Graduate Course Descriptions
Autumn | Winter | Spring | Undergraduate Courses
AUTUMN QUARTER
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31000 13800 History and Theory of Drama-1; Bevington, David; Rudall, Nick
32100 12300 Poetry and Being; Ruddick, Lisa
32400 12400 Writing Poetry and Fiction; Schaeffer, Susan
33000 Academic and Professional Writing (Little Red Schoolhouse); McEnerney, Larry; Cochran, Kathryn; Weiner, Tracy
34100 Foundations of Interpretive Theory, Jay Schleusener, Candace Vogler
34300 14300 Advanced Poetry Workshop; Volkman, Karen
34400 14400 Advanced Fiction Writing; Schaeffer, Susan
34700 14700 Creative Writing: Fiction; Obejas, Achy
34900 14900 Old English; Rabin, Andrew
36800 17th-Century England, Steven Pincus
37500 17501 Milton; Scodel, Joshua
39900 Intensive Reading Research; Staff
41300 Medieval Allegory; Murrin, Michael
42800 Chicago; Knight, Janice
42901 12901 Poetry Workshop: Poetic Forms; Volkman, Karen
43000 24000 Ulysses; Ruddick, Lisa
43400 Frankfurt School Aesthetics and Modern Poetry
43600 13600 Playwriting, Claudia Allen
44400 Representing Truth and Reconciliation in South African Writing; Driver, Dorothy
44800 24800 Gender and South African Writing; Driver, Dorothy
45500 After Great Pain: From Sentimentality to Trauma in the
U.S. Liberal Tradition, Lauren Berlant
47900 27900 African American Poetry; von Hallberg, Robert
48000 Methods and Issues in Cinema Studies; Hansen, Miriam
48700 29300 History of International Cinema I-Silent Era; Tsivian, Yuri
50100 Graduate Teaching Colloquium: The Craft of Teaching; Staff
50300 Principles of Teaching Writing, Larry McEnerney
51000 PhD Colloquium; Chandler, James
51700 Shakespeare and the Question of Value; Mazzio, Carla
53700 Epistemology, Ethics and Aesthetics in the Long Eighteenth Century; Macpherson, Sandra
57200 Elements of Poetry and Poetics; von Hallberg, Robert
59900 Reading Course; Staff
61400 Sem: Early Modern Britain 1, Steven Pincus
64800 History & Fiction in 19th Century Britain; Helsinger, Elizabeth
67100 Shock Treatments and Nervous Systems; Nelson, Debbie
31000 13800. History and Theory of Drama-1.
TuTh 1:30-2:50.
Bevington, David; Rudall, Nick.
A survey of major trends and theatrical accomplishments in Western drama from the ancient
Greeks through the Renaissance: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, medieval
religious drama, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson, along with some consideration of dramatic
theory by Aristotle, Horace, Sir Philip Sidney, Dryden. The course features voluntary but
highly recommended end-of-week workshops in which individual scenes will be read aloud
dramatically and discussed. Assignments at mid-quarter and at the end of the quarter will
give the option of two substantial essays, or (in place of either or both) the putting on
of a short scene in cooperation with some other members of the class. Acting skill is not
required; the point is to discover what is at work in the scene and to write up that process
in a somewhat informal report.
32100 12300. Poetry and Being
TuTh 9:00-10:20.
Ruddick, Lisa.
The course involves close analysis of poems from a variety of periods and genres,
some exposure to various critics' perspectives on literary form, and a number of
theoretical readings (largely from the domain of psychoanalysis) on creativity,
play, and emotion, which readings we would place in dialogue with our interpretations
of individual poems.
32400 12400. Writing Poetry and Fiction
TuTh 3:00-4:20.
Schaeffer, Susan.
This course will be taught as a workshop. The principal texts to be used will be those written by the
students during the quarter, and class discussion will center on these works. In addition, several
other texts will be examined, primarily in order to enable students to begin criticizing and editing
their own works. These texts will be short. Those specializing in poetry will be expected to write
a poem a week; those specializing in the short story will be expected to write at least three stories
during the quarter. If anyone embarks on a novel, a schedule will be worked out once the quarter
begins. It is imperative that all students participate in discussing the works of everyone else in
the class. This is a class in which everyone is free to experiment. It is not necessary to choose
one genre and stick to it for the entire quarter. Ideally, students will, by the end of the semester,
have a clearer idea of what they want to be doing and how they want to be doing it. Each student will
submit a portfolio at the end of the quarter. Grades will be determined both by these portfolios and by
class discussion.
