Fall 2025 Courses

Class information on LOCUS takes precedence over information posted here.

UCLR 100E Interpreting Literature

ENGL 210 Business Writing

ENGL 211 Writing for Pre-Law Students

ENGL 220 Theory/Practice Tutoring

ENGL 271 Exploring Poetry

ENGL 272 Exploring Drama

ENGL 273 Exploring Fiction

ENGL 274 Exploring Shakespeare

ENGL 282C African-American Literature Post-1900

ENGL 283 Women in Literature

ENGL 284 Asian American Literature

ENGL 288 Nature in Literature

ENGL 290 Human Values in Literature

ENGL 293 Advanced Writing

ENGL 299 Topics in Advanced Writing

ENGL 317 The Writing of Poetry

ENGL 318 The Writing of Fiction

ENGL 319 Writing Creative Nonfiction

ENGL 320 English Literature: Medieval Period 

ENGL 325 British Literature: The Renaissance

ENGL 326 Plays of Shakespeare

ENGL 354 Contemporary Critical Theory

ENGL 361 Modernist Poetry

ENGL 272B Studies in Fiction 1700-1900

ENGL 381B Comparative American Literature

ENGL 382B Studies in American Culture 1700-1900

ENGL 390 Advanced Seminar

ENGL 393 Teaching English to Adults: Internship

ENGL 394 Internship

ENGL 397 Advanced Writing Workshop: Poetry

ENGL 399 Special Studies in Literature

Interpreting Literature (UCLR 100E)

Section: 001 #2515
Instructor: Hinkson, J.
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 8:15AM – 9:05AM

This foundational course in literary studies will require students to read closely and analyze carefully a representative variety of prose, poetry, and drama, master key literary and critical terms, and explore a variety of core critical approaches to the analysis and interpretation of literature. This course will also explore important conceptual questions about literature and its study. What is literature? Why does it matter? How has it been conceived in different times and places? How do we envision the relationships among author, text, and reader or audience? What is the difference between reading a literary work in its historical context and in the light of our own contemporary time? Where does meaning come from in literature? What is literary interpretation and what role does it have in the production of literary meaning? How are literary works related to culture and society and how do they reflect – and reflect on – questions of value and the diversity of human experience?  Exploring these questions will help students develop the skills of analysis and interpretation needed to approach literature in a sophisticated manner.

Section: 002 #3118
Instructor: Scharfenburg, K.
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 8:15AM – 9:05AM

Working for the Weekend
From rags to riches, this course invites you to examine the meaning of work and labor as represented throughout American literary history. This section of Loyola's foundational course in literary studies will consider the ethics, aesthetics, politics, values, challenges, and dynamics of U.S. work culture by closely reading fiction, poetry, and drama from authors including Herman Melville, Gish Jen, Cormac McCarthy, Robert Frost, Arthur Miller, and Suzan-Lori Parks, among others. Assessments include in-person and take-home exams, response videos, and a collaborative digital humanities final project.

Section: 003 #3119
Instructor: Bayley, E.
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 10:25AM - 11:15AM

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, in-class writing opportunities, an in-class writing on poetry and prose, and a final reflection on drama.

Section: 004 #3120
Instructor: Scharfenberg, K
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 10:25AM - 11:15AM

Working for the Weekend
From rags to riches, this course invites you to examine the meaning of work and labor as represented throughout American literary history. This section of Loyola's foundational course in literary studies will consider the ethics, aesthetics, politics, values, challenges, and dynamics of U.S. work culture by closely reading fiction, poetry, and drama from authors including Herman Melville, Gish Jen, Cormac McCarthy, Robert Frost, Arthur Miller, and Suzan-Lori Parks, among others. Assessments include in-person and take-home exams, response videos, and a collaborative digital humanities final project.

Section: 005 #3121
Instructor: Bell, V.
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 11:30AM - 12:20PM

Personal & Political Hauntings in American Literature
The foundational course of literary studies requires students to read closely and analyze carefully a representative variety of literary texts, master key literary and critical terms, and explore a variety of core critical approaches to the analysis and interpretation of literature. 
This section explores the interpretation of American literary works that are “haunted” by the past and use tropes such as the cemetery, the haunted house, the jump scare, literary persona, and concrete or graphic forms.  The essays, novels, films, and poems that we will explore speak in the voices of real or imagined people in the history of the Americas, or at least obsessively struggle to represent those voices and earlier events.  The works also focus on complex and uncomfortable, even taboo, American problems—death, suicide, racial conflict, genocide, colonialism, abuse, violence, political upheaval, etc.—yet also explore opportunities for change and the expansion of freedom. Course texts may include works by George Saunders, Carmen Maria Machado, Diana Khoi Nguyen, Cornelius Eady, or others. Course requirements include midterm and final exams, two critical essays, active synchronous class participation, and asynchronous participation in Discussion Forums and/or VoiceThreads.

Section: 006 #3122
Instructor: Reddon, M.
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 11:30AM - 12:20PM

Dreams, Visions, Fantasies
“From dreams we talk to each other about reality,” writes Jean Toomer in his collection of aphorisms Essentials (1931). Using “dreams” as a thematic bridge, this course will introduce students to poetry, drama, and prose that explores the relationship between literary representation and subjectivity. We will consider questions such as how does literature define and mediate our experiences of the world? How does fiction, like the dream, express our desire for a better future? Alternatively, how does fiction represent our ambivalence to the past and our frustration with the present? Throughout the course our class will foreground issues around gender, race, sexuality, nationality, place, and spirituality in our readings. Course texts may will include experimental poetry, plays, and prose from a range authors and historical periods. Students who take this course will be introduced to a variety of approaches for reading literature in its cultural, historical, and political contexts, develop close writing and analytic skills through literary analysis and essay writing, and gain critical vocabulary to describe figurative language and genre.

Section: 007 #3123
Instructor: Sleevi. S.
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 11:30AM - 12:20 PM

This foundational course introduces students to the study of literature through the close reading and analysis of fiction, poetry, and drama. We will gain familiarity with key literary terms and approaches as we read novels, short stories, plays, and poems, examining their thematic content and formal features in relation to the unifying theme of “perspective.” The course will also explore important conceptual questions about literature and its study—including how literary works reflect (and reflect on) culture, society, and human experience—that will help students develop the skills of analysis and interpretation needed to approach literature in a sophisticated manner. Work for the course will include reading quizzes, written response assignments, a midterm exam, and a final exam.

