CURRENT Course Descriptions
Course Descriptions | Course List
This is a select and incomplete set of course descriptions for the English and Linguistics courses that will be offered in SPRING 2010. Others will be added as the Department receives them.
For a complete course offerings for Fall 2009 English and Linguistics courses (without full descriptions), please consult the UIC's online Schedule of Classes. Note that some of the information below updates and corrects information (particularly concerning course topics, times and room locations) in the printed version of the Timetable.
100 LEVEL
ENGL 101: Understanding Literature
CRN: 14320, 14321
Instructor: Dan Rodden
Day/Time: MWF; 12:00-12:50 PM
This reading-intensive section of English 101 surveys the literary styles of short stories, poetry, plays, and novels. You will learn basic concepts and vocabulary related to literary technique and criticism and will learn how the historical and cultural contexts of production and interpretation might influence the production, reading, and understanding of literature. We will explore how writers from different literary periods have constructed narratives, told stories and explored the intellectual and emotional experiences of life. The course will help you gain skills in the interpretation and analysis of literary texts using literary theory and critical approaches and help you respond to texts with coherence and precision. The texts assigned for reading will include examples from many traditions.
ENGL 101: Understanding Literature: Lies that Lead to Truth
CRN: 29112, 29113
Instructor: Todd Sherfinski
Day/Time: TR; 11:00-12:15 PM
English 101 is an introductory Literature course that focuses on what stories and poems are-the literary elements that comprise them-and how readers do something with such stories and poems-how readers wittingly and unwittingly apply literary approaches to poetry and fiction. Through close readings, class discussions, quizzes, and written assignments, students in English 101 will both sharpen their critical and interpretive skills and address Picasso’s claim that “art is a lie that leads people to the truth.”
ENGL 101: Introduction to Literature
CRN: 18938, 18937
Instructor: Colby Cuppernull
Day/Time: T TR; 3:30-4:45 PM
This section of English 101 will focus on the various genres of literature, investigating how genres are defined, talked about, and ultimately challenged and manipulated. In order to better understand the way literature functions in the world, we will consider a wide range of texts from a variety of genres. This may include but not be limited to poems, short stories, short story collections and cycles, novels and novel cycles,graphic novels, memoirs, and other forms of non-fiction books (biographies, investigations, etc.).
Students will learn to speak critically about literature and to analyze it in meaningful ways. Along the way, they will be expected to read, write, and participate in class extensively.
ENGL 101: Ethics and Aesthetics in Literature
CRN: 18931, 18932
Instructor: Marc Baez
Day/Time: MWF; 10:00-10:50 AM
In this section of Understanding Literature we will focus on relationships between ethics and aesthetics in the work of Marquis de Sade, Grant Morrison, and Louis C.K. To establish this focus on ethics and aesthetics, we will read around in the “Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism” and in Georges Bataille’s “Literature and Evil.” The main goal of this class is to have a good time gaining an understanding of how literature works.
ENGL 101: Understanding Literature: Lies that Lead to Truth
CRN: 29112, 29113
Instructor: Todd Sherfinski
Day/Time: TR; 11:00-12:15 PM
Lies That Lead to Truth: Understanding Literature
English 101 is an introductory Literature course that focuses on what stories and poems are-the literary elements that comprise them-and how readers do something with such stories and poems-how readers wittingly and unwittingly apply literary approaches to poetry and fiction. Through close readings, class discussions, quizzes, and written assignments, students in English 101 will both sharpen their critical and interpretive skills and address Picasso’s claim that “art is a lie that leads people to the truth.”
ENGL 102: Introduction to Film
CRN: 27619
Instructor: MaryAnne Lyons
Day/Time: MW; 4:00-6:50 W, 4:15-5:30 M
This course examines the ways in which image, movement, language, and sound combine to make meaning in film. We will focus on developing familiarity with the structural elements of filmmaking — narrative, cinematography, editing, sound, and mise-en-sc?ne — and with how these elements combine to make meaning in film narratives. We will examine the social values implied by such meanings, taking into consideration questions of context, reception, and ideology. Screenings for the class will include films from a wide range of traditions and time periods.
ENGL 103: English and American Poetry
CRN: 14328, 20878
Instructor: Nikki Paley Cox
Day/Time: TR; 9:30-10:45 PM
In this course, we will study a number of classic and modern poems by British and American poets who are masters at their game. We will investigate the details and "technology" of poetry to uncover those devices that elevate a bunch of words into a poem.
ENGL 103: The Poetic I
CRN: 20877
Instructor: Jen Hammond
Day/Time: F; 11:00-11:50 AM
English 103 will introduce you to some of the major poetic figures from the past 100 years. The goal of the class is for you to master not only one part of American literary history but also to learn to work with poetic forms. The driving theme for this class is to understand how poets construct the speaker (the “I”) present in their poems. From the Romantics to the post-modern moment, how have poets considered the place of the “self” in their work. Poets read will include, but not be limited to: Sylvia Plath, William Carlos Williams, Frank O’Hara, Jorie Graham, Michael Palmer, Jennifer Moxley, and Tao Lin.
ENGL 103: The Poetic I
CRN: 14236
Instructor: Jen Hammond
Day/Time: MW; 11:00-11:50 AM
English 103 will introduce you to some of the major poetic figures from the past 100 years. The goal of the class is for you to master not only one part of American literary history but also to learn to work with poetic forms. The driving theme for this class is to understand how poets construct the speaker (the “I”) present in their poems. From the Romantics to the post-modern moment, how have poets considered the place of the “self” in their work. Poets read will include, but not be limited to: Sylvia Plath, William Carlos Williams, Frank O’Hara, Jorie Graham, Michael Palmer, Jennifer Moxley, and Tao Lin.
ENGL 105: English and American Fiction
CRN: 14331, 20940
Instructor: Amy Gates
Day/Time: TR; 8:00-9:15 AM
In this course we will read British fiction—primarily novels—dating from the eighteenth century through the late twentieth century. The pieces we read will be linked thematically by featuring a main female character who is making her way in the world or, perhaps, is making the world around her. A range of primary and secondary texts will allow us to consider some of the ways fiction and critical responses to fiction have developed over time. Questions we will consider include the following: What is fiction? What does it do? Why do we read it? Is fiction dangerous? Misleading? Revelatory? Morally suspect? Edifying? We are unlikely to figure out what the “truth” about fiction is, but we can consider why, for over 300 years, people have been asking and trying to answer these questions.
You will learn about some of the formal elements of fiction and will begin to develop the vocabulary and skills needed for analyzing, discussing, and writing about literature. Emphasis will be on careful reading, critical thinking, and cogent writing.
ENGL 105: English and American Fiction
CRN: 14333
Instructor: Vincent adiutori
Day/Time: TR; 9:30-10:45 AM
This course will focus primarily on the novel with a limited look at short stories. The class will be organized around common themes that will be traced throughout the semster from text to text. Primary goals include stregthening critical reading and thinking skills as well as developing academic writing through several assignments designed to promote argumentative techniques through close reading. Some authors might include but are not limited to: Chester Himes, Michael Ondaatje, and Don Delillo.
ENGL 105: English and American Fiction
CRN: 20924, 14332
Instructor: James Adcox
Day/Time: MWF; 10:00-10:50 AM
This course will focus primarily on tracing English and American literature from Postmodernism, through the resurgence of realism in the 80s and 90s, to the literary scene(s) of the present day. We will read such canonical authors as John Barth, Donald Barthelme, Kathy Acker, and Raymond Carver, along with contemporary authors such as George Saunders and Tao Lin. Students will learn about the formal elements of fiction and will begin to develop the vocabulary and skills to analyze, discuss, and write about literature. In addition, we will explore questions such as, what is the contemporary literary scene, and where did it come from?
ENGL 107: Introduction to Shakespeare
CRN: 29790, 29791
Instructor: Gary Buslik
Day/Time: TR; 3:30-4:45 PM
This course will introduce you to the life, times, and work of the great poet, dramatist, and inventor of the English language, William Shakespeare. We will read a lively biography about him and selections from a book about Elizabethan England. We will read and discuss a Shakespeare comedy, a tragedy, an historical play, and several sonnets. We will also watch two or three filmed productions of the Bard's most famous plays. We will write two formal papers.