33000. Academic and
Professional Writing (Little Red Schoolhouse)
TuTh 3:00-4:20.
McEnerney, Larry; Cochran, Kathryn; Weiner, Tracy.
This course teaches the skills needed to write clear and coherent expository prose and to
edit the writing of others. The course consists of weekly lectures on Thursdays,
immediately followed by tutorials addressing the issues in the lecture. On Tuesdays,
students discuss short weekly papers in two-hour tutorials consisting of seven
students and a tutor. Students may replace the last three papers with a longer paper
and, with the consent of relevant faculty, write it in conjunction with another class
or as part of the senior project.
34100. Foundations of Interpretive
Theory
Jay Schleusener, Candace Vogler.
An introduction to seminal works in the European
philosophical tradition which have shaped important
approaches to humanistic study. The course focuses on
traditional accounts of the intending subject, and the
criticism of it central t some modes of psychoanalytic and
Marxist work, and to some work on culture, sex race, and
gender. Among the authors read are Hegel, Marx, Heidegger,
Sartre, Freud, Lacan, and Althusser. Ian Mueller and Candace
Vogler with guest lecturers.
34300 14300. Advanced Poetry Workshop
M 3:00-5:50.
Volkman, Karen.
For students who have completed one or more poetry workshops. This course requires extensive reading,
writing, and preliminary attempts by the student to place his or her work within the ongoing dialogue
of tradition and innovation. We will start by reading T.S. Eliot's somewhat fusty "Tradition and the
Individual Talent" and begin to frame our own definitions of broad and variable terms such as tradition
and influence. Our reading will pair predecessor poets with a later figure, considering them in terms of
legacy and cultural inheritance, focusing on Whitman/Ginsberg, Dickinson/Plath, Stevens/Ashbery,
and Hughes/Komunyaaka. Students will write new poems prompted by the poets we discuss, and will
explore influences on their own writing and the relationship of another set of poets in two short
papers. P.Q: submit 3-5 poems to G-B 309 by 09-01-01.
34400 14400. Advanced Fiction Writing
TuTh 12:00-1:20.
Schaeffer, Susan.
This course is partially a continuation of the Autumn quarter Advanced Fiction Writing course.
It is open to students who have taken the Autumn course, as well as students who have not.
This course will be taught as a workshop. Students entering this workshop will be expected
to have some experience in writing fiction. The principal texts for this course will
consist of the students' own writings. Several short texts will be examined in light
of the authors' decisions. Those writing short stories will be expected to write three
stories during the course of the quarter. Anyone writing a longer work will work out
a schedule tailored to the project. It is imperative that all students be willing to
participate in discussing the works of others in the class. Experimentation is welcome.
If, at the end of the quarter, you feel as if you can work on your own without the help of
further workshops or mentors, the course will have achieved its goal. Each student will
submit a portfolio at the end of the quarter. Grades will be determined both by these
portfolios and by class discussion.
34700 14700. Creative Writing: Fiction
Obejas, Achy.
A workshop that will meet once weekly to read, discuss and analyze students' original work.
Students will be expected to re-write, revise and re- evaluate from week to week. Lectures
will be based on issues that arise from student work. There will be occasional exercises
outside the students' own writing. Instructor is Achy Obejas, author of Memory Mambo,
a novel (1996) which won a Lamda award; and We Came All the Way from Cuba So You Could
Dress Like This?, a collection of short stories (1994). She lives in Chicago, is a feature
writer for the Chicago Tribune, teaches a fiction-writing course regularly at Columbia
College, and is by all accounts a lively and gifted teacher as well as writer. She holds
an MFA from Warren Wilson College in NC.
34900 14900. Old English
MWF 10:30-11:20.
Rabin, Andrew.