Section: 008 #3124
Instructor: Goldstein, L.
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 12:35PM - 1:25PM

Section: 009 #3125
Instructor: Weeks Stogner, E.
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 12:35PM - 1:25PM 

Section: 010 #3126
Instructor: Bayley, E.
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 1:40PM - 2:30PM

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, in-class writing opportunities, an in-class writing on poetry and prose, and a final reflection on drama.

Section: 011 #3127
Instructor: TBD
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 1:40PM - 2:30PM

Section: 012 #3128
Instructor: TBD 
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 1:40PM - 2:30PM

Section: 013 #3129
Instructor: Weeks Stogner, E. 
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 1:40PM - 2:20PM

Section: 014 #3130
Instructor: Tricker, S. 
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 2:45PM - 3:35PM

Vibes & Feels in American Literature
People often talk about the “vibe” or “aesthetic” of a person, place, or thing. In this course, we’ll examine how moods, atmospheres, and emotion are produced in and through literature and other media. Exploring a range of American fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, song, drama, and film, we will work to become careful interpreters of texts and other cultural artifacts. We will also consider how reading can help us reclaim fading powers of concentration in today’s fickle “attention economy.” Authors and artists studied may include Sherwood Anderson, James Baldwin, Gwendolyn Brooks, Franny Choi, Sandra Cisneros, Emily Dickinson, Lawson Inada, Noname, Edgar Allan Poe, Upton Sinclair, the Staple Singers, Ocean Vuong, August Wilson, and Chloé Zhao. Assignments may include essays, student-led small group discussions, and reading quizzes.

Section: 015 #3131
Instructor: Peters, R.
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 2:45PM - 3:35PM

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. This section features a theme of Place, Travel, and Identity. Our course texts explore the construction of identity and its innate connection with place. Some of our readings depict characters who lead transnational lives: travelers, immigrants, cosmopolitans, and more. How are identities built and maintained with family and community in multiple cultures and places? Other course readings feature characters who create identities specific to particular places and unique regional or national cultures. This section will explore works by Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, James Joyce, Flannery O’Connor, Annie Proulx, Jhumpa Lahiri, and others

Section: 016 #3132
Instructor: Sleevi, S. 
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 2:45PM - 3:35PM

This foundational course introduces students to the study of literature through the close reading and analysis of fiction, poetry, and drama. We will gain familiarity with key literary terms and approaches as we read novels, short stories, plays, and poems, examining their thematic content and formal features in relation to the unifying theme of “perspective.” The course will also explore important conceptual questions about literature and its study—including how literary works reflect (and reflect on) culture, society, and human experience—that will help students develop the skills of analysis and interpretation needed to approach literature in a sophisticated manner. Work for the course will include reading quizzes, written response assignments, a midterm exam, and a final exam.

Section: 017 #3133
Instructor: Ayoub, Y.
3.0 credit hours lecture
TTh 8:30AM - 9:45AM

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.” –James Baldwin
This 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. This course satisfies the first tier of Loyola University’s core Knowledge Area requirement in “Literary Knowledge”.
This section of UCLR, titled Loneliness & Belonging, will look to an array of literature selected for their engagement with themes of loneliness, isolation, identity and subject formation, community, and belonging. The Baldwin epigraph serves as a framework through which we will ask questions of literature, such as: how does literature propose, assert, or interrogate notions of belonging? What can literature teach us about the “feelings” of loneliness and belonging, and therefore about identity and community? What is the specific power, or usefulness, of literature in teaching these lessons? Or: what does literature show us about these phenomena that other art forms cannot?

Section: 018 #3134
Instructor: Bradshaw, M. 
3.0 credit hours lecture
TTh 10:00AM - 11:15AM

In this section of Loyola’s foundational course in literary studies we will focus on literature written in and about Chicago, from the 19th century to the present. We will look at how literature represents and portrays the city, helping us remember key moments in Chicago history, grapple with social and cultural issues that define it, reflect on what makes this city unique among American cities.

Section: 019 #3135
Instructor: Molby, B.
3.0 credit hours lecture
TTh 10:00AM - 11:15AM

Monsters & Mazes
This foundational class explores literary portrayals of the monstrous and the unknown through a selection of prose, poetry, and drama.  Through an examination of works including Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Susannah Clarke’s Piranesi, this class will discuss how these texts portray ideas of knowledge, identity, power, community, and our relationship to the natural world.  This class will introduce students to key terms, techniques, and methods of literary interpretation.  Course requirements include reading quizzes, short written analysis assignments, a midterm exam, and a final exam.

Section: 020 #3136
Instructor: TBD
3.0 credit hours lecture
TTh 10:00AM - 11:15AM

Section: 021 #3137
Instructor: Weller, S.
3.0 credit hours lecture
TTh 10:00AM - 11:15AM

Section: 022 #3138
Instructor: TBD
3.0 credit hours lecture
TTh 11:30AM - 12:45PM

Section: 023 #3601
Instructor: Olszewska, D.
3.0 credit hours lecture
M 4:15PM - 6:45PM

This section of Loyola’s foundational course in literary studies will focus on the portrayal of cannibalism in fiction, poetry, and drama. We will endeavor to identify and categorize the different moving parts that make up a short story, a poem, and a play. We will also interrogate the function of cannibalism in a few specific texts. These texts include short stories by Stephen King, Sayaka Murata, and Mark Twain; poems by Josh Bell, Stephen Crane, Jerzy Ficowski, Amy Gerstler, Kimiko Hahn, Joyce Mansour, Cheryl Savageau, Charles Simic, Safiya Sinclair, and Jared Singer; a play by William Shakespeare; and the film adaptation of a novella by H.G. Wells. We will analyze the effects these texts have on us as readers, the authors’ perceived intentions, whether the writings can be described as objectively well-crafted, how “true-to-life” these works strike us, and what these readings suggest about the societies in which these works were forged. Students are expected to read up to fifty pages of literature a week and to hand write weekly journal entries that respond to the course content. Students will also complete two presentations for the class: one group presentation that summarizes an assigned reading and one individual presentation that analyzes a piece of media of the students’ choosing. This course satisfies the first tier of Loyola University’s core Knowledge Area requirement in “Literary Knowledge.”

Section: 024 #3662
Instructor: TBD
3.0 credit hours lecture
Tu 4:15PM - 6:45 PM

Section: 025 #4923
Instructor: Cheung, D. 
3.0 credit hours lecture
MW 4:15PM - 5:30PM

Literature & Lifestyle
#BookTok is only the most recent case in a plentiful history of readers understanding their archives as both personally and socially constructive. How am I informed by what I read? How is what I read informed by who I am? How am I known to others by what I read and what might this way of thinking about the experience of literature tell us about a society within which those experiences hold value? Why, ultimately, has literature proven so compelling a site for studying and signaling the self and its relationship to the social world? A first reason may be that modern literature has been produced and defined according to the nature of its attention to these very concerns. That is, before literature can contribute to the lifestyles of readers, the lives of the many subjects comprising literary works have been formed by matters of style. In this section of UCLR 100E, we will think about the historical conditions and social meanings of modern literature by reading across and about its three major genres—poetry, prose, and drama—with a focus on how their formal properties, analytical demands, and sociopolitical engagements reflect the desire to communicate and contribute to diverse modes of experience.

