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101. Methodology and Issues in Textual Studies. Required of
English concentrators. This team-taught course introduces students to the
concerns and critical practices of English. It provides some grounding in
critical methodology and controversies across a range of genres and prepares
students to enter into the discussions that occur in more advanced courses.
J. Knight, Staff, Autumn; L. Ruddick, Staff, Winter.
102-103. Problems in Gender Studies (=GS Hum 228-229, Hist 204-205, Hum
228-229, SocSci 282-283; Eng 103=Anthro 215). PQ: Second- or third-year
standing and completion of a Common Core social science or humanities course or
the equivalent. This two-quarter interdisciplinary sequence is designed as
an introduction to theories and critical practices in the study of feminism,
gender, and sexuality. Both classic texts and recent reconceptualizations of
these contested fields are examined. Problems and cases from a variety of
cultures and historical periods are considered, and the course pursues their
differing implications for local, national, and global politics. Topics might
include the politics of reproduction; gender and postcolonialism; women, sexual
scandal, and the law; race and sexual paranoia; and sexual subcultures. L.
Berlant, E. Hadley, Staff, Autumn; E. Alexander, E. Povinelli, Staff,
Winter.
104. Introduction to Poetry (=GS Hum 219). Course work includes reading
poems from many periods of English and American literature. Class discussions
focus on pairs of poems on similar subjects. We explore the ways that
techniques--of diction, syntax, and rhythm--shape the meaning of individual
poems. No knowledge of the art of poetry, only an interest in poems, is
expected of students registering for the course. R. Strier. Autumn.
(D)
105. Introduction to Drama (=GS Hum 245). This course provides an
introductory exploration of the complex and often ambiguous relationship
between the dramatic text and the theater event. We begin with the familiar
contemporary domestic drama and the realist form and go on to the less
familiar, reading plays that challenge received notions of realism; Elizabethan
tragedy and history; modern social plays; Brechtian epic theater; avant garde
assaults on representation; and third world transformations of Western drama.
Authors include Arthur Miller, George Lillo, Shakespeare, Bertolt Brecht,
Alfred Jarry, and others. Logistics permitting, we may include a local theater
production in class discussion; students pay for their tickets. L. Kruger.
Spring. (F)
107. Introduction to Fiction (=GS Hum 210). In the first half of this
course, we focus on the principal elements that contribute to effect in
fiction--setting, characterization, style, imagery, and structure--in order to
understand the variety of effects possible with each element. We read several
different writers in each of the first five weeks. In the second half of the
course, we bring the elements together and study how they work in concert. This
detailed study concentrates on one or, at most, two texts a week. W. Veeder.
Winter. (E)
108. Introduction to Film I (=GS Hum 200). PQ: This is the first part of
a two-quarter course. The two parts are offered in alternate years and may be
taken in sequence or individually. The first part consists of an
introduction to basic concepts of film analysis, which are discussed through
examples from different national cinemas, genres, and directorial oeuvres.
Along with questions of film technique and style, we consider the notion of the
cinema as an institution, comprising an industrial system of production, social
and aesthetic norms and codes, and particular modes of reception. Films
discussed include works by Hitchcock, Porter, Griffith, Eisenstein, Lang,
Renoir, Sternberg, and Welles. C. Federle. Spring. (F)
Go to top of document 109. Introduction to Film II (=GS Hum 201). PQ: This is the second part
of a two-quarter course. The two parts are offered in alternate years and may
be taken in sequence or individually. This quarter builds upon the skills
of formal analysis, knowledge of basic cinematic conventions, and familiarity
with the institutions of cinema acquired in the first semester. In this course
we address intertextual and contextual problems, such as those associated with
genre, authorship, stars, and various responses to the classical Hollywood
film. Alternatives studied include documentary, European national cinemas, "art
cinema," animation, and various avant garde movements. J. Lastra. Autumn.