This course is designed to prepare students for further study in Old English language and literature.
As such, our focus will be the acquisition of those linguistic skills needed to encounter such Old
English poems as Beowulf, The Battle of Maldon, and The Wanderer in their original language. In
addition to these texts, we may also translate the prose Life of Saint Edmund, King and Martyr and
such shorter poetic texts as the Exeter Book riddles. We will also survey Anglo-Saxon history and
culture, taking into account the historical record, archeology, manuscript construction and
illumination, and the growth of Anglo-Saxon studies as an academic discipline. This course
serves as a prerequisite both for further Old English study at the University of Chicago and
for participation in the Newberry Library's Winter Quarter Anglo-Saxon seminar.
36800 16800. 17th-Century England
Steven Pincus. This course examines the causes and consequences of the great
social, cultural, and political transformations which shook
England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The
course will not only examine the natural of England's Civil
Wars and its Glorious Revolution, but it will also seek to
explain how and why English society changed over the period
in question. Using largely primary materials - writings from
Ben Jonson, William Shakespeare, John Milton, John Locke,
Robert Filmer, and Aphra Behn among others - students will
examine the contours of early modern English culture. This
course is appropriate not only for students of history but
also for students interested in English literature and the
history of political thought.
37500 17501. Milton
TuTh 10:30-11:50.
Scodel, Joshua.
This course will follow Milton's career as a poet and, to some extent, as a writer of polemical prose.
It will concentrate on his sense of his own vocation as a poet and as an active and committed Protestant
citizen in times of revolution and reaction. Works to be read include the Nativity Ode, selected sonnets,
A Mask, Lycidas, The Reason of Church Government, selections from the divorce tracts, Areopagitica,
Paradise Lost, Samson Agonistes, and Paradise Regained. There will be a mid-term exercise and a
final paper.
39900. Intensive Reading Research
ARR.
Staff.
A student who wishes to study an author or a topic not covered by the course offerings may arrange
for independent study with a professor willing to supervise that study. The student should
indicate on the Registration Program Card the name of the professor from whom a grade is to be expected.
41300. Medieval Allegory
TuTh 9:00-10:20.
Murrin, Michael.
This course will concentrate on a crucial hundred years, that which begins with scholastics like
Aquinas and Bonaventure and ends with vernacular poets like Chaucer and the Pearl poet. Texts
studied will depend to an extent on what is available, but we will cover both biblical and secular
allegory and look especially at contemporary interpretations of Dante's Inferno. Requirements include
a class presentation and seminar paper.
42800. Chicago
TuTh 1:30-3:00; F 9:30-12:00.
Knight, Janice.
In this course we will explore Chicago - its history, literature, architecture, neighborhoods, and peoples.
The first part of the course will be arranged chronologically. We will begin with a look at the early
history of Chicago, exploring such topics as immigration in the nineteenth century, the great fire,
and the Columbian Exposition of 1893. In subsequent weeks we will focus on neighborhood communities,
cultural diversity, issues of assimilation, and literary movements centered in Chicago. We will
explore Chicago's unique architecture as well as its distinctive neighborhoods. We will read such
diverse writers as Dreiser, Addams, Wright, Herrick, Ida Wells, and Cisneros. Feild trips may include
visits to the Chicago Historical Society, the DuSable Museum, and a walking tour of the neighborhood
of Pilsen/Little Village. Closed to Ph.D. students.
42901 12901. Poetry Workshop: Poetic Forms
TU 3:00-5:50.
Volkman, Karen.
This creative writing course will focus on the exploration of poetic form. Using Eavan
Boland and Mark Strand's anthology The Making of a Poem as a central text, we will
consider historical models and contemporary variations of major forms in the Western
tradition, including the sonnet, sestina, and elegy. We will also explore notions of
form representing alternate traditions--including set forms from Eastern cultures (ghazal,
tanka, haiku) and oral traditions--and innovations such as projective verse and the prose
poem which directly respond to conventional prosodies. The goal is to extend awareness of
the ongoing revision and adaptation of tradition to contemporary concerns and to the
compulsions of the individual maker, and to empower participation in that dialogue. A
further ambition is to make the history of forms a living and vital element in students'
relationship to a complex poetic legacy. You will write poems in the forms discussed as
well as exploring a form-type or formal concern in a final paper. P.Q. Consent of instructor,
Sample submission of 3-5 poems due into Gates-Blake 309 by December 15, 2001.
