CURRENT COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

This is an unofficial list of English courses that will be offered in FALL 2013. It is strictly for the use of expanded course descriptions. For the complete official course offerings, please consult the UIC SCHEDULE OF CLASSES.

100 Level

ENGL 101: Understanding Literature
CRN: 11088/20586
Days: MWF 1:00-1:50
Vincent Adiutori
In the Ruins of Representation: This course considers problems of representation as they emerged throughout the 20th and into the 21st century. While our primary focus will be contemporary novels and literary representation more generally, we will engage the intersection of these problems in various forms of representation: musical, visual, political, etc. The course is organized around a number of themes that provide a sense of unity to the semester. Primary goals include strengthening close critical reading and thinking skills as well as developing student knowledge and construction of academic writing. Assignments include short papers, individual and group presentations, and midterm and final exams.

ENGL 101: Understanding Literature
CRN: 25642/25644
Days: MWF 10:00-10:50 am
Chris Bryson
In this course we will examine short stories and novels from Modern, Postmodern, and contemporary American authors. Students will pay careful attention to the formal, historical, and political elements of each work in order to better understand and appreciate American fiction. Finally, students will further develop their critical reading and writing skills and become more adept with literary terms and methods of scholarship. Students should expect engaged class discussion and a substantial amount of reading over the semester. Course requirements will include reading responses, two argumentative papers, a midterm exam, and a final exam.

ENGL 101: Understanding Literature
CRN: 22337/22333
Days: TR 3:30-4:45 pm
Sein Oh
Aesthetics and Politics: In this course, we will examine short stories, poetry, drama, and even non-fictions from various periods throughout the history, and although we will go through multiple topics, the consistent concern that I wish you to think through the assigned readings is how we can place literature/literary works in the context of politics and society, i.e. the way in which humans form communities and systems. This will give us rethink the popular tendency to think that aesthetic representations are detached from reality, and thus has no political arguments whatsoever. As usual with ENGL 101 courses, literary terms will be covered and emphasis will be on how to write argumentative essays on the literary readings. Assignments will include blackboard responses for every class, three papers (3-4 pages, 5-6 pages, and 7-8 pages), and a final exam. The last paper will require you to conduct research.

ENGL 101: Understanding Literature
CRN: 11053/20583
Days: TR 12:30-1:45
Jason Douglas
Students will seek to understand literature by examining texts from a number of different angles: plot, characterization, narrative, social context, figurative language, etc. in order to develop the tools to identify the meaning of texts through close reading. We will focus on texts that feature the fantastic and the improbable, specifically stories about dragons. Students need to do consistent and substantial reading. Course work will regularly require reading, quizzes, and participation in class discussion. It will periodically require written assignments, exams, and class presentations. Readings for the course will feature such authors as: J.R.R. Tolkein, Robin McKinley, and Anne McCaffery.

ENGL/MOVI 102: Introduction to Film
CRN: 11104 24423
Days: T 2:00-3:15 pm; R 2:00-4:45 pm
Angela Dancey
This course is an introduction to the study and analysis of film, examining the major elements of cinema as an art form (camerawork, narrative, editing, sound design), a social and cultural institution, and an industry. Students will watch, discuss, and write about a variety of narrative, avant-garde, and documentary films from around the world, examining their formal aspects (how they are constructed), their meanings, and the historical contexts in which they were produced.

ENGL 103: English and American Poetry
CRN: 20646 / 20645
Days: TR 11:00-12:15
Brianna Noll
In this course, we will explore the history and development of lyric poetry in English, focusing in particular on the ways in which its predominant characteristics have been questioned and revised over the centuries. How does a contemporary lyric poem resemble a Romantic lyric? An Elizabethan lyric? Or, more to the point, how does the contemporary lyric differ? Our historical and critical discussion of the lyric genre will be paired with close readings of poems, which will allow us to consider how a poem’s form and content not only inform one another, but also shape and/or illuminate aspects of the work’s historical and aesthetic contexts. We will endeavor to understand not just what, but how a lyric poem means, and in so doing, students will develop the analytical skills necessary to read carefully and write critically.

ENGL 103: English and American Poetry
CRN: 22348/22349
Days: MWF 9:00-9:50
Jennifer Hawe 
English and American Poetry will introduce students to a wide range of wonderful poems from Shakespeare to Lyn Hejinian. (Who's Lyn Hejinian? You'll find out!) We will investigate ways of reading and interpreting poems: What's the best way to read a poem in order to get the most out of it? Should you read differently depending on the poem or situation? How do you arrive at an understanding or interpretation of a poem? Through gaining reading and interpretive skills, you will develop a keener understanding and appreciation for poetry. Students will be expected to approach each text actively – as a literary scholar responsible for teaching your peers about what you've read. We will use daily writing, regular journaling, group work, quizzes, and other projects to unpack this fascinating literature. In addition to smaller assignments, students will complete four major projects: a group presentation, a critical paper, a creative paper, and a final portfolio.

ENGL 104: English and American Drama
CRN: 26201
Days: MWF, 1:00-1:50
Garin Cycholl
This course reconsiders the stage as a public space for exploration of the basic human experiences of family, work, race, class, and place.  We’ll begin this exploration through the examination of plays centered in Chicago, then move into plays by writers who reassess these aspects of human experience.  Texts for the course include plays by Lorraine Hansberry, David Mamet, August Wilson, Augusto Boal, Seamus Heaney, and Barbara Guest.

ENGL 105:  British and American Fiction
CRN:  33745/33744
Days:  T/TH 11:00-12:15
Gina Gemmel
In this course, we will explore some of the basic formal elements (including theme, plot, character, point of view, setting, language, and tone) and contextual factors (including considerations of genre, cultural period, and the author’s body of work) that are relevant to the reading of literary fiction.  We will examine primarily novels by American and English authors from our contemporary period that move through and beyond the borders of the two nations we’ll be surveying.  The goal of our exploration will be to prepare you to analyze, interpret, and make argumentative claims about literary texts.  Assignments will include two short papers, several response papers, a midterm exam, and a final exam.  Be cautioned that this course requires extensive reading and writing, as well as significant contributions to classroom discussions.  Possible authors include Dinaw Mengestu, Gish Jen, Hari Kunzru, Edwidge Danticat, Colson Whitehead, Michelle Cliff, Zadie Smith, and Teju Cole.

ENGL 105: English and American Fiction
CRN: 11126/20597
Days: TR 2:00-3:15
Aaron Finley
“...that gallant man who thought to pound up the crows by shutting his park gate...” - John Milton, “Areopagitica.”
In this course we will be reading and discussing pleas for and against censorship as well as reading literature that has been either banned or challenged in United States school districts.   We will investigate what it is that might (for some) make literature dangerous enough to warrant censorship.  We will begin this course outside our target area of English and American fiction with an excerpt from Plato’s Republic; thus, along with a conversation about censorship, our course materials will occasionally (and inevitably) touch on ideas such as utopian ideals, literary education, obscenity, and freedom of speech.  The week of September 22nd, 2013 is the American Library Association’s “Banned Book Week” and student may be asked to participate in events around the city during this week.
The material we will read in this class will likely include (though will not be limited to): Plato’s Republic (excerpt), John MIlton’s “Areopagitica”, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, George Orwell’s 1984, Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (excerpt), Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle.  Please wait until you receive information from your instructor on which editions to buy, as having the same edition as the rest of the class will best facilitate discussion.

ENGL 107: Introduction to Shakespeare
CRN: 26583/26585
Days: T-R 3:30-4:45
Gary Buslik
This course will introduce you to the life, times, and work of the great poet, dramatist, and inventive genius of the English language, William Shakespeare. We will read a lively biography and selections from a book about him, his work, and Elizabethan theater. We will read and discuss one or two plays and several sonnets. We will also watch three or four filmed productions of the Bard's most famous plays. We will write several response papers and have quizzes on all readings and a summary exam.

ENGL 108: British Literature and British Culture - Modernity
CRN: 29602
Days: MWF 10:00-10:50 am
EuiHuack Kang
The central question we would like to raise in this course is about “modernity.” This term has been variously defined throughout social and literary history. We are concerned with “modernity” not because the literary trajectory we are following roughly overlaps with the broad periodic definition of modernity. Rather, our question arises primarily because modernity is such a central, though complex, concept that without properly addressing modernity we cannot clearly see what we call post-modernity—that is, our own age. I hope this course will enable us to seriously think about what is modernity, how modernity is constructed, why we call our age post-modern, where is the right place to locate modernity, etc. 

ENGL 108: British Literature and British Culture – City Lit
CRN: 22313
Days: TTh 9:30-10:45
Anna Kornbluh
City Lit: This class introduces students to British literature and culture from the 19th through the 21st centuries by studying the connections between the city of London and the genre of the novel.  Like novels, cities are worlds unto themselves, arising from human relationships and human intentions, but ultimately taking on lives of their own.  Both spontaneous and designed, cities are spaces of communion and alienation, of excitement and danger, of beauty and degradation, of the banal and the extraordinary.  What is it about cities that makes them such great fodder for novels?  What is it about the novel that prompts it so often to urban exploration?  Readings will include excerpts from history and theory of urban experience, and novels by Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Hanif Kureishi, John Lanchester, and others.

ENGL 109: American Literature and American Culture
CRN: 27713/27714
Days: MWF 8:00-8:50 am
Mary Hale
The Color of Life in the Fiction of the Gilded Age: In his 1884 essay, “The Art of Fiction,” Henry James exhorts fellow novelists to “try and catch the color of life” in their literary work; as America sought to define itself amidst the political and social battles of reconstruction and emancipation, the labor disputes of the Gilded Age, the migrations of westward expansion, and the shifting demographics of wide-scale immigration, theories of the form and purpose of the novel began to command greater attention. In this course, we will consider the way in which various literary movements, such as realism and naturalism, responded to and contributed to this era of social upheaval and artistic definition. Through the development and use of close reading techniques, students will examine the literary devices and formal structures that defined these literary categories and participate in conversations about the way in which art, and particularly the novel, formally and thematically thinks about the world in which it is written. The course will include novels and short stories by Mark Twain, Henry James, William Dean Howells, Charles Chesnutt, Edith Wharton, and others.

ENGL 109: American Literature and American Culture
CRN: 25237/25233
DAYS: MWF 12:00-12:50
Trevor Strunk
This course will introduce students to the many literary and aesthetic debates surrounding inclusion and exclusion in the American political community after World War II.  We can see the promise of community and consensus in much of what is taken for granted about America’s identity as a nation: the American Dream imagines a kind of upward mobility for all in the US community, regardless of origin, class, or race; the many rights and privileges given to the American people in the Constitution seem to promise a kind of communally assured equality; and even the very concept of democracy relies on a shared belief in the equality of participation and the validity of broad majority consensus.  After the world historically catastrophic events of World War II – the Holocaust; the introduction and use of nuclear weapons; and the massively lethal war itself – this consensus was dramatically challenged.  How can one imagine ethical national consensus after systematic genocide?  Is the figure of the community still valid?  And is the individual subject outside of community really an acceptable alternative?  This course intends to determine in what ways literary and aesthetic objects have attempted not only to answer these questions, but also to question the truth of a classical American consensus in the first place.  The novels we will be reading in this class will therefore focus on the question of what it means to be “outside” of a national polis – whether one is excluded because of class, race, gender, sexuality, or otherwise.  They will focus on the conspiratorial, the deductive, the mysterious, and the unanswerable, and will all attempt to provide a vision of the American consensus and community by looking at the problem from a negative position.  It will be our job in the class to work out these aesthetic positions on the political and ourselves deduce how accurate or explanatory we believe them to be in not only questioning the American community, but also the very idea of an American subject. Texts will include novels by Thomas Pynchon, Karen Tei Yamashita, Colson Whitehead, and others.

ENGL 109: American Literature and American Culture
CRN: 25231/25235
Days: TR 9:30-10:45
Davis Brecheisen
The course will introduce twentieth century American literature through the lens of its frequent obsession with money and wealth. At once coveted and disdained, wealth and the wealthy have served as literary figures for social desires and anxieties of the American empire since there was such a thing. Throughout the semester will examine the ways in which literary works have represented shifting views of money and how people get it from the decadence of the Jazz Age to the most recent implosion of the economy in 2008. Texts for this course will include novels by Fitzgerald, Hammett, Whitehead, and Franzen among others. 

ENGL 110: Popular Film Genres (English and American Popular Genres)
CRN: 11166
DAYS: Tuesday 2-4:45, Thursday 2-3:15
A Blended Learning Course, 30% online
Marsha F. Cassidy
This course surveys popular film genres and their prominent conventions, especially focusing on the spy story, detection and crime, film noir, horror, and romance.  Lectures and online exercises introduce students to theories of popular culture, genre theory, postmodernism, and the link between gender and genre.  Questions of racial and ethnic representations also overarch the course.  Each Tuesday, a feature-length film is screened as a required part of classwork.  Films studied in the past include Goldfinger, The Siege, The Maltese Falcon, Desperado, The Killer, The Exorcist, Pride and Prejudice, Memento, and Shaun of the Dead.
Past students have praised the benefits of blended learning in English 110:
1. Shortens classroom time on screening days
2. Reduces or eliminates some lectures
3. Allows students to work online at their own pace, anywhere, anytime
4. Allows all students the opportunity to express opinions and insights in Blogs and Forums
5. Fosters creativity in online projects and Wiki pages
*English 110 fulfills a Humanities requirement in the Creative Arts and the Individual in Society.
*With permission, English 110 counts as credit toward the Moving Image Arts Minor

ENGL 111: Women and Literature
CRN: 32312
Days: MWF 9:00-9:50
Elvira Godek-Kiryluk
This course will focus on the representation of the Woman Question in literature, but we will also look at representations of women in painting and cinema as well as representations of women in non-fictional political and commercial genres. We’ll read texts mostly from the second half of the nineteenth century through Modernism and evaluate the meaning of political stakes for the arts themselves. The readings will be drawn from continental Europe (France, Russia, Germany) and from the United States. They will consist of works written by women and men. The question of what is to be done, which animates much of the discourse in the nineteenth century, will be paired with questions about what art is and what it thinks it can do from the point of view those queries were formulated in the twentieth century by Modernism. There will be short papers, a midterm, and a final exam.

ENGL/NAST 112: Introduction to Native American Literatures                                    
CRN 34771/34772            
Days: MWF 1:00 – 1:50 pm
MaryAnne Lyons
The goal of this course is to familiarize you with the literatures of Native America, from traditional oral narratives and rituals to the most recent works of living Native American and First Nations authors. We will look at these works within the contexts of the history, public policy, issues, trends, and influences that inform them. We will focus primarily on the genres of fiction and life-writing, with some attention also given to poetry and film. The course is intended as a beginning, an introduction, rather than a complete and comprehensive account of the languages, literatures, cultures, and histories of the hundreds of Native American and First Nations groups who call this continent home.

ENGL 113: Introduction to Multiethnic Literatures in the United States
CRN: 11238
Days: MWF 11:00-11:50 am
Smita Das
This course will examine multiethnic literatures in the United States and the complex ways that identities are produced through narratives.  Through our study of African American, Latin American, Asian American, and Native American literature, we will interrogate theories of dislocation, borders/borderlands, hybridity, transnationalism, alienation, and assimilation.  In critically engaging with “minority” literatures, we will explore how writers use form and language as a way to produce counter-narratives and alternative histories of nation, national identity, and belonging.  By focusing on multiple forms of the novel, such as science fiction and magical realism, we will consider the ways that silenced or marginalized histories emerge, contest, and transform the political, ideological, geographical, economic, and cultural spaces of the nation-state.

ENGL 113: Introduction to Multiethnic Literature in the U.S.
CRN: 25649
Days: TR 11:00 am-12:15 pm
Julie Fiorelli
Multiethnic literatures in the U.S. – e.g., African American, Asian American, Latino/a, and Native American literatures – arise out of specific historical and cultural contexts.  These various literatures also share a common commitment to some form of identity – whether racial, ethnic, or cultural – as a means toward formulating either a more inclusive sense of American national identity or a more pluralist sense of culture.  They therefore demonstrate a societal tension between what might be called universality and particularity.  This course will explore this tension by examining multiethnic U.S. literary texts and nonfiction essays that attempt to elucidate the status of the ethnic U.S. subject and ethnic literature.  Central to the course is the complex relationship between the ethnic subject and the nation, which includes factors such as citizenship rights, immigration and migration, class and labor, gender/sexuality, and cultural norms.  Particular attention will be devoted to literary representations of this relationship during times of war.
While this course is concerned with what works of multiethnic literature have to say about these topics, it is equally concerned with how they say it.  We will therefore be practicing close reading skills to make the connection between aesthetics and political/ideological impact.  Course requirements include two literary analysis papers (4-6 pages each), a midterm exam, and a final exam.  Students will be expected to prepare for and participate actively in discussion, and to lead discussion at least once.  Readings for the course may include authors such as Sherman Alexie, W.E.B. Du Bois, Gwendolyn Brooks, Chester Himes, John Okada, Toni Morrison, Leslie Marmon Silko, Gloria Anzaldua, Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Junot Diaz.