Business Writing (ENGL 210)

Section: 01W #3647
Instructor: Chamberlin, J.
3.0 credit hours lecture
TTh 8:30AM - 9:45AM

Business Writing will teach you to research, analyze, and write effectively in a professional setting. As an engaged learning course, you will be working as part of a team to research an organizational issue and compose a formal recommendation report providing solutions. Components of the research project will involve conducting interviews, designing surveys, and investigating approaches in published literature and at comparable institutions. A particular focus of the course will be how organizational (i.e., business) research differs from academic research in scope, required skills, ethics, methodology, and final product. As this is also an intensive writing course, you will be expected to produce, workshop, revise, and polish your written work in stages throughout the semester. You will also learn to recognize professional writing genres (such as the email, formal letter, memo, proposal, and report) and communicate effectively. In addition to the group project, you will have the opportunity to work with our embedded tutor to create a job application portfolio in a tailored one-on-one experience. You should expect to produce at least 15 pages of written work through the semester and be prepared to conduct research, such as interviews and surveys, with a team outside of class.

This is a writing intensive course.

Section: 02W #3648
Instructor: Meinhardt, M.
3.0 credit hours lecture
Tu 7:00PM - 9:30PM

Business Writing is a seminar designed to build and improve effective communication practices for use in the business community. The ideas of “personal professionalism” and “priority of purposes” guide an exploration of business writing genres ranging from correspondence to memos, and from employment documents to executive summaries. Collaboration, peer interaction, and individual economy direct the creation of a series of writing projects that use revision and research as a necessary step in the writing process.

This is a writing intensive course.

Section: 03W #3649
Instructor: Ackman, H.
3.0 credit hours lecture
W 7:00PM - 9:30PM

This is a writing intensive course.

Section: 04W #4050
Instructor: Janangelo, J.
3.0 credit hours lecture
Th 7:00PM - 9:30PM

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 your peers and me in draft conferences. That gives you a chance to raise ideas, ask questions, get assistance, and receive feedback on your work.

Writing for Pre-Law Students (ENGL 211)

Section: 01W #4584
Instructor: Hovey, J.
3.0 credit hours lecture
MW 4:15PM - 5:30PM

Writing and research are essential for lawyers no matter what area they decide to practice in.  Lawyers must be able to write well in order to communicate effectively with their clients and argue for them in court. This course focuses on the rhetoric of law and the ways that legal texts create a culture and establish relationships through the language and arguments they employ. This course provides an opportunity for you to work on your writing as you select a Supreme Court Opinion to analyze over the course of the term. We will be especially interested in how American legal opinions create "justice" (or don't!), and how they define important terms like “evidence” or “rights.”
Outcomes: Students will do short assignments, then write a long paper where they look at the rhetorical devices that help construct a legal opinion, making arguments about those devices and the effect they have on fairness and justice.

This is a writing intensive course.

Section: 02W #3604
Instructor: Gorski, D.
3.0 credit hours lecture
M 7:00PM - 9:30PM

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 motion memoranda. 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. 

This is a writing intensive course.

Theory/Practice Tutoring (ENGL 220)

Section: 2WE #5642
Instructor: Kessel, A.
3.0 credit hours seminar
TTh 2:30PM - 3:45PM

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 who can speak to the student’s writing ability and interpersonal skills. Recommendations should be emailed to Amy Kessel (akessel@luc.edu). Those who excel in the course will be eligible to work as paid writing tutors

ENGL 220-2WE #5642 is a writing-intensive service-learning class.  Please see instructor akessel@luc.edu  or (773) 508-2682 for permission to take this class.

Exploring Poetry (ENGL 271)

Section: 01W #3606
Instructor: Stayer, J.
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 10:25AM - 11:15AM 

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 focus on British authors: John Donne, Shakespeare, John Keats, Anna Barbauld, William Wordsworth, William Blake, T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, Dylan Thomas, Philip Larkin, W. H. Auden, and others. The contemporary poetry we read focuses 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.

Section: 02W #3607
Instructor: TBD
3.0 credit hours lecture
TTh 11:30AM-12:45PM

Section: 03W #4586
Instructor: Cragwall, J.
3.0 credit hours lecture
TTh 10:00AM - 11:15AM

Why should we care about poetry—and how should we care about it?  We’ll start historically—who before us cared about poetry, and why?  We’ll study the pressure poems put on their historical moment, and how they’re shaped by it in surprising ways: for example, our discussion of Shakespeare will start with the formation of “Shakespeare” as a figure, often at odds with the “evidence” of the poems, of canonical standards throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a program that affected even the spelling of his poems. Many of the authors we’ll read were white, male, and rich—how has literature been used to promote a series of questions and assumptions that they may have shared (sometimes called “the canon”), and how has it, even in some of these same authors, blown apart (some of) the stereotypes and orthodoxies we’d expect to find?  We’ll watch the invention not only of English-speaking cultures, but of the English language itself, its twists and triumphs, detours and degenerations—and most importantly, we’ll watch as language, especially literary language, is fashioned into a vehicle of social (as well as aesthetic) contest. Readings in genres epic, lyric, dramatic, and pornographic, from many hundreds of years. We (well, you) will also write papers, take exams, and mix metaphors—the entire range of academic abjection, in one convenient course.

Section: 04W #5643
Instructor: TBD
3.0 credit hours lecture
TTh 10:00AM - 11:15AM

Section: 05W #5644
Instructor: Cragwall, J.
3.0 credit hours lecture
TTh 1:00PM - 2:15PM

Why should we care about poetry—and how should we care about it?  We’ll start historically—who before us cared about poetry, and why?  We’ll study the pressure poems put on their historical moment, and how they’re shaped by it in surprising ways: for example, our discussion of Shakespeare will start with the formation of “Shakespeare” as a figure, often at odds with the “evidence” of the poems, of canonical standards throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a program that affected even the spelling of his poems. Many of the authors we’ll read were white, male, and rich—how has literature been used to promote a series of questions and assumptions that they may have shared (sometimes called “the canon”), and how has it, even in some of these same authors, blown apart (some of) the stereotypes and orthodoxies we’d expect to find?  We’ll watch the invention not only of English-speaking cultures, but of the English language itself, its twists and triumphs, detours and degenerations—and most importantly, we’ll watch as language, especially literary language, is fashioned into a vehicle of social (as well as aesthetic) contest. Readings in genres epic, lyric, dramatic, and pornographic, from many hundreds of years. We (well, you) will also write papers, take exams, and mix metaphors—the entire range of academic abjection, in one convenient course.