(F)
114/316. History of Criticism: Classical to the Eighteenth Century (=ComLit
363). This course examines the history of classical and neoclassical
criticism from the Greeks to the late eighteenth century, with particular
emphasis on criticism as a kind of literary production and on the interaction
between literary theory and contemporaneous practice. The course considers both
the "literary" qualities of critical works about literature and literary works
that explicitly thematize critical concepts. Authors include Plato, Aristotle,
Longinus, Montaigne, Sidney, Jonson, Corneille, Dryden, Addison, Pope, Johnson,
and Burke. J. Scodel. Winter. (B, H)
115. Literature and Society in the Culture Wars. Literature and literary
study have become a battleground, as fierce public debates have erupted over
such questions as which texts students should read and how one should read
them. Universities have come under attack for allegedly replacing the canonical
great books with texts by women and ethnic minorities and for generally
politicizing the humanities. These debates over education lead to wider
divisions in the culture over multiculturalism, political correctness, hate
speech, sexual harassment, and even the "Contract with America." Through
selected canonical and revisionist literary texts, works of criticism, and
journalism, we survey the main areas of dispute and major positions in the
controversy, with an eye to clarifying the issues, if not resolving them. G.
Graff. Autumn. (E, G)
126/326. Visual Culture (=ArtH 258/358, GS Hum 230/330). This course
explores the fundamental questions in the interdisciplinary study of visual
culture: What are the cultural (and thus, natural) components in the structure
of visual experience? What is seeing? What is a spectator? What is the
difference between visual and verbal representation? How do visual media exert
power, elicit desire and pleasure, and construct the boundaries of subjective
and social experience in the private and public spheres? How do questions of
politics, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity inflect the construction of visual
semiosis? W. J. T. Mitchell. Spring. (F)
129. Split Selves/Double Lives. Through a study of fictional "doubles" as a
genre of the "uncanny," this course examines a range of twentieth-century
literary texts where the encounter with racial or sexual difference produces a
profound ambivalence in the structure of personal and social identity. We pay
particular attention to the use of the figure of the "double" to signify
moments of historical and cultural transition, focusing on the disturbance that
accompanies the search for new forms of identity and community. Freud's essay
"The Uncanny" and Derrida's "Double Session" significantly inform our inquiry.
The work of Joseph Conrad is also central to our concerns. This course
provides an introduction to psychoanalytic and poststructuralist theories of
literary interpretation. H. Bhabha. Autumn.
130/330. The Little Red Schoolhouse (Academic and Professional Writing).
P/N grading optional for non-English concentrators. This course
teaches the skills needed to write clear and coherent expository prose and to
edit the writing of others. The course consists of weekly lectures on
Thursdays, immediately followed by tutorials addressing the issues in the
lecture. On Tuesdays, students discuss short weekly papers in two-hour
tutorials consisting of seven students and a tutor. Students may replace the
last three papers with a longer paper and, with the consent of relevant
faculty, write it in conjunction with another class or as part of the senior
project. Materials fee $20. L. McEnerney, J. Williams, Staff. Winter,
Spring.
Go to top of document 131/331. Writing Fiction (=GS Hum 226/326). PQ: Consent of instructor.
Much of the course centers on student stories. These are (painlessly) mixed
with stories from an anthology of good fiction. Students must submit a short
sample manuscript. R. Stern. Spring. (E)
134. Creative Writing (=GS Hum 225). PQ: Consent of instructor. In
this course we read and write poetry intensively. Class time is spent on short,
focused writing exercises, discussion of seasoned and recently published poetry
(expect to read one volume of poetry per week, as well as miscellaneous essays,
interviews, and poems), and constructive discussion of each other's work.
Students also meet with the instructor outside of class to talk about their
poems. Enrollment is limited; students must submit three to six shorter poems.
E. Alexander. Spring. (D)
135/335. Writing Fiction and Poetry (=GS Hum 227/327). PQ: Consent of
instructor. Discussion of student writing and the problems of literary
composition. Students must submit a short sample manuscript. R. Stern.