ENGL 115: Understanding the Bible as Literature
CRN: 32306, 32307, 32306, 35587
Days: MWF 9:00-9:50
Rachel Havrelock
This introductory class presents a literary perspective on the Bible.  Each week revolves around a particular theme with one lecture on the Hebrew Bible and one on the New Testament.  Themes include creation, birth, the hero, the mountain, purity, the Temple, suffering, Satan, and the end.  As we place biblical texts in their historical contexts, we will consider the Bible as a literary work with distinct genres, themes and conventions. The thematic connections between the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament will be explored at the same time that differences in their style and message are investigated. While reading the Bible, we will develop a vocabulary for discussing literary texts as well as a vocabulary specific to texts from the ancient world. This lively and pluralistic course provides a thorough introduction to the literature of the Bible.

ENGL 117: Introduction to Gender, Sexuality and Literature
CRN 30900
Days: MWF 10:00-10:50am
M. Shelly Conner
We will explore larger issues of gender and sexuality through the lens afforded us by 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 117:  Introduction to Gender, Sexuality, and Literature
CRN 25656
Days:  TR 11:00-12:15pm
Virginia Konchan
Topics for this course include the impact of race and class on sexuality (and vice versa); the relationship between various feminisms (coalitional, Marxist, Gaga) and lesbian practice; AIDS activism and commemorating the dead; queer performance; gender, embodiment, and mental illness; prostitution and the commercial sex-industry, the governance of sexuality, and the relationships between economic structures, sexuality and sexual norms.  We will read from a variety of literary genres—novels, poems, plays, short stories, and memoir.  Authors to include Luce Irigaray, Susan Bordo, Tony Kushner, Audre Lorde, Kathy Acker, Alison Bechdel, Leslie Feinberg, Rosi Braidotti, David Wojnarowicz, Katherine Dunn, Arturo Islas, Elizabeth Grosz, Randall Kenan, and JT LeRoy.

ENGL 120: Film and Culture         
CRN 35432         
Days: M 3:00 – 5:45 PM; W 3:00 – 4:45 PM
MaryAnne Lyons
Topic: The Western
Stories of the Wild West have been a popular theme in American culture from the dime novels of the mid-nineteenth century and the earliest days of the film era, through the pinnacle of the Hollywood studio system one hundred years later. The influence of the Western continues to be seen in more recent times in novels like Lonesome Dove and the TV miniseries it inspired, and films as diverse as True Grit (2010), Brokeback Mountain (2005), and Django Unchained (2012). In this course, we will explore both written and filmic texts that illustrate the ways in which the Western constitutes a kind of American origin myth, focusing in particular on some of the major themes, motifs, and conflicts embodied in the genre, including the tensions inherent in the rhetorical binaries of cowboy/Indian, law/lawlessness, savagery/ civilization, and nature as inspiration/threat. 

ENGL 121/MOVI 121: Introduction to the Moving Image
CRN: 20666/33405
Days: M 3-4:50; W 3-5:45
Kate Boulay
This course provides an introduction to the history of the construction and dissemination of moving images in American society and culture. Working with images produced from the late 19th century onward, we focus on how moving images have been created and used to a) reveal ‘truth’ about the human body and b) discipline that same body. Visual texts examined include time and motion studies, early film and documentary, video, digital image making, Hollywood cinema, television, and animation. Additionally, we will consider military and medical imaging technologies. Although Euro-American texts are foregrounded, we will also examine key examples of contemporary documentary practice from India and China.

ENGL 122: Understanding Rhetoric: The Dialogue
CRN: 34823
Days: T/R 11:00-12:15
Lucas Johnson
Rhetoric, or the art of persuasion, finds one of its basic forms in the dialogue. Plato, a skeptic of vulgar rhetoric as simply persuasion rather than a process of exploration, wrote exclusively in dialogues, employing two main characters: a so-called “learned” intellectual (Socrates) and a common-sense citizen (student). Through dialogue, the character of Socrates would pose questions to the student (citizen) with whom he engaged, attempting to find common ground from which to begin the process of persuasion. Thus the inquiry between Socrates and his student would nearly always begin with agreement, rather than working toward agreement as an end. As such, Platonic dialogues were always in the process of questioning and, as such, were inquiries into undecided topics. In other words, Platonic dialogues did not begin with one person trying to persuade another (argument); rather the dialogues moved by questions, agreements, contradictions, and most importantly, agreeing on where two parties do not agree.

Thus the course will focus on persuasion that starts with agreement, or what is called a stasis point, which just means a point on which two reasonable people agree to disagree, and only then will we begin to explore the tools for advanced persuasion, such as the classic logos, ethos, pathos triumvirate. This course will be based exclusively around dialogues because we can simplify the art of persuasion by focusing simply on two people “dialoguing.” While we will likely begin with Plato, we will also pull dialogues from novels, plays, movies, youtube, television, your own experience–wherever we can. And students will be required to contribute a good part of the course content (dialogues) throughout the semester. Students will also be expected to write short papers, their own dialogues, and possibly even perform, record, videotape a dialogue with another student for the final project. The course, then, will focus on dialogic means of persuasion: question-posing, visual representation, narrative, agreement, and disagreement.

ENGL 122:  Understanding Rhetoric: Visualizing Persuasion
CRN: 32345
TR 2:00-3:15
Lindsay Marshall
Rhetoric is often associated with something politicians do in speeches (how many times have you heard the word rhetoric used as a synonym for empty promises or trickery?) but there is much more to the rhetorical than this. Though there are very specific (or for that matter, overly general) understandings about what rhetoric means or what it is, it is important to recognize that rhetoric is in everything. Simply put, because of its fluctuating and contextual nature, there is no strong definition that can describe “exactly” what rhetoric is in all cases. So, in this class, we will not be aiming to uncover absolute truths, but will instead be working to develop and exercise a rhetorical awareness of what and how things mean. In this course, we will be looking at rhetoric as both a critical and constructive art. We’ll start the semester by learning about ancient Greek and Roman thinking on rhetoric, and will then move into more contemporary notions of rhetoric, ones which can allow us to (rhetorically) think through the kinds of visual images and messages we encounter in our everyday lives.

200 Level

ENGL 200: Basic English Grammar
CRN: 34460
TR 12:30-1:45
Robert R. Romeo
We were born with an innate ability to speak our first language, and by kindergarten we had enough language competence to produce grammatical sentences. This “internalized knowledge” of our first language is something we take for granted.
This is an English grammar course. Those of us who speak English as a first language often have not looked at the patterns, relationships and structures upon which the English sentence is built. We will do so this semester. You are expected to learn the terminology associated with this discipline.
Our goal will be to look carefully at the English language and its grammar – a fascinating, useful and intricate body of knowledge. By taking a close look and having experiences with these tools, you will develop a working relationship with the components and patterns of English grammar.
Native speakers will probably have an advantage. That is not to say that non-native speakers cannot do well; it means that, many times, the native speaker will be able to rely on the “internalized knowledge” mentioned above.

ENGL 200: Basic English Grammar
CRN: 21003
Days: T/R 9:30 – 10:45
Mimi Rosenbush
This course will closely examine the English sentence. Through diagramming experiences, students will develop an understanding of basic sentence elements, the expanded verb pattern, and sentence variations and their applications. The last part of the class will cover morphology and purposeful punctuation. In addition to take-home quizzes and exams, students will complete two projects: a syntactical and morphological analysis of Jabberwocky, and Language Logs, an analysis of grammatically interesting variations of standard sentences. 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 200: Basic English Grammar
CRN: 35758
MWF 12:00-12:50 a.m.
Katherine Parr
Knowledge of grammar is an important component to writing.  It enables a writer to produce sentence structures that affect how well a message, essay, or other document will be received by readers.  This section of Basic English Grammar will apply a rhetorical lens to the traditional study of grammar with an emphasis on style.  Students will recognize parts of speech in terms of their functions 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 and will examine works by professional writers to discover their grammatical and stylistic choices.

ENGL 201: Introduction to the Writing of Non-fiction Prose
CRN: 12068
MWF 1:00-1:50 p.m.
Chris Girman
What is creative non-fiction?   In the simplest terms: real life.  In this course we look at how cultural essays, childhood memoirs, literary journalism, diaries, and a variety of other non-fiction formats attempt to give form to the chaos of life. We will read some of the modern non-fiction masters and apply some of what we learn to the writing of our own non-fiction works.  Expect to live, and then expect to write about your experiences.  One thing is certain: be prepared to take some risks in this course.  We'll be returning to distant memories, critiquing popular culture, researching new subjects, challenging ourselves in experimental projects, and contemplating our place in the world through travel narratives and spiritual considerations.  We do this together--through direct reading and the critiquing of each other's work.  We are going to fall flat on our faces sometimes, and that's okay.  As one prominent creative non-fiction practitioner puts it, “If we are rigorous enough, fearless enough, and humble enough to attempt this responsibility, this way of seeing, the rewards we reap will be great: we will understand.”

ENGL 202:  Media and Professional Writing
CRN:  32314
MWF 10:00-10:50 a.m.
Katherine Parr
One of the most competitive media towns in America, Chicago provides a dynamic backdrop for English 202.  Through readings, class discussions, writing, interviews, and Internet based technology, students gain a perspective on today’s media and public relations professions.  Because of technological changes and accompanying financial constraints, media, especially, is undergoing historical transformation.  Students in 202 seeking jobs in media and public relations will learn how to prepare for the shifting landscape in those industries.  Furthermore, students will prepare for internships as writers in those industries.
This section of English 202 will reflect the workings of the professional workplace.  Your assignments are drawn from the kinds of assignments you would be given in the field of media communications -- whether as a journalist, a public relations professional, or a technical writer.  Because media communication has become entwined with the Internet, we will use some of our time on to work in the computer lab, SCAILAB.  I hope that we can truly reflect the professional workplace, optimizing your experience as a professional writer, and that you will enjoy the class.

ENGL 202: Media and Professional Writing
CRN: 26210
Days: MWF 12:00-12:50
Jay Shearer
In this course, students develop a fresh perspective on--and skills regarding--writing for media and public relations.  Through extensive reading, interviewing, writing and discussion, they learn to analyze and produce work appropriate for these dynamically evolving industries.  Our coursework acknowledges this as a moment of acute transformation in the way we ingest and disseminate the printed word.  Taking these shifts into account, students will develop confidence as media writers and future participants in the professional workplace.  They will examine multiple aspects of media and communications--from journalism to company PR--and eventually produce a writing portfolio (and/or press kit), preparing them for internship and employment opportunities to come.

English 210: Introduction to Poetry Writing
CRN: 12082
MWF 11:00-11:50
Chris Glomski
Welcome to Introduction to Writing Poetry, a creative writing course designed to improve students’ skills as writers and readers of poetry.  It is intended for students with little or no formal experience in writing poetry and is open to students of all majors.  To orient and sustain our efforts, this section of Writing Poetry will function as part discussion and part workshop.  During the discussion portions, we will discuss weekly topics and assigned readings; a workshop devoted to discussion of original student poems will follow.  You will be expected to demonstrate considerable familiarity with assigned readings and--as the semester progresses--cumulative working knowledge of basic concepts and forms. 

ENGL 210: Introduction to the Writing of Poetry
CRN 12086
TR 9:30-10:45
Sara Tracey
In English 210, you will not only learn to generate, edit, and revise your own poems, but you will also gain experience in close reading and discussion of poems written by others.  Half of the course will focus on reading and discussing the works of both classic and contemporary poets while introducing important literary terms and techniques.  The other half of the course will focus on reading, annotating, and discussing student-generated poems (in other words, the class will become a workshop).  Ultimately, you will leave this course with 1) the ability to thoughtfully discuss poetry as a scholar and 2) have a strong understanding of the craft of poetry as well. 

ENGL 212:  Introduction to the Writing of Fiction
CRN: 36170
MWF 2:00-2:50pm
Brooke Wonders
In this course, we will read and interpret works of short fiction covering a range of genres, from older realist works to contemporary experimental fiction.  During the first half of the semester, expect to produce weekly reading responses as well as in-class writing activities geared toward practicing the techniques under discussion, including common narrative devices like repetition, setting, character, dialogue, dramatization, and imagery.  The second half of the semester will be devoted to workshop. You will write two short stories (each 10-15 pages in length) and critique your peers’ submissions.  Following these workshops, you will submit a portfolio containing an aesthetic statement, and at least one story revision based on class feedback.

ENGL 212: Introduction to the Writing of Fiction
CRN: 12098
TR 2:00-3:15
James Adcox
The focus of this course will be different types of fictional prose, and the process of writing them(/it). We will be reading a variety of prose and writing some very short stories as well as one longer piece (8-20 pgs). In our reading we will cover conventional pieces and experimental works in order to experience the range of the art of fiction. Through directed writing exercises and discussions of your own and published work, we’ll acquire a vocabulary for talking about prose from the point of view of the writer, as well as practice some of the most important skills required for this art. This course will be a combination of a studio and a discussion class. I expect you to come to class prepared to write and talk.

ENGL 212: Introduction to the Writing of Fiction
CRN: 22428
MWF 9:00-9:50 a.m.
Maggie Andersen
In this course, students will review the history and traditions of fiction and explore the genre first-hand. We’ll read several forms of fiction and various authors, analyzing techniques of character and plot development as well as literary movements and their significance. Student writing will include an analytic review of an established author’s work, a mini-review of a local literary event, a literary magazine presentation, and two original stories, which will be workshopped in class. (Each student will submit one revised story at the end of the term.) Students are also expected to take their assigned turns as primary critics and participate actively in the workshop process.

ENGL 212: Introduction to the Writing of Fiction
CRN 12103
T/TH 9:30-10:45
Laura Krughoff
In this course, students will be introduced to the fundamental techniques of fiction writing.  We will read, discuss, and analyze the work of master short story writers in addition to reading a helpful book on craft.  These readings will be used to model various literary styles and techniques, and the first half of the semester will be spent developing and honing these skills.  In the second half of the semester, students will write two short stories and revise one of those stories at the end of the semester.  Students will participate in workshops of their peers’ fiction, in which they will analyze and critique short stories with the intention of developing successful strategies for revision.  There will also be regular quizzes, short writing assignments, and a mid-term exam.

English 222: Tutoring at the Writing Center          
CRN:  12110
T 3:30-4:45
Vainis Aleksa
Members of the course learn to help fellow students be successful at writing. As we will learn, success has many dimensions – it includes communicating effectively, but also finding in the process meaning and reward.  A part of what can be meaningful is having a supportive, engaged, and resourceful conversation about writing with a peer. In addition to helping writers with clarity, organization, and editing, tutors learn to create conversations that are full: conversations that can build confidence, share ideas,  model the use of resources, demystify expectations, and make writers feel welcome to return in the future.  The course meets weekly for instruction. Students schedule two additional hours weekly for tutoring. Assigned reading includes Rhetorical Grammar by Martha Kolln, The Bedford Guide for Writing Tutors by Leigh Ryan and Lisa Zimmerelli, and articles on increasing the range and depth of effective support. Students will write weekly, including a longer writing project at the end of the semester.

English 222: Tutoring at the Writing Center
CRN: 32315
M: 3:00-4:15
Tyler Mills
Members of this course will develop both the knowledge and practical experience to develop one’s  skills as a tutor and as a writer, particularly as a tutor of writing. Students will work together to develop tutoring and writing skills through a variety of activities: observation of experienced tutors, readings in writing center theory and pedagogy, class discussion, thoughtful evaluation of our one’s own writing process and tutoring philosophy, professional development, a final project, and most importantly, a weekly commitment to tutoring undergraduate students in the Writing Center. The course meets weekly for instruction. Students schedule two additional hours weekly for tutoring. Course goals include the following: dedication to the ethics of tutoring; knowledge of the strategies for effective tutoring; greater insight into your own writing process; knowledge to strengthen your own writing, research, and critical thinking skills; development of writing skills, including applying grammar to asses written work, in terms of organization, grammar, style, and coherence; and valuable professional experience. Assigned reading includes Rhetorical Grammar by Martha Kolln, The Bedford Guide for Writing Tutors by Leigh Ryan and Lisa Zimmerelli, and articles on increasing the range and depth of effective support. Students will write weekly, including a longer writing project at the end of the semester.

ENGL 222: Tutoring at the Writing Center          
CRN:  33816
R 2:00-3:15
Vainis Aleksa
Members of the course learn to help fellow students be successful at writing. As we will learn, success has many dimensions – it includes communicating effectively, but also finding in the process meaning and reward.  A part of what can be meaningful is having a supportive, engaged, and resourceful conversation about writing with a peer. In addition to helping writers with clarity, organization, and editing, tutors learn to create conversations that are full: conversations that can build confidence, share ideas,  model the use of resources, demystify expectations, and make writers feel welcome to return in the future.  The course meets weekly for instruction. Students schedule two additional hours weekly for tutoring. Assigned reading includes Rhetorical Grammar by Martha Kolln, The Bedford Guide for Writing Tutors by Leigh Ryan and Lisa Zimmerelli, and articles on increasing the range and depth of effective support. Students will write weekly, including a longer writing project at the end of the semester.

