604 #3031
Instructor: A. Kessel
3.0 credit hours Lecture
W 7:00 – 9:30 PM LSC

 

The goal of this course is to explore English grammar not only as a list of rules and regulations that govern linguistic behavior but also as a means for students to more clearly convey their ideas in speech and writing.  The rules of English grammar are not as strict as they once were, but there is still a noticeable difference between standard and substandard English.  The ability to discern this difference can improve the image one projects as well as one’s career advancement. This course will examine all elements of English grammar from parts of speech and how they function in a sentence to proper punctuation and how it enhances clear and precise prose.  While studying proper usage, students will discover that words commonly used in one context may not be appropriate in another. This course will also promote an appreciation for the English language and investigate techniques for utilizing language effectively in speech and writing. This course is required for students planning to teach high school English, but it is also open to others. 


Women Writers Post-1900 (ENGL 306)

Section: 085 #5842
Instructor: J. Bouson
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00 – 11:15 LSC

Crosslisted with Women’s Studies, English 306 will focus on literature written by twentieth- and twenty-first-century women authors. This course is designed to help students gain knowledge of women’s writings and to understand the ways in which women novelists use fiction to challenge inherited cultural and literary assumptions; to show them the difference gender makes to the writing, reading, and interpretation of literature; and to help them become familiar with the application of feminist theory to works by women authors.  In English 306, the instructor will provide necessary background information on the works covered and will model how to perform close readings of literary texts as she guides students in the investigation of the structures and strategies of representative works of women-authored fiction. The instructor will also place emphasis on the gender scripts and psychological dramas encoded in the works read in the course, paying special attention to the various ways the authors represent coming of age, coming to age, the female body, romantic love, mother-child relationships, and female friendships in their works.  The authors covered will include Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood, Jamaica Kincaid, Toni Morrison, and Nancy Mairs.  There will be reading quizzes, papers, a midterm and a final exam.

This course fulfills the post-1900 period requirement of the English major.


World Lit. in English Post-1900 (ENGL 312)

Section: 086 #5843
Instructor: H. Mann
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30 – 12:45 LSC

 

Adopting an international and cross-disciplinary perspective, this course will introduce students to a range of critical and theoretical approaches to the study of world literatures in English, with particular attention to the issues of modern-day colonization, decolonization, and globalization as experienced in Africa, the Caribbean, South Asia, and North America. Drawing on the work of leading postcolonial theorists like Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Homi Bhabha, and Arjun Appadurai, we will study the literary writings of Chinua Achebe, Nadine Gordimer, and Kiran Desai among others. Discussion and research will center on such topics as colonial and postcolonial discourse, race, religion, nationalism, third world feminism, hybridity, diaspora, and globalization.

 

This course meets the multicultural requirement of the English major.


The Writing of Poetry (ENGL 317)

Section: 087 #2118
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
M 2:45 – 5:15 PM LSC

Section: 088 #2120
Instructor: A. Baker
3.0 credit hours Lecture
R 2:30 – 5:00 LSC

This course offers practice and instruction in the techniques and analysis of poetry through reading, writing, discussing, and revising poems. We will give particular 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, complicated, and fascinating world of contemporary poetry. What draws us to poetry in the first place? Why did it ever occur to us to do something like this? What does writing poetry offer us that nothing else can? Poets who have recently published their first books of poetry will visit our class to reflect on these matters with us. 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.

Section: 089 #5055
Instructor: V. Anderson
3.0 credit hours Lecture
T 2:30 – 5:00 PM LSC


The Writing of Fiction (ENGL 318)

Section: 090 #2121
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
M 2:45 – 5:15 PM LSC

Section: 091 #3603
Instructor: D. Kaplan
3.0 credit hours Lecture
T 2:30 – 5:00 LSC

Students will learn the art and craft of writing fiction through (a) reading master writers; (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.