Autumn.(E)
Eng 136. Poetry Writing. D Cummins.
138-139. History and Theory of Drama I, II (=ComLit 305-306, GS Hum
248-249). This course covers Aeschylus to Aychkbourne and Sophocles to
Sade. D. Bevington, N. Rudall. Autumn, Winter. (F)
144. The Lyric (=GS Hum 221). This course addresses the lyric as a
collection of forms, as well as a traditionally recognizable mode of writing.
Looking at a range of poets writing in English from a variety of periods and
cultures, we begin with basic critical strategies for coming to terms with
lyric writing and, in some cases, with nonwritten lyric production. We consider
matters of prosody, form, structure, common tropes and topoi, and familiar
conventions. Eventually, we move on to consider the question of how lyrics
might be understood to signify in variously construed aesthetic, historical,
and political contexts. J. Chandler. Autumn. (D)
148/358. Medieval Drama (=ComLit 377, GS Hum 246/346). This course surveys
medieval drama in a historical framework from its beginnings in the tenth
century through the early sixteenth century. Cross-disciplinary, especially at
first, we look at Latin and Anglo-Norman drama written chiefly on the
Continent. As the course progresses, we focus increasingly on the English
religious drama of the later Middle Ages: the great cycle plays, saints' plays,
and moralities (these latter are read in their Middle English originals, with
editorial assistance provided). Readings and discussions focus on primary
material, along with recent criticism. D. Bevington. Winter. (B, F,
H)
149/349. Old English (=German 310). This course aims to provide the student
with the linguistic skills and historical and cultural perspectives necessary
for advanced work on Old English. C. von Nolcken. Autumn. (B, D,
H)
152/352. The Construction of Self in Early English Literature.
PQ: Eng 149/349 or equivalent. This course meets at the Newberry
Library. For further information, students should contact the Center for
Renaissance Studies at the Newberry Library, 312-943-9090. K. O'Brien
O'Keeffe. Winter. (B, D, H)
153. Arthurian Romances. The major Arthurian romances, English and
Continental, of the medieval period are read. M. Murrin. Winter. (B,
D, H)
156. Readings in Old and Middle English Literature. Working primarily with
the Norton Anthology of English Literature, but supplementing it with
other readings, we examine a variety of writings in Old and late-Middle
English. We concern ourselves in particular with how these works seem to relate
to the periods in which they were written and with how we have reached our own
understandings of these periods. C. von Nolcken. Autumn. (A, B, D,
H)
Go to top of document 157/357. Ricardian Poetry. The last years of King Edward III (reigned
1327-77) and the reign of King Richard II (1377-99) constitute a period of
extraordinary creativity in the history of English poetry. We attempt to define
some of the characteristics of the period by reading from the works of Chaucer,
Gower, Langland, and the Gawain-Poet. C. von Nolcken. Winter.
(B, D, H)
165. Shakespeare I: Histories and Comedies. Shakespeare's major history and
comedy plays are read with some attention to questions of genre and character.
Essay assignments stress close analysis of texts, which include A Comedy of
Errors; A Midsummer Night's Dream; Much Ado about Nothing; Twelfth Night; All's
Well That Ends Well; Richard II; Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2; and Henry V.
D. Bevington. Autumn. (B, F, H)
166. Shakespeare II: Tragedies and Romances. This course studies
Shakespeare's major tragedies and romances. Plays read include Hamlet, King
Lear, Othello, Corialanus, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest. R.
Strier. Winter. (B, F, H)
169. Renaissance Literature. An introduction to Renaissance literature from
Wyatt to Milton with emphasis upon the period's sense of its own modernity, new
notions of self and society, and ways these new notions express themselves in
the generic and formal characteristics of Renaissance texts. J. Scodel.