English 232: History of Film I: 1890 to World War II
CRN: 12114/12118
Days: MW 3:00-4:50
Martin Rubin
An overview of film history from the late 19th century to the late 1940s.  Topics covered include the invention of cinema, the evolution of the film director, the rise of narrative cinema, the birth of documentary, German expressionist cinema, Soviet montage cinema, Japanese silent cinema, the coming of sound, and Italian neorealism.  Filmmakers covered include Georges Méliès, D.W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Robert Flaherty, Sergei Eisenstein, Yasujiro Ozu, Josef von Sternberg, Orson Welles, and Vittorio De Sica.   The emphasis of the course is on formal analysis of the films and excerpts that are screened in class, and on the films’ historical and aesthetic contexts.  Course requirements include regular quizzes and essay assignments.

ENGL 240: Words and Power, An Introduction to Literary Theory
CRN: 31753/31756
Days: MWF 10:00-10:50
Sunil Agnani
Socrates found poets to be so dangerous he wanted to exile them from his Republic. Who fears poets and literature today? Perhaps we should more than we are aware. Both totalitarian and democratic regimes arguably have ways of regulating words, spreading myths, and mitigating dissent. This course introduces and explores links between literature and the world it describes, guided by a question: what are the links between words and power, and between aesthetics and politics? Chronologically, the focus is on four eras: classical Greece (Plato & Aristotle) as we think of how the sophists related to public debate; Enlightenment Europe, where challenges to monarchic and despotic power found expression in a new type of writing on art and literary texts (Hume, Burke, Kant, de Staël); the nineteenth century (Hegel, Coleridge, Baudelaire, Nietzsche); and finally the modern and (almost) contemporary era, where a range of literary theories re-visit and reformulate this question (Saussure, Roland Barthes, Adorno, Benjamin, Foucault, Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak). Due attention will be paid to pessimists as well as optimists (e.g. Matthew Arnold alongside excerpts from Marx). Ideally, completing a course like this should prepare you for reading further in a variety of critical and theoretical styles.

English 240: Introduction to Literary Study
CRN: 32318
TR: 12:30-1:45
Cathy Birkenstein-Graff
Controversy, arguably, is the generating force that drives both literature and the study, analysis, and criticism of literature.  Many novels, for instance, contain characters who engage in heated debates over the central issues that the novel itself is about and that literary critics often take as their own points of departure.  This section of English 240--a Writing-in-the- Disciplines Course designed to introduce English majors to basic methods for analyzing literature--focuses around debate and controversy, suggesting that the very same principles of debate and conversation so commonly used to stimulate students' insights in in-class conversations should also be central in student writing.  The  assigned readings by Flannery O'Connor, George Orwell, William Shakespeare, and Matthew Arnold will therefore be read for the debates they provoke between you, the students, and between critics with competing methodologies.  In addition, students will be encouraged to summarize and take a position in these debates in their writing.  Our guide in this debate-centered approach will be _They Say/I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing_, a textbook co-written by this course's instructor, which suggests that writing is best when it enters controversies and debates.

English 240: Introduction to Literary Study
CRN: 29078
MWF 2:00-2:50
Robin Reames
Why do we read novels, and what happens when we do? In this course we will read a small selection of novels by Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Gaskell, Chinua Achebe, and David Mitchell in order to examine such questions as: What is the novel? How has the idea of the text changed over time? How do theory and cultural criticism impact composition? We will read and write critically about these texts by examining them through theory, including theories of the novel, psychoanalysis, Marxism, Postcolonialism (including race and gender), and Poststructuralism. In this way we will use theory to interpret literature. In so doing, students will explore what it means to read literature, what it means to critique literature, and what it means to theorize about both of these activities. The course focuses heavily on students’ own writing and aims to facilitate students’ engagement in these critical debates about reading literature.

ENGL 240: “Why doesn’t it just say that?”
CRN: 22356
Days: R 9:30 - 10:45
Nasser Mufti
“Why doesn’t it just say that?” At the heart of this question (often posed to works of literature) is why a text withholds something from us? But the question is equally about why we care to find out what is being kept from us. Why does a text tell us some things, and not others? Should we uncover this secret, or is it part of the experience of reading? Is what is being withheld always the same? In this course, we will think about these and other questions from a range of perspectives. Looking at Marxist, psycho-analytic, structuralist and post-structuralist literary theory, as well as literature itself, we will think about the ways in which writers have thought about what lies hidden in texts.

ENGL 241:  Introduction to English Literature: Beginnings to 1660
CRN:  12171
Days:  MW  12:00-12:50, Lecture;  Friday sections 11:00, 12:00
Mary Beth Rose
This course will survey English literature from the Anglo-Saxon era through the late seventeenth century. We will study texts from the medieval and  early modern centuries with the following goals: exploring the development  of literary forms, such as lyric and narrative poetry, drama, satire, and  prose fiction and non-fiction; becoming acquainted with various kinds of  literary analysis and approaches, including close, in-depth reading of texts and  examining the ways that texts participate in history;  and considering  the changing representation of such issues as gender, social class, race, and heroism.

ENGL 242: HIstory of English Literature II: 1660-1900
CRN:12192,12174,12180,22314,22315
MW 10-10:50 (lecture), F 9-9:50, 10-10:50 (discussion)
Mark Canuel
This course surveys British literature by authors ranging from the Augustans to the late Victorians.  Our aim is to read and critically examine a range of works written in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  We will accomplish this by reading widely, discussing works in class, and providing responses in short classroom assignments and longer essays.  Classroom discussions will tend to emphasize techniques of close reading that enhance our appreciation of specific formal strategies involved in writing novels, plays, or poems.  Thus, we will often focus on selected areas of text from the assigned readings rather than produce generalized accounts of all of them.  In addition, we will add depth to our study of literary works by considering them in relation to specific historical contexts, including constructions of sexual, racial, and national identity; the altering social role of established religion; the relationship between literature and social form.  Requirements: attendance and participation in all classes, occasional short quizzes or assignments, two papers, mid-term and final examinations.

300 Level

ENGL 303: Studies in Poetry
CRN: 29861
Days: TR 12:30-1:45 PM
Jennifer Ashton
In this course we’ll study poetry not only in the form of specific poems and the aims of specific poets, but as something larger in scope. That is, we’ll consider poetry not so much as a collection of cultural products than as, to borrow the words of the poet and critic Allen Grossman, an ongoing “civilizational project.” Our texts will span several centuries and two continents, beginning with the anonymous 13th-century Scots ballad, “The Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence,” and ending with two rewritings of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, one by the American poet John Beer, and the other by the Canadian poet Kevin Davies. In between we’ll look at major works from major periods and developments, including representatives of metaphysical poetry, the romantic lyric, modernism, Black Arts, language poetry, conceptual poetry, spoken word and rap. From the outset we’ll consider basic questions about the kind of art poetry is and claims to be – what the requirements are for its reading (students will become proficient “close readers” by the end of the semester); what constitutes its meaning; who is speaking; how to understand the relationship between each poem’s very distinctive formal qualities and the various communicative aims it does and doesn’t pursue; and how poets view their work in light of that of their predecessors. Students will draft and revise two 4-6-pp papers, and complete an in-class midterm and a take-home final. Active participation in discussion is expected of all students in the course.

ENGL 313: MAJOR PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE
CRN: 34171
MW 11:00-11:50, F Sections 10:00-10:50, 11:00-11:50
Lisa A. Freeman
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. We will also explore many of the latest online and digital tools for studying Shakespeare and work as a class ensemble toward developing some of our own.

ENGL 315: Enlightenment Narratives, Colonial Subjects: Literature & Empire in the 18th Century
CRN: 29611
Days: MWF 1:00-1:50
Sunil Agnani
The global world we take for granted today was formed in the 18th century through world-wide commerce, maritime trade, and the establishment of colonial empires—in short, early capitalism. Alongside these social and economic phenomena were contentious cultural and political debates on sovereignty and slavery. If this is so, how can we read Europe’s literature in a cosmopolitan manner? How did writers and thinkers in this period conceive of cultural, racial and religious difference? We explore a tension between two organizing terms: “Enlightenment narratives” stress ideas of progress, the forward march of humanity, an ever widening circle of freedom, etc., associated with the period; yet the perspective of many “colonial subjects” allows us to question this optimistic view of the era. As Diderot once put, angrily addressing his European reader, “you are proud of your Enlightenment, but what good is it for the Hottentot?” (Just who the Hottentots were and why Diderot invokes this South African tribal group is a topic of one class). We read novels (from Aphra Behn, Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, and Rousseau), life narratives (Olaudah Equiano) and prose writings (Adam Smith on commerce, Edmund Burke on India and France) to explore these questions. Denis Diderot’s imagination of Tahiti as a kind of sexual utopia raises the question of sexuality in the period, and we pursue that topic with consideration of gender in the Enlightenment (Wollstonecraft, de Gouges). Topics considered include ideas of savagery and civilization, slavery and abolition, and revolution. We conclude with Rousseau’s theory of education proposed in his novel Émile.

ENGL 321 Early American Literature: 1630 to 1790
CRN: 34472
Days: T/Th 12:30-1:45
Robin Grey
Early American literature is extraordinarily diverse, covering everything from gothic novels, travel narratives, memoirs and poetry to witchcraft trials, political pamphlets, sermons, and contact narratives with Native Americans. This course will examine a sampling of fictional and nonfictional texts from these genres in order to provide a foundation for understanding many aspects of American national identity and culture to the present day. We will also be tracing out the beginnings of literature in America, despite a variety of biases against it. Some of the issues we will examine as they are raised in these narratives are: the volatile footing on which intercultural relations are established with Native Americans; the fragile nature of American nationhood during the American Revolution and shortly thereafter, prompting conspiracy theories about “foreigners”; the problem of social conformity and the eruption of witchcraft trials; the problem of fiction/poetry and female autonomy in early America; the notion of an “American Dream” and the problem of centralized versus decentralized government; as well as the sometimes problematic underpinnings of American evangelicalism and Protestant work ethic.
Sample authors and texts: Anne Bradstreet’s poetry; Charles Brockden Brown’s Gothic Novels Wieland and Ormond; Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography; Colin Calloway’s Dawnland Encounters (English and French contact narratives with Native Americans); testimonies from the Salem Witchcraft Trials; a narrative of King Philip’s War (Native American tribal warfare with New England settlers).
Requirements: a midterm, two 5-7 page papers, a final examination, and occasional short analyses of readings. Class participation will be important

ENGL 324: American Literature from 1865 to 1900
CRN: 35460
Tuesdays and Thursdays; 2:00-3:15
Walter Benn Michaels
The last third of the 19th century was an interesting period in American history. It was marked by extraordinary economic growth (in 1870 we were the world’s 4th largest economy; by 1900 we were the largest), by increasing class conflict (e.g. the Haymarket Affair in 1886), by the emergence of a new “radical” racism (e.g. the 1896 decision in Plessy v Ferguson), and by the emergence of American writers (especially Henry James) whose work began to matter not just to a national but to an international audience. In this class, we will focus especially on the period between 1880 and 1900 and on developments in the novel. We’ll be interested both in the new artistic ambitions of American fiction and in the way those ambitions intersected with social developments like the ones mentioned above. In addition to James, we’ll read texts by such writers as Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Kate Chopin, Charles Chesnutt and Theodore Dreiser.

ENGL 325: Modern American Fiction

CRN: 34477
TR 11-12:15PM
Chris Messenger
 (chrism1@uic.edu)
We'll study the curve of modern American fiction through the classic realists and modernists such as Dreiser, Cather, Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Faulkner. We'll track issues of elite and popular fiction, the move from naturalism to realism to modernism, the rise of gender studies in our time to critique American classic modernists. Works and authors will include Dreiser, SISTER CARRIE; Cather, MY ANTONIA, THE PROFESSOR’S HOUSE; Hemingway, IN OUR TIME, THE GARDEN OF EDEN; Fitzgerald, TENDER IS THE NIGHT, THE LOVE OF THE LAST TYCOON; and Faulkner, LIGHT IN AUGUST. Writing will include several ungraded reaction, two short (5-7pp.) papers. a midsemester exam, and a final exam. Discussion format whenever possible. Inquiries welcome.

ENGL 342: Cultural and Media Studies: On TV
CRN: 35485
Days: TR 2:00 - 3:15
Nicholas Brown
For much of television’s history, the question about TV was not whether it was a medium capable of sustaining art. Presumptively, it was not. Rather, the question was whether the entertainment that television could sustain was in some way harmful — culturally, socially, or indeed neurologically. Abruptly, in a shift that occurred more or less with the turn of the twenty-first century, television began to carry long-form narrative no longer constrained by the middlebrow constraints of the television miniseries or the episodic conventions of the television drama. It seems intuitively plausible that in our time television is capable of sustaining art. But what does such a claim mean, and what does it entail? What are the conditions of possibility — economic, technical, and aesthetic — that enabled such a shift? Most importantly, what uses have been made of it? Aside from historical, theoretical, and critical writings, material covered will include seasons or selections from The Wire, Deadwood, Sons of Anarchy, Justified, Dexter, Six Feet Under, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Girls, Mad Men, Homeland (Hatufim), Twin Peaks, The Prisoner, Battlestar Galactica, The Boss, The Killing (Forbrydelsen), Downton Abbey, and others.

ENGL 372: History of Literary Criticism
CRN: 35511
Days: MWF 12:00-12:50
Christina Pugh
This course will provide a study in the highlights of literary criticism from Plato and Longinus through deconstruction. The issues raised in this span of critical writing are of course manifold, but some of the questions we’ll address will be the following: what is the role of the writer or poet in social and cultural life? How “present” is the poet/ writer, or his or her consciousness, in the literary work? Where does meaning reside – inside or outside of the text, and how will we discern the borders that would define such a distinction? How does literature impact, or become parasitic upon, the other arts such as painting, photography, or music? What are the limits of literature as an art form? The course will include short papers, a longer paper, and an oral presentation.

400 Level

ENGL 402: Rhetoric
CRN: 35512/35513
MWF:  11:00-11:50
Robin Reames
How do texting, tweeting, and updating your status impact your ways of thinking? And what does this have to do with the ancient world or with rhetoric? This course is designed to offer students an intensive study of central topics in rhetorical theory in their historical depth. In particular, we will examine the beginnings of the discipline of rhetoric as a byproduct of the “literate revolution” in ancient Greece, where the development of writing technology transformed thought and enabled the development of the rhetorical technology. We will trace this transformation from antiquity to the early modern period, and ultimately to the present day, where our own “technographic revolution” transforms how we communicate, think, and live.

ENGL 419: Topics in Romantic Literature and Culture--The Gothic Novel
CRN: 35514,35515
M 3-5:45
Mark Canuel
Why have “Gothic” novels--novels about ghosts, demons, murderers, monsters, vampires, and so on--fascinated readers at least since the eighteenth century?  This course will entertain and explore the idea that perhaps not all Gothic literature is the same; the reasons for the popularity of the Twilight series and for the popularity of Frankenstein may differ in many interesting ways.  This course goes back to some of the earliest of Gothic fictions by Horace Walpole and Ann Radcliffe and investigates how these works arose as a way of framing imaginative responses to issues and problems in Britain and throughout the Western world.  Continuing with novels by “Monk” Lewis, William Godwin, Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, and others, we’ll talk about the relationship between novel-writing and discourses on race, religion, and political authority in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain.  Our studies will be combined with examinations of film and the visual arts.  Requirements: attendance, class presentations, one short paper, one longer research paper.

ENGL 422: The Two Nations?: Partition and Apartheid
CRN: 35517
Days: TR 2:00 - 3:15
Nasser Mufti
The partitioning of India in 1947 was a colonial invention. But it was also the culmination of an anti-colonial movement—it inaugurated the postcolonial moment in the Subcontinent. The very next year, another regime of separateness was institutionalized, but of a very different character: South African apartheid. Rather than a moment of liberation, apartheid was quite the opposite. In this course, we will do a comparative reading of these two histories and their pre-histories. What do partition and apartheid share in their colonial origins? How are two regimes of separateness legitimized, maintained, and contested? In what ways in separation imagined—cultural, political, geographic, national? Although our readings will come from a range of genres, the bulk will be fiction. Readings will include Sa’adat Manto, Nehru, Tagore, Jan Smuts, Peter Abrahams, La Guma, Gordimer, Coetzee. Theoretical texts include Partha Chatterjee, Ashis Nandy, Balibar, Mbembe and Derrida.

ENGL 427: Topics in American Literature and Culture: The Systems Novel
Days: TTh 11:00-12:15
Joseph Tabbi
The course is organized around the Routledge _Companion to Literature and Science_ (2010), a presentation of more than thirty fields of concentration, each of which offers alternatives to, or useful complications of, established literary practice. The goal of the course is to bring the richness of current literary study and practice into contact with key scientific concepts. Current developments in the physical, ecological, and and cognitive sciences, while themselves needing criticism, have a far wider circulation than literary theory in the public sphere and, within academia, beyond the Humanities. Such science-oriented approaches also cast a new light on some of our most ambitious current literary creations, in print and new media. Some of the authors considered include Don DeLillo, Tom McCarthy, Richard Powers, Thomas Pynchon, W.G. Sebald, Jean Winterson.

Recommended background reading (in addition to the Routledge_Companion_):
Brian Richardson and Ellen Spolsky, _The Work of Fiction: Culture, Cognition, Complexity_, Mark C Taylor, _Rewiring the Real: Conversations with William Gaddis, Richard Powers, Mark C Danielewsky, and Don DeLillo_.