Section: 605 #2244
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
W 7:00 PM – 9:30 PM LSC


Writing Creative Nonfiction (ENGL 319)

Section: 092 #3604
Instructor: TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
F 2:45 – 5:15 LSC


English Lit: Medieval Period (ENGL 320)

Section: 093 #3605
Instructor: E. Wheatley
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 – 3:45 LSC

Topic: Dreams and Visions, Dreamers and Visionaries

This course will explore the medieval understanding and uses of dreams and mystical visions as exemplified in secular and religious writing. We will examine the conventions of these kinds of writing and the ways that five medieval writers–Chaucer, Lydgate, Margery Kempe, Christine de Pizan, and the anonymous Pearl-poet--deployed them for their own unique purposes. Students will also learn some linguistic history through an introduction to basic Middle English. The final grade will be based on class participation, two essays, and mid-term and final exams.


British Lit: The Renaissance (ENGL 325)

Section: 094 #2122
Instructor: C. Kendrick
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30 – 12:45 LSC

The course is a literary survey of the “long” English Renaissance (c. 1516 – 1660), with an emphasis on poetry. We will spend a relatively large amount of time on at least 4 writers' works: Spenser, Donne, and Marvell will be among them. We will also be reading much work by other writers, enough to provide a sense of the conventions available in the period. Special attention will be paid to questions of genre; to changing notions of authorship and publication; to representations of gender and social and religious change. Two papers, a midterm, and a final.


Plays of Shakespeare (ENGL 326)

Section: 095 #2123
Instructor: V. Strain
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 10:25 – 11:15 LSC

This course refines students’ close reading and critical thinking skills through an intense engagement with a range of Shakespeare’s drama—his comedies, histories, tragedies, and later “romances.” We will examine Shakespeare’s language use and plots in the context of the early modern commercial theater (its material conditions and literary trends) and the poetic and rhetorical traditions disseminated through Elizabethan grammar schools. The  selected plays illuminate the writer’s style within masterful animations of the topics that defined his era. Speaking directly to his own time in its own terms, Shakespeare raised perennial questions related to the nature of friendship and love, the use and abuse of power, and the nature of otherness. Assignments have been designed to help students overcome historical and linguistic barriers to comprehension. We will confront together the central paradox that Shakespeare’s works present to later ages: his plays represent a so-called common heritage and they are utterly “foreign to us all,” distant from us in “time, language, and thought” (Dennis Kennedy). As with all texts, the unfamiliar is an exhilarating starting point. Not only does historical, geographical, and cultural difference present an intellectual challenge, but it is also an opportunity to reimagine the norms of current culture that can otherwise appear natural or inevitable. Engagements with historical texts and contexts are ultimately future-oriented: they expand students’ awareness of the world as it is and as it could be.

Section: 096 #2124
Instructor: J. Knapp 
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 – 3:45 LSC

This course will focus on a selection of Shakespeare’s plays in all the major genres (comedy, history, tragedy, and romance).  We will read the plays through a variety of critical approaches, taking into account the historical context in which they were produced.  To emphasize the importance of drama as intended for theatrical performance students will attend a production of Twelfth Night at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier.  Throughout the course of the semester we will focus on the development of drama in England, the material history of the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage, and the political and cultural place of the theater in Shakespeare’s England.  Plays will include: Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, Richard II, Henry V, Hamlet, King Lear, and The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale. The primary text will be David Bevington’s edition of the Complete Works of Shakespeare, 6th edition.  There will be papers, a midterm and a final.


British Literature: Victorian Period (ENGL 340)

Section: 098 #2125
Instructor: M. Clarke
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 11:30 – 12:20 LSC

The primary aim of this course is the understanding and appreciation of Victorian literature, i.e., English literature written between 1837 and 1900.  In this course, students will improve their analytic, interpretive, and writing skills, and will learn what to look for in the way of attitude, as well as technique, in Victorian literature.  Readings and lectures on the cultural, philosophical, and religious milieu of the period will help to make the readings more accessible.  Assignments will include brief ungraded reflection papers, a mid-term examination, a critical paper, and a final examination.  Our texts will be The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 9th Edition, Volume E: The Victorian Age, and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.    


British Literature: 20th Century (ENGL 345)

Section: 099 #5057
Instructor: J. Wexler
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00 AM – 11:15 AM LSC

 

This course tells the story of twentieth-century British literature through the lens of public violence. Writers recognized the difficulty of conveying the extremity of contemporary events in everyday language, and they developed formal solutions to this problem. Texts include canonical modernist texts as well as popular novels and poems. There will be three essays, a final, and short writing assignments.