ENGL 271-05W #5644 is a writing-intensive class.

Exploring Drama (ENGL 272)

Section: 01W #3608
Instructor: Peters, R.
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 10:22AM - 11:15AM

English 272 focuses on the understanding, appreciation, and criticism of drama; extensive readings and several critical analyses are required in this class. This section of English 272 offers a rigorous study of numerous significant 20th and 21st Century dramas. Course texts will include works from Tennessee Williams, Margaret Edson, Tony Kushner, August Wilson, Lynn Nottage, and several others.

ENGL 272-01W #3608 is a writing-intensive class.

Section: 02W #5645
Instructor: Molby, B.
3.0 credit hours lecture
TTh 1:00PM - 2:15PM

Drama is a foundational literary form with its own traditions and expectations and is continually being shaped by innovative authors and artists who challenge its creative conventions.  This class will give students a set of tools for reading, interpreting, and writing about dramatic texts and their adaptations for stage and screen, and we will also explore how the inclusion of visual and musical elements enhances the range of meanings and the audience's own experience of these texts.  The class will empower students to demystify, analyze, and enjoy drama from a diverse range of styles, forms, and voices.

ENGL 272-02W #5945 is a writing-intensive class.

Exploring Fiction (ENGL 273)

Section: 001 #5646
Instructor: Jacob, P.
3.0 credit hours lecture
TTh 1:00PM - 2:15PM

Stories Within Stories
The story within the story is a trick as old as storytelling itself. From folktales to dystopian novels, a fictional narrative is frequently encased within a framing device—a bedtime story, a found diary, a novel being written inside the novel being read. In this course, we will explore why fiction so often demands a frame. What happens when we bring our attention to the inside and the outside of a story? When does the act of storytelling delay, protect, ensnare, and enchant? In addition to narrative theory, this reading-intensive course will include fiction from the 18^th century to the 21^st.  Prepare to read a lot! Texts may include: the collection of folktales One Thousand and One Nights, Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Okorafor’s The Death of the Author.

ENGL 243-01 fulfills the multicultural requirement. 

Section: 002 #5647
Instructor: Aftab, A.
3.0 credit hours lecture
TTh 2:30PM - 3:45PM

Section: 003 #5648
Instructor: Staidum, F.
3.0 credit hours lecture
TTh 2:30PM - 3:45PM

The Horrors of Race
In contemporary society, Black and Brown people are consistently endowed with supernatural and monstrous qualities with often deadly effect. From Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson’s description of Michael Brown’s “intense aggressive face […] like a demon” to media depictions of Asian-American citizens or Central American migrants as nefarious carriers of COVID-19, measles, the “plague” and other disease, popular representations of Black, Asian, and Latino/a/e peoples (including African descendent members of the latter) portray these populations and communities as dangerous threats to the US body politic—entities to be feared, contained, and vanquished. These associations between perceived human difference and fear, however, are not new.
Exploring Fiction focuses on comprehending, appreciating, analyzing, and interpreting prose fiction. In this section, we study a sampling of Gothic fiction and, in some cases, Horror film to explicate the long history of representing the scary Other via the nonwhite and foreign presence. Through confrontations between good/evil, human/monster, and living/dead, the Gothic and Horror embody societal anxieties regarding difference and the unknown. In this course, we seek to reveal the myriad ways these genres incorporate marginalized racial, ethnic, and national identities as analogies for the terrifying and sublime. We will ponder: How do these racialized “monsters” simultaneously reinforce and trouble the lines between human and non-human, normal and abnormal, Self and Other? How has society deployed the grotesque figure of the monster, corpse, alien, ghost, and freak to regulate the fluid definitions of race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, class, and sexuality? What are some of the ramifications for both marginalized individuals and communities forced to negotiate these monstrous forms? We will consider figurative and formal techniques, thematic content, historical context, and secondary scholarship to develop sophisticated, nuanced analytical skills for exploring fiction.

Section: 01W #5649
Instructor: Mun, N.
3.0 credit hours lecture
TTh 11:30AM - 12:45PM

Conflict (polemos) has been written about by philosophers since the pre-Socratic era—from war to ethical struggles. We, in the 21^st century, have continued with this obsession, but our tastes have broadened a bit to include not only external conflict, such as war or the cosmos, but psychological dilemmas, as well. To put it succinctly: Conflict is an integral part of human nature. It surrounds us, whether we want it or not, which is why we do our best to avoid it. Literature can take advantage of this avoidance. Novels and stories can provide a "safe space" of sorts for readers to look at conflict, directly and unflinchingly. Conflict pulls us into the text and allows us to witness, experience, and perhaps process what we might not be able to in our own (very real, sometimes absurdly real) lives. We’ll start by diving into how writers mechanize and think about conflict, and try to understand concepts such as, chronic and acute conflicts. From there we’ll discover numerous creative writing elements writers use to make readers feel, think, react, and even take action, long after they’ve turned the final pages of the book. We’ll also consider all the different “types” of conflict a reader might engage with while reading: interpersonal conflict, person vs. society, person vs. self, etc. By the end of the course, students will have a solid understanding and appreciation for not only how fiction works, but also how conflict—when combined with “eros”— can behave as a motor force that propels the reader toward the final pages of stories and novels. Students will also be able to articulate their understanding and evidence-based opinions in thoughtful writing projects.

ENGL 273-01W #5649 is a writing-intensive class.

Section: 02W #5650
Instructor: Sen, A.
3.0 credit hours lecture
TTh 2:30PM - 3:45PM

Neighborhoods of Fiction
Chicago is known as a city of neighborhoods, but what exactly is a neighborhood and who decides its boundaries? What kind of politics, identities, and emotions do they produce, and what conflicts seethe within their apparent bubbles? This course will take up predominantly prose fiction (short stories, novellas, novels) and occasionally, TV and film, so we can immerse ourselves in the intricate details and worlds of neighborhoods, and try to interrogate their logic. In our three units, we will move from small towns to major cities, and finally to suburban gated communities, identifying what shape the neighborhood takes in each of these formations. In the process, and with the help of literary style and devices, we will trace what we might call “neighborhood logic.” We will investigate traces of the utopian, the horrific, and the absurd in these spaces to see how the ideal vision for a neighborhood collides with material reality. Authors in our syllabus are likely to include Shirley Jackson, James Baldwin, Sandra Cisneros, and Hanif Kureishi. Assignments will mostly be as follows: journal entries on weekly texts, three scaffolded essays of increasing length that analyze fiction based on prompts, and a small creative component that will involve engaging with a neighborhood of your choice in Chicago.