Requirements: attendance; weekly 1-page papers, mid-term and final exam.

ENGL 446: Topics in Theory – The Critique of Everyday Life
CRN: 35759 / 35760
Days: TTh 11:00-12:15
Anna Kornbluh
The Critique of Everyday Life Everyday life is mundane, repetitive, and boring.  Yet ‘the everyday’ is absolutely fascinating to the genre of the novel, and is considered incredibly complex by important philosophies of socio-political relations like feminism and Marxism.  This course explores theories of everyday life, of social space and architecture, of power relations and the reproduction of society.  Theorists will include Bachelard, Benjamin, de Certeau, Foucault, Freud, Lefebvre, and Weber, and we will read them alongside a few key novels of varying realism by Austen, Dickens, Woolf, Baker, and Franzen.   

ENGL 459: Introduction to the Teaching of English in Middle and Secondary Schools
CRN: 32600/32601
T: 3:30-6:15
Sarah Donovan
In ENG 459 we ask the central question, Why teach English?  In doing so, we will uncover a range of theoretical assumptions we have about teaching, schools, students, and how we learn.  We will pay particular attention to competing discourses that attempt to answer this central question, and you will be asked to engage in this conversation by evaluating the usefulness and the limitations of different frameworks for imagining what it means to teach. One of our goals this semester will be to complicate our understanding of teaching and learning in order to better prepare ourselves to teach a culturally and linguistically diverse community like Chicago.  You will have the opportunity to participate in schools and examine these institutions as part of the larger socioeconomic, political, and cultural context that shapes them.  As part of your fieldwork (12-15 hours), you will join a practicing teacher at Chicago high school to participate in lessons and discussions about teaching.  In this way, we will attempt to bridge the gap between theory and practice and examine important ways in which these seemingly disparate notions are connected.   Another goal in the English Education program here, in addition to preparing professional teaching candidates for urban schools, is to examine the possibilities and the problems that come with teaching and consider how we might affect social change.  With this goal in mind, we will be looking carefully at what’s possible and what’s problematic about using a “social justice” or “anti-oppressive” approach to schooling. We will begin to re-imagine the role of the teacher as well as the function of schools in specific socioeconomic, political, and cultural contexts.

ENGL 473: Topics in African American Literature
CRN: 35770/35771/35812/35813
Days: TTH 9:30-10:45am
Ainsworth Clarke
From Black Studies to African American Studies and Back Again:
In the age of Obama the continued relevance of race and by extension departments of African American studies has increasingly been questioned. If race is receding as the defining term of African American experience, why should it still organize a field of knowledge? What, after all, are we studying when we study “Blackness”? This course aims, if not to answer these questions, to at least find a better way of asking them by turning to the debates that inform the establishment of Black Studies as a disciplinary field. This course is divided into three parts, each focused on a critical juncture in the development of Black Studies. We will first trace the emergence of Black Studies as a distinct field of inquiry in the 1890s in the work of W.E.B. Du Bois, Alexander Crummell, other members of the American Negro Academy before transitioning to a comparative analysis of that earlier moment with the terms governing the establishment of departments of Black Studies on the university campus in the late 1960s. We will conclude the semester by assessing the various contemporary attempts to rethink the field in the work of Alexander Weheliye, Henry Louis Gates, Ronald Judy, Fred Moten, Sylvia Wynter and others.

ENGL 474:  The Invisible Made Visible: Writers of Color in American Speculative Literature
CRN:  33613, 33614, 35761, 35762
TTh: 12:30 - 1:45
Mary Anne Mohanraj
In this course we will examine speculative literature authored by American writers of color.  Speculative literature is a catch-all term meant to inclusively span the breadth of fantastic literature, encompassing literature ranging from hard science fiction to epic fantasy to ghost stories to horror to folk and fairy tales to slipstream to magical realism to modern myth-making -- any piece of literature containing a fabulist or speculative element.  Writers of color will primarily be limited to non-white writers, although the nuanced details of that definition will be discussed further during class.  Readings will include books authored by Samuel R. Delany, Octavia Butler, Nnedi Okorafor, and Hiromi Goto, and anthologies edited by Sheree R. Thomas, Nisi Shawl, and Uppinder Mehan / Nalo Hopkinson.

ENGL 478: The Bible as Literature: Hebrew Bible
CRN: 29627, 29628
Days: MWF 12:00-12:50
Rachel Havrelock
Course Description:
The Hebrew Bible is a lively and intriguing literary work.  As Erich Auerbach, the literary critic, famously put it, the Hebrew Bible is "fraught with background."  This means, among other things, that the interpretation of a single biblical story requires knowledge of other biblical stories.  Students grasp this context created by the biblical canon as they read the major narrative portions of the Hebrew Bible.  Each class meeting concerns a set of biblical texts read alongside a theoretical treatment.  Students will learn techniques of analyzing the Hebrew Bible and engage in discussions of the primary texts and secondary readings.
Following five weeks of class discussion and the deadline for the first paper, students will participate in the study-pair technique.  The study-pairs are modeled on the mode of inquiry in ancient academies.  In these modern day study-pairs, students are matched with a dialogue partner in order to discuss assigned questions and biblical texts.  As the students prepare an essay based on these questions, they work with their study partner on editing drafts as well as the final version.  Study-pairs draw all of the students into a dialogue and give each student a chance to express reactions to the text. As a result, students enter into dialogue with the texts and with their peers.  The study-pairs enable students to work on public speaking, writing, and editing skills.

Course Objectives:
The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament, Tanakh) is a central text that has influenced literature, history, and global politics.  This course instructs students in reading and interpreting the Hebrew Bible according to its structure and tropes and within its original contexts.  The Hebrew Bible is read in English as translated by the Jewish Publication Society from the original Hebrew.  Students study theories of biblical authorship and gain insight into the historical and literary background of the texts.  Contemporary theoretical studies of the Hebrew Bible accompany the rigorous study of specific biblical texts.  The course focuses on biblical narrative and covers the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, I & II Samuel.  Students will complete the course with experience in reading, interpreting, discussing, and writing analytic papers on the Hebrew Bible.  An academic approach is emphasized throughout.
Course Goals:
1.   To comprehend the narrative texts of the Hebrew Bible.
2.   To situate these texts in literary and historical contexts.
3.   To analyze the Hebrew Bible according to its form, content, and genres.
4.   To expand the interpretation of these texts through contemporary literary theory.
5.   To work with a study partner on developing a thesis for the second paper and producing drafts of the paper.
6.   To write coherent, original, and analytic papers concerning topics in the Hebrew Bible.
7.   To understand the Hebrew Bible as a literary text and gain a sense of its influence on English and World Literature.

We will read a variety of texts including theoretical works and teacher stories to help us broaden our understanding of literacy and teaching in different contexts. Another crucial part of our project this semester will be to develop what Marilyn Cochran – Smith calls a professional “inquiry community” that will allow us to ask each other the often difficult questions about our emerging identity and practice as teachers.  The questions we develop as part of our community of inquiry will allow us to revise and elaborate our theories of teaching throughout the semester and explore the usefulness of critical inquiry for teaching.  In the end, we will imagine, develop, and revise our own teaching philosophies.

ENGL 481: Methods of Teaching English in Middle and Secondary Schools
CRN: 21079/21080
W: 3:00 - 5:45
Sarah Maria Rutter
This Teaching of English capstone course, meant to be taken the semester before student teaching and in conjunction with Education 330/432 (Curriculum and Instruction), focuses on the relationship between theories of teaching and the realities of practice. Students will consider and discuss their own beliefs and understandings about literacy and reflective pedagogy, and read extensively about English Language Arts curriculum design and about current trends and issues in the field. In addition to writing a comprehensive unit plan, students will also lead discussions, practice lessons they design, and use Blackboard extensively as part of writing and revising their work, as well as responding to others'.

ENGL 482: Campus Writing Consultants                 
CRN:  21190/21191 
R 12:00-1:50
Charitianne Williams
English 482 focuses on Writing Center Theory specifically for future educators. We will examine the relationship between students’ language use and their educational experiences, and how an educator’s awareness of these factors can lead to a healthier educative environment for students. Collaborative and anti-oppressive pedagogical practices will be emphasized. In addition to the 2 hours of instruction time, class members are required to complete 2 hours of one-on-one tutoring in the UIC writing center per week.

ENGL 486: Teaching Writing in Secondary Schools
CRNs: 20658 (undergrad); 21082 (grad)
Days: TR, 2:00-3:15
Todd DeStigter
Why teach writing? and How can we teach writing more effectively and responsibly?  These are the main questions we will try to answer as we work together in English 486.  Drawing from a wide range of sources such as Tom Kirby and Dan Liner’s Inside Out and from professional periodicals like the English Journal, we will think about writing not so much as a transfer of information from one person to another (or others) but as itself a process of learning—a way of thinking critically reflectively, and precisely about issues that are important to us.  In our readings, we will encounter many practical, day-to-day activities suggested by experienced and successful writing teachers; we will model and practice these activities as we write extensively together; we will read and assess each other’s work; we will talk about how to teach students to write not just essays, but fiction and poetry as well.  In essence, we will create an environment where you can develop your professional identity as a writer and teacher of writing by actually participating in the types of practices you may soon be implementing in classrooms of your own.  Also, in order to understand more clearly why we find certain ways of teaching writing to be more useful and ethical than others, we will discuss ideas that lend coherence and justification to our specific classroom activities (what some people call “theory”).  Whatever generalizing we do, however, will be grounded in the particular details of working toward the goal of this class: that is, to prepare you to establish and maintain a productive community of writers.

Course requirements include 12-15 hours of field work in an area high school, two portfolios demonstrating what you’ve learned in various sections of the course, and a unit plan that integrates reading and writing.

ENGL 490: Advanced Writing of Poetry
CRN:  12504/20335
Days:  W 3:00-5:45 p.m.
Christina Pugh
In this course, we’ll be building on the poetic foundation established in English 210, as well as opening up your work to new possibilities of language and thought.  Students will write poems based on formal and thematic constraints and will hand in a portfolio of revised work at the end of the semester.  Students will also write short critical papers and give an oral presentation.  This course will elaborate on concepts introduced in English 210, such as metaphor and metonymy, the syntactical practices of parataxis and hypotaxis, and concrete description as evidenced in ekphrasis (poems about visual art) and dreams.  We will also read a selection of critical materials addressing these issues.  The course is based on strong literary (lyric) models and on the notion that critical and creative thinking inform one another, but please note that the emphasis here will be on the discussion of student poems and on the development of craft at the advanced undergraduate level -- in an environment that is positive and encouraging, but also rigorous.  Students need to be open to, and curious about, working with prosody (including some assignments incorporating rhyme and meter).  As per Writing Program rules, English 490 will only be open to students who have received an A or a B in English 210.  Exceptions will be made only through permission of the instructor.

ENGL 491: Advanced Fiction Writing
CRN: 35764
Days: M, 3pm-5:45pm
Christopher Grimes
This advanced fiction workshop is for students who have taken English 212 (or the equivalent).   Knowledge of fiction-writing techniques and willingness to engage in open discussion of work-in-progress are necessary.  Failure to participate will adversely affect grades.  Each student will write a minimum of 3 story drafts and critiques for every other peer-evaluated story.  This workshop will not accept work that is genre fiction; no science fiction, mystery, horror/gothic, romance, or conversion doctrine.  There will be additional required guidelines to assist students in broadening the scope of their approach to writing.

ENGL 491: Advanced Fiction Writing
CRN: 12509/20342
Days: TR 12:30-1:45
Mike Newirth
This course is intended for fiction writers who have already spent some time writing and reading fiction, and have taken Engl 210 or a similar prerequisite.  It is designed to accentuate your skills through the workshop process, but also to compel you to consider important questions about the place of fiction writing in contemporary life.  What is the relationship between formal innovation and story-telling?  Is fiction better served by a traditional voice and narrative framework, or by the provocative voice and decentered structure of so-called “experimental” writing?  What are the best routes to conceiving, writing, editing, and publishing stories and novels in a world that often marginalizes them?  In this workshop, we will read and discuss short stories and other texts relevant to the fiction writing process.  You will write and share in the workshop three  short stories as well as other written exercises, including written annotations of published work.  The workshop will also include constructive discussion of your work, along with editorial review of manuscripts,  in which you approach one another’s writing with the care and consideration you yourself would wish from readers.

ENGL 492: Advanced Writing of Nonfiction
CRN:  12510/20346
Days: T 3:30-6:15 pm
Cris Mazza
This advanced nonfiction workshop is for students who have taken English 201 (or the equivalent).   Knowledge of narrative nonfiction techniques and willingness to engage in open discussion of work-in-progress are necessary.  Failure to participate in workshop discussions will adversely affect grades.  Each student will write several drafts of mini essays or fragments plus at least 2 drafts of fuller-sized essays. Course work also includes a book review, and critiques for every other peer-evaluated story.  This workshop will not discuss journalism, music or restaurant reviews, or scholarly essays. There will be additional guidelines and assigned reading to assist students broaden the scope of their approach to writing literary nonfiction.

500 Level

ENGL 500: Master’s Proseminar
CRN: 22397
Day: W 5:00-7:50 PM
Jennifer Ashton
This proseminar will introduce first-year MA students to graduate study in English by means of a series of representative critical and theoretical debates, both past and present.  We’ll start with the very basic question of what we mean by the “meaning” of a text and examine several seminal contributions to the theory of interpretation, beginning with the New Critics and moving through Deconstruction and a critique of both in Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels’s “Against Theory,” whose claim that texts mean only what their authors intend them to mean continues to be the subject of vigorous debate.  Having also considered, by way of these theoretical claims, what it means to perform “close reading,” we’ll then look at two very recent attempts to revise how we think about the kind of reading critics do:  Franco Moretti’s research laboratory work at Stanford, developing so-called “distance readings,” and the recent exchange over Stephen Best and Sharon Marcus’s essay “Surface Reading.” We’ll move on to some specimens of how theory plays out in application, not only in literature but in the visual arts in the work of Michael Fried and Douglas Crimp.  Finally we’ll consider the study of literature in relation to the debate over art’s (including literature’s) relation to politics, economics, and history.  In addition to readings from the Frankfurt School, and the work of one of the most important theorists of political imperatives for art of the 20th century, Bertolt Brecht, we’ll read several recent debates, over the work of Kenneth Warren, Adolph Reed, Ruth Leys, and Michael Clune.  Prior to the start of the semester (over the summer, for example) students should read the “libretto” and production notes for Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera and Ralph Waldo Ellison’s novel, Invisible Man, which will come into play at several points during the semester.The first three weeks’ shorter readings will be posted on Blackboard in early August and sent around via email to registered students two weeks before class begins.  Students will write 3 short analysis papers (3-5-pp double-spaced), a final conference-panel-style argumentative paper (8-10 pp), and an annotated bibliography (5-10 entries) to accompany the final paper. Active participation in discussion is expected of all students in the course. 

ENGL 503: Proseminar Theory and Practice of Criticism
CRN: 21006
Days: W  5-7:50 pm
Lennard Davis
This course will explore several literary texts through the lens of various critical methodologies including Marxist, Freudian, biopolitical, and identitarian ones. Students will be responsible for an in-class presentation and a final paper of 15-20 pages.

ENGL 517  Family Plots: Gender, Authority and Literary Form in English Texts
CRN: 35521
Days: R, 2-4:50 pm  
Mary Beth Rose
This course will explore transformations in the representation of marriage and the family in texts from the fourteenth to the twenty-first centuries, considering the political, legal, and religious aspects of cultural and aesthetic change.  We will focus on such issues as erotic love, property, sexuality, gender relations, and social class.  We will study the ways in which formulations of cultural authority intersect with and are encoded in literary forms, including narrative, drama, the lyric, and the novel. Focusing on 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.  Authors will include Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Hobbes, Aphra Behn, Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf, and Tony Kushner.

ENGL 527: Reconstruction in America, from the end of the Civil War to 1900
CRN: 31746
Day: W, 2-4:50 PM
Robin Grey
This course will explore the final days of the Civil War, with Sherman’s devastating March to the Sea and then examine closely the dynamic changes of the nation’s policies during the Reconstruction period(s).   We will alternate between historical texts and literature and some film versions, examining the failures of various forms of Reconstruction in the lives of black freedmen, Southerners more generally, and the rise of Black Codes, Jim Crow laws, and “slavery by another name.”  The course will try to balance the social, political, literary, and legal attempts to address the nation’s issues in the aftermath of the Civil War.  We will also balance the local with the national when we read about specific issues in a particular state along with the broader problems of national attempts at reconciliation and/or domination.
Sample authors and literary texts will include: selections from Melville’s Battle-Pieces, Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce; Sidney Lanier’s Tiger Lillies; Albion Tourgee’s A Fool’s Errand: A Novel of the South During Reconstruction (Tourgee was the lead attorney in the trial of Homer Plessy); John William De Forest’s Miss Ravenel’s Conversion from Secession to Loyalty along with his writings on his work at the Freedmen’s Bureau; Frances Harper’s Iola Leroy; and Ellen Glasgow, The Voice of the People.
The course will also include a number of historical texts, particularly Eric Foner’s Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution: 1863-1877; selections from Douglas Blackmon’s Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II; selected chapters from Mark Grimsley’s The Hard Hand of War; chapters from Stephen V. Ash’s Middle Tennessee Society Transformed, 1860-1870; selected chapters from Michael Perman’s Struggle for Mastery: Disenfranchisement in the South, 1888-1908; and Philip Dray’s Reconstruction through the Lives of the First Black Congressmen.  Selections of film representations of the War and its Reconstruction aftermath will also be shown periodically. 
Oral reports, and drafts of a final paper (for feedback) preceding the final paper will be required.