Contemporary Critical Theory (ENGL 354)

Section: 100 #5058
Instructor: P. Jay
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45 – 3:35 LSC

This course introduces students to a range of contemporary theories about literature, literary criticism, and cultural studies. We will explore recent innovations in how we think about texts, authorship, narration, writing, and reading, review a variety of approaches to critical analysis and interpretation, and consider the social, cultural, and political dimensions of critical theory and literary analysis. Required texts for this course will include a range of introductory and advanced readings in critical and literary theory, and a selection of poetry and fiction. Requirements include 2 shorter critical essays, regular quizzes, and a final longer paper.

Section: 101 #5059
Instructor: P. Caughie
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00 – 2:15 LSC

“The main effect of theory,” writes Jonathan Culler, “is the disputing of ‘common sense’” (Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction, 4). Whether the topic is language or reality, sex or race, literature or authors, theory refuses to take such concepts at face value, as “givens.” Theory teaches us how to question what we often take for granted. If this course succeeds, then, it should produce a kind of crisis—a crisis of meaning, a crisis of confidence, a crisis of language—as we unlearn certain habitual ways of thinking. We will read theories from a range of disciplines (e.g., linguistics, literature, history, sociology, psychoanalysis, philosophy) and “schools” (e.g., formalism, structuralism, deconstruction, feminism, Marxism) from the 1960s through the 1990s to understand how the theory revolution has changed the study of literature and culture. Our goal will be to learn how to read theory, not just how to define it, and how to write theoretically informed analyses. Requirements include short response papers based on the readings, a seminar paper analyzing a particular text (or an alternative project to be negotiated individually) and a final exam. Readings include selections from an anthology of theory, a reader’s guide to theory, and a novel (Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler), along with other selections from literary works.


Women in Drama – Post-1900 (ENGL 369)

Section: 102 #5844
Instructor: V. Foster
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40 – 2:30 LSC

 

In this course we will explore women’s multiple roles in drama and theatre: as characters, playwrights, actors, directors, critics, and audience members.  We will begin by examining the construction of gender in life and on the stage through cross-casting of actors and cross-dressing of characters (Twelfth Night, Cloud 9).  We will examine important female characters such as those in Othello, Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, and Chekhov’s The Three Sisters and look at the ways in which they have been revised by feminist critics, rewritten by women dramatists (Paula Vogel’s Desdemona, Beth Henley’s Crimes of the Heart), and interpreted by actresses and women directors.  We will also read plays by a variety of women dramatists such as Caryl Churchill, Timberlake Wertenbaker, Lorraine Hansberry, and Suzan-Lori Parks that deal with issues of particular concern to women.  Throughout the course we will consider whether or not female members of theatre audiences respond to what they see differently from men.  We will attend Loyola’s production of Twelfth Night in the Newhart Family Theatre.  Requirements:  2 essays (8 pages each); brief in-class writing assignments; in-class performance and one-page report; class participation; final exam.  This course fulfills the requirement for literature post-1900.            


American Lit to 1865 (ENGL 375)

Section: 103 #5061
Instructor: J. Glover
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00 – 2:15 LSC

Literature is often thought of as synonymous with the printed word.  But print often functions alongside other ways of sharing information, including oratory, the circulation of manuscripts, and public readings and performances.   This course surveys the emergence of an English-language American culture from the period of the English colonization of America to the Civil War, with a special emphasis on how print interacted with other forms of communication.  The course will consider a broad range of American writing from this period, from the jeremiads of English Puritan reformers to the literatures of republicanism and revolution.  Our literary readings will range from sermons and captivity narratives to canonical classics like Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, yet along the way, we will also consider a wide range of media, from epitaphs and broadsides to more ephemeral forms of communication like rumors, natural soundscapes, and animal noises.   By looking at print in the context of other ways of sharing and controlling information, we will attempt to recover the cultural production of groups often excluded from literary histories organized around acts of print publication.  When we turn our attention to other forms of media, religious dissenters, women, slaves, and Native Americans appear anew as active agents in the public world of the colonial Americas.   