ENGL 108: British Literature and Culture
CRN: 19653
Instructor: EuiHuack Kang
Day/Time: MWF; 2:00-2:50 PM
This is an introductory course in British literature from the Romantic Period through Modernism. Tracing the stylistic developments of selected authors and periods, this class will examine texts that reflect some of the variety of cultural and historical experiences in Great Britain from about 1800 to 2000. The authors to be studied have been selected for their considerable influence on the future directions of the modern world and their relevance to contemporary readers.
Students are expected to have the necessary background and experience in analyzing, discussing, and responding to literature, as well as the ability to conduct independent research and to write correctly documented research essays using MLA format. Students are also cautioned that this course requires extensive reading, writing, and discussions; students not prepared to read and to write on a regular basis should not consider taking this course.
ENGL 109: The Gothic in American Literature and Culture
CRN: 30489, 30490
Instructor: Mark Bennett
Day/Time: MWF; 9:00-9:50 AM
This course will study the Gothic in American fiction and culture from the nineteenth century up to the present day. Gothic horror stories can be read as not dealing literally with demons, vampires, and the supernatural. We will study, instead, the deeper meanings and significance of Gothic fiction, as authors use supernatural elements to express and explore the fears of change, alienation, and death in their own lives and societies. We will examine themes of family, illness, trauma, sexuality, religion, race, war, and technology in the course’s selection of Gothic short stories, novels, and films. Novels will include Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, and Toni Morrison’s Beloved. The course goal is to think and write critically about the literary concepts in Gothic fiction, while analyzing the narrative techniques of a variety of texts from a variety of different authors and time periods. Students will write two 3-4 page papers and a few shorter response papers, as well as create their own Gothic narratives.
ENGL 109: American Literature and Culture
CRN: 22523
Instructor: Meg King
Day/Time: MWF; 11:00-11:50 AM
In the late twentieth century, many American men faced a masculinity crisis. Scholars continue to debate the causes of this widespread feeling of emasculation. Popular culture, sociologists, and the U.S. government proposed a variety of solutions. In this course, we will examine texts that describe the problem, as well as imagine a means of recuperating masculinity. As such, our readings will range from governmental reports to sociological studies, but will primarily focus on novels. Authors might include: Philip Roth, David Bradley, Annie Proulx, Carolyn Chute, and Toni Morrison.
ENGL 109: American Literature and American Culture
CRN: 26249, 26250
Instructor: Lydia A. Saravia
Day/Time: TR; 11:00-12:15 PM
The course is officially titled: American Literature and American Culture—a very broad topic. For this section of ENGL 109, we will specifically look at mid to late 20th century literature and film on gang culture and gang identity. The topic of gangs has been extensively covered in literature and film, and to further narrow down our topic, we will look at literature and film on and about the Latino Gang identity formation and negotiation: Formed in the US, negotiated between and among the “old,” “native,” “home” identity and the “new,” “assimilated” identity. We will begin with the Zoot Suits, move to Chicago’s Latin Kings, and end with considering authentic gang identity.
Consider the following:
In the early 1990s, three important American films were made: American Me; Blood In, Blood Out; and Mi Vida Loca. These films, along with books written by ex-gang members, depict a reality we often think of as lower class: the Latino gang member. In this class we will examine historical, social and cultural aspects that may affect the creation of el cholo. We will study el cholo identity within the immigrant environment, the urban (American) environment and the prison environment, while closely looking at culture, gender and sexuality.
Our course will largely depend on how authors and artists define gang identity and on what researchers say about the formation of a gang. We will read the research, discuss researchers’ findings, and see how these research based texts can be applied to the “real life accounts” as presented via film and narrative.
ENGL 109: English and American Literature
CRN: 24549
Instructor: Alice Haisman
Day/Time: TR; 12:30-1:45 PM
THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS: (POST) APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE AND CINEMA
In this class we will examine 20th and 21st century American apocalyptic narratives in film and literature in an effort to define this genre of cultural production and identify the work that it does. We will study the way in which the settings of films such as Children of Men, Dark City, 12 Monkeys, and Matrix put into play values associated with the film tradition they belong to. We will also consider how the editing techniques of films such as Dernier Combat and Dr. Strangelove construct spatial and temporal relationships that are unique to apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic films and how these relationships suggest the larger meanings of the films and their place in our culture. We will also explore the genre-defining difference between plot and story in apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic films. We will further work to identify why apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic literature in America has shifted from books like Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, Stephan King’s The Stand, and Larry Niven’s Lucifer’s Hammer to darker and quieter visions such as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Ultimately the students will be asked to address these works in the contexts of a few theorists such as Jean Baudrillard and Francis Fukuyama and to formulate their own arguments about the meaning and significance of End-of-World narratives.
ENGL 111: Women and Literature
CRN: 14584
Instructor: Megan Milks
Day/Time: MWF; 9:00-9:50 AM
WOMEN AND HORROR
In this course, we will primarily spend our time at the mercy of radical women writers of horror. We will think of horror broadly, reading texts both within and without the genre and looking at how the writers of various narratives comment on culture by invoking fear (and/or desire). Topics will include the female gothic, the monstrous feminine, gender anxiety, representations of the female body and female sexual desire, the postcolonial gothic, fairy tales, and monsters, with several weeks devoted to vampire literature. Texts will likely include Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN, Octavia Butler's FLEDGLING, and Toni Morrison's BELOVED, alongside stories by Angela Carter, Shirley Jackson, and Nalo Hopkinson, among others. Students will have the option of writing two short term papers or one long research paper.
ENGL 113: Introduction to Multiethnic Literatures in the United States
CRN: 14340
Instructor: Smita Das
Day/Time: TR; 9:30-10:45 AM
This course will examine multiethnic literature in the United States and the complex ways that national identities are produced through national narratives. Through our study of Latin American, African American, and Asian American novels and films, we will interrogate the space of the border as a site that can potentially produce counter-narratives through alternative histories. By critically engaging with multiple forms of the novel, such as science fiction and magical realism, we will discover how silenced histories of the nation emerge, contest, and transform the political, ideological, economic, and cultural spaces of the borders of the nation-state. Our exploration, furthermore, will look at theories of race, gender, sexuality, modernity, postmodernity, and transnationalism.
ENGL 114: Introduction to Colonial and Postcolonial Literature
CRN: 28382
Instructor: Mary Anne Mohanraj
Day/Time: TR; 2:00-3:15 PM
In this course we will examine the literature of the colonial period, the writers of resistance and revolution, and the stories of what came after, in the wake of new nations which emerged, shaken and often fragmented, from the rubble of what were once European colonies. In such regions as India, Africa, the Caribbean, and Ireland, we will examine how national, cultural and individual identities have been radically altered by the experience of colonization. We will examine how authors have related this postcolonial condition; or, as some have put it, how "the empire writes back."
As a product of such colonization myself (born in Sri Lanka to Tamil ancestors who became Catholic as a result of Portuguese colonizing missionaries, and who became an English professor in the wake of British colonizers and their imposition of English on my nation), and as a fiction writer whose own work focuses on issues of nationalism, immigration, emigration, gender, sexuality, and race, I'm particularly pleased to be offering this course.
ENGL 114: Introduction to Colonial and Postcolonial Literature
CRN: 29792
Instructor: Mary Anne Mohanraj
Day/Time: TR; 9:30-10:45 AM
In this course we will examine the literature of the colonial period, the writers of resistance and revolution, and the stories of what came after, in the wake of new nations which emerged, shaken and often fragmented, from the rubble of what were once European colonies. In such regions as India, Africa, the Caribbean, and Ireland, we will examine how national, cultural and individual identities have been radically altered by the experience of colonization. We will examine how authors have related this postcolonial condition; or, as some have put it, how "the empire writes back."
As a product of such colonization myself (born in Sri Lanka to Tamil ancestors who became Catholic as a result of Portuguese colonizing missionaries, and who became an English professor in the wake of British colonizers and their imposition of English on my nation), and as a fiction writer whose own work focuses on issues of nationalism, immigration, emigration, gender, sexuality, and race, I'm particularly pleased to be offering this course.