ENGL 540: Seminar in Contemporary Studies in English
CRN: 35522
Tuesdays: 5:00-7:50
Walter Benn Michaels
This seminar will focus on major texts and works of the 21st century so far. The basic idea is that there is a set of theoretical issues (having to do with how we understand the materiality of works of art, how we understand the roles of the producers and consumers of those works in constituting their meaning and how we understand the political economy of our time) that underlies a significant number of otherwise different aesthetic and theoretical projects. Developments in the novel (focusing, among others, on texts by Tom McCarthy, Jonathan Littell, W.G. Sebald, William Vollman and maybe Sheila Heti and/or Ben Lerner) will be central but critical theory (e.g. “Surface Reading” by Stephen Best and Sharon Marcus, Adolph Reed on Django Unchained, Michael Fried on photography) and poetry and the memoir (maybe both Maggie Nelson’s Jane, A Murder and The Red Parts) will also come into play. The course is not a neutral survey of the field; when you’re trying to decide whether or not to take it, reading a little of my recent work (you can go with what’s available on nonsite.org) may be helpful.

English 557:  Language and Literacy: Pragmatism, Education, and the Quest for the Democratic Subject
CRN: 23604
Day: T, 5:00-7:50
Todd DeStigter
What does it mean to teach for justice and democracy, and what does American pragmatism have to contribute to conversations regarding whether it is desirable or even possible to do so?  These central questions will provide a framework for our exploration of the (ir)relevance of our work as scholars and teachers of English to the world beyond our classrooms and campuses. 
Although we will occasionally discuss specific curricular choices and teaching methods, most of our readings will encourage us to consider broader theoretical issues such as 1) how “democracy” can be defined and whether it remains a viable sociopolitical aspiration, 2) whether it makes sense anymore to think of the postmodern subject as capable of having an actionable ethic or intentionality, 3) the extent to which pragmatism as a philosophical/analytical method provides ways to think about the possible amelioration of sociopolitical and economic problems, and 4) whether “progressive” initiatives that stop short of political revolution or the fundamental transformation of the modes of production merely contribute to the reproduction of the status quo.
Put another way, this course will be the site of an ongoing conversation about whether we as students and teachers of English can/should hope that our work matters beyond our own intellectual and/or financial interests.  Though our reading list will evolve in response to our discussions and students’ recommendations, some possible texts are these:

PRAGMATISM by William James
DEMOCRACY IN WHAT STATE by Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, et.al.
THE DEMOCRATIC PARADOX by Chantal Mouffe
HATRED OF DEMOCRACY by Jacques Ranciere
DISCIPLINE AND PUNISH by Michel Foucault
A RHETORIC OF MOTIVES by Kenneth Burke
TWENTY YEARS AT HULL HOUSE by Jane Addams
THE HUMAN CONDITION by Hannah Arendt
IN DEFENSE OF LOST CAUSES by Slavoj Zizek
UNCERTAIN VICTORY: SOCIAL DEMOCRACY AND PROGRESSIVISM IN EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN THOUGHT, 1870-1920 by James T. Kloppenberg
THE PHANTOM PUBLIC by Walter Lippmann
LIBERALISM AND SOCIAL ACTION by John Dewey
AMERICAN DREAMERS: HOW THE LEFT CHANGED A NATION by Michael Kazen
REGULATING AVERSION: TOLERANCE IN THE AGE OF IDENTITY AND EMPIRE by Wendy Brown
SAVE THE WORLD ON YOUR OWN TIME by Stanley Fish
DEMOCRACY PAST AND FUTURE by Pierre Rosanvallon
TERRITORIES OF DIFFERENCE by Arturo Escobar
PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL HOPE by Richard Rorty
DEMOCRATIC HOPE: PRAGMATISM AND THE POLITICS OF TRUTH by Robert B. Westbrook
PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED by Paulo Freire
DEMOCRACY AND OTHER NEOLIBERAL FANTASIES by Jodi Dean

English 557 is intended to be of interest to students in the graduate English, Education, and TESOL programs. Course requirements include bi-weekly “conversation papers” used to prompt class discussions, a mid-term paper, and an end-of-term paper/project of each student’s choosing.

ENGL 571: Program for Writers Fiction Workshop
CRN:  33333
Days: M 3:00 – 5:45
Cris Mazza
The Program for Writers fall fiction workshop is for all fiction: novels, short fiction, novellas, flash fiction, etc.   All fiction 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 on the table for discussion.  This course will be team-taught by Professor Grimes, and will be held in conjunction with a section of 491 (meeting 3:30-6:15). Graduate students will either gain experience leading an advanced undergraduate workshop, lead a discussion with them on a particular published story, or attend a Q&A with the undergraduate workshop on one of the graduate student’s own pieces of fiction.
Writers of literary nonfiction who wish to participate are also welcome.
Students who are not in the Program for Writers need the permission from the instructor to enroll.

ENGL 585: Theoretical Sites: Autonomy
CRN: 35765
Days: R 5:00 - 7:50
Nicholas Brown
What does it mean to claim that the work of art has some kind of special status that sets it apart from the rest of social and economic life? More importantly for the contemporary moment, what does it entail to claim that it does not? In their starkest forms both the claim to aesthetic autonomy and the claim to aesthetic heteronomy reveal themselves as incoherent; and yet a compromise position between them is even less satisfactory. What, then, are we really talking about when we talk about the autonomy of art? Autonomy from what? Does art’s autonomy (or its lack) have a history? What is the history of the accounts of the work of art’s autonomy, or of its lack? What is the relation of these histories to broader social, political, and economic history? Readings will include foundational work on the  aesthetic, largely taken from the German Idealist and Romantic traditions; writings from the fin-de siècle and modernist periods and the historical vanguards; and theory and criticism from the period of the historical eclipse of the claim to autonomy. Finally, we will ask: is there a plausible claim to aesthetic autonomy today? If so, how do artworks make it? And why?

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Research/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. 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.

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.

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). For doctoral students only. 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.

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First Year Writing Program

070

ENGL 070: Culture Wars: Conflicts in Multicultural America
CRN 30498 (TR 9:30-10:45)
Romeo, Robert
This preparatory class emphasizes the second-language writing challenges presented by structure, meaning, and use to those for whom English is not the primary language. The content of English 070 parallels that of English 160 and focuses on the skills needed to produce academic writing. Particular attention is paid to critical thinking and reading. Students will also be introduced to the concepts of Situated Writing--the idea that writing offers a way of understanding the world as well as a way to get things done and that the context for producing a piece of writing, who is writing it and why, helps the writer decide about the form a piece of writing will take The class requires three writing projects and three cover letters in order to allow for more time and instruction on the writing process and on sentence-level skills. The course will focus on the public debates caused by the conflicting needs of our multicultural U.S. society. How do people in the U.S. view themselves and their way of life? How do questions of gender, language, race, education and politics manifest themselves in the “public forum”? Students will participate in these "conflicts" through papers and group discussions.

ENGL 070: Introduction to Academic Writing for the Nonnative Speakers of English
CRN 30497 (TR 8:00-9:15)
Williams, Charitianne
This class will explore elements of writing from analyzing audience, the situation prompting the written response, to the effects of your completed texts. We will focus on the expectations of both academic and public genres of writing. The class also includes grammar and language study appropriate for non-native or bilingual speakers of English.

071

Monday / Wednesday / Friday
ENGL 071: Introduction to Academic Writing
CRN 30505 (MWF 9:00-9:50)
Drown, James
This class will explore the impact of the use of multiple languages in both the U.S. and the world. We will explore global rhetoric, examine the cultural language norms of American Academic English and more commonly used public discourse styles, and look at how identity is, in part, created through language usage. We will be producing three major written projects, in which we will not only write about what we have learned about language, but we will use what we have learned about language to increase the quality of our writing.

ENGL 071: Popular Music and Politics
CRN 30509 (MWF 10:00-10:50); CRN 30515 (MWF 12:00-12:50)
Glomski, Chris
This class involves intense writing and considerable reading. It is designed to prepare you for the challenges of writing in the languages of academic and other forms of social discourse. You will be responsible for producing multiple drafts of each writing assignment, and for making substantial revisions to each as needed. You will also work on honing the mechanics of your prose at the sentence level, acquiring active academic reading skills, and broadening your vocabulary. The guiding principle for the course is that what we write about and how we write it matters. In “Popular Music and Politics,” we will investigate subjects that may find us debating such questions as: “Why do the meanings of some words appear to change, depending on who is saying them?” “What might something so basic, so essential, as the music we listen to reveal about our social class?” “Can mere ideas, or products of thought, ever be harmful enough to warrant regulation?” These are some of the starting points for much stimulating critical thought, and written response, we will undertake together this semester.

ENGL 071: Introduction to Academic Writing
CRN 30513 (MWF 11:00-11:50)
Parr, Katherine
English 071 introduces students to the kinds of writing assigned at the college level, especially in English 160. We will explore genres of writing from various academic fields. Students will have access to the electronic forum MyCompLab where they will find helpful exercises and other tools that support our textbook. Students will learn to match their writing appropriately to situation and audience, as well as to their own purpose in writing. Furthermore, students will receive instruction and practice in grammar within the context of their own writing in order to make their essays clear and concise, using Standard American English.

Tuesday / Thursday sections
ENGL 071: Writing, Identity, and Institutions
CRN 30504 (TR 8:00-9:15); CRN 30507 (TR 9:30-10:45); CRN 30517 (TR 12:30-1:45)
Krall, Aaron
How do college writing courses imagine writers, produce identities, and shape public institutions? In this course, we will develop and pursue a sustained inquiry about the intersections between writers, texts, and institutions. Beginning with our own writing experiences, we will explore the history and function of first-year writing courses, the kinds of writers they hope to produce, the methods they employ, and their effects on students, universities, businesses, and the public sphere. Our course will structure this inquiry through a series of argumentative writing projects that will ask you to actively participate in a variety of genres, as well as an examination of their contexts (social and physical locations) and their consequences (the changes they might produce in the world). As we explore the situations and genres that motivate and organize these projects, we will attend to the language choices that writers make and the expectations and conventions that shape these choices.

ENGL 071: Writing About Representations of Marginalized Groups
CRN 30521 (TR 11:00-12:15); CRN 30519 (TR 12:30-1:45); CRN 32782 (TR 3:30-4:45)
Petrovic, Robin
This section will explore how American popular culture shapes ideologies. Through readings and class discussions, we will analyze how minority groups are represented in advertisements, television, and movies. We will also examine how these groups respond to these mainstream depictions. Through this lens, we will discuss the intended consequences of various written pieces including, but not limited to, articles, essays, and letters. By reading and writing in a variety of genres, we will learn how written forms have evolved to respond to certain situations and how to craft the most appropriate responses to given scenarios. We will also focus on language, and we will employ it as a tool to meet our writing goals.

ENGL 071: Saying What You Like, Or Don't: Opinion and Argument on the Web
CRN 30964 (TR 2:00-3:15)
Rutter, Sarah Maria
In this class, our central inquiry will center on the ways in which writing about social issues, especially those that are addressed in popular media, takes shape in public forums on the Internet. How do reviews of products and public venues affect our perceptions of them? How do opinion pages and blogs affect public perception of current political and cultural issues? In what ways do the situations, contexts, and purposes for these texts affect how they're both written and read? We will explore these questions by practicing critical reading strategies, and by writing argumentatively in several types of genres where we focus on language choices, grammar and usage skills, and effective communication.

160

Monday / Wednesday / Friday sections

ENGL 160: Investigating the Media
CRN 29462 (MWF 12:00-12:50); CRN 28743 (MWF 1:00-1:50)
Boulay, Kate
This course assumes that “the mass media (newspapers, television and radio [and film, photography, the Internet, social networking, etc.]) are of considerable, and still growing, importance in modern societies” (McQuail 1). In this class, focusing mainly but not exclusively on the news, we will examine how local, national, and international media help shape our daily lives and interactions with others. This semester our readings and writings cover a range of perspectives on the news media. Exploring the local mediascape, interviewing media workers, and examining websites, etc. we critically think and write about the production, dissemination, and reception of news in Chicago, the United States, and the English-speaking world. Synthesizing our assignments, we end the semester writing a media manifesto in which we outline and advocate for a media practice that suits our individual needs, preferences and politics. These projects--as well as our in-class work--are based on the cornerstone of the UIC composition program: situated writing. We consider how situation shapes genre choice, how language choices produce consequences, and how the ideas we generate as a class this semester can impact a broader social context.

ENGL 160: Writing for Social Action
CRN 30965 (MWF 1:00-1:50)
Bryson, Chris
In this course, we will explore a series of situations that affect your generation and the current state of our country. These situations will lead you into producing four pieces of writing in four different genres. This course approaches writing as a means of power, and a tool of social change. What are some of the larger issues that are plaguing our education and our future? How can you, a freshman at UIC, make a difference through writing? What questions will you ask, and what problems will you tackle to make your voice be heard? This course, “Writing for Social Action,” invites you to ask questions, explore answers, and take advantage of the power of rhetoric.

ENGL 160: A Sense of Place
CRN 11337 (MWF 8:00-8:50); CRN 11385 (MWF 10:00-10:50)
Buchmeier, Sarah
How are we shaped by the places we’re from? How do we, in turn, shape places and what happens when a place’s identity starts to change? How do we engage with and evaluate the spaces we inhabit here at UIC? In this course, we will hone our writing skills in four different genres to explore notions of place and space. As we practice adapting our writing to a variety of situations, using rhetorical strategies effectively, and choosing the best organization, we will not only become better writers, but we will become more engaged writers.

ENGL 160: Putting Writing to Purpose: The Multigenre Project
CRN 11818 (MWF 12:00-12:50)
Carey, Kevin
Like with most skills, becoming a better writer is largely a matter of practice. When practice is wedded to purpose, it becomes even more powerful. Writing about a subject you find interesting or important motivates you to take your writing more seriously. For this class you will identify an area of interest which you will explore through reading, writing, and discussion over the course of the semester. As a class, we will also read about and discuss a number of genres. Genres are conventions or templates for writing which shape both the subject matter and how you write about it. Your inquiry into your subject will take place through writing in four different genres. By the end of the semester, you will not only come to know more about your area of interest, but in the process learn a lot about how genre affects our understanding of subjects. And of course, all of this will serve the main goal of becoming a more effective writer.

ENGL 160: Writing About Race, Sexuality, and Gender
CRN 27286 (MWF 9:00-9:50)
Conner, M. Shelly
This course will satisfy ENGL 160 requirements by examining multi-genre writing that participates in the current discourse on race, gender, and sexuality issues. Students will produce four major writing projects: personal statement, manifesto, feature/profile, and an argumentative essay.

ENGL 160: www.writing
CRN 24146 (MWF 8:00-8:50); CRN 30661 (9:00-9:50)
Cycholl, Garin
At the center of our study this semester are the ways that the Internet and electronic texts have changed your own sense of writing. How does the electronic text make you think differently about concepts like human memory or history? Who or what is an author? How is autobiography understood in the age of the “hive mind?” Has technology shifted our common understanding of writing genres? How will economic variables continue to define the shape of the writing classroom? Through various assignments, we will examine these and other questions to define common perspectives on twenty-first century writing in public spaces such as the workplace and university.

ENGL 160: Writing and Engagement with Extracurricular Activities
CRN 28746 (MWF 8:00-8:50); CRN 11458 (MWF 10:00-10:50)
Doble, Heather
In this class, you will investigate an extracurricular activity at UIC that is new to you, the needs it fills, how it is funded, and the ways in which it does or does not link to the larger Chicago community of cultural events. The information you glean surrounding extracurricular activities and the students they benefit cause you to respond as an engaged citizen. As a result of your desire to become involved at UIC and beyond, you will become knowledgeable about an extracurricular activity that is new to you and share this activity with the rest of the class by writing a blog to be posted on the class site. Your newfound interest will then lead to attendance of a performance, meeting, or competition of your chosen activity which will inspire you to write a review which will also be shared with the class. After learning about the ways your activity fills students’ needs, you will isolate areas of possible improvement in your activity and you will write a proposal that argues for the funding of an extracurricular activity of your own design. Finally, you will create a brochure to persuade other students to join your newly created organization. Through attention to situation, genre, language, and their consequences in your writing, you will become deliberate in your responses and develop methods for moving these critical conversations forward in meaningful ways. You will also learn how your writing choices allow you to engage with issues that are important to you. This is a collaborative class--you will have the opportunity to interact in small group discussions, and to share peer reviews of writing assignments.