Adv. African-American Lit. Post-1900 (ENGL 384)

Section: 104 #5845
Instructor: B. Ahad
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 – 3:45 LSC

This course will examine primarily contemporary works of satire in African-American literature and culture. Generally known as a literary genre that serves as a form of social critique, satire has often been deployed by black artists as a way to comment on various modes of racial injustice, from slavery to stereotyping. The course will begin by examining some historical texts that function as a point of departure for the more recent novels, plays, and films we will study. Featuring texts as varied as Frederick Douglass's speech "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?," Percival Everett's novel Erasure, Suzan Lori-Parks's drama Topdog/Underdog and Quentin Tarantino's film Django, we will examine how black artists and intellectuals use satire to expose social inequalities, challenge dominant narratives of American history, and highlight absurdities inherent in the very concept of "race." You will be required to write two formal essays (5-6 pages), participate in a class-structured "book club," produce several short informal (1-2) page papers, and construct a final group presentation. Given that this course is an "advanced seminar," there will be a strong emphasis on individual participation and group interaction. In other words, you will be both expected and required to pay attention, listen well, respect your peers, and speak in class.


Advanced Seminar: (ENGL 390)

Section: 17W #2129
Instructor: V. Strain 
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 12:35 – 1:25 LSC

This course provides a grounding in the most influential texts and critical methods in the field of law and literature. While literature’s close ties with the law are evident in ancient texts, the modern interdisciplinary movement took shape in the later twentieth century and has continued to benefit from emergent literary trends and schools of critical thought (not to mention developments in cultural, social, and legal history). We will concentrate on literary borrowings from the law (in the form of language, content, ordering principles, and ethical questions), as well as literature’s ability to critique the premises and practices of the law. We will approach the law as a source of language, metaphors, narratives, and interpretative strategies; as a mode of categorizing, analyzing, and representing human experience. Through literary works such as Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, Melville’s Billy Budd, and Kafka’s short stories, we will examine the signature tensions that connect, and the signature perspectives that divide, these two fields. Law and literature both struggle to make meaning by constructing relationships between principles and particulars, texts and contexts, tradition and innovation. Assignments, lectures, and class discussions will help students use law and literature to put pressure on the definitions and practices that shape our lives.

Section: 18W #2746
Instructor: J. Glover
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00 – 11:15 AM LSC

We often think of democracy as a form of government that levels social distinctions.  However, the first generation of US citizens had an endless appetite for details about the lives of the famous and powerful.  This course will examine gossip and celebrity in US literary culture.  We will consider how the public exposure of private lives shaped early republican understandings of power, democracy, sexuality, and equality.  We’ll start with several narratives of scandal, shame, and rumor among prominent political figures of the antebellum era.  Our focus will then shift to the Gilded Age, where we will consider how cultures of tabloid celebrity expressed both class aspirations and anxieties about growing inequality.  Next, we’ll consider the transformation of celebrity culture in the twentieth century.  Many of our narratives will be drawn from newspapers, periodical culture, television, and film.  However, we’ll also consider fictional (or thinly fictionalized?) drama and fiction by Royall Tyler, Theodore Dresier, Henry James, Edith Wharton, Jacqueline Susann, Nathanael West, and Bruce Wagner.  We’ll be guided by a number of questions.  How do private lives condition the exercise of reason in the civic sphere?  Is obsession with celebrity compatible with democratic ideals?  Does shame have democratizing effects? 

Section: 19W #3619
Instructor: S. Bost
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30 – 12:45 LSC

Special Topic: Contemporary American Literature and the Limits of the Human

The human condition has been an obvious preoccupation across traditions of literature and literary analysis, but the subject emerges in a particularly interesting light under postmodernity.  New technologies have pushed the boundaries of human bodies and human agency.  Globalization and new movements in identity politics have challenged assumptions about universal human qualities in favor of human diversity.  And postmodern theory has questioned central precepts of Humanism.  These historical, political, and intellectual developments are intertwined in the texts we will study in this seminar.  Through our readings and discussions we will explore the boundaries of the human and the (ethical, political, and social) possibilities and violations that come with expanding these boundaries.  Readings will include Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time, William Gibson’s Neuromancer, Cherríe Moraga’s Heroes and Saints, Alejandro Morales’s The Ragdoll Plagues, Nancy Mairs’s Waist-High in the World, Don DeLillo’s The Body Artist, Donna Haraway’s “A Manifesto for Cyborgs” and The Companion Species Manifesto, and Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, plus supplemental essays, visual images, and films.  Assignments will include regular in-class exercises, one class presentation, three brief papers, and a final research project.