43000 24000. Ulysses
TuTh 10:30-11:50. Staff.
Ruddick, Lisa.
This course will combine close attention to the text of Ulysses with
readings designed to give a sense of the range of critical approaches
available for interpreting Joyce. These will include selected (recent)
Joyce criticism; theoretical texts that can be brought to bear on the novel,
including work in feminism, psychoanalysis, and anthropological and Marxist
theories of the commodity; and material from the culture of early
twentieth-century Dublin (including newspapers, music hall lyrics, and magazines)
that we can place alongside Ulysses in order to formulate ideas about Joyce's relation to popular culture.
43400. Frankfurt School Aesthetics and Modern Poetry
Readings in major Frankfurt-School texts on aesthetics and
critical theory in relation to literature and the other arts;
special concentration on the writings of Walter Benjamin and
Theodor Adorno, and on their development of Kantian,
Hegelian, and Marxian traditions of aesthetics and critical
theory; sustained attention to how and why poetry turns out
to be so crucial to the Frankfurters' (and, in particular, to
Benjamin's and Adorno's) debates about modernity,
technological reproduction (in both the economic and
artistic-aesthetic spheres), and critical agency;
consideration of how Frankfurt-School concerns and legacies
would engage the changed sociopolitical circumstances and the
artistic-aesthetic tendencies--and, above all, the poetry--of
the last three decades. Some treatment of Romantic and
nineteenth-century poetry, but the course will focus
primarily on twentieth-century, modernist poetry (including
poetry written and published during the postmodern period).
43600 13600. Playwriting
Claudia Allen.
This course introduces the basic principles and techniques of
playwriting through creative exercises, discussion, and the
viewing of contemporary theater. Structural components of
plot, character, and setting are covered as students develop
their dramatic voices through exercises in observation,
memory, emotion, imagination, and improvisation. PQ: Consent
of instructor.
44400. Representing Truth and Reconciliation in South African Writing
TuTh 12:00-1:20.
Driver, Dorothy.
44800 24800. Gender and South African Writing
TuTh 9:00-10:20.
Driver, Dorothy.
In this course we will develop an understanding of South African writing, with particular
focus on the changing social constructions of masculinities and femininities during the period
1950-2000; the effects of race/racism, urbanization, and class on conceptions of gender; and
the impact of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on our understanding of gender
identifications in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa. Texts will include a selection
of short stories, essays and sketches (by, among others, Can Themba and other writers of the
"Drum" School, Bessie Head, Nadine Gordimer, Gcina Mhlope, Miriam Tlali, and Zoe Wicomb);
political autobiographies by Ellen Kuzwayo and Antjie Krog (the latter dealing with the Truth
and Reconciliation Commission); and novels by Bessie Head, Lauretta Ngcobo, Nadine Gordimer,
and Zoe Wicomb. Students wishing to read in advance of the course should start with Ellen
Kuzwayo's Call Me Woman.
45500. After Great Pain: From Sentimentality to Trauma in the
U.S. Liberal Tradition
Lauren Berlant.
This course will explore, in broad outline, the centrality of
pain to the production of concepts of social belonging and
sovereign personhood in the U.S.A. since the migration of
sentimental fiction to the U.S. in the 1780s and the rise of
abolitionist and indigenous rights rhetoric in the 1830s.
While an image of the universal subject enlightened by
rationality suffuses most descriptions of modernity, this
course will suggest that scenes of negative emotion such as
pain, suffering, abjection, and shock took the place of
rationality in mass society as the measure of a subject s and
a culture s humanity, their virtue and value. The first unit
will focus on rhetorics of sentimental attachment, the second
on those from trauma: both will involve enumerating the
genres through which public affect worlds (such as, but not
only, the nation) were said to be organized around a
normative emotional habitus or practical subjectivity.