ENGL 273-02W #5650 is a writing-intensive class. 

Exploring Shakespeare (ENGL 274)

Section: 001 #3611
Instructor: Glover, J.
3.0 credit hours lecture
TTh 1:00PM - 2:15PM

This course will offer students an introduction to the dramatic and poetic works of William Shakespeare. We will combine close readings of his plays with an exploration of their performance on stage and screen (including attendance at performances at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater and potentially other venues). Throughout our focus will be on the greatness of Shakespeare’s dramatic art and the many ways to appreciate it.

ENGL 243-01W #3611 is a writing-intensive class. 

African-American Literature (ENGL 282)

Section: 01W #5651
Instructor: TBD
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 4:15PM - 5:30PM

African-American Literature Post-1900 (ENGL 282C)

Section: 001 #4900
Instructor: Graves, H.
3.0 credit hours lecture
TTh 4:15PM - 5:30PM

In this course, students will gain holistic knowledge of the long arc of 20^th century African American Literature, from 1900 to the Contemporary Period.  Beginning with the Nadir of Race Relations where authors contended with the color line to contemporary literary expressions (1980s- present), the course will introduce students to critical snapshots of expressive writings by and about African Americans. We will read the work of writers like James Baldwin, Richard Wright, and Lorraine Hansberry; Black Arts Movement writers such as Amiri Baraka, Audre Lorde, and Carolyn Rodgers; late-20th century writers such as Toni Morrison and Essex Hemphill. In short, the aim of this course will be to explore how black people in the U.S. meditated on a range of topics during different historical periods such as black life and sociality, and black death and anti-blackness, through literature and the intersections of class, gender, and sexuality.

ENGL 282-001 #4900 is a multicultural class.

Women in Literature (ENGL 283)

Section: 001 #4075
Instructor: O'Dea, V.
3.0 credit hours lecture
TTh 11:30AM - 12:45PM

Reputation (19C Version): Rakes, Coquettes, and the Seduction Plot
Reputation, which Samuel Johnson’s 1755 Dictionary vaguely defined as “credit; honour; character of good,” was seen as a quality of utmost value in the nineteenth-century Anglo-American world. Women, in particular, were encouraged to safeguard their reputations in order to procure advantageous marriages and maintain their social standing. For many women, though, this was easier said than done. Intersections of class, race, and gender left some women more vulnerable than others to the threat of seduction, coercion, and even rape. In this class, we will explore how the seduction plot worked to both reify and subvert traditional gender roles in the nineteenth century during a time of increasingly rapid social upheaval. Readings may include works by Hannah Foster, Jane Austen, Harriet Jacobs, Francis Ellen Watkins Harper, and Edith Wharton.

Section: 01W #3612
Instructor: Bradshaw, M. 
3.0 credit hours lecture
TTh 11:30AM - 12:45PM

Deconstructing the Diva
This writing intensive section of ENGL 283: Women in Literature focuses on divas and diva culture. Revered and reviled, imitated and appropriated, divas are the most visible women in our culture. They are also the most misunderstood. On the one hand, the diva represents empowerment—she is loud, courageous, and often outrageous. But her power comes at a great cost: when she is consumed and absorbed into fans’ lives, she risks becoming the object of obsession. She also risks losing her identity, even as she serves as a vehicle for shaping others’.  This class uses fiction, drama, biography, autobiography, film, and performance theory to explore the paradoxes and problems of the “woman with a voice” and her place in contemporary conceptions of femininity.

ENGL 283-01W #3612 is a writing-intensive class.

Nature in Literature (ENGL 288)

Section: 01W #3614
Instructor: Bayley, E. 
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 11:30AM - 12:20PM

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 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.

ENGL 288-01W #3614 is a writing-intensive class.

Human Values in Literature (ENGL 290)

Section: 001 #4077
Instructor: Quirk, K.
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 10:25AM - 11:15AM

In Their Own Voices: Contemporary American Memoir
This course uses contemporary memoirs as sources for studying the relationship between individual, cultural and national identity in the United States. The readings (nearly all full-length memoirs) help us examine the ways in which writers use autobiographical forms to examine the individual self, interpret experience, articulate their identities, and negotiate their place within American society. In addition to studying memoir as cultural documents, the course examines them as literary texts – self-consciously crafted stories with plots, characters, imagery, symbolism, metaphor, simile and point of view. The goal of class discussions and assignments is to encourage students develop their own critical understandings of autobiographical writing, America, and identity, and to reflect generally on the role personal stories play in our individual lives and the quest for truth in American culture. Writing assignments will include both analytical and creative work.
Texts may include some the following works: Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted, Alison Bechdel, Fun Home, Mira Jacob, Good Talk, Ayad Akhtar, Homeland Elegies, Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House, Kiese Laymon, Heavy, and Hua Hsu, Stay True.

Section: 002 #4078
Instructor: Janangelo, J.
3.0 credit hours lecture
Tu 7:00PM - 9:30PM

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 Postcolonialism, Gender, Psychology, Marxism, and Morphology) 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 essays, and an in-class reading journal. Our readings will include Dorothy West’s “Rachel,” Guy du Maupassant’s “The Necklace,” Charles Perrault’s “Bluebeard,” and Scarlett Bermingham’s Big Boy Pants.

Section: 01W #4079
Instructor: Sorenson, P.
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 1:40PM - 2:30PM

In Hugh Lloyd-Jones’s translation of Sophocles’s Oedipus Tyrannus, Oedipus asks, “Where shall the track of an ancient guilt, hard to make out, be found?” In this course, we will be exploring Oedipus’s question. In other words, we will be exploring guilt. Who’s to blame? How do we assign that blame, and what does it mean to be found guilty? Can an individual really be held responsible for any crime? Or, are the social conditions themselves at fault? We will be exploring vengeance, mob violence, collective guilt, misplaced blame, and corruption. We will also consider forgiveness, apology, and restoration. In the end, this course raises questions of causation: What are the final causes of any effect? To aid us in answering that question, you will be tasked with reading fiction, poetry, and drama. Moreover, 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 six-page essay near the semester’s end.

ENGL 290-01W #4079 is a writing-intensive class.