ENGL 160: Writing and Rhetoric for a Global Audience               
CRN 30665 (MWF 10:00-10:50)
Drown, James
This class is designed to recognize the benefits and advantages of bilingualism, and to serve the needs of bilingual and English-language-learning students. This is not an ESL class--instead, the class will explore global rhetoric, focus on the cultural norms of American Academic and public discourses, and help students find ways to express linguistic diversity while still communicating clearly and effectively with a chosen audience. We will examine both personal and public writing, and also examine how our language choices and forms change when moving in and out of different linguistic contexts. Please note: This section is designed to meet the needs of English-language learners. Instructor permission is required to enroll.

ENGL 160: Writing in Academic and Public Contexts
CRN 24124 (MWF 10:00-10:50 )
Girman, Chris
A successful act of authorship brings to birth a new being, quite separate from what goes on in the writer’s head, which then takes on a life of its own. In this course, you are going to practice turning “all that stuff” in your writer’s head into a written product that both represents you and exemplifies many of the types of writing projects you will be expected to do in college. We’ll write, rewrite, rip things apart, start anew, and give ourselves an awesome final product. In the process, we’ll hit those annoying things like comma splices, run-on sentences, punctuation mistakes, and other “nuts and bolts” (semantics) of the writing process. If you are already a good writer, be prepared to further advance, integrating semicolons, parentheses, and dashes to liven up your thoughts, along with deepening the connections you make between yourself, the written word and the dynamic world around you.

ENGL 160: Writing in Diverse Workplace and Community Situations
CRN 11332 (MWF 8:00-8:50); CRN 30667 (MWF 11:00-11:50)
Grunow, Scott
In this course, we will explore the whys and hows of writing in response to a variety of real-life situations ranging from harassment by noisy neighbors to obtaining funding for a not-for-profit arts organization. The course will culminate in the genre of an argumentative essay focusing on the ongoing controversy surrounding the global retail giant, Walmart. All assignments will expand critical thinking and reading perspectives in order to successfully write not just for the teacher, but for the world.

ENGL 160: Genres and Genres: Writing In and About Music
CRN 11560 (MWF 10:00-10:50); CRN 28744 (MWF 12:00-12:50)
Hammes, Aaron
We live in an age where recorded music is in its second century and, with the popularity of archival projects and the digitization of music creation, distribution, and promotion, the art form is as ubiquitous as one could ever have imagined even 20 years ago. Music is discussed is terms of “consumption” and “digestion,” and arguments are commonly made that the quality of music is impaired by how easy it is to produce, that music writing is dead as print media has grown decrepit, that file-sharing has corroded the record industry, and that gas prices and general apathy has destroyed live, original music in the United States. This course does not seek to vindicate music, but it does in some ways seek to champion writing about it, and to consider its popular genres, particularly those of the past 60 years, as a serious art form worthy of our consideration. We will quickly see that anything we say about music, from analyzing individual lyrics to relating experiences about how it has moved us, makes arguments and claims about what is important to us in our world and our experiences as people in the 21st century. We will consider a vast swath of reviewing styles and manner of critiquing and evaluating music. We will act as curators of our own miniature musical museums in the form of mixtapes. We will make arguments for and against a vital and pressing issues which effects most of us in one or various ways. Finally we will attempt to tap into an experience with music in our own lives, perhaps at a more visceral and direct level.

ENGL 160: “Writing in Academic and Public Contexts: Fantasy Novels, Comics, and Films”
CRN 30663 (MWF 9:00-9:50)
Jones, Adam
In this class you will employ a variety of reading and writing strategies to draft and revise four major writing projects: a film review, a comic, an argumentative essay, and a profile. In each of these projects, your subject will be contemporary fantasy literature and cinema. In order to have something to say, we will examine current trends in fantasy literature and cinema, as well as arguments made about current culture and the audiences driving those trends. Readings will include reviews, historical narratives, critical analyses, informal interviews, and argumentative essays. To accomplish these reading and writing tasks with style and substance, you will spend a significant amount of time in class focusing on areas key to reading and writing at the college level.

ENGL 160: “Fast Food Nation: Writing about Contemporary Food Production and Consumption”
CRN 25972 (MWF 9:00-9:50)
Kulik, Ekaterina
The main goal of this class is to introduce you to writing in academic and public contexts by providing you with strategies and knowledge that you can use to write about ideas which can impact a broader social context. The course covers a wide range of topics related to industry agriculture, food production, and food consumption. You are invited to take a closer look not only at what we eat, but also how what we eat affects the world we live in, and thus, participate in the ongoing conversation that focuses on important issues of health, economy, and sustainability in the contemporary food industry.

ENGL 160: Academic Writing and Issues of Consumption
CRN 11601 (MWF 11:00-11:50); CRN 28745 (MWF 2:00-2:50); CRN 21750 (MWF 3:00-3:50)
O'Hara, Mary Ellen
This course will focus upon the problems inherent to being a consumer today in the United States. Factory farming, GMO’s and food production, as well as ancillary issues such as landfills, waste issues, and water production/rights will be examined through various in-class discussions, group activities, and writing projects. The course takes a heuristic approach whereby students formulate their response to specific consumer issues based upon their unique moral landscape. Thus, students will explore and define their relationship to sustainable and ethical consumption, boycotting and buycotting, as well as other methods utilized to address problematic consumer issues. This class will employ a variety of writing strategies to draft and revise four major writing projects including a Personal Essay, a Film Review, an Argumentative Essay, and a Newsletter based upon a Service Learning Project regarding the recovery of food for local food banks.

ENGL 160: Writing, Power, and Everyday Life
CRN 11462 (MWF 10:00-10:50); CRN 30664 (MWF 1:00-1:50)
Pittendrigh, Nadya
In this course, students will constantly be asked to connect the classroom to the “real world.” The class is based on the idea that writing and communication has real consequences in the world, and that if we can just hold that thought for the duration of the semester, we will all become better writers. Students will be asked to read not only a variety of texts and connect them to the real world, they will also be asked to read the complicated social chemistry of real-world social situations and gauge their writing accordingly. Students should be ready to conduct interviews with real-world public figures and take field notes in various neighborhoods in the city. Students should be prepared to publish their writings online and with each other. Students will explore the intersections between “action” and writing. Students will “make real things happen” through their writing.

ENGL 160: Writing the Migrant Experience
CRN 11505 (MWF 11:00-11:50); CRN 30668 (MWF 12:00-12:50)
Sandoval, Neri
During the 2012 Republican National Convention, Mitt Romney began his speech repeating what countless other political and cultural figures before him have said about the United States: “We are a nation of Immigrants.” Of course, Romney is saying this after just having advocated the construction of an electric fence across the Mexico-U.S. border during the Republican primaries. So, on the one hand we see a presidential candidate embracing multiculturalism, and on the other we see the very same candidate push forth a political and economic agenda that expropriates those that compose a multiculturalist state. Moreover, one hears this statement so often from both sides of the political aisle (the Democrats and Republicans) that it has become tantamount to a politically meaningless cliché. In resisting such superficial (the “why can’t we all just get along” sentiment) understandings of this social process, this class attempts to dive into the multi-faceted dimensions of immigration as a social and economic process. The exponential rise of highly-lucrative immigration detention centers, the longstanding tradition of exploiting immigrant labor, and the battle over ethnic studies in Arizona can be viewed as symptomatic of an emerging American public anxiety about the changing demographics of the country (i.e. “the browning of America”). For the scope of this course, we will take a step back and attempt to use writing in order to not only map our individual subject positions into the social fabric of Chicago, but also to examine the historical layers of such a social process which spans various ethnicities and nationalities. This positioning will allow us to examine the structures of situation, language, genre, and context. Certain motifs that we will brush up against throughout this course will focus on who, why, and how different groups migrate to the U.S., how they integrate into our economic infrastructure, and how they are portrayed by various news outlets. Specific issues to explore include settlement, education, identity, assimilation/acculturation, discrimination, employment, language, marriage, legal status, and political participation. Over the course of this semester, you will compose, piece-by-piece, a portfolio featuring four writing projects: an interview, a letter to the editor, an argumentative essay, and a team debate. As we draft, edit, and revise these writing projects, we will also discuss how to best manage argumentative structure, tone, rhetorical appeals, and grammar mechanics. More importantly, through the work assigned in this course, students will learn a set of writing practices that, if employed correctly, will empower the student to enact change not only in their college careers, but outside of the university setting as well.

ENGL 160: Writing Your Way into the Conversation
CRN 11330 (MWF 9:00-9:50); CRN 11399 (MWF 1:00-1:50)
Shearer, Jay
This course will direct and assist you in a written conversation with the world around you, primarily through (though not limited to) the art of composing an argument. Through articles, case studies, book excerpts and other media, you will examine popular culture, political culture, and your place in the country and world. You will express and examine your opinions regarding these issues and evaluate opinions that differ from your own. You will express your “take” on a given situation via four distinct written forms: the Opinion Piece, the Personal Essay, the Media Review, and the Argumentative Essay. This course should challenge you, improve your writing skills, and engage you in a public conversation. It might even be actual fun.

ENGL 160: Writing in Academic and Public Contexts
CRN 11809 (MWF 8:00-8:50); CRN 11558 (MWF 10:00-10:50)
Shepard, Nathan
Welcome to UIC! As you are now learning, Chicago has been a hotbed of political activity, protests, and questioning (articulating conditions, objections, and arguments for change through language [logos]) for some 160 years. Most if not all of you are either working now while pursuing your studies--whether as a work-study employee, or as a part-time worker--or you have had a job in the past. Indeed, as Adam Kader, Managing Director of Arise Chicago (a worker’s rights advocacy group) recently put it, “we spend more time at work than we do at anything else” (“Wage Theft in Chicago 2011”). With Labor Day coming up, and considering the fact that we are a few feet away from Hull-House, an institution created by Jane Addams in the late 19th century to address, in part, labor conditions in Chicago, this course will address the question of labor, with particular emphasis being placed on how we can become active and articulate agents for change through writing as workers (or as future workers). A note on the word “change”: while this course is designed to teach students how to become articulate writers, it is not a course designed to advocate for one position over another concerning the labor issues we’ll be discussing. In fact, one of the skills we will develop is how to advocate a position we do not personally agree with. Why? Because learning counter arguments allows us to see our interlocutors as human beings while also allows us to sharpen our own arguments.

English 160: Entering the Food Conversation through Writing
CRN 27575 (MWF 9:00-9:50)
Sjostrom, Kate
In setting pen to paper, the academic writer is entering a conversation in his or her discipline. In other words, academic writing is what the writer “says” in response to what others in the field are “saying.” Such writing is not merely an exercise in composition; it is a natural response to the ongoing “talk.” To ensure his or her voice is heard, a good academic writer will ground his or her work in the conversation’s context, write with a clear purpose, and write in language and a genre appropriate to the audience and situation. English 160 is designed to prepare you for such situated writing. Because the fields of study of 160 students vary, we will turn to a conversation in which we all participate: the food conversation. You will be given opportunity to consider the messages sent to you through food packaging and marketing; the food activism going on in your own community; the academic, food-related debates being waged on local, national, and international stages; and your own responses to the food you eat. After grounding yourself in these different, though related, situations, you will practice tailoring your language and purpose to the various contexts and audiences. In the process, you will write and revise a letter of complaint or praise to a food company, a profile of a food activist, an argumentative essay, and a restaurant review. All writing projects are designed to invite you into actual, current conversations so that you might experience your “say” being heard as well as the very real consequences of your composition choices.

ENGL 160: Writing About Media
CRN 11526 (MWF 11:00-11:50); CRN 11534 (MWF 12:00-12:50)
Steuber, Evan
In this class you will create “situated” writing that engages various types of media. You will move from the creation of a traditional academic essay addressing stand-up comedians, to the creation of a brochure with a focus on the effectiveness of advertisements, to a review, and then finally, to a dialogue addressing issues of representation in the news. You will find through the various genres of writing we address that different writing prompts call for different kinds of writing. Not only will your language change and adjust according to the genre, but so will the consequences attending that language. The goals in an academic essay are not the same as the goals in a review, but what they share is a use of rhetoric, language, purpose, and audience. Each situation of writing calls for a different focus, a different use of tools of analysis, a different language adjusted to the proposed audience. Our focus on media will show you the different ways in which media not only entertains and informs, but also makes an argument. It is our goal as a class to get at the rhetoric at the center of these writing genres and forms of media and to develop an understanding of writing that is complex and nuanced and that changes from situation to situation.

English 160: Writing about American Cultural Myths
CRN 11821 (MWF 12:00-12:50); CRN 11446 (MWF 1:00-1:50); CRN 11792 (MWF 3:00-3:50)
Weeg, Marla
In this course you will work on your critical reading and writing skills to help you in your academic career at UIC. The core reading material we will look at will be from Gary Colombo, Robert Cullen, and Bonnie Lisle’s Rereading America (8th edition). This book centers on some of the prevalent cultural myths in America. The publisher states, “Rereading America takes on the myths that dominate U.S. Culture: family, education, success, gender roles, race and the environment.” Although we will be analyzing and using critical thinking in the readings, primarily this course provides the opportunity to explore writing and its consequences in four different situations and genres. Through a selection of readings centered on the cultural myths of America, you will explore the ways that different written genres have an impact on their audiences and how the rhetorical construction of these genres can be effective in different situations. Each writing project lasts three weeks, and asks students to work in different genres, including personal and argumentative essays, the opinion piece, and a dialogue.

ENGL 160: Writing about Travel and Homecoming
CRN 11339 (MWF 9:00-9:50); CRN 11575 (MWF 11:00-11:50); CRN 11759 (MWF 1:00-1:50)
Zabic, Snezana
In this class, you will read and write about travelers and their destinations. You will examine the places you and others have traveled to, near or far; about how art travels to and from Chicago; and about the place you call home. These habitats, as well as the ways we reach them, are not necessarily pretty, and some might be outright terrifying. You will master the basics of analytical reading, thinking, and writing, by completing four writing projects that will be collected in a portfolio at the end of the semester. These projects are conceived as responses to texts--essays, comics, and documentaries--we will read and view throughout the semester. You will also learn how to write professional cover letters.

Tuesday / Thursday sections

ENGL 160: Writing in Academic and Public Contexts
CRN 21630 (TR 3:30-4:45)
Adcox, James
As students and as citizens we are constantly engaged in conversations with the wider world. These conversations take place not only in face-to-face interactions--many of our most far-ranging social conversations take place through mass media, newspaper articles, comments on blogs, Facebook, or Twitter, while some of our most important personal conversations now take place through email or texting. Each of these conversations is dependant on a particular context or situation, and each requires an understanding not only of the situation but also of the genres suitable to that situation--that is, to the conventional forms we use to communicate in each situation. In this class you will explore four ideas important to composition and communication in general: situation, genre, language, and consequences. You will learn how each of these terms informs one’s writing, even if one is unaware of them (perhaps especially if one is unaware of them). And you will engage four concrete situations that require responses through such genres as the Media Review, Literary Analysis, Position Argument, and Photo Essay.

ENGL 160: “The Horror! The Horror!”
CRN 11727 (TR 9:30-10:45); CRN 27282 (TR 11:00-12:15)
Berger, Jessica
All writing exists as part of a situated genre. Over the course of the semester, you will learn to identify, navigate, and effectively respond to diverse writing situations using a genre of a different medium: the horror film. Just as the horror film tends to operate via strict generic conventions as it participates in a larger public conversation, we will explore writing as one of the many ways we can contribute to and participate in our world. Writing is an instrument of community involvement and a tool of social change. Whether the community you choose to involve yourself in is an online one of unabashed movie fandom or larger academic discussion, this course invites you to actively participate in these exchanges. Warning: not for the faint of heart.

ENGL 160: Making Sense of Media 
CRN 11343 (TR 2:00-3:15)
Brecheisen, Davis
We are inundated by media--texts, tweets, email, video, sometimes books. At their best these technologies open avenues for political and cultural expression that were unthinkable even a decade ago. At their most grotesque they are agents of disinformation and propaganda. Usually, it’s somewhere in between, which makes our job as consumers of media--as interpreters of texts--all the more important and difficult. Honing the skills necessary to be good readers and writers of texts enables us to better make sense of our cultural and political moment. This course is an attempt to negotiate the rocky terrain of the media landscape--from music reviews to politics and fiction. We will attempt to make sense of the various ways in which media competes for our intellectual and emotional investment. In particular, we will attempt to look at the challenges and opportunities provided by different genres communicated across different media platforms through close reading and analytical writing.

ENGL 160: Rhetoric and Propaganda
CRN 11514 (TR 11:00-12:15); CRN 27280 (TR 2:00-3:15)
Castellanos, Jose Manuel
Thousands of years ago, Socrates warned us against those who pandered to the masses and sought to control us with sweet words, opinion, and threats. Ignorant people, he warned, can use argument and rhetoric to convince equally ignorant people of things that they are both ignorant about. If Socrates were alive today, one might argue that he would be appalled by the power of language in our age of mass communication. We are convinced almost every day of things such as how a soda will make us enjoy life more, how we are living in true democracy, how shoes will make us superb athletes, how more guns will make us more/less safe, and how the truth of the few and powerful is the truth of us all. We will be exploring several genres of writing that will not only help you understand propaganda and other forms of manipulative discourse, but will also give you an appreciation for the rigorous processes of academic writing, research, and reading. We will begin with our own propaganda piece, the manifesto, in which you will use your own ethos and opinionated logic to convince our classroom to take action for a cause of your choosing. Our next project will be a proposal of a monument to be built in Chicago. Although the monument will be reflective of your values and beliefs, you must carefully consider the expectations and desires of your audience as well as how the monument will benefit the city itself. Next, we will further develop an appreciation for critical thinking, argument, and rhetoric as we analyze pieces of propaganda that we come into contact with in our daily lives. Finally, we will write an argumentative paper on topics concerning mass media and/or censorship.