ENGL 115: Introduction to the Bible as Literature
CRN: 30508, 30509
Instructor: Garin Cycholl
Day/Time: MWF; 11:00-11:50 AM
Using literary, historical critical, and sociological approaches, this course will examine selected books of the Hebrew Bible and Christian New Testament, plus some extracanonical texts. Narrative and poetic forms will be considered, as well as wisdom, prophetic, and apocalyptic literatures. Particular attention will be paid to the questions of what dimensions define a “sacred text” and what elements are involved in the formation of “canon” within faith traditions. How do these texts function not only theologically, but literarily as well? How have their shapes and interpretations been historically impacted? Hopefully, this will engender a deeper appreciation and understanding of the history, development, and transmission of Biblical texts.
ENGL 117: Introduction to Gender, Sexuality and Literature
CRN: 22168
Instructor: Marsha Conner
Day/Time: TR; 9:30-10:45 AM
This class will explore larger issues of gender and sexuality in various types of literature. What kinds of sexualities are understood by the writers on the reading list? What kind of gender roles are evidenced by the readings and why? By the end of the semester, students will have developed their own working definitions of the concepts "gender" and "sexuality," will be able to identify some of the assumptions and presumptions made about gender and sexuality within our culture, and will be able to read and write about literature that deals with sexuality and gender in a meaningful way.
ENGL 120: Film and Culture: Cult Films
CRN: 30507
Instructor: Andrew Farkas
Day/Time: TR; 3:30-4:45 T, 3:30-5:30 R
This course will explore the world of Cult Films, focusing on how we can label a movie as a “Cult Film.” Consequently, we will watch and discuss various films that have been labeled “cult” and read various critics’ definitions of just what a Cult Film is. Films to be viewed include “Repo Man,” “Reservoir Dogs,” “Casablanca,” and “Two-Lane Blacktop,” amongst others. This course aims to build upon students’ working knowledge of the formal components of moving image artistry with an emphasis on the ways films construct and convey meanings through generic repetition and aesthetic innovation.
ENGL 122: Understanding Rhetoric
CRN: 24552
Instructor: Jason Schneider
Day/Time: TR; 2:00-3:15 PM
In this course we will be looking at rhetoric as “the art of persuasion”—that is, as the way in which people use language to affect others’ perceptions of the world. One of our key assumptions will be that the study of rhetoric isn’t only the study of political speeches, advertisements, and other clearly persuasive texts; it’s the study of how all language and symbolic expressions try to lead people to certain ways of thinking and feeling. We’ll start the semester by learning about ancient Greek and Roman thinking on rhetoric, then we’ll move into more contemporary theories that connect rhetoric to topics such as power, gender, class and education. Our main goal throughout will be to apply rhetorical thinking to the kinds of messages we encounter in our everyday lives. To that end, we will spend time analyzing some of the rhetorics of popular music, reality TV, magazines images, political debates, classroom conversations and romantic relationships, to name a few.
ENGL 122: Understanding Rhetoric
CRN: 27463
Instructor: Lucas Johnson
Day/Time: MWF; 9:00-9:50 AM
In this course we will look at several of the key terms and concepts in classical rhetoric (Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, etc.) in order to provide a vocabulary and a conceptual framework for inventing and arranging arguments. Simultaneously, we will perform rhetorical analyses of contemporary texts, speeches, advertisements, and selections from popular culture (fashion, technology, etc.) using these classical concepts. Commonly, rhetoric is associated with speech; however, in this course, we will not be giving any speeches. Instead, we hope to understand the power of rhetoric by absorbing foundational concepts, applying them to rhetorical analysis, inventing and designing our own (rhetorical) arguments, and ultimately discussing the ethics of contemporary techniques of persuasion.
200 LEVEL
ENGL 200: Basic Grammar
CRN: 26085
Instructor: Katherine Parr
Day/Time: TR; 12:30-1:45 PM
Students taking this class will learn to apply grammatical tools to their
writing with the aim to improve writing style. The study of grammar
enables a writer to produce sentence structures that affect how well a
message, essay, or other document will be received by the reader. This
section of Basic Grammar will apply a rhetorical lens to the traditional
study of grammar and style. Students will learn how parts of speech
function in sentences and will practice sentence forms in order to
appreciate the impact of a sentence on its reader. Students will also
produce short essays that demonstrate their understanding of rhetorical
grammar in addition to taking quizzes and tests over the material.
English 200 is not a remedial class. Students should already have a basic
understanding of grammatical concepts covered in English 160 and 161.
ENGL 200: Basic English Grammar
CRN: 27465
Instructor: Mimi Rosenbush
Day/Time: TR; 9:30-10:45 AM
This course is designed to provide students with a working knowledge of how English sentence elements function. In gaining a deeper understanding of what they intuitively know or have learned in the past about grammar, students will achieve confidence and proficiency in making the grammatical choices necessary to produce meaningful and accessible English sentences.
ENGL 201: Introduction to the Writing of Nonfiction Prose
CRN: 22216
Instructor: Carrie Messenger
Day/Time: MWF; 11:00-11:50 AM
This course is designed to improve your writing of nonfiction prose. We will be working on essays and memoirs. In addition to in-class writing exercises and discussions, you will critique each other’s writing in constructive workshops, working on ways to develop and focus your material and to control style and language. We will read and discuss the nonfiction prose of many published writers, including Jamaica Kincaid, David Sedaris, and Luis Urrea, using their styles and content matter as a guide for our own writing.
ENGL 201: Introduction to the Writing of Nonfiction Prose
CRN: 14479
Instructor: Jay Shearer
Day/Time: TR; 9:30-10:45 AM
This course is designed with 2 aims in mind: to develop your nonfiction prose writing skills and enhance your abilities as readers of nonfiction, including (but not necessarily limited to) the memoir, the personal essay and literary journalism. We will read these works--published authors and your own--less as literary critics than as fellow writers, our core focus being process, aim and technique, i.e. the writer's craft, how the writer does what he or she does and with what purpose. There will be multiple writing exercises as well as workshops of student work.
ENGL 202: Media and Professional Writing
CRN: 14482
Instructor: J. Linn Allen
Day/Time: TR; 12:30-1:45 PM
The purpose of the course is to develop the craft of media and fact-based professional writing by having students learn the basics of journalism. Assignments will require them to come up with story ideas, do their own reporting and write stories that meet a high standard for clarity, accuracy and readability. Understanding the news media business and creating a writing portfolio for getting internships and jobs are also crucial goals.
ENGL 202: Media and Professional Writing
CRN: 29938
Instructor: Katherine Parr
Day/Time: TR; 11:00-12:15 PM
Chicago, one of the most competitive media towns in America, provides a
dynamic backdrop for English 202. Through readings, class discussions,
writing, and interviews, students gain a perspective on today’s media and
public relations professions. Media, especially, is undergoing historical
transformation because of technological changes and accompanying
financial constraints. Students in 202 seeking jobs in media and public
relations will learn how to prepare for the shifting landscape.
Furthermore, students will prepare for internships as writers in those
industries.
ENGL 202: Media and Professional Writing
CRN: 23683
Instructor: Linda Landis Andrews
Day/Time: TR; 9:30-10:45 AM
Chicago, one of the most competitive media cities in America, provides a dynamic backdrop for English 202. Students learn to write for public audiences and to analyze media content. Through readings, class discussions, writing, and interviews, they will gain a perspective on today’s media, which is undergoing historical transformation because of technology and accompanying financial constraints. The goals of the course are: 1) to understand and respond to the needs of the audience; 2) to develop a news sense; 3) to be aware of the rapidly changing media business and the opportunities this presents; 4) to be an aggressive and ethical newshound; 5) to learn the style of public writing; 6) to create a writing portfolio for internship and employment interviews. Students attend two workshops to learn InDesign, a layout software widely used today.