Section: 02W #4080
Instructor: Hopwood, E.
3.0 credit hours lecture
TTh 4:15PM - 5:30PM

Literature and Hustle Culture
What’s your relationship to hustle culture? Is it a necessary evil in our profit-driven capitalistic society? Is it an enviable aesthetic on the socials? Or is it a system that we might re-examine and critically interrogate? If you are burnt out, exhausted, or otherwise fed up with the relentless grind of the workaday world, this course may be for you. We’ve come to value labor and production over rest and self-care, even in (especially in) moments of social, political, and global crisis. But what if care and rest were forms of capital? Or even used as a means of resistance? What if we turn to the power of rest not only as a respite from hustle culture, but as a lens through which to access stories that imagine other ways of being? This course will revolve around care and rest as a means of liberation and “living otherwise,” both historically and today. We will interrogate contemporary “grind culture” and examine how labor, self-care, communes, and social movements operated from the nineteenth century to today and within a global context. In doing so, we will identify and question the values we ascribe to work, play, and rest. We will also examine connections between productivity and the “attention economy” to consider how attention has become a precious form of capital and to think through how and where we spend our own attention. We will read novels, poetry, short stories, essays, and manifestos by authors such as Jenny Odell, Sayaka Murata, Herman Melville, Ross Gay, Henry David Thoreau, Ling Ma, Louisa May Alcott, and Tricia Hersey. 

ENGL 290-02W #4080 is a writing-intensive class.

Section: 03W #4081
Instructor: Salama, N.
3.0 credit hours lecture
TTh 11:30AM - 12:45PM

Money, Money, Money: Problems of Publishing and Authorship
We’re told not to judge a book by its cover, but do we ever judge it by its price? How many people pick up a book in a bookstore (because the cover looks interesting) only to set it down again because it’s more expensive than they would like? In this class, we’ll examine why it is that we still—despite the common idiom—judge books by their covers and by their prices. We will consider the function of money in literary works from the late nineteenth century onward. In addition to analyzing literature that circles topics of money, authorship, and publishing, we will also closely read an array of additional materials—from book covers to correspondence to contracts—to reevaluate how we think about books as objects. In doing so, this course will encourage you to question some of the most basic assumptions made about books: Does publishing a book change how we read the story or poetry it contains? How does the financial foundation of publishing shape the literature we read? Who is the true author of a particular book, and what parts of the book influence the way we read it? Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Nnedi Okarafor are just some of the figures around whom the course may revolve.

ENGL 290-03W #4081 is a writing-intensive class.

Advanced Writing (ENGL 293)

Section: 01W #4217
Instructor: Fiorelli, J.
3.0 credit hours seminar
MWF 12:35PM - 1:25PM

Academic Writing: Theory & Practice
Ready to take your writing, and understanding of it, to the next level? English 293 explores academic writing as both an activity and a subject of study. As contributors in this class, we will take part in the activity – academic writing – and step back to think about, read about, discuss, and theorize it. As we work on essays, we will also ask questions about the purposes of academic writing, what strong academic writing looks like, how one produces it, where expectations for academic writing come from, and more. Course content will therefore center around students’ reconsiderations of their own writing processes and additions to their repertoire of strategies, as well as active reading and discussion of composition theory.

Prerequisite: UCWR 110 (C- or higher) or equivalent, except for students in the Honors Program.

ENGL 293-01W #5423 is a writing-intensive course. 

Topics in Advanced Writing (ENGL 299)

Section: 01W #5652
Instructor: Cornelius, I.
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 1:40PM - 2:30PM

Write it Like You Mean it
Modern computers provide two basic paradigms for document authoring: What You See is What You Get (WYSIWYG) and What You See Is What You Mean (WYSIWYM). Most people use the WISIWIG paradigm without knowing it; this course introduces students to the other paradigm, centered on meaning. Our focus is on the unique properties of text, a lightweight and versatile medium for encoding and transmitting knowledge. Plain text has inherent advantages in comparison with proprietary file formats like Microsoft Word’s DOCX (which lock users in to inefficient, cluttered, and expensive software environments) and in comparison with audio-visual media (which must be tagged with textual metadata to facilitate discovery, interpretation, and accessibility). But the very ubiquity of text leads us to overlook its unique virtues and neglect the tools needed to properly activate them. In this course students acquire a working knowledge of the Zotero reference management system, standard text editors, and a full stack of terminal-controlled applications — git, pandoc, Jekyll and more — to create, organize, edit, document, and distribute knowledge. Assessment is by scaffolded writing assignments, quizzes, and in-class presentations.

Pre- or co-requisite: COMP 141 (Introduction to Computing Tools and Techniques)

ENGL 294-01W #5652 is a writing-intensive course. 

The Writing of Poetry (ENGL 317)

Section: 001 #2589
Instructor: Baker, A.
3.0 credit hours seminar
M 4:15PM - 6:45PM

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 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.

Section: 002 #3615
Instructor: Goldstein, L.
3.0 credit hours seminar
Th 4:15PM - 6:45PM

Section: 003 #3616
Instructor: Sorenson, P.
3.0 credit hours seminar
W 2:45PM - 5:15PM

This course aligns poetry writing with the reading of poetry and the exploration of poetic practices both old and new. Through outside reading, students will question their relationships to contemporary modes and cultures. Thus, students will further develop their own voices, styles, and methods of production, and they will begin to situate their craft in the larger poetic world.
Our class will center the poem as project. Over the course of the semester, you will be constructing a chapbook-length work. This work will include a single poem or a set of linked poems that speaks to or expresses the same concept, theme, image, or narrative. Finally, the course content will cover some basic elements, terms, and techniques of writing poetry, such as the line, form, rhyme, free verse, imagery, and metaphor.

The Writing of Fiction (ENGL 318)

Section: 001 #3618
Instructor: Hawkins, M.
3.0 credit hours seminar
M 2:45PM - 5:15PM

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, discuss, and write responses to each other’s work, too. As time allows, students will also free-write in class in response to questions and prompts designed to spark creative momentum, generate ideas, and explore technique. Class discussions will focus on craft and concept, with attention to the following topics: structure, character, dialog, voice, tone, imagery, and ethics.  Again and again, we will ask each other and ourselves: What story do I most want to tell? What works, what doesn’t, why, and how can I make it better?

Section: 002 #3619
Instructor: Mun, N.
3.0 credit hours seminar
Tu 2:45PM - 5:15PM

Five Beginnings, One Ending
Starting a story or a novel 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 five 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 already in free-fall, so we’ll have things to work on, long after the course’s end. The final 10 weeks will be focused on developing one of those beginnings into a polished story or chapter. So the question is: Is this a good time to start something new? The answer is: always.