Winter. (A, B, H)
175. Milton. This course examines Milton's career as a writer, set in the
context of his personal development and social history. Class attention centers
on his poetry, from the Ode on the Nativity to Samson Agonistes,
with a three-week unit on Paradise Lost. Consideration is also given to
major prose tracts: "Areopagitica," "Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce," and
"Tenure of Kings and Magistrates." Besides primary readings in Milton, a
biography is required secondary reading. J. Mueller. Spring. (B, D,
H)
187. The Eighteenth Century: Time, Place, and Text. In English culture
during the "long" eighteenth century (1660-1800), the experience of time
changed dramatically and the sense of place began to operate in new ways, with
new power. Texts--from manuscript diaries and letters to daily news-sheets to
multivolume novels--dealt pointedly, obsessively, and innovatively with the
particulars of both time and place, and with the changes (political, cultural,
social, and commercial) that unfolded within them. Works by Pepys, Dryden,
Behn, Clifford, Cavendish, Swift, Pope, Addison, Steele, Finch, Defoe,
Fielding, Johnson, Goldsmith, Boswell, Thrale, Burney, and others are read.
S. Sherman. Spring. (A, C, H)
188/388. Dr. Johnson and His Circle. This course concentrates on the
works of Johnson, Boswell, and Goldsmith, viewed in their cultural milieu.
Burke and Reynolds also receive consideration. B. Redford. Spring.
(C, H)
189/391. The Eighteenth-Century Novel. The first great age of prose fiction
in England comprises a variety of formal experiments in which structures
borrowed from nonfictional forms (spiritual autobiography, the heroic romance,
the familiar letter) are transformed. We look at this process of
experimentation and refinement in selected works of Defoe, Fielding, Lennox,
Richardson, Smollett, Burney, and Austen. B. Redford. Winter. (C, E,
H)
201. Romanticism and the Other. Through extensive readings in literature,
history, and theory, we attempt to understand the relationship between
romanticism and the paradigmatic shifts in modern British conceptualizations of
cultural otherness and modes of imperialism. We also explore the relationships
between these paradigmatic shifts and the definition or constitution of
"romanticism" as a period. S. Makdisi. Autumn. (C, D,
H)
Go to top of document 212. Gender and Identity in Victorian Poetry (=GS Hum 222). This course
looks at the intersection of issues of self and subjectivity and concerns about
gender identity as a major issue in Victorian poetry. We also read some recent
feminist and nonfeminist critical essays on the general problems of
subjectivity and authority. Poets include Tennyson, Browning, Emily
Brontë, Christina Rossetti, and Swinburne. E. Helsinger. Winter.
(C, D, H)
213. The Victorian Novel. We read selected novels to be chosen from such
authors as Dickens, Thackeray, the Brontës, Mrs. Gaskell, Trollope, and
George Eliot. L. Rothfield. Spring. (C, E, H)
223. Henry James: The Fiction of Crisis (=GS Hum 213). In 1895, Henry James
suffered his first nervous breakdown. Over the next five years, he produced
several of the greatest novellas and novels of the nineteenth century. How
fiction writing became a mode of self therapy for James is one of the issues
this course explores. In addition, we examine how self-analysis interacted with
a mordant social analysis to produce fiction that simultaneously looks outward
and inward. By a close reading of James's texts and of various theorists, we
work to engage the forces that produced James's masterpieces. Texts include
The Aspern Papers, The Pupil, The Spoils of Poynton, In the Cage, The Turn
of the Screw, What Maisie Knew, The Awkward Age, and "The Great Good
Place." W. Veeder. Spring. (C, E, G, H)
224/425. Postcolonial Literature. This course focuses on writings--fiction,
essays, and interviews--by a range of "South Asian" writers, including Mulk Raj
Anand, V. S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Michael Ondaatje, Bhaati Mukherjee, and
Amitav Ghosh. By attending to the diverse sociocultural "locations" of these
writers and their varied relation to the discourse of postcoloniality, we
interrogate several things simultaneously: How do we conceive of and apply the
notion of postcoloniality? What kinds of critical projects we are seeking to
elaborate through this rubric? How do we understand these particular authors
and their works in the light of such critical projects? A. Yadav. Autumn.