ENGL/GWS 204: Gender and Popular Culture
CRN: 30324
Instructor: Judith Gardiner
Day/Time: TR; 2:00-3:15 PM
We are immersed in popular and material culture for many of our waking hours. How is it shaping us, and how can and should we respond? This course will investigate representations of gender and sexuality in popular and material culture, focusing on clothing and toys, television, magazines, advertisements, blogs, and the internet. Some themes we will discuss include bodies and beauty, girl culture, race and class factors in marketing, and the functions of humor. We will focus primarily on U.S. popular culture but also examine some comparative material -- Bollywood, manga, and telenovelas. Theoretical and critical texts will help us analyze the primary material. Course assignments are likely to include attendance and participation in discussion-centered classes, all reading, quizzes and short exercises, a mid-term, final, and two 5-page papers. Probable texts: Gill, Rosalind. Gender and the Media.. Polity, 2007; current Bitch magazine; additional readings on Blackboard
ENGL 210: The Craft of Writing Poetry
CRN: 14487
Instructor: Garrett Brown
Day/Time: TR; 9:30-10:45 AM
This course is an introduction to the world of writing poetry. As such, you will be trained to critically read poetry and to identify the basic elements of verse (figurative language, rhythm and meter, musical devices, and imagery) while also discovering your own poetic voice. This class will give you a framework to explore the world of contemporary poetry by requiring that you attend poetry readings, read and present to the class a recent book of poetry, and demonstrate your own reading and performance skills. Through our class reading, you will be exposed to a wide variety of poetic and theoretical texts that will outline both historical and current debates in poetry as well as help you define your own work within those debates.
ENGL 210: Introduction to the Writing of Poetry
CRN: 14486
Instructor: Jenny Morse
Day/Time: MWF; 9:00-9:50 AM
A practical and workshop class that introduces writers to the elements of poetry, open to beginning and continuing writers provided prereqs of Engl 240 and one other 200 level English course have been completed. Class work will include reading the work of established poets, studying the craft of writing, and considering creative writing within and outside the boundaries of the genre.
Students will participate in a variety of activities, including but not limited to: in-class writing, group writing, workshop, technique-specific practices, reading, and group discussion. These activities are meant to support the purpose of the class, which is to familiarize the student with the writing of poetry.
ENGL 222: Theory and Practice for Tutoring English Language Learners in the Writing Center
CRN: 14496
Instructor: Charitianne Williams
Day/Time: M; 3:00-4:15 PM
English 222 focuses on methodological approaches to tutoring and teaching. You will explore and question your writing choices and the choices you make in a tutoring session. This section will specifically focus on tutoring writing to English Language Learners. We will read texts on this topic, as well as on second language acquisition and general writing center theory. In addition to class meetings, students enrolled in this class tutor in the UIC Writing Center.
ENGL 222: Between Writers and the University
CRN: 14495
Instructor: Alex Wulff
Day/Time: T; 3:30-4:45 PM
English 222 is an advanced writing course, which means that we will do a lot of writing this semester. 222 is also a practicum course designed around tutoring in the Writing Center. It will be the goal of this course to become better writers and better tutors. The driving force behind reaching these two goals is the idea that improved writers make better tutors and better tutors make better writers. Each student of English 222 will be asked to explore this synergistic effect that tutoring writing makes possible. In addition, students will posit what it means to be a writer, what it means to respond to writing and how we negotiate our position as liaisons between the writer, the instructor and the university. As such, we will examine the various power relations that are involved in a tutoring session. The Writing Center and its tutors are simultaneously in a position of “peerness” and of authority. We will want to examine how the difficulties created by this situation. This is a hands-on, discussion-oriented course that requires engagement with the diverse community of the entire UIC campus. Course work includes weekly writing, assigned reading, and participating in projects in cooperation with other tutors. Students are also encouraged to apply for permanent tutor positions at the Writing Center after completing the course.
ENGL 233: History of Film II: World War II to the Present
CRN: 14589
Instructor: Martin Rubin
Day/Time: MW; 5:00-6:50 PM
A selective overview of the modern era of film history, with an emphasis on various "new waves" that rocked the cinema establishment from the 1960s on: the rule-breaking French New Wave of Godard and Truffaut (plus a couple of films by the 1950s Hollywood mavericks who inspired them), the European art cinema of Bergman and Antonioni, the activist Cuban cinema of the 1960s, the 1970s revitalization of Hollywood by Altman and Coppola, the New German Cinema of Wenders and Herzog, the identity-building African cinema of Sembene and Mambéty, the censorship-battling Iranian cinema of Makhmalbaf and Panahi, and the back-to-the-basics Dogme movement of Lars von Trier and Susanne Bier.
ENGL 240: Introduction to Literary Study and Critical Methods
CRN: 20947
Instructor: Lennard Davis
Day/Time: MW; 1:00-1:50 PM
The course will involve an introduction to critical methods and aesthetic theories. Students will be expected to become familiar with the major ideas concerning definitions of art, philosophical approaches to the aesthetic experience, as well to develop a working knowledge of the major trends in the history of literary criticism and critical theory. Readings will be from the Norton Anthology of Theory with additional literary readings.
ENGL 240: Introduction to Literary Study and Critical Methods
CRN: 29936
Instructor: John Huntington
Day/Time: TR; 12:30-1:45 PM
The purpose of English 240 is to acquaint students with the basic issues that motivate literary theory and with some ways of analyzing texts. The course will read closely a number of texts (a novel, some stories and poems, a play, and a film) and discuss them extensively. We will simultaneously study a few critical essays which address questions about what we read, how we understand, and how we judge what we read. Students will write five short papers (3-5 pages) over the semester. The class will be conducted as a discussion.
ENGL 240: Introduction to Literary Study and Critical Methods
CRN: 27474
Instructor: Cathy Birkenstein-Graff
Day/Time: TR; 12:30-1:45 PM
As a course in critical methods of analyzing literature, and as a course in writing in the disciplines, this section of English 240 is concerned with what might be called "literary literacy" on a variety of levels. Besides reading literary works by Matthew Arnold, Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, William Shakespeare, and Flannery O,Connor, this course examines how a range of critics approaches these works and the debates that arise between these critics. In this way, the course introduces students not only to primary works of literature but to so-called "secondary" scholarly debates about how to read and think about these primary works. In so doing, we also introduce students to some of the basic methods and theories, new and traditional, that inform these secondary critical debates. And finally, throughout this course, we focus heavily on students' own writing, providing students with strategies for entering the debates and conversations of critics and theorists over what literature, criticism, theory, and the enterprise of literary studies as a whole is all about.
ENGL 240: Introduction to Literary Study and Critical Methods
CRN: 27474
Instructor: Gerald Graff
Day/Time: TR; 12:30-1:45 PM
As a course in critical methods of analyzing literature, and as a course in writing in the disciplines, this section of English 240 is concerned with what might be called "literary literacy" on a variety of levels. Besides reading literary works by Matthew Arnold, Ernest.
ENGL 241: English Literature I: Beginnings to 1660
CRN: 14497
Instructor: Thomas Bestul
Day/Time: MW + F discussion section; 11:00-11:50 AM
This course is part of a required sequence for English majors. We will study representative works from the Old English period to the end of the seventeenth century. Authors covered include Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne, and Milton. We will pay particular attention to the historical and cultural contexts of the readings. This course will be taught as lectures on Monday and Wednesday, with small discussion sections on Friday. Midterm and final exam; two papers. Text: Norton Anthology of English Literature, 8th ed., vols. A and B; Shakespeare, Macbeth (Penguin).
ENGL 242: English Literature II: 1660-1900
CRN: 14507
Instructor: Lisa Freeman
Day/Time: MW; 10:00-10:50 AM
English 242: The History of English Literature, 1660-1900
This course serves as the second part of the History of English Literature series. During the semester we will study a sampling of works from major authors of the Restoration through Victorian periods. Our goal will be to further our knowledge of literary form and content by developing a better understanding of the relationship between literary structures and the stories they tell. While we will approach literature in its cultural and historical contexts, we will also strive to develop an understanding of the study of literature as a discipline requiring the use of specific tools and methods.
ENGL 243: American Literature to 1900
CRN: 14514
Instructor: Robin Grey
Day/Time: MW; 1:00-1:50 PM
This survey will start from the colonial period and extend into the beginning of the twentieth century. Enrollment and attendance in discussion sections of Friday is mandatory. Attendance is mandatory for lecture.