Section: 003 #3620
Instructor: Hawkins, M.
3.0 credit hours seminar
F 2:45PM - 5:15PM

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, discuss, and write responses to each other’s work, too. As time allows, students will also free-write in class in response to questions and prompts designed to spark creative momentum, generate ideas, and explore technique. Class discussions will focus on craft and concept, with attention to the following topics: structure, character, dialog, voice, tone, imagery, and ethics.  Again and again, we will ask each other and ourselves: What story do I most want to tell? What works, what doesn’t, why, and how can I make it better?

Section: 004 #3621
Instructor: Macon Fleischer, C.
3.0 credit hours seminar
W 7:00PM - 9:30PM

This fiction writing course gives students an opportunity to develop new and original short stories and receive personal feedback from their classmates and the instructor. We will read and analyze fiction works from a range of authors and genres to help students explore varying writing styles, perspectives, themes, and tones. Weekly writing prompts will encourage students to maintain a sustainable writing practice both in and out of the classroom. This is a collaborative course in which students can practice their own writing while learning how to effectively articulate responses to other writing.

Writing Creative Nonfiction (ENGL 319)

Section: 001 #3623
Instructor: TBD
3.0 credit hours seminar
Tu 2:45PM - 5:15PM

Section: 002 #3624
Instructor: Zabic, S.
3.0 credit hours seminar
W 2:45PM - 5:15PM

Nonfiction is the only literary genre named for what it’s not. In creative nonfiction narratives, writers do not fabricate anything and instead rely on a combination of observation, research, memory, and reflection, while still practicing the techniques of characterization, concrete description, and plot development. In this course structured as a workshop, students begin with brand new rough drafts. After they exchange feedback, they develop and revise their drafts and finally share a portfolio of their own nonfiction prose. Throughout the process, students harness the unique ability of creative nonfiction to chart not only the inner life of an individual, but also all the surprising ways in which people relate to one another, in time-and-locale-specific settings. Our writing exercises explore our immediate surroundings, both on campus and off, playing with a variety of nonfiction forms, including memoir, flash essay, comics, photo essay, and haibun.

Section: 003 #3625
Instructor: TBD
3.0 credit hours seminar
Th 2:45PM - 5:15 PM

English Literature: Medieval Period (ENGL 320)

Section: 001 #6142
Instructor: Cornelius, I.
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 12:35PM - 1:25PM 

This course provides a survey of medieval literature of the British Isles. We read a few of the best and most influential works of literature composed during the first nine hundred years of English literary history; we also sample the medieval British literature written in languages other than English. Likely readings include Beowulf and other Old English poems, “The Scholar and his Cat” and other Old Irish poems, the Mabinogi, poems of Marie de France, poems of Meir of Norwich, Piers Plowman, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, poems of Geoffrey Chaucer, and The Book of Margery Kempe (the first autobiography in English). Works written originally in Latin, Old English, Old French, Old Irish, Middle Welsh, and Hebrew will be read in Present-Day English translations. Some Middle English will be read in the original language. Long works are excerpted to provide a tasting menu of the diverse literatures that survive from the multilingual cultures of premodern Britain. Assessment is by written assignments, a class presentation, and midterm and final exams.

British Literature: The Renaissance (ENGL 325)

Section: 001 #5654
Instructor: TBD
3.0 credit hours lecture
TTh 1:00PM - 2:15PM

Plays of Shakespeare (ENGL 326)

Section: 001 #3626
Instructor: Knapp, J.
3.0 credit hours lecture
TTh 2:30PM - 3:45PM

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, we will view recorded performances, and, if possible, attend a local theatrical performance. Over the course of the semester we will explore 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 may include: Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Richard II, 1 Henry IV, Macbeth, Hamlet, The Winter’s Tale, and Cymbeline. The primary text will be David Bevington’s edition of the Complete Works of Shakespeare. There will be presentations, papers, a midterm, and a final.

Contemporary Critical Theory (ENGL 354)

Section: 001 #4083
Instructor: Aftab, A.
3.0 credit hours lecture
TTh 11:30AM - 12:45PM

ENGL 354-001 #4083 is a multicultural class.

Modernist Poetry (ENGL 361)

Section: 001 #5655
Instructor: Stayer, J.
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 1:40PM - 2:30PM

This course will focus on British and American poets—men, women, queer, straight, and persons of color—associated with the first half (-ish) of the 20^th century: T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, W. B. Yeats, H. D., Gertrude Stein, Stevie Smith, Dylan Thomas, Robert Hayden, Robert Frost, E. E. Cummings, Marianne Moore, Langston Hughes, Ezra Pound, and Elizabeth Bishop. In considering these authors, we will give particular weight to issues of poetic form: how the constraints of meter, rhyme, line, stanza and structure create meaning when those patterns are followed or broken. We will consider biographical and historical contexts, particularly the forces of modernity which put extraordinary pressure on poetic form. While earlier forms of poetry had always trafficked in the artificial, the proliferation of styles in the 20^th century brought an unprecedented disjunction, making heavy demands on readers: compression of language, contortion of syntax, and absence of transitions were bewildering developments for those used to the staid satisfactions of Victorian and Edwardian styles. All of these changes at the turn of the century produced the general sense that poets “must be difficult,” as Eliot argued. From the perspective of a hundred years, and with more spectacular experiments of form still on the horizon, these poets no longer seem difficult so much as they are peculiarly and powerfully expressive.

Studies in Fiction 1700 - 1900 (ENGL 372B)

Section: 001 #5656
Instructor: Kerkering, J. 
3.0 credit hours lecture
TTh 1:00PM - 2:15PM

Character, Identity, Persona
This course will examine how conceptions of character, identity, and persona variously informed the writing of fiction during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with particular emphasis placed on works by US writers.  Authors assigned may include Susanna Rowson, Charles Brockden Brown, Catherine Maria Sedgwick, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Lydia Maria Child, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Hannah Crafts, William Dean Howells, Henry James, Mark Twain, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Charles Chesnutt, Theodore Dreiser, Kate Chopin, and Paul Laurence Dunbar.

Studies in American Literature 1700-1900 (ENGL 379B)

Section: 001 #6285
Instructor: Glover, J.
3.0 credit hours lecture
TTh 11:30AM - 12:45PM

American Literature and the Civil War
The American Civil War was fought on the battlefield but also on the page. This course will offer a survey of the literature of the Civil War with the goal of understanding the importance of writing and print to America’s great crisis of slavery and secession. We will start our work in the latter part of the eighteenth century with the literature of the political compromises and judicial decisions that enshrined slavery in the new country’s laws. We will then explore the development of distinctive literary cultures in free and slave states over the course of the early nineteenth century. The bulk of our work will focus on the long secession crisis itself as it unfolded from the 1830s onward and as it was captured in novels, stories, poems, judicial decisions, and political speeches by figures such as Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. The class will end with a consideration of the literature of Reconstruction and the long shadow it cast on American life. Throughout, however, our focus will be on the unique role of literature and print culture in America’s defining conflict with itself.   