(E)
232/432. Toward Modernity (=GS Hum 212/312). This course centers on
important twentieth-century texts. Questions about the nature of modernity
radiate from the texts. The radiation creates not so much a context for
literary discussion as a mental constellation of which the texts are important
elements. R. Stern. Autumn. (E)
Eng 233. British and American Modernism. K Cochran.
235. What's Love Got to Do with It? The Genres of Modern Romance (=ArtDes 260).
Love brings with it romantic promises that are supported by an elaborate
culture of representation. Using materials from cinema, literature, the visual
arts, and cultural theory, we pose questions about the genres of romance and
the construction of romantic subjectivity. This involves rethinking gender,
sexuality, desire, love, narrative, pain, and modes of representation. Subjects
include the relation of the pornographic and the erotic; of high, avant garde,
and popular culture; of hetero- and homoerotic scenes of pleasure; conventional
"women's culture" sites like magazines and talk shows; popular music (with its
saturation by the love song); and sex-radical art. This interdisciplinary
course involves producing and analyzing art in traditional forms (painting,
photography, sculpture) and less traditional forms (performance, video,
installations). L. Berlant, L. Letinsky. Winter. (E, F,
G)
252. American Embodiments, 1855-1905. PQ: Eng 101. Beginning with
Whitman's Leaves of Grass, this course tracks a variety of literary
investments in human corporeality. In particular, we explore the tension
between, on the one hand, a vision of the body as a site of pleasure and
transformative potential and, on the other, a recognition of the body as a
boundary that limits personal and social achievement. Literary texts are read
in conjunction with texts from American intellectual, legal, and social
history. Major authors include Rebecca Harding Davis, Mark Twain, Frances
Harper, Henry James, Frank Norris, and Edith Wharton. W. Brown. Spring.
(C, E, G)
Go to top of document 258. Practicing American Poetry, 1855-1899 (=Hum 177). Once upon a time in
the nineteenth century, the American public actually read poetry. In this
course, we attempt to reimagine the nineteenth-century "public" (or multiple
"publics") and its poetic practices: its needs, pleasure, and agendas. We
attend, particularly, to the overlapping spheres--domestic, "public,"
commercial, and state-sponsored--that allowed poetry to reach beyond
established East Coast magazines and into the daily life of (mostly)
middle-class Americans. A. Sorby. Autumn. (C, D, G)
261. American Renaissance. American writing at the middle of the nineteenth
century has been described as part of an "American Renaissance." A small group
of male New England writers--Melville, Hawthorne, Whitman, Emerson, and
Poe--have usually been named its leading figures. This course reexamines these
strange geniuses, both to recall how eccentric, unpopular, and unofficial they
were at the time, and also to read them together with other contemporary
writers (such as Margaret Fuller, E.D.E.N. Southworth, and Elizabeth Stoddard).
How did the United States come to have an official literature made up of such
rebels and oddballs? Likely readings include Melville's Moby Dick,
Thoreau's Walden, Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance, Emerson's
Nature, Essays, Stoddard's The Morgesons, Fuller's Women of
the Nineteenth Century, and Southworth's The Hidden Hand. C.