The course will examine both the ways literary texts participate in artistic, social, and religious tensions within American culture and the ways these literary works challenge and reshape the culture through acts of inventive myth-making. We will try to balance our exploration of tensions within society with an awareness of the particular author's sensibility and style in his or her literary work. Topics covered in the course will include (among others): the experience of living in strict religious communities; the relationship between church and state; immigration; upward mobility and the American Dream; transcendentalism and individualism; social protest; marriage and feminism in the nineteenth century; the Civil War in the eyes of poets, and race relations in the eyes of writers; the Gilded Age of artistic development and capitalist exploitation. Literary genres will include poetry, short fiction, personal narratives and diaries, sermons, and essays.
Authors will include: Winthrop, Edwards, Wheatley, Rowlandson, Jefferson, Madison, Crevecoeur, Emerson, Fuller, Thoreau, Douglas, Whitman, Melville, Dickinson, Wharton--and possibly others.
Requirements: 1 midterm; 1 paper--8 pages; final exam; quizzes in discussion sections and other possible writing assignments in discussion sections.
300 LEVEL
ENGL 303: Studies in Poetry
CRN: 27481
Instructor: Anne Winters
Day/Time: TR; 11:00-12:15 PM
ENGLISH 303. STUDIES IN POETRY.
CANNIBAL FLOWER OR ELECT NATION: AMERICAN POETS IMAGINE AMERICA.
The first few days of this course will explore the earliest American concept of the New World as an "Elect Nation," a community encountering special responsibilities and unusual temptations—a people chosen, but also imperiled, by God.
The rest of the course will consider American poets of the nineteenth and twentieth century and how they re-interpreted, and sometimes turned on its head, this early imagining. After brief Puritan readings, we will begin with Walt Whitman. We'll look at Robert Frost's religious and national poems. In conclusion we'll look at Robert Lowell's subversive psychological revisioning of the earliest Calvinist traditions, Robert Hayden's "cannibal flower" envisioning of America , Robert Hayden's "cannibal flower" America in such poems as his elegies for Malcolm X. We will close by turning to the Beat Generation for Allen Ginsberg's apocalyptic visions of the nation at the turn of the Twenty-First Century.
Teaching Method: Lecture and Discussion.
Workload: Reading the texts, papers, oral participation, exams. Evaluation Method: pop quizzes and oral work, papers, midterm, final exam.
ENGL 313: Major Plays of Shakespeare
CRN: 27645
Instructor: Lisa Freeman
Day/Time: MW; 1:00-1:50 PM
In this section of the Major Plays of Shakespeare we will study a selection of William Shakespeare's most important plays. Over the course of the semester we will consider and discuss two of the major strains in Shakespeare criticism: one, that the Bard's works speak to us across time, i.e. that their meaning is universal and timeless; and two, that Shakespeare's works are a reflection of their time and place. Particular attention will be paid to the different ways in which each of these critical traditions construes identity categories such as race, class, gender, and nation. We will approach these works as plays meant to be staged and will compare the effects of text with those of both live performance and film.
ENGL 325: Modern American Fiction
CRN: 29803
Instructor: Chris Messenger
Day/Time: TR; 2:00-3:15 PM
We'll study the curve of modern American fiction through the classic realists and modernists such as Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Faulkner. We'll track issues of elite and popular fiction, the tradition of women's fiction, the move from naturalism to realism to Modernism. Works and authors will include Wharton, THE HOUSE OF MIRTH; Cather, MY ANTONIA, THE PROFESSOR担 HOUSE; Hemingway, IN OUR TIME; Fitzgerald, TENDER IS THE NIGHT;, Larson, PASSING, QUICKSAND; and Faulkner, LIGHT IN AUGUST, ABSALOM, ABSALOM!. Writing will include several ungraded reaction papers, two short (5-7pp.) papers. a midsemester exam, and a final exam. Discussion format whenever possible. Inquiries welcome.
ENGL 327: World Fictions
CRN: 29800
Instructor: Joseph Tabbi
Day/Time: MWF; 1:00-1:50 PM
A consideration of recent work by established and emerging novelists and conceptual writers in the United States and how such work bears on longstanding international debates on World Literature, World Systems, and (more recently) the rise of New Liberal economics in the U.S. and elsewhere. Attention will be given to authors who discover ways, not to deny to the systems that increasingly define contemporary life, and not to resist these systems mindlessly, but rather to reform the systems - and at the same time do the hard work of reforming, informing, and remaking oneself. Formally, the works are also chosen for their adaptive qualities, the way they do not simply follow the rules of a given genre or mode, but rather use these formulas toward unpredictable, innovative ends. This plasticity of form extends even to the mixture of poetry and essayistic writing, image and narrative, and other combinations of fields and practices normally kept separate. Authors to be discussed include Don DeLillo, J.M. Coetzee, William Gaddis, Thomas Pynchon, W.G. Sebald, Lynne Tillman, Jeanette Winterson, and Curtis White.
ENGL 341: Literature and Popular Culture
CRN: 27484
Instructor: Thomas Bestul
Day/Time: MW; 3:00-4:15 PM
Arthurian Legend in Literature and Popular Culture
The story of King Arthur and his knights of the round table has been an enduring phenomenon in the popular culture of the Western world from the medieval period to the present time. This course begins by exploring the origins of the legend in the remote archeological past and moves forward to consider how it is expressed in contemporary literature, music, and film. We will read foundational writers of the Middle Ages, such as Chrétien de Troyes and Sir Thomas Malory; and then take up the great Arthurian revival of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, examining, for example, the paintings of Burne-Jones, Wagner’s operas (Parsifal, Tristan und Isolde), poetry such as Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, and novels such as Twain’s Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. For the twentieth century, we will read novels such as T. H. White’s Once and Future King, Walker Percy’s Lancelot, and “feminist” retellings of the legend such as Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon. We will also consider films such as Disney’s animated Sword and the Stone, the Bing Crosby version of Connecticut Yankee, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, John Boorman’s Excalibur, and the latest Hollywood version, King Arthur (2004). One of our aims will be to understand the varying cultural, social, and ideological uses of the Arthurian legend at different moments in history, and to explore distinctions between high art and popular culture as revealed in this material.
Requirements: midterm and final exam; one short paper (3-5 pages); one long paper (8-10 pages). This course will be lecture/discussion format with extensive use of multi-media resources.
Texts: The Romance of Arthur, vol. 1, ed. James J. Wilhelm (Garland), and others selected from titles mentioned above.
ENGL 341: Literature and Popular Culture
CRN: 29802
Instructor: Ned Lukacher
Day/Time: TR; 3:30-4:45 PM
This course will examine the enduring popularity of literary tragedy, not in its dramatic form (which we studied in Engl 416/fall '09), but tragedy as it is transformed by its displacement or migration from the theater into the novel. While in Germany and France, for example, dramatic tragedy continued to be popular throughout the 18th- and 19th-centuries, in England dramatic tragedy retreated into the closet, into the realm of text rather than theater. And this may have largely been due to the overwhelming influence of Shakespeare. Our focus will be limited to studying tragedy in the 18th- and 19th-century English novel, with a particular focus on the work of the most popular writers in the tragic mode: Samuel Richardson and Thomas Hardy.
ENGL 342: Cultural and Media Studies, Television and American Culture: Past and Present
CRN: 26095
Instructor: Marsha Cassidy
Day/Time: T/TH; 2:00-3:15 T, 2:00-4:15 TH
Television and American Culture: Past and Present”
Class meets Tuesday and Thursday, from 2-3:15.
From 3:15-4:15 on Thursdays, we screen television programs relevant to our discussion. Attendance at these screenings is required.
This course studies US television’s relationship to significant social, cultural, and ideological movements across time, offering discussions of contemporary TV programs within the context of television’s past.
We explore television’s interconnection with ongoing cultural questions and issues--from narrower topics like the art of political satire, cigarette and liquor consumption, celebrity obsession, sports mania, and “reality” vs. reality television--to deeper social concerns regarding ethnicity, sexuality, gender, crime and violence, and war.