Comparative American Literature (ENGL 381C)

Section: 001 #5657
Instructor: Reddon, M. 
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 2:45PM - 3:35PM

North American Indigenous Modernisms
Read as a speculative literature, modernism traces the production of the racial subject through the discursive capture of the body as authors respond to and theorize their political conditions through aesthetic figuration. This course offers students a survey in Indigenous modernist literature from the northern part of “Turtle Island,” what is now known as North America. Beginning with Anishinaabeg origin stories and Neshnabek treaty stories and moving through political speeches and essays, memoirs and auto-ethnographies, novels, poetry, and theoretical works, this course provides students with a historic and literary overview of Indigenous expressions of sovereignty from 1890 to the present day. Our readings will stress the radicalism and resurgent quality of these texts by foregrounding their political, cultural, and spiritual contexts. Central questions we will consider include what is “Indigenous sovereignty” and how has it been expressed differently across historical periods and geographies? What are the political and cultural stakes of writing for Indigenous writers, activists, and theorists within colonial modernity? How do these authors think through their relationships to land, community, identity, and the law? And how do our accounts of Indigenous literature shift when we understand these authors as participants in the speculative project of modernism instead of “borrowers,” “hybrids,” or “victims” of its terms? Newcomers to Indigenous literature are welcome. Students will be introduced to Indigenous epistemologies, languages, and traditions to help them build culturally specific frameworks for reading the material as well as important political histories, such as treaty rights, dispossession, residential schooling, and resource extraction, that give more context for these literary works.

Studies in American Culture 1700 - 1900 (ENGL 382B)

Section: 001 #5658
Instructor: Tricker, S. 
3.0 credit hours lecture
MWF 11:30AM - 12:20PM

American Cities in the Margins
American cities grew rapidly in the late nineteenth century. Immigrants poured in from abroad, while other settlers relocated from rural to urban areas. Much like their present-day counterparts, city dwellers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries chased social, as well as economic opportunities. In this course, we will read literature that focuses on working class immigrants, queer folks, people of color, and the disabled in booming cities like New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. Authors studied may include Jane Addams, Nellie Bly, Abraham Cahan, Stephen Crane, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Edith Eaton (a.k.a. Sui Sin Far), James Weldon Johnson, Herman Melville, Alice Dunbar Nelson, Carl Sandburg, Upton Sinclair, Frank J. Webb, and Theodore Winthrop. Additionally, we will examine American magazines and newspapers for their representations of city life and social conflict in fiction, nonfiction, and visual culture (e.g. early photography, political cartoons, and illustrations). Assignments may include essays, student-led small group discussions, and reading quizzes.

ENGL 382B-001 #5658 is a multicultural class.

Advanced Seminar (ENGL 390)

Section: 01W #3627
Instructor: Bost, S.
3.0 credit hours seminar
TuTh 10:00AM - 11:15AM

Visionaries
This course will focus on visionary ways of thinking and writing, ideas that push us beyond the status quo we live in. Authors will include Octavia Butler, Gloria Anzaldúa, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Cameron Awkward-Rich, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Felicia Luna Lemus, Joshua Bennett, and the zine work of Noemi Martinez. Assignments will include regular in-class writing/journaling/zine-ing. The final project will ask the students to build from our course readings and independent research to develop their own visionary work. 

ENGL 390-01W #3627 is a writing-intensive class.  This class requires department consent.  Please contact your English advisor for permission.

Section: 02W #5659
Instructor: Cragwall, J.
3.0 credit hours seminar
TTh 2:30PM - 3:45PM

“Natural Religion: Romanticism and the Markings of Belief”
This course considers our most conventional sense of Romantic difference: Romanticism as “nature worship.” We’ll start with natural theology, the careful attention to empirical knowledge that was the bedrock of orthodox Protestant theology in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But as we’ll see, just as English theology domiciled spiritual forms in ever more material grounds, conceptualizing “religion” as “natural,” inevitable and unproblematic, English literature turned increasingly to cases of “naturals”—children, animals, historically and geographically distant peoples—who seemed discomfitingly immune to sacred instincts. This is our real subject, and it’s the ideological condition for the rhetorical and semiotic effects that most characterize what we’ve come to call Romanticism: “nature” and the “natural” are held to be a vast reservoir of peculiarly moralized meaning, and this meaning inevitably deconstructs across the syntax that frames it. We’ll read in Benedict Spinoza, David Hume, the Williams Blake, Paley, and Wordsworth, Mary and Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and others.

ENGL 390-02W #5659 is a writing-intensive class. This class requires department consent.  Please contact your English advisor for permission.

Teaching English to Adults: Internship (ENGL 393)

Section: 01E #1413
Instructor: Heckman, J.
1, 2, or 3 credit hours

MTWTh 5:00PM - 7:00PM

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.  While our in-person tutoring location and office is Loyola Hall and we hope to return someday, we will continue tutoring only online in Fall 2025.
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.

This class requires department consent.  Please contact Ms. Jacqueline Heckman at jheckma@luc.edu or (773) 508-2330 for permission.  This class satisfies the Engaged Learning requirement in the Internship category.

Internship (ENGL 394)

Section: 01E #1414
Instructor: Cragwall, J.
1, 2, or 3 credit hours

English 394 provides practical, on-the-job experience for English majors in adapting their writing and analytical skills to the needs of such fields as publishing, editing, and public relations.  Students must have completed six courses in English and must have a GPA of 3.0 or higher before applying for an internship. Qualified second-semester juniors and seniors may apply to the program.  Interested students must arrange to meet with the Internship Director during the pre-registration period and must bring with them a copy of their Loyola transcripts, a detailed resume (which includes the names and phone numbers of at least two references), and at least three writing samples.  Students may be required to conduct part of their job search online and to go out on job interviews before the semester begins.  Course requirements include completion of a minimum of 120 hours of work; periodic meetings with the Internship Director; a written evaluation of job performance by the site supervisor; a term paper, including samples of writing produced on the job.

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

Advanced Writing Workshop: Poetry (ENGL 397)

Section: 01W #3632
Instructor: Baker, A.
3.0 credit hours seminar
Tu 4:15PM - 6:45PM

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 397-01W #3632 is a writing-intensive class.

Special Studies in Literature (ENGL 399)

Section: 001 #1415
Instructor: Cragwall, J.
3.0 credit hours lecture

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.