Looby. Autumn. (C, E, G)
267. American Literature and Culture, 1776-1855. This course examines the
role of literature and authorship in the creation of national subjects as
producers who make, or construct, themselves through work. Authors read include
Crevecoeur, Franklin, Thoreau, Melville, Harriet Wilson, and Jane Addams. This
course offers an introduction to poststructuralist critiques of Marx,
particularly Althusser and Baudrillard. Literary work is considered in view of
technological change, the transformation of artisan production, the rise of
labor movements, and the growth of advertising from the late eighteenth through
the early twentieth centuries. L. Rigal. Spring. (C, E,
G)
270. Introduction to Contemporary Chicana/o Cultures. This course considers
various forms of expression in contemporary Chicana and Chicano culture:
literature, film, visual arts, music, and folklore. Topics include the
relationships between particular forms and their histories of domination and
resistance; the "Brown Power" movement of the sixties; the intersections of
race, gender, and class in border cultures; and the politics of Chicana/o
style. We read works by Acuna, Cisneros, Fregoso, Hinojosa, Moraga, and
Paredes; study local murals and discuss the art works in the "Chicano Art:
Resistance and Affirmation" catalogue; listen to and read about music from
Tex-Mex to hip hop; and watch films, including I Am Joaquin, Yo Soy Chicana,
The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez, and Born in East L. A. C. Márez.
Winter. (E, F, G)
272/472. Dreiser, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway. Representative works of each
author are read with the aim of understanding them as discrete and unified
wholes and to give some sense of the diversity and continuity of American
literature in the first half of the twentieth century. In this respect, the
author, his times, and the literary tradition in which he worked, as well as
the work, are considered. A representative reading list includes Dreiser's
Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy; Fitzgerald's The Great
Gatsby, Tender Is the Night, and selected short stories; and
Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and
selected short stories. E. Wasiolek. Spring. (E, G)
277. African Diaspora I (=AfAfAm 201, Anthro 313-1, GS Hum 216). Looking at
a variety of texts by black and white authors, drawn primarily from the period
extending from the 1930s though the 1960s, we consider the myriad ways writers
sought to come to terms with the "permanence" of the black presence in the
West. Among the texts we consider are Ellison's Invisible Man, Hurston's
Tell My Horse, Faulkner's Light in August, Hughes's The Big
Sea, James's The Black Jacobins, Sartre's Black Orpheus, and
Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth. Informing our inquiry is the pressure
exerted on the literary imagination by official histories of the slave trade
and of emancipation. K. Warren. Autumn. (E, G)
Go to top of document 278/478. American Poetry since 1945 (=GS Hum 224/324). This is a survey of
the encampments and divisions in American poetry since World War II, but the
emphasis falls on those poems that bear a clear relation to social and cultural
history. Much of the class discussion centers on analysis of various stylistic
conventions of the period. R. von Hallberg. Autumn. (D,
G)
282. Sound in the Cinema (=GS Hum 205). We have, as a culture, debated
images for centuries, focusing on the most technical aspects of construction in
order to illuminate their cultural and social functioning. Yet, despite the
immense profusion of recorded speech and music, telephones, radios, and "sound
bites," we have no well-defined set of terms, concepts, or questions that we
systematically use to address to sound representations. Since Hollywood was in
the forefront of sound research and technology from 1925 to 1965, we examine
films with regard to basic questions of sound space, compositional conventions,
syntagmatic relations, and spectator positioning, in order to establish basic
ground rules for the critical study of sound, especially as it relates to
images of various sorts. J. Lastra. Winter.
(F)
284/482. The Horror Film and the Historicity of Monstrosity (=GS Hum 208/308,
German 350). PQ: Introductory course in film theory or consent of
instructor. This course examines the horror film in an attempt to
understand how film horrifies us, how horror is produced in film, and what
might be historically specific to the various forms that horror has assumed
over the course of its filmic history. We consider the difficulty of defining
the genre in light of its polymorphous and ever-multiplying perversities.
Readings in contemporary theories of horror, cinema, the fantastic,
monstrosity, and ideology inform our discussions of the films. Film screenings
are three hours a week in addition to class time. C. Federle. Autumn.
(F)
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English Language and Literature Courses
Refer to letters after course descriptions for courses that fulfill program
requirements: (A) Period; (B) Pre-1700; (C) 1700-1900;
(D) Poetry; (E) Fiction; (F) Drama/Film; (G)
American; (H) British.
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