Students are introduced to television history and different aspects of television theory, including industry and genre theory, TV aesthetics, postmodernism, and theories of identity, gender, and sexuality.
Screenings will include: I Spy, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, Charlie’s Angels, Chico and the Man, Murphy Brown, Twin Peaks, Miami Vice, Margaret Cho’s All-American Girl, Will and Grace, The Bachelor, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and television’s war coverage.
Students complete several short daily assignments; a midterm and final exam; and one research paper of 8-10 pages.
ENGL 358: Colonial and Postcolonial Literature
CRN: 27485
Instructor: Mary Anne Mohanraj
Day/Time: TR; 12:30-1:45 PM
In this course we will examine the literature of the colonial period, the writers of resistance and revolution, and the stories of what came after, in the wake of new nations which emerged, shaken and often fragmented, from the rubble of what were once European colonies. In such regions as India, Africa, the Caribbean, and Ireland, we will examine how national, cultural and individual identities have been radically altered by the experience of colonization. We will examine how authors have related this postcolonial condition; or, as some have put it, how "the empire writes back."
As a product of such colonization myself (born in Sri Lanka to Tamil ancestors who became Catholic as a result of Portuguese colonizing missionaries, and who became an English professor in the wake of British colonizers and their imposition of English on my nation), and as a fiction writer whose own work focuses on issues of nationalism, immigration, emigration, gender, sexuality, and race, I'm particularly pleased to be offering this course.
ENGL 370: History of Literary Criticism and Theory
CRN: 30506
Instructor: Joseph Tabbi
Day/Time: MWF; 2:00-2:50 PM
A study of critical writing, and key terms from Longinus to Jacques Derrida with particular emphasis on how such terms are being gathered and presented in new media: The Electronic Literature Directory, and its metatag vocabulary of keywords in literature and criticism, will be a main resource for the class, along with traditional readings in Literary Criticism.
ENGL 375: Writing for Social Change
CRN: 29145
Instructor: Ann Merle Feldman
Day/Time: TTH; 11:00-12:15 PM
Note: This course is only open to students in the Chicago Civic Leadership Certificate Program (CCLCP) who have completed three required courses.
Danielle Christmas is a co-instructor in this course. The study of how language and other media intersect with material conditions to make political belief and political change.
400 LEVEL
ENGL 413: Topics in Shakespeare
CRN: 29799
Instructor: Alfred Thomas
Day/Time: TR; 2:00-3:15 PM
SUBVERSIVE SHAKESPEARE:
Staging and Screening Dissent from the Renaissnace to the Twentieth Century
In 1610 a group of persecuted English Catholics were accused of staging a “seditious interlude” before an uproarious crowd in the village of Niddersdale in Yorkshire. One of these subversive revels allegedly included a performance of Shakespeare’s tragedy King Lear. Three hundred and sixty years later, in Communist Czechoslovakia, the banned playwright Pavel Kohout staged a private performance of Macbeth for a group of fellow dissidents in a private house in Prague. Regardless of what Shakespeare may have privately professed, he has been variously appropriated across the centuries as a crypto-Catholic, a precursor of gay rights, and a political dissident avant la lettre. In this course we shall examine how and why such a canonic figure as Shakespeare has been so frequently treated as a subversive writer. In addition to reading plays and poems by Shakespeare, we shall screen and analyze certain films based on his work, including Hamlet and King Lear, directed by the Russian filmmaker Grigori Kozintsev, and The Tempest and The Angelic Conversation (a homoerotic visualization of the sonnets) by the British cinematographer Derek Jarman.
ENGL 440: Topics in Cultural and Media Studies--Bio-power, Bio-politics, and Biocultures
CRN: 27946, 27947
Instructor: Lennard Davis
Day/Time: T; 2:00-4:50 PM
The course will examine the concepts of biopower, biopolitics, and biocultures. We will examine the way that life came under the subjection of regulatory mechanisms and disciplinary control by looking at the work of Michel Foucault, Georgio Agamben, and Roberto Esposito, among others. The course will consider Deleuze and Guattari’s idea of the “body without organs,” Merleau-Ponty’s ideas of phenomenology and perception, Donna Haraway’s notion of the cyborg, and more generally the interaction of technology, biology, and culture. The human-animal connection will be explored through Haraway, Derrida, Cary Wolfe, and others. Issues around genetic engineering, impact of technology, body-altering surgery will be explored through fiction including the work of William Gibson, Margaret Atwood, and films like Gataca and eXistenZ.
ENGL 446: Topics in Criticism & Theory
CRN: 24820
Instructor: Ned Lukacher
Day/Time: R; 5:00-7:50 PM
Special Topic: Basic Derrida
Derrida's body of work is as extensive and as diverse as is his influence in a myriad of fields. Although it is clearly presumptuous to say what is 'basic Derrida' and what is derivative or secondary, this course will, with considerable trepidation, attempt to make precisely such a determination. Therefore, this course is in no way specifically designed for or accessible to students of English studies or any other discipline; it is a course about Derrida's place in the history of thinking and writing. At the center of the course is a reading of Derrida's most important early work, "Of Grammatology" (1967), which we will study in its entirety and in conjunction with a careful selection of Derrida's subsequent writings.
ENGL 459: Introduction to the Teaching of English
CRN: 19861
Instructor: Brian Charest
Day/Time: TR; 2:00-3:10 PM
Intended as a general initiation to the field of secondary English teaching, this course focuses on many of the crucial issues facing teachers in contemporary language arts classrooms and on innovative ways in which educators might think about these issues more productively and humanely. In this course we will explore the deceptively simple question, Why teach English? In doing so, we will undoubtedly uncover a range of theoretical assumptions we have about teaching, about schools, about students, and about how we learn. One of our goals this semester will be to complicate our understanding about teaching and schooling in order to better prepare ourselves to teach in a culturally and linguistically diverse community like Chicago. In addition to reading a variety of texts—teacher stories, theoretical works, young adult literature—you will also have the opportunity to participate in schools and examine these institutions as part of the larger socioeconomic, political, and cultural context that shapes them. For one of our major course projects, students will be asked to participate in a structured field experience in a local high school, and some of our class meetings will be held there. Other course requirements include two portfolios, a book review, and a community inquiry project.
ENGL 474: Topics in Popular Culture and Literature
CRN: 29793
Instructor: John Huntington
Day/Time: TR; 5:00-7:50 PM
Science fiction of the sixties and seventies. We will focus on five writers who wrote serious genre fiction: Ursula Le Guin, Philip K. Dick, Samuel Delany, Thomas Disch, and James Tiptree, Jr. (Alice Sheldon). In the first ten weeks the class will read two novels by each of the first four and a group of short stories by the last. Some of the books may be out of print, so I will depend on students finding their own copies. I will email to enrolled students the names of the books we will study in the first week of December.
ENGL 474: Topics in Popular Culture and Literature
CRN: 30504
Instructor: Chris Messenger
Day/Time: TR; 11:00-12:15 PM
Popular Classics and Their Elite Subversions
We'll study the three most phenomenal blockbuster best-sellers in American publishing history, UNCLE TOM'S CABIN, GONE WITH THE WIND, and THE GODFATHER and read them against their elite literature twin on the same subjects and written in the same era: Melville's BENITO CERENO, Faulkner's ABSALOM, ABSALOM!, and Doctorow's RAGTIME. We'll try to argue the differences between popular and elite fiction and the stakes in such discussions for readers and for literary culture. Writing will include several ungraded reaction papers, a short (5pp.) paper. a midsemester exam, a final paper on a text or problem of your choice, and a take-home final. Discussion format whenever possible. Inquiries welcome.
ENGL 478: The Bible As Literature: New Testament
CRN: 26179, 26180
Instructor: Anne Winters
Day/Time: TR; 2:00-3:15 PM
Many of the world's great sacred texts are also great works of literature. This course will not approach the Greek Scriptures according to modern denominational teachings, but, as in any ancient literature course, as works of the human mind, to be studied in connection with the geographical and historical contexts of the individual authors. To better understand New Testament background, we will begin with selections from the Hebrew Scripture-- Pentateuch and the Prophets. Next, moving to the gospels and Paul, our focus will be the chronological development of New Testament christolgies (conceptions of the theological role of Jesus.) We’ll also look at the important place of the "Q" source for the sayings of Jesus; and in general pay attention the landscape, characters and stories of the New Testament, with attention to the rich variety of New Testament literary genres (gospels, epistles, parables, apocalypse, etc.)