ENGL 160: Writing About Food
CRN 11766 (TR 8:00-9:15); CRN 32836 (TR 9:30-10:45); CRN 11784 (TR 12:30-1:45)
Cox, Nikki Paley
This course approaches writing as an instrument of community involvement and a tool of social change. Writing is one of the many ways we can contribute to and participate in our world; local, national, and global issues generate numerous forms of public “conversations.” This course invites you to actively participate in these exchanges, specifically in areas related to food and food studies. In this class, you will complete four writing projects: a rhetorical analysis, a review, an argumentative essay, and a feature story/profile. Additionally, you will write a cover letter explaining how you understand the key terms of the class as they apply to these four assignments and your growth as a writer. Through this series of writing projects you will be asked to contribute to the public discourse(s) surrounding specific social situations and community or national issues. These writing projects will ask you to respond to diverse situations by employing different types of writing from a variety of genres. As we explore various forms of writing, we will also work towards an understanding of how different genres are created out of and shaped by the particular situations from which they arise.

ENGL 160: Academic Writing I
CRN 11788 (TR 2:00-3:15)
Douglas, Jason
Good writing achieves a desired outcome. Are you able to effectively convey your knowledge, skills, personality, feelings, and beliefs through writing? We will focus on writing projects that develop your skills in personal, academic, and professional settings. Each writing project will require you to account for the specific discourse community you are speaking to and engage the appropriate genre. You will need to carefully coordinate your personal preferences, knowledge, and experiences with the specific demands of situation, genre, language, and consequences of each writing project in order to effectively communicate. You will produce four writing projects: a personal essay, a report, an argument, and one more genre that we will determine collectively. These projects will require multiple drafts, follow-up cover letters, and a final portfolio of your work.

ENGL 160: Writing In Context: Defining Your Voice
CRN 11828 (TR 8:00-9:15)
Eighan, Jocelyn
The goal of this course is to encourage you to think critically about current social issues on a local and global scale. We will discuss important topics--like cultural authenticity, the meaning of personal identity, and the global job market--and how these issues relate to you. This course will prepare you to locate your own voice within the public discourses surrounding these topics. In this class, you will learn how to effectively express yourself through writing. From letters and personal essays to more formal proposals, reviews, and feature stories, you will be able to utilize your writing skills in a variety of different genres. By the end of the semester, you should have a new understanding about the contexts from which we write. Furthermore, you will have (hopefully) learned more about your own identity and your place in the issues we have discussed throughout the semester.

ENGL 160: You I C
CRN 27283 (TR 3:30-4:45)
Finley, Aaron
The cornerstone of the UIC composition program is the idea that successful writing both arises from a specific situation in the world, and has the ability to shape that world itself. Your writing for this semester will be generated by a real-life situation that you are already becoming steadily more familiar with: the UIC campus. You have no doubt been bombarded by a steady stream of new people, ideas, and environments since your arrival as a student. The first task for your work for this course is to become intimately acquainted with the situation of campus itself, and the excitements and challenges that are unique to this space in which you and your peers are pursuing your educational goals. Once you have become familiar with your surroundings, you will soon see opportunities for their improvement. From there you will learn how, through the genres of writing that we will explore in this course, you can go about effecting the kind of changes that you determine are necessary to make the campus a better place. Through your work for this course, you will learn a set of writing practices that will help you become an active participant in your new social and cultural environment. These practices will become evident as you compose both a set of letters to newspaper editors and a proposal that details the type of changes you would like to make on campus. By the end of the semester you will have developed ideas about the role of student organizations on campus as well as strategies for starting your own student organizations. In short, you will enact in writing ways to establish new opportunities for your campus community to thrive and your issues to be addressed. The writing you will practice in this course will empower you not only to enact change in your environment at UIC, but outside the boundaries of the university as well. You will, after taking this course, be capable of understanding and participating in projects that can be applied to the social and cultural issues of your community, your city, and beyond.

ENGL 160: Writing Into Community Conversations
CRN 11720 (TR 11:00-12:15); CRN 11731 (TR 12:30-1:45); CRN 27373 (TR 3:30-4:45)
Hibbeler, Mary
This course approaches writing as an instrument of community involvement and a means of instigating social change. Writing is one of the many ways that we can contribute to and participate in our world--from personal letters, web logs, and emails to resumes, articles, formal proposals, and academic presentations. Local, national, and global issues generate numerous forms of public [written] “conversations.” This course invites you to actively participate in these exchanges. Through a series of four writing projects you will be asked to contribute to the public discourse(s) surrounding specific social situations and community issues. These writing projects will ask you to respond to diverse situations by employing different types of writing from a variety of genres. As we explore various forms of writing, we will also work towards an understanding of how different genres are created out of and shaped by the particular situations from which they arise.

ENGL 160: Danger Everywhere! 
CRN 11512 (TR 8:00-9:15); CRN 27372 (9:30-10:45); CRN 11787 (TR 11:00-12:15)
King, Meg
In this course, you will read about and discuss the rhetoric of imminent danger, as it is manifest in contemporary American culture. This includes topics as various as environmental disaster, the dangers of junk food, and gun rights. Your writing projects will either participate in the conversation on impending doom or will analyze the rhetorical devices used to heighten fear. You will compose and revise four writing projects, ranging from a film review to an argumentative essay.

ENGL 160: Writing in the Technological Age
CRN 23460 (TR 2:00-3:15)
Konchan, Virginia
We live in a period of sweeping technological change, rapid communication, and increased connectivity. The ability to recognize the implications of these changes and the ways in which we might respond to them through writing is vital to negotiating our place in the contemporary world. In this class we will consider the implications of some of these changes and examine how people are reacting to them. Through these activities, you will begin to situate yourself as a respondent to these events through writing. Although the course covers a wide range of topics--Definition and Diversity at UIC, Appropriation Art, Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Systems, and Social Networking Sites--the situation which these topics are built on is the same: change has called for responses from different writers, and you are invited to participate in the resulting, ongoing conversation. We will be specifically considering the genres through which individual writers have chosen to respond to this larger situation, and you will be asked to use some of the genres we examine in four major writing projects: a Manifesto, a Review, an Argumentative Essay, and a Dialogue. For each of these projects, you are going to assess arguments made for and against the various aspects of these topics and consider the ways in which the language that we choose influences the consequences of our writing.

ENGL 160: Writing about Class
CRN 11791 (TR 8:00-9:15); CRN 11543 (TR 9:30-10:45); CRN 11390 (TR 2:00-3:15)
Lamm, Zachary
Given the current economic crisis in the U.S. and beyond, the subject of class and the impact of the economy on citizens' lives are very much on people’s minds and in the media. This class will take the topic of class (especially our own class status) as a topic for writing in a variety of genres, including personal essays, argumentative papers, and even film reviews. We will think about how we think about class, how ideas of class shape our culture and political system, and how we might respond through our writing to the challenges we face in light of the ever-changing economic world we live in. Students will complete four writing projects over the course of the semester, and we will divide meeting time between discussion of the subject of the course, methods and practices of writing, and in-class work on students' own writing.

ENGL 160: Writing in Elementary Education
CRN 23461 (TR 12:30-1:45); CRN 11769 (TR 2:00-3:15)
Marincic, David
Why do we write? How do we adapt our writing to the circumstances surrounding it? What can writing do for us? In this course we will critically examine some of the situations in which teachers often write, the effects of those situations on our language and genre choices, and the potential consequences of writing. Our work will focus around current issues in education, and will help you to hone your rhetorical and analytical skills as readers, writers, thinkers, and speakers. We will read and write in multiple genres throughout the term, and for each writing project, you will be asked to understand your audience and your purpose and to gear your writing accordingly. Please note: This section is reserved for Elementary Education majors in the College of Education only. No other students will be permitted to take this class.

ENGL 160: Writing About Work
CRN 11841 (TR 8:00-9:15); CRN 11796 (TR 9:30-10:45); CRN 11801 (TR 2:00-3:15)
McFarland, Scott
In this writing workshop we will examine employment issues in the U.S. from a variety of academic perspectives, from the social to the political, from the literary to the philosophical. Course readings, writing assignments, and class discussions will explore the values and beliefs that have shaped common-sense ideas about jobs, careers, and “opportunity” in 21st-century America. Along the way, you will be asked to examine your career goals and ambitions, i.e. “How do you define success?” We will study many kinds of writing situations, and will produce highly-polished pieces of writing in four genres: the oral history, the satirical news article, the argumentative essay, and the personal essay.

ENGL 160: Writing about Culture in Personal, Public, and Academic Contexts
CRN 11539 (TR 2:00-3:15)
Noll, Brianna
In this course, we will examine the role of culture in our personal, public, and academic lives. You will be asked to consider cultural products critically, countering the tendency to “experience” them passively. Some might believe popular culture, for example, to be too “lowbrow” for serious analysis and study; but why is that? We will consider the ways in which culture, including popular culture, works rhetorically to influence our lives and beliefs, and we will discuss why (or whether) it is, in fact, worthwhile to study. We will read texts about a variety of subjects, from the content of music videos to the role of liberal arts in education, and compose in a variety of genres. You will be asked to write four papers, which we will call “writing projects” because they are not your standard term-papers: a memoir, a rhetorical analysis, an argumentative essay, and a photo essay (accompanied by a cover letter). These projects--as well as our in-class work--will be based on the cornerstone of the UIC composition program: situated writing. We will consider how situation shapes genre choice, how language choices produce consequences, and how the ideas we generate as a class this semester can impact a broader social context.

ENGL 160: Writing as a Social Act
CRN 29191 (TR 5:00-6:15)
Oh, Sein
This 160 course proposes that writing matters not merely as a communicative tool but also as a social act that will actually affect the worlds (both abstract and real). Depending on the given situation, we try to find a genre of writing which is rhetorically effective, with proper language and style that accompany both situation and genre, and then see how our writings move the audience or change the world. Also, in our digitized, technologically advanced era, writing also works as an important connector between cyberspace and the real world, as well as between more traditionally defined worlds such as between inner mind and outer experience, between artistic performances and the everyday lives, between an individual and the community to which the one belongs. We will go through four different situations and genres (narrative, proposal, argumentative essay, and film review), and consider how writing becomes constitutive of the society/community we belong to, and will try to make our writing matter.

Blended Course (Tuesday Only)

ENGL 160: Writing Your Way Into the Public Conversation
CRN 11550 (Tuesday 9:30-10:45); CRN 11803 (Tuesday 11:00-12:15); CRN 19880 (Tuesday 12:30-1:45)
Young, Andy
The purpose of this course is for you to examine and develop your “voice”--the sense of self that allows you to be both yourself and a member of a community larger than yourself. Writing, and how you reveal your voice in your writing, is a social activity that creates “public conversation.” The public conversation is defined by the voices of its participants. Writing in the public conversation will require you to coexist in a community which has a tolerance of diversity and respect for others. In this class, we will not only add our voices to the public conversation, but we will try to bring our ideas into useful relation to the ideas of others. Our public conversation will not be dominated by the loudest voices, but will be balanced with both voicing you ideas and opinions and listening to the voices of others. Please note: This is a blended version of the course, which means class will meet once a week with all other activities being completed through online and new media activities and assignments.

Blended Course (Thursday Only)

ENGL 160: Writing and Self-Representation
CRN 32837 (Thursday 12:30-1:45)
Tracey, Sara
Writing, regardless of the particular situation it responds to, offers you an opportunity to present yourself, your community, and/or your opinions to an audience. In this course, we'll look at the ways a particular piece of writing--as well as a body of writing across genres--acts as self-representation. Because this course takes place part of the time in a physical classroom and part of the time across the expanses of the Internet, we’ll pay specific attention to writing that occurs online (for instance: blogs, Twitter, and Facebook) and the possible consequences of this type of writing. Please note: This is a blended version of the course, which means class will meet once a week with all other activities being completed through online and new media activities and assignments.

161

Monday / Wednesday / Friday sections
ENGL 161: Writing After Globalization
CRN 22420 (MWF 10:00-10:50)
Adiutori, Vincent
What is globalization? Where did it come from? And what has it become in the 21st century? This section of 161 focuses on identifying and interpreting globalization's effects throughout the world and more specifically in the U.S. and Chicago. Students are expected to become active members in the classroom and develop individual projects of inquiry. Using Peter Singer's book One World to frame general research and introduction, students will engage problems regarding economics, culture, history, philosophy, public health, environmental sciences, among other disciplines. Final research papers require students to read across multiple texts and arguments through sustained intellectual engagement with their topics. Many research projects negotiate the tensions between local and global as well as individual and social needs in light of globalization's establishment in many spheres of daily life.

ENGL 161: Writing the Dead: Composing on the Decomposed
CRN 21626 (MWF 10:00-10:50)
Browning, Annah
The particular “body” of inquiry we will be investigating in this course is (pun intended) the human body after death. How have dominant Western narratives about death affected views of the cadaver? How have these attitudes become manifested in how we handle the dead (physically and emotionally, as well as intellectually and ethically) both in art and in society at large? Through our study, we will explore the various ways in which cadavers serve us--how they have expanded our knowledge of both science and history, the human body, and human society as a whole, and how their use (and non-use) has been, and continues to be, contested. Once you have situated yourself within this body of issues through extensive reading and writing, you will find your own topic of interest. Through your research on this topic, you will not only create a contribution to the larger academic discourse surrounding the dead, but develop a useful set of skills that will serve you throughout your time in academia and beyond. English 161 is a writing course designed to provide you with the tools that you will need to engage academic inquiry. During the first half of the semester, you will complete three writing assignments in which you will learn to summarize, analyze, and synthesize class readings. In the second half of the semester, you will write a research proposal about one aspect of the course you’d like to research. You will spend the remainder of the semester turning your proposal into a research essay using the skills you learned in the first half of the semester.

ENGL 161: Writing about Chicago Architecture
CRN 11868 (MWF 2:00-2:50)
Casey, John
In this course we continue the examination of “situated writing” begun in English 160. Using the four key terms of language, genre, situation, and consequences, we will explore how research is conducted in an academic setting. Specifically we will review how writers have interpreted, and represented architecture in Chicago. Our main text will be a collection of articles written by Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin. In addition, we will read a selection of academic journal articles and excerpts from books on the interpretation of the built environment. These readings will help us conceptualize how to “read” and interpret buildings and their surroundings. They will also help us understand how Chicago’s skyline has been understood over time and whether or not that historic narrative is still valid. Your main assignment for this class is a 10-15 page research paper on one aspect of architecture and/or urban design in Chicago. There will also be three short papers to help you master the skills of Summary, Synthesis, Analysis, and Argument and a variety of short writing assignments and in class activities. The subject of your research might be connected to contemporary events or it might be historical, but it should either reveal to the reader an aspect of the city’s built environment that you feel we are not aware of or change our perception about some aspect that we thought we understood. By the end of this course, you should have an understanding of the process that leads from inquiry to academic writing. You should also have a better understanding of the perception of Chicago in terms of its architecture and design and how that perception relates to the reality of life for this city’s residents. Required Texts: Blair Kamin, Why Architecture Matters: Lessons from Chicago, 2003. [ISBN-13: 978-0226423227] Stuart Greene and April Lidinsky, From Inquiry to Academic Writing: A Practical Guide, 2011. [ISBN-13: 978-0312601409] These texts will be available at the UIC Bookstore in the Student Center East. All other course readings will be made available through the class Blackboard site.

ENGL 161: The Pain of the Macho: Writing About Masculinity in the 21st Century
CRN 11952 (MWF 9:00-9:50); CRN 11866 (MWF 10:00-10:50)
Cha, Dongho
English 161 is designed to provide you with the tools that you will need to engage academic inquiry. During the first half of the semester, you will complete three writing assignments in which you will learn to summarize, analyze, and synthesize class readings. In the second half of the semester, you will write a research proposal about one aspect of the course you’d like to research. You will spend the remainder of the semester turning your proposal into a research-assisted essay using the skills we learned in the first half of the semester. You will emerge as an incipient scholar joining the masculinity research community and offering your perspective on many of the pertinent debates in the field. In this course we will examine the subject of the so-called “declining American male.” Recent studies in academic journals, magazines, and the mainstream press agree that the American male is in a state of crisis. Rigid definitions of masculinity are outdated and dysfunctional, leading men to a variety of health, economic, and sexual problems, as verified by recent statistical evidence. We will examine the research in a variety of disciplines--psychology, sociology, economics, history, sport, sexuality, and pop culture, among others--and trace the historic roots of contemporary masculinity. In addition, our readings will address several different topics in the masculinity debate, including the nature-versus-nurture divide, the politics of gender, adolescent male development, father-son dynamics, hyper-masculinity in sports, the metrosexual, and cultural constructions of manhood. The central question, as posed by journalist Guy Garcia, is this: can men stop being defensive without going on the offensive? And does the American male have anything to be defensive about? You will be expected to take into account your own experiences and integrate these into the ongoing masculine narrative of contemporary American culture.