Readings will include theoretical selections from Ellison,
Leys, Seltzer, Ranciere, Balibar, Agamben, Bourdieu, and
Carruth; the novels The Coquette (read for day one---), Uncle
Tom's Cabin; Imitation of Life; The Bluest Eye; Maus; Was;
the films Golddiggers of 1933; Home of the Brave and Safe.
Students will give one class presentation and write a 20-25
p. essay, not necessarily on the aesthetic materials we
engage in class. Prerequisite: Permission of Instructor.
47900 27900. African American Poetry
TUTH 12:00-1:20.
von Hallberg, Robert.
48000. Methods and Issues in Cinema Studies
MW 1:30-2:50 C 307; Su 1:00-4:00 Scr C425; Tu 7:00-10:00 Scr C307.
Hansen, Miriam.
This course offers an introduction to ways of reading, writing on, and teaching film. The focus of
discussion will range from methods of close analysis and basic concepts of film form, technique, and
style; through industrial/critical categories of genre and authorship (studios, stars, directors);
through aspects of the cinema as a social institution, psycho-sexual apparatus, and cultural practice;
to the relationship between filmic texts and the historical horizon of production and reception. Films
discussed will include works by Griffith, Lang, Hitchcock, Deren, and Godard.
48700 29300.History of International Cinema I-Silent Era
TTH 1:30-2:50 C 307; M 7:00-10:00 Scr 307; W 3:30-6:30 Scr C 307.
Tsivian, Yuri.
The aim of this course is to introduce students to what was singular about the art and craft
of silent film. Its general outline is chronological; we will also discuss main national
schools and international trends of filmmaking.
50100. Graduate Teaching Colloquium: The Craft of Teaching
TBA.
Staff.
This year-long colloquium is open to all PhD students in the department, regardless of teaching
experience. We will meet four times each quarter to practice, read about, and theorize
teaching. Topics will range from the pragmatics of grading, lecturing, and leading
discussions to the meaning of "professionalism," the contradictions and overlaps of
teaching and scholarship, and the politics of literacy generally. A planning meeting
will be held early in the fall quarter to take stock of immediate needs and interests.
The fall quarter will probably focus on inventing and describing courses and constructing
syllabi. Issues of authority, "contracts with students," etc., will undoubtedly arise.
50300. 50300 Principles of Teaching Writing
Larry McEnerney.
We will survey some of the major points in teaching
composition, including the research that speaks to matters on
intention, invention, organization, style, and usage as they
impinge on teaching composition. We will attempt to evaluate
different theories of evaluation and the reasons for the
markedly different approaches to evaluating student writing.
Open to Little Red Schoolhouse lectors only, others by
application.
51000. PhD Colloquium
MW 3:00-4:20.
Chandler, James.
51700. Shakespeare and the Question of Value
MW 1:30-3:00. Mazzio, Carla.
This course will examine structures of value in Shakespeare, from
questions about the "worth" of persons in socio-economic contexts of the
plays and period, to literary, cultural and methodological assumptions
about the value of Shakespeare. Thinking on historical frameworks for
the construction of value in Shakespeare's plays, we will pay particular
attention to the interplay of scientific, economic and theological
models of value. But the question of value is integral to a range of
critical approaches, and we will also interrogate assumptions of value
in Romantic, Marxist, psychoanalytic, historicist and gender studies of
Shakespeare. Focusing in particular on the interplay of quantity and
quality, we will examine the formal structures of genre, "integrity" and
"accountability," in The Comedy of Errors, Love's Labour's Lost, The
Merchant of Venice, Henry IV, Macbeth, Othello, Hamlet, King Lear and
The Winter's Tale. There will be weekly assignments for this course.
Seminar members will initiate discussion once, develop a research paper
throughout the quarter, give a presentation of research and argument,
and submit a substantial paper at the end term. Summer reading might
include Lars Engle's Shakespearean Pragmatism. The syllabus will work to
accommodate the particular interests of seminar members, so please email
mazzio@uchicago.edu if you have a strong interest
in a play not yet
included.
53700. Epistemology,
Ethics and Aesthetics in the Long Eighteenth Century
Sandra Macpherson, sandra@uchicago.edu.