Our texts will be the HARPER/COLLINS STUDY BIBLE(in the most recent Edition), because of its solid notes and because it is based on the excellent New Revised Standard Version translation from the Greek. Also required is the standard American college introduction for 'Bible as Literature' courses: Gabel, Wheeler & York’s THE BIBLE AS LITERATURE, 4th edition.
Method of Teaching: Lecture/Discussion.
Evaluation: Your grade will be based on your oral work (that is, the degree of attention to the text shown in your voluntary in-class discussion), along with quizzes, midterm and final exams, and a term paper.
ENGL 482: Writing and Tutoring in the Writing Center
CRN: 14542, 14540
Instructor: Lydia A. Saravia
Day/Time: R; 12:00-1:50 PM
Our goal is to learn from each other and from our experiences working with other student writers. Therefore it is important to remember that we, too, are student writers. In this course you will be the writer, tutor, and teacher. This class encourages you to balance your development of these roles. Our goals are the following: to help you develop into effective teachers by providing practical experience in the kind of individualized writing conferencing that occurs in the Writing Center; to develop your own writing skills and an understanding of your own writing practices; to think about the social contexts in which writing occurs and in which writers develop so that we increase our understanding of what complicates the act of writing.
We are educators. Let’s remember Paolo Freire’s words in First Letter: Reading the World/Reading the Word: “There is no teaching without learning, and by that I mean more than that the act of teaching demands the existence of those who teach and those who learn. What I mean is that teaching and learning take place in such a way that those who teach learn, on the one hand, because they recognize previously learned knowledge and, on the other, because by observing how the novice student’s curiosity works to apprehend what is taught, they help themselves to uncover uncertainties, rights, and wrongs.”
Throughout the semester, we will consider the following questions: What is “good” writing? Who defines it? What values and experiences are expressed and privileged by standards of writing, particularly academic standards? Should we teach students to be “good” writers according to academic standards? What is literacy and why is it important? How do we teach literacy and good writing? And, finally, how do we teach grammar?
Note: In this class, we do very little distinguishing between writing center theory, and pedagogy. As a tutor, you are an educator. We see these, writing center work and class room work, as overlapping. Having said that, much of what we will concentrate on this fall 2009 semester will be on pedagogy…specifically how you would prepare high school students for the college classroom, given your one-on-one work as your tutor, given your observation of a comp class, and given the standards as set-up by the Illinois School Board and CPS.
In general, English 482 is less interested in the history of writing centers. Instead, we are interested in moving and understanding the new direction writing center theories are moving toward, and how social justice pedagogy is informing these new directions. Therefore, as an institution who believes in social justice, we are more interested in ways anti-racist, anti-oppressive and feminist theories can inform our tutoring practices and your goals as an educator.
ENGL 490: Advanced Writing of Poetry
CRN: 19913, 19914
Instructor: Chris Glomski
Day/Time: MWF; 10:00-10:50 AM
English 490 is the advanced undergraduate poetry workshop and the successor to English 210, which is its pre-requisite (and in which UIC students are required to achieve a grade of “B” or better). If you enroll for this course you are expected to have a working knowledge of basic poetic forms, meters, and tropes, and to have some experience participating in a creative writing workshop. In addition to pursuing your own work, you should be prepared to respond to various poetic writing assignments (intermittently given throughout the semester); to offer regular critical commentary on peer work; and deliver informal, but thoughtful, presentations on assigned topics. Readings will focus on a course topic to be announced. Previous topics have been “Years of the Modern,” “Secrets of Surrealism,” and “Literary Anthologies, Literary Communities.”
ENGL 491: Advanced Writing of Fiction
CRN: 14547, 14548
Instructor: Dale Barrigar
Day/Time: MWF; 12:00-12:50 PM
This course is an advanced fiction writing workshop. We'll explore an intriguing variety of writing exercises designed to generate ideas and sharpen understanding of writing techniques, as well as reading classic examples of short fiction which illustrate narrative strategies used in the past by masters of the short story form. Students will have the opportunity to engage in constructive criticism of others' work-in-progress, while also receiving helpful feedback on their own writing drafts.
ENGL 491: Advanced Fiction Writing
CRN: 22828
Instructor: Eugene Wildman
Day/Time: TR; 2:00-3:15 PM
This is primarily a writing course supplemented with readings from an anthology. The emphasis will be on the short story though other genres can be entertained provided they are self-contained. Students will complete two original stories and one revision of a previously submitted story. Active participation and creative criticism of the work of peers is expected.
ENGL 493: Internship in English
CRN: 26976
Instructor: Linda Landis Andrews
Day/Time: WR; 3:00-3:50 W, 4:00-4:50 R
Prospective employers prefer to hire graduates with professional experience, which can be acquired through an internship. The large metropolitan area of Chicago offers many internship opportunities for English majors in publishing, non-profits, corporations, tv and radio, and public relations firms. Tasks vary and may involve writing copy for a web page, researching for a grant proposal, managing a special event, or interviewing employees for a company’s newsletter. While writing, editing, or researching in an internship, students are enrolled in English 493. The six-credit course meets for an hour each week to give students an opportunity to share knowledge gained in the internship, write short papers, and learn about the culture and business of professional writing. Internships give students an opportunity to examine different work scenarios and to build a network of contacts before graduation. The internship may be completed in summer, fall, or spring.
ENGL 493: Internship in Nonfiction Writing
26976/22507
Andrews, Linda Landis
W 3-350/or R 4-450
The large metropolitan area of Chicago offers many internship opportunities for English majors in publishing, television and radio stations, non-profits, corporations, government agencies, and public relations firms. Tasks vary and may involve writing copy for a brochure, collecting information for a grant, or interviewing employees for a company’s newsletter, to name a few. While writing, editing, or researching in an internship, students are enrolled in English 493. Resume, cover letter, and two writing samples are required to apply. The three-credit course meets for an hour each week to give students an opportunity to share knowledge gained in the internship, write short papers, and learn about the culture and business of professional writing. Internships give students an opportunity to examine different work scenarios and to build a network of contacts before graduation
500 LEVEL
ENGL 504: Proseminar II
CRN: 20011
Instructor: Mark Canuel
Day/Time: W; 6:00-8:50 PM
This course builds on some themes from the first half of the proseminar, concentrating in particular on debates about literary form. We begin the semester with some readings from Kant's third _Critique_, and move on to discussions of literary form by the likes of W.K. Wimsatt, Mary Poovey, Steven Knapp, Frances Ferguson, and Denise Gigante. Along with this theoretical vein of inquiry, we'll be addressing two case studies of works that have figured prominently in discussions of form in prose fiction and lyric poetry: Jane Austen's _Emma_ and John Keats's 1821 volume of poems (plus a few pertinent letters). Requirements: attendance, presentation, final paper.
ENGL 520: Seminar in Renaissance Studies
CRN: 30049
Instructor: Mary Beth Rose
Day/Time: T; 9:30-12:15 PM
Gender and Representation in Early Modern Literature
In this course we will explore the ways in which ideologies of gender in the Renaissance (or early modern era) inform literary representation and the construction of texts. Focusing on the interrelationship of gender and transforming conceptions of politics, race, sexuality, marriage, and heroism, our approaches will be both formal and historical. We will consider the connections among diverse texts, change over time, and the role representation plays in a culture‚s evaluation of itself. We will also examine the ways in which literary forms register and enable cultural change. Writers covered will include Castiglione, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Chaucer, Christine de Pizan, Shakespeare, Elizabeth Tudor, Margaret Cavendish, Milton, Mary Astell, and Aphra Behn.