ENGL 161: Writing About Globalization
CRN 21629 (MWF 11:00-11:50)
Findeisen, Chris
The main text for this course will be Peter Singer’s One World: The Ethics of Globalization. You will use this book either as a touchstone, or a point of departure, for your own academic inquiries into the broad topic of globalization. The point of the course is to locate yourself as a writer in the public and academic conversation about globalization, while learning the research and writing skills necessary to enter into meaningful academic discourse. In short, this class prepares you to do the work asked of any serious student in a research university. To this end, writing assignments and in-class work will focus on the techniques of summary, analysis, and synthesis, and the course will culminate in a thesis-driven research paper on an issue related to those discussed in class.

ENGL 161: Writing About Global Ethics
CRN 11861 (MWF 12:00-12:50)
Godek-Kiryluk, Elvira
English 161 is designed to provide you with the tools that you will need to engage in academic inquiry. Approximately half of the course is devoted to developing the intellectual tools that will help you to guide your inquiry, while the other half is devoted to developing a field, or subject of inquiry. In this class, we will examine the development of globalization through a number of texts and disciplines. You will be expected to draw on both experience and research to formulate an inquiry into the effects of globalization. We will focus on the ethical implications of living in a world affected by the results of globalization. The final writing project for the course will be a 10-page, documented research paper where you will develop your own claim stemming from your research in and familiarity with a specialized field that addresses the concerns of globalization.

ENGL 161: Writing About Animal Rights, Ecology, and Civic Engagement
CRN 21697 (MWF 12:00-12:50); CRN 29333 (MWF 1:00-1:50); CRN 29334 (MWF 2:00-2:50)
Jenks, Philip
This course focuses on the relationships between animal rights, ecology, and civic engagement. In this class, you will critically examine our social and individual responsibilities in relationship to the environment, with an emphasis on how diet and consumption affects our social and physical environment. You will visit relevant public institutions (West Loop Meatpacking district) connecting animal rights, sustainability, and our role in the world. By combining the physical experience of exploring the West Loop Meatpacking district with relevant written assignments and readings, you will enhance your research skills considerably. Your written assignments include journaling, summary, extended analysis, a research proposal, and a culminating research paper. In each assignment, you will demonstrate an ability to argue and analyze effectively.

ENGL 161: Writing Back to Globalization
CRN 11851 (MWF 11:00-11:50)
Kang, EuiHuack
In this class, we will examine the development of globalization through a number of texts and disciplines. Students will be expected to draw on both experience and research to formulate an inquiry into the effects of globalization. We will focus on the ethical implications of living in a world affected by the results of globalization. The final writing project for the course will be a documented research paper where students will develop their own claim stemming from their research in and familiarity with a specialized field that addresses the concerns of globalization.

ENGL 161: “Chicago Works?” Writing Through the Issues of the Working Poor
CRN 11864 (MWF 8:00-8:50); 24055 (MWF 9:00-9:50); 29300 (MWF 11:00-11:50)
Lewis, Jennifer
In this course, we will extend and further develop our skills that evolved in English 160. We will enter even further into public conversations and their consequences, first discerning what these conversations about the "working poor" in fact, are, assessing their validity, and articulating our own, well-supported arguments. As summary, analysis and synthesis are central components of the academic research paper, we will practice these, and we will learn to find and evaluate a variety of primary and secondary sources for our final projects. One of our goals is to identify and participate in public conversations about poverty and work. In order to do this we will each bring in one newspaper or magazine article per week. It can be any piece that interested you for any reason. Please identify the issue at hand, what/who you think the author is responding to, and consider how the author defines/uses major terms such as poverty, work, welfare, etc. This will be part of your journal and will help you move toward your final research portfolio as well as spark class discussions. Our first three writing projects, which are summary, analysis and synthesis essays, will be based on David Shipler's The Working Poor and the Course Packet (includes: "The Myth of the Working Poor," by Steven Malanga; "The Working Poor," by Tim Jones; "Wal-Mart's Urban Romance," by Ta-Nehisi and Paul Coates; selections from When Work Disappears by William Julius Wilson, essays by Malcolm Gladwell and Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich). The fourth project is an annotated bibliography and final project outline, and the final research portfolio will be the culmination, in the form of a ten-page paper, of the semester's inquiries and efforts.

ENGL 161: Writing about Film in a Historical Context
CRN 11956 (MWF 12:00-12:50)
Lyons, MaryAnne
Movies are one of the dominant popular art forms in America today, but they are also a valuable part of our cultural landscape. They are both made and watched within a dense fabric of culture, history, and sensibilities. In this class we will explore the place of film in American society from World War II to the present.

ENGL 161: Writing About Globalization
CRN 21840 (MWF 12:00-12:50)
Moraghan, Matthew
In this course, we will further develop the skills put to use in English 160. Our ultimate goal is to write a thoughtful and well-organized research paper that addresses the broad question, “What is globalization?”--specifically, by considering its cultural, political, and economic aspects. As summary, analysis, and synthesis are central components of the academic research paper, we will practice these skills in short papers. We will also learn how to search for, and evaluate, a range of primary and secondary sources for the research paper. Our first writing project (summary) will be based on Manfred Steiger’s “Globalization,” and in the next two projects (analysis and synthesis) we will consider Steiger’s arguments in relation to ideas put forward by other globalization theorists. The fourth project is an annotated bibliography and final project outline, and the final research portfolio will be the culmination, in the form of a 10 page paper, of the semester’s work. By the end of this course, in addition to having fine-tuned writing skills, you will be able to adeptly participate in conversations about the nature and significance of globalization.

ENGL 161: Writing for Inquiry and Research
CRN 30673 (MWF 1:00-1:50)
Strunk, Trevor
English 161 is a writing course designed to provide you with the tools that you will need to engage academic inquiry. During the first half of the semester, you will complete two writing assignments in which you will learn to summarize, and analyze class readings. In the second half of the semester, you will write a research proposal about one aspect of the course you’d like to research. You will spend the remainder of the semester turning your proposal into a research essay using the skills you learned in the first half of the semester.

Tuesday / Thursday sections

ENGL 161: Talking to Strangers: Writing about Stand-Up Comedy
CRN 11979 (TR 11:00-12:15); CRN 33322 (TR 12:30-1:45); CRN 21668 (TR 3:30-4:45)
Baez, Marc
In Comedy at the Edge, Richard Zoglin characterizes stand-up comedy in the United States during the 1970s as marking a clear shift from a primarily impersonal, joke-based entertainment into a more varied and ambitious art invested in personal experience and direct social commentary. But while it is clear that Richard Pryor and George Carlin and Andy Kaufman engaged in experimentation that was often in conflict with the older style of stand-up, we will treat this tension between a set-up/punchline joke-telling tradition and the development and success of other approaches in the 1970s as an opportunity to explore connections between this “new” type of stand-up comedy and stand-up’s complicated past, from the Borscht-Belt to Vaudeville to Blackface Minstrelsy. English 161 is designed to provide you with the tools that you will need to engage in academic inquiry. So with this in mind, you will complete four writing projects: Summary (2 pages); Extended Analysis (5 pages); a Research Proposal including an annotated bibliography (3 Pages); and a final Research project (10 Pages). Through the first three writing projects, you will develop skills that will enable you to create a well-organized and tightly argued final research paper. Each writing project will include at least two drafts, and the final draft for the research project will be highlighted to show all revisions and will also include a cover letter explaining these revisions.

ENGL 161: Writing the Revolution
CRN 11886 (TR 9:30-10:45); CRN 24008 (11:00-12:15); CRN 11853 (2:00-3:15)
Costello, Virginia
In this class, we will analyze Emma Goldman’s highly romantic and wildly impractical theory of anarchism. Since Goldman became an anarchist primarily in response to the treatment of Haymarket anarchists, we will start here in Chicago, 1886, move to the early 1900s when Goldman lectured throughout the U.S., and finally make connections to contemporary movements and politics. We will examine Goldman’s essays, which are rich in references to the work of respected scientists, sexologists, and literary writers as well as a few quacks (!). We will hone our critical thinking skills, develop our own positions, and write about the justice system, education, gender, politics, and class. Finally, we will examine the way in which many of Goldman’s arguments are strikingly relevant today. We will be entering into an intellectual conversation on anarchism and students will be positioning themselves within that conversation. The later half of the semester will be dedicated to employing our critical thinking skills and writing a research paper. Our text, From Inquiry To Academic Writing: A Practical Guide, explains how to develop ideas, analyze essays, synthesize sources, construct a thesis, organize an essay, conduct basic research, and use appropriate styles and forms of citation.

ENGL 161: Science Fiction and the Body
CRN 11958 (TR 9:30-10:45)
Fiorelli, Julie
As recent film and television examples such as Battlestar Galactica, District 9, Moon, Dollhouse, Source Code, and The Hunger Games illustrate, science fiction can not only project more technologically advanced futures, but also provide political and social commentary on the present. This commentary may reflect various political viewpoints, and it may deal with a wide array of issues, including race, class, and gender. In this course, we will explore various examples of science fiction writing and film/television with an eye toward its critical function. More particularly, we will be looking at science fiction that addresses the human body, and technology’s effects on the body and how we view it. We will also read nonfiction material that examines science fiction’s function and issues raised in the fiction. While this course takes up science fiction and the body as its topic and model of inquiry, its primary goal is to help students to develop as academic writers. Over the course of this class, students will develop their skills of academic inquiry and analytical writing; through a series of shorter writing assignments, the class will culminate in an extended research project of the student’s choosing, related to the topics of the class.

ENGL 161: Writing Analytically about Ethics and Politics
CRN 27288 (TR 12:30-1:45); CRN 22416 (TR 3:30-4:45); CRN 27376 (5:00-6:15)
Ford, William, Dr.
This course is designed to prepare you to write academic research papers, specifically, position papers (papers that analyze a controversy, proposing and defending a solution to it), partly by involving you in readings and discussions about many of the ethical and political controversies of our time. In connection with our primary writing text, From Inquiry to Academic Writing: A Practical Guide, we’ll examine two philosophically-based texts: one (Understand Ethics) that will provide us with an organized overview of ethical (and, to some extent, political) ideas, and another (Understand Political Philosophy) that provides a similar overview of political questions and theories as they have been considered and developed throughout the history of Western Civilization up to the present. Looking at ethical and political questions in a more disciplined analytical and philosophical way will not only help you to sort through alternative positions to find the one that makes the most sense to you, but it will also give you the opportunity (and incentive) to learn some very practical skills to help in the cultivation of your analytical writing. To begin with, you will learn some easy and effective ways to analyze the range of opinion on specific ethical and political issues, how to identify major points of conflict, how to formulate research questions, and how to recognize unexamined opinions and uncover hidden assumptions. You will also learn techniques for paraphrasing short passages, summarizing longer ones, analyzing complex subjects and controversies, synthesizing (relating together) ideas and arguments from various points of view, and constructing reasonable arguments of your own. Emphasis will be placed on persuasive rhetorical structure, unbiased representation of conflicting positions, identification of underlying principles, rational (and honest) argumentation, and correct documentation of source material. All of this constitutes excellent preparation, not only for college-level research, but also for making everyday decisions (or life-changing ones) concerning your own ethics and politics. No prior knowledge of ethics, logic, politics (or philosophy in general) is required.

ENGL 161: Writing Urban Secret Histories
CRN 21700 (TR 11:00-12:15); CRN 21667 (TR 3:30-4:45)
Newirth, Michael
This Composition II course focuses thematically on the contested narratives visible in the actual social histories of cities like Chicago and New York. Students will read a variety of texts by writers such as Luc Sante and Marco d’Eramo, while encountering different writing techniques, culminating in an independently researched, thesis-driven 10-page research project. This course should appeal to students who are willing to engage historical narratives as text evidence, and wish to build their writing skills in terms of logic, clarity, and specificity.

ENGL 161: Writing about Chicago: Pursuing Inquiry through Research
CRN 32676 (TR 8:00-9:15); CRN 11854 (TR 11:00-12:15)
Rosenbush, Mimi
Reading about Chicago’s 19th-century emergence as a mighty industrial force is difficult to reconcile with today’s city of Millennium Park, but this dynamic interplay characterizes Chicago’s remarkable story. In reading the history of Chicago, students will gain competence in academic writing through summary and analysis practice. For final research projects on Chicago, students will choose topics that intersect with their own academic and personal interests.

ENGL 161: From Public Duty to Private Business: Writing About the Politics of Waste
CRN 11875 (TR 8:00-9:15); CRN 25973 (TR 9:30-10:45); CRN 11972 (TR 12:30-1:45)
Sherfinski, Todd
The topic of this course is sanitation, an often overlooked and (historically speaking) fairly modern concern. To that end, Rose George’s The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters will serve as the central text for the course. In addition to George’s book-length examination of waste, students will also read excerpts from Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing, edited by Harvey Molotch and Laura Noren, as well as various other literature on sanitation. The purpose of the course is to engage in meaningful and critical conversation about real issues and concerns, which is another way of describing academic writing. Through close reading and practical yet rigorous writing assignments, students will learn how to negotiate the use of analytical tools: summary, analysis, and synthesis. The course is designed to integrate research, more specifically academic inquiry, into fundamental components of academic writing, which are primarily developing a focus, finding a purpose, and expressing oneself accurately and concisely. In addition to completing daily reading and writing assignments, students enrolling in sections of this course are expected to participate in both class discussions and small group presentations based on assigned research topics, develop independent research projects, and engage in and contribute to the academic community of which they belong.

ENGL 161: The Language of “Us” and “Them”: Linguistics and Identity
CRN 11961 (TR 2:00-3:15)
Williams, Charitianne
This class is designed to recognize the benefits and advantages of bilingualism, and to serve the needs of bilingual and English-language-learning students. In this class we will study language variation with a focus on how language shapes our own and other’s sense of identity. Examining major national linguistic events such as the Oakland Ebonics debate and the English-only movement, the class will attempt to separate truth from myth as course members gain mastery of one discourse community in particular: Academia. Please note: This section is designed to meet the needs of English-language learners. Instructor permission is required to enroll.

Blended Course (Tuesday Only)

ENGL 161: Science Fiction and Fantasy as Critical Commentary
CRN 35789 (Tuesday 2:00-3:15)
Wonders, Brooke
As examples such as Hunger Games, Moon, Firefly, Game of Thrones, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind illustrate, genre fiction--whether by projecting an alternate future or by looking back at an altered past--can also provide political and social commentary on the present. This commentary may be either conservative or progressive and is capable of addressing a wide variety of issues, including race, class, and gender. In this course, we will explore various examples of genre writing and film/television with an eye toward the critical function of such works, and we will read criticism of major genre phenomena. Although this course takes up science fiction and fantasy fiction as topics of inquiry, the primary goal of this class is to help you develop your skills as academic writers. During the first half of the course, we will examine science fiction and fantasy in terms of some of the issues these genres raise in relation to the body, technological innovation, and the possibilities of language. We’ll also learn about some of the different lenses or methodologies scholars take up when discussing genre fiction. We will work toward developing intellectual tools to guide us in focused, academic inquiry. During the second half of the class, you will develop a subject of inquiry that will result in a research-based academic paper. In this final paper, you will develop your own claim and research an issue raised in class in a way that is interesting and exciting to you. Please note: This is a blended version of the course, which means class will meet once a week with all other activities completed through online and new media activities and assignments. Please note: This is a blended version of the course, which means class will meet once a week with all other activities being completed through online and new media activities and assignments.

Blended Course (Thursday Only)

ENGL 161: What Can Poetry Teach Us?
CRN 11924 (Thursday 9:30-10:45); CRN 21838 (Thursday 11:00-12:15); CRN 11858 (Thursday 2:00-3:15)
Leavey, Andrea Witzke
The twentieth-century poet, Marianne Moore, begins her poem “Poetry” with the line, “I too dislike it.” The “too” implies, of course, that the speaker is not alone. Poetry is not always easy--even for poets--and yet it has much to teach us, be it as readers, as writers, as thinkers, as people. As Gertrude Reif Hughes puts it in her essay “How Poems Teach Us to Think,” “[i]n trying to understand an obscure poem we have to loosen some of our habitual responses. Riddles are an extreme example. They baffle on purpose, using disguise in order to reveal, so they offer a telling instance of how poems teach us to think.” American poet and businessman Dana Gioia would agree. Gioia felt his poetic training and “background in imagination, in language and in literature” gave him an enormous advantage in the business world. So how does poetry provide a route to developing the “qualitative and creative” skills and “creative judgment” that Gioia believes poetry gave him? In this course, we will examine that question as well as learn methods for reading and understanding many kinds of contemporary poetry. We will also read John Timberland Newman’s How Did Poetry Survive?, a book that explores the links between American poetry and the rise of urban culture over the last century. Students will produce four writing projects over the course of the term, finishing with an extended, documented research paper about a particular aspect of poetry, its relation to American culture, and how it could be used in innovative ways in areas of life and society that aren’t always associated with poetry. Please note: This is a blended version of the course, which means class will meet once a week with all other activities being completed through online and new media activities and assignments.