Teaching English to Adults (ENGL 393)

Section: 01S #2127
Instructor: J. Heckman
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MTWR 5:30 PM – 10:00 PM LSC

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 Dumbach Hall on the Lake Shore Campus in Rooms 05 and 06. No previous tutoring experience is necessary. Students tutor adult learners, some of whom are native English speakers preparing for the GED or improving their literacy skills. Other learners are immigrants or refugees whose skills in their native language range from their being highly educated professionals to being perhaps functionally illiterate, and who may know some English or no English. The Center is open M-Th evenings during the fall and spring semesters from 7-9:30 pm. Students may take the English 393 course for 1, 2, or 3 credit hours; when taken for 3 credit hours, the course fulfills the Core Engaged Learning-Service Learning Internship requirement. Students must attend an orientation as well as bi-weekly class meetings (5 class meetings total; a 6th meeting for those students taking the course for 3 credit hours and Core credit). Students tutor one or two evenings a week, depending on the number of credit hours for which they are registered. Students are required to keep a weekly journal of their experiences, examine a textbook and journal articles concerned with literacy, language, and adult education, submit ten journals and four papers throughout the semester, and prepare a final paper or project. Core students have an additional reading and written report. 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 the requirements for each of the credit hour electives.

Section: 02S #2128
Instructor: J. Heckman
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MTWR 5:30 PM – 10:00 PM LSC

(See above.)


Internship (ENGL 394)

Section: 097 #1623
Instructor: B. Ahad


Honors Tutorial: (ENGL 395)

Section: 20W #2131
Instructor: J. Biester
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MW 4:15 – 5:30 PM LSC

History of Literary Theory

This course will explore issues of recurring importance in the history of literary theory by examining selected texts from antiquity through the nineteenth century.  Students will be able to explore developments in their fields and periods of interest in relation to the topics of the course.  We will begin by investigating how literary theory, borrowing from other forms of discourse, came to focus on three primary functions: exploring cognitive or philosophical issues and questions; moving an audience to political action; and providing aesthetic pleasure or delight.  In tracing a history of literary theory, we will consider, among other topics, how focus on any single one of these goals, or any pair of them, has prompted a response from later theorists.  We will also study how theorists in various periods have: 1) approached the problem of defining “literature”; 2) defended literary discourse in the face of attacks on its moral, political, philosophical, and psychological effects; and 3) compared literature to other forms of art and discourse.  Requirements will include papers, class presentations, and possibly a take-home final.


Advanced Writing Workshop: Poetry (ENGL 397)

Section: 21W #2306
Instructor: A. Baker
3.0 credit hours Lecture
F 2:45 – 5:15 PM LSC

In this advanced poetry workshop, we will seek to deepen our engagement with poetry as an art form—both as readers and writers. Through reading, writing, and workshopping, we will grow more familiar with the anatomy and texture of poetry: image, word, voice, syntactical configurations, rhetorical devices— stanza, line, punctuation, and page. Your work will be given a great deal of individual attention in our workshops, and you will be offered the opportunity to work very closely with the instructor as you write and revise your final project for the course—a portfolio of your best work.

ENGL 397-32W is a writing intensive class.


Advanced Writing: Fiction (ENGL 398)

Section: 22W #2132
Instructor: D. Kaplan
3.0 credit hours Lecture
R 2:30 PM – 5:00 PM LSC

A fiction writing workshop for those who have already taken English 318, which builds upon concepts of fictional art and craft studied there.  Students will write three original stories, which will be discussed and critiqued by the instructor and by one's fellow writers in a supportive workshop environment.  Students will also read the work of master fiction writers, such as Steven Milhauser, Haruki Murakami, Joy Williams, Richard Ford, and others. Class participation is emphasized.


Special Studies in Literature (ENGL 399)

Section: 098 #1626
Instructor: B. Ahad

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.