ENGL 537: Theories and Fictions of Diaspora
CRN: 29801
Instructor: Madhu Dubey
Day/Time: R; 2:00-4:50 PM
This course will examine the meanings of the term ‘diaspora’ from a transnational, comparative perspective. By looking at theoretical, literary, and cinematic texts from a range of regional and/or national contexts (including the Caribbean, the United States, Britain, Asia, and Africa), we will try to arrive at a precise and historically contextualized understanding of diaspora. We will begin the course with some influential essays that seek to define diaspora in relation to the contemporaneous yet distinct processes of globalization. We will then go on to comparatively analyze literary and cinematic representations of various kinds of racialized diasporas formed from distinct histories of slavery, indentured labor, exile, and immigration.
ENGL 545: Seminar: American Literature to 1865: The Civil War in Literature, History and Politics
CRN: 29795
Instructor: Robin Grey
Day/Time: M; 3:00-5:50 PM
In this course we will explore the complex of causes--as seen by writers and politicians--which combined to bring about the Civil War, the experience of the war, and its aftermath in the failure of the Reconstruction. Walt Whitman pronounced the Civil War an irretrievable event: "Future years will never know the seething hell and the black infernal background of countless minor scenes and interiors, . . . of the Secession War. . . . . The real war will never get in the books." Yet he insisted that "it is of measureless importance to have" the basis of the War "well grounded . . . in the understanding of the American people." Indeed, it is the memory of the Civil War that most concerned Frederick Douglass: "I am not indifferent to the claims of a generous forgetfulness, but whatever else I may forget, I shall never forget the difference between those who fought for liberty and those who fought for slavery; between those who fought to save the Republic and those who fought to destroy it."
Because of the intense interplay between literary text and historical document in this period, we will have the opportunity to probe the disciplinary boundaries of literature and history in order to discuss issues of interdisciplinarity, the making of history, the process of remembering and forgetting, and the nature of sentiment. Both sides of the slavery argument will be assigned and discussed, so some material may seem offensive, but in the interests of studying history, and in the interests of not forgetting how things came to be the way they were (and to some extent, still are), we will read both sides of the debate. We will, moreover, read some writings of modern scholars who theorize about history and memory, history in relation to the present, and various kinds of resistence: including but not limited to, Reinhart Kosseleck (The Practice of Conceptual History); David Scott (Conscripts to Modernity); Pierre Nora (“Between Memory and History”); Michel de Certeau (The Practice of Every Day Life). A tentative list (subject to possible changes) of the authors and literary texts we will read is as follows. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin; Herman Melville, Battle-Pieces; Walt Whitman, Drum-Taps; Speeches by Abraham Lincoln; John William De Forest, Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Session to Loyalty; Augusta Jane Evans Macaria, or the Altars of Sacrifice; Frances Harper, Iola Leroy; Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage; Ambrose Bierce's Civil War stories; excerpts from Grant's and Sherman's Memoirs. Along with these "literary" texts, we will be reading some 19th century historical accounts and documents: Michael Perman's anthology of primary documents and interpretive essays, Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconstruction (Edition to be announce); Drew Gilpin Faust's anthology of pro-slavery arguments, The Ideology of Slavery; the Penguin Anthology of Abolitionist documents; Kenneth Stampp's assessment of The Causes of the Civil War; excerpted letters from Freedom's Soldiers: The Black Military Experience in the Civil War; a chapter from Mark Grimsley's The Hard Hand of War. To these I will add some other primary texts I have gleaned from the Newberry Library, such as political cartoons, song ballads and popular music, letters and diaries, burial records.
Students will be responsible for giving oral reports on assigned readings, as well as a longer paper done in stages with intermediate drafts turned in for comments and suggestions for development leading to a final research paper of 20-30 pages in length.
ENGL 570: Program for Writers: Poetry Workshop
CRN: 14576
Instructor: Christina Pugh
Day/Time: R; 2:00-4:50 PM
This course is a poetry workshop for graduate level poets. The discussion of student work will be the primary focus here, and the workshop welcomes a full range of approaches and aesthetic commitments. We will also read some volumes of contemporary poetry that are notable for the particular ways in which they navigate issues of syntax and line. In addition, the course includes critical readings that incorporate hands-on discussions of poetic making. Many of these critical works treat poems in the lyric tradition; it is my belief that study of this tradition can usefully inform creative work that ranges from the lyric to the experimental. Students will write and revise new poems; they will also produce an artist’s statement and other critical written responses to the readings.
ENGL 571: Short Fiction Workshop
CRN: 14577
Instructor: Eugene Wildman
Day/Time: W; 3:00-5:50 PM
This is a graduate level fiction writing workshop. There are no assigned outside readings though various works may be suggested as seems appropriate. The emphasis will be on the short story though other genres can be considered provided they are self-contained. Students will complete a minimum of two original stories and one revision of a previously submitted story. Active participation and creative criticism of the work of peers is of course expected.
ENGL 572: Novel Workshop
CRN: 14578
Instructor: Cris Mazza
Day/Time: T; 5:00-7:50 PM
The Program for Writers workshop in the novel welcomes students preparing to write a novel, just beginning a novel, or already engaged in working on or completing a novel. Novelistic techniques as well as pitfalls, variables and whims of the marketplace, and how literary fiction is affected by social pressures and/or political unrest in the world are all on the table for discussion. Students who are not in the Program for Writers need the permission from the instructor to enroll.
Independent Studies
During his or her academic career, a student may enroll in a variety of independent studies. A student must obtain approval from the professor with whom he or she expects to work. It is the student’s responsibility to find a professor willing to direct the student’s independent study. Students then must complete an Independent Study/Research form ("the Purple Form") which needs to be signed by the professor who will supervise the work and presented to the Director of Graduate Studies for approval. A brief description of the project or research should be attached as well. Professors have the right to decline to take independent study students in a given semester. It is also the student's responsibility to meet regularly with the professor and to fulfill the special demands of the independent study. The work should be completed in the semester in which it is undertaken.
ENGL 591
Prospectus Research
1-12 credits (variable).
For doctoral students only. Supervised research and development of dissertation prospectus and colloquium committee. All doctoral students are expected to enroll
for Prospectus Research when they have passed their Preliminary Examination.
ENGL 592
Preliminary Exam Research
1-12 credits (variable).
For doctoral students only.
Supervised research and reading that facilitates the student's preparation for the preliminary examinations. Course is graded S/U only. Credit 1 to 12 hours, may be repeated for maximum of 12 hours of credit.
ENGL 596
Independent Study
1-4 credits (variable). Individualized research and study, with
the supervision of a faculty member, in topics not covered by regular course
offerings.
ENGL 597
Master's Project Research
0-4 credits (variable).
For Master's degree students only. Supervised research and reading that facilitates the student's preparation of project research. Course is graded S/U only. May be repeated for a maximum of 12 hours. No more than 4 hours of ENGL 597 may be applied toward the degree.
ENGL 599
Thesis Research
1-16 credits (variable). All doctoral students are expected to enroll
for Thesis Research when they have passed their Preliminary Examination (they must also enroll in ENGL 591).
They must earn up to 32 hours for the dissertation.
LINGUISTICS
LING 160: Language and Society
CRN: 27461
Instructor: James Drown
Day/Time: MWF; 1:00-1:50 PM
We use language both consciously and unconsciously. Language is used by individuals to strengthen and enforce relationships, as well as by nations to help control order and the populace. And, that is just the tip of the iceberg. By using systematic analysis of language and the situations it occurs in, we can learn more about society and by extension ourselves.
LING 160: Language and Society
CRN: 27462
Instructor: James Drown
Day/Time: MWF; 2:00-2:50 PM
We use language both consciously and unconsciously. Language is used by individuals to strengthen and enforce relationships, as well as by nations to help control order and the populace. And, that is just the tip of the iceberg. By using systematic analysis of language and the situations it occurs in, we can learn more about society and by extension ourselves.
LING 586: Classroom Testing for TESOL
CRN: 14134
Instructor: Mark Overstreet
Day/Time: M; 3:00-5:50 PM
The title of this course is Classroom Testing in TESOL, and I hope to achieve the goals that such a course title would imply. However, testing only makes up a part of what would be considered a comprehensive assessment program for effective classroom language instruction. The expanded goal, then, will be to review, evaluate and discuss the components of an assessment program, the components of the components, and assessment tools for the assessment tools.