This course is designed to familiarize students with
developments in British epistemology from the 1650s to
the 1790s, and to investigate the relationship between
philosophy of mind and philosophy of action (ethics).
We will read canonical (and more obscure) examples of
empiricist, idealist, neo-Platonist, Deist, skeptical
and associationist thought. And we will engage with a
variety of literary texts that are in dialogue with the
new philosophy. Readings include selections from Hobbes'
De Corpore, De Homine, and Elements of Natural Law;
Margaret Cavendish's Observations Upon Experimental
Philosophy; Ralph Cudworth s Treatise of Freewill; Anne
Conway's Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern
Philosophy; Charles Blount's translation of Spinoza's
Tractatus; Locke's Essay Concerning Human
Understanding; Berkeley's Treatise Concerning the
Principles of Human Knowledge; John Gay's Fundamental
Principle of Virtue or Morality; Hume's Treatise; and
Thomas Reid's Essay on the Intellectual Powers and
Essay on the Active Powers. Literary texts include
Swift's Tale of a Tub; Cavendish's Blazing World; Gay's
Trivia; Richardson's Pamela; Sterne's Tristram Shandy;
and poetry selections from Rochester, Finch, James
Thompson, and Wordsworth. This course will appeal to
specialists in eighteenth-century studies and
Romanticism, and to students with an interest in the
history of philosophy and/or the history of the novel.
57200. Elements of
Poetry and Poetics
TUTH 9:00-10:20. von Hallberg, Robert.
This course is designed as a high-level introduction to poetry and the criticism
of poetry as well. We will begin class discussions always with individual poems,
but the course will proceed through a series of four categories of reading and
analysis: 1) Meter and Prosody; 2) Tone, Structure, Syntax, and Diction; 3) Simile,
Description, and Metaphor; 4) What Is Poetry? Within each of these segments of
the course, we will read particular poems but students will also read and report
on assigned critical writings on these topics. Three short papers.
59900. Reading Course
ARR. Staff.
61400. Sem: Early Modern Britain 1, Steven Pincus
This seminar introduces students to large accounts which
emphasize the importance of early modern Britain. Students
will explore analyses in which early modern Britain is seen
as central to the emergence of capitalism, liberalism, and
modernity. Students will then turn to consider the new
Atlantic and new imperial history. Students will use these
materials to generate topics for an article-length seminar
paper. The course will also involve an introduction to the
range of primary materials available for research in early
modern Britain. This course is appropriate to Early Modern
History graduate students generally, English graduate
students seeking to pursue historically informed topics, and
graduate students in Political Science interested in the
history of political thought.
64800. History & Fiction
in 19th Century Britain
Tu 3:00-5:50 (or F any time - see which she wants).
Helsinger, Elizabeth.
This course will explore the relations of history and fiction in nineteenth-century
Britain. Topics will include nineteenth-century conceptions of history, especially
with respect to the construction of a national history and representations of the
French Revolution; the nature of historical fiction; and general questions about
the historicity of fiction, the fictionality of history, and problems of narrative,
texture, and textuality. Readings: selections from nineteenth-century historians
(Carlyle, Macaulay, Ruskin), contemporary theory and criticism (Lukacs, Foucault,
Barthes, de Certeau, White, etc.), a generous selection of novels (Scott, Thackeray,
Dickens, Eliot), and Browning's long historical poem "The Ring and the Book."
67100. Shock Treatments and
Nervous Systems
Th 3:00-5:50. Nelson, Debbie.
While this course examines the metaphor of electroshock therapy that finds
its way into a good deal of post World War II US literature Ð Sylvia Plath's The
Bell Jar and Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest for instance -- it
will principally investigate the dueling assumptions in post war America that human
beings were both too sensitive to pain and too anesthetized to it. If art of this
period offered, as Susan Sontag said of Diane Arbus's photography, a "self willed
test of hardness," it did so with extreme ambivalence about the stability of
its subjects. "Nervous systems" refers both to the individual's psychic wiring
and the organizing institutions (state, corporation, bureaucracy) and
categories (race, gender, sexuality) of postwar society. We will
necessarily have to attend to shock value, but I'm more interested in how
various writers and artists figured the value of shock.
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