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Graduate Courses
Click on the course title to view its course description. Please note that all courses are subject to change without notice. For the most up-to-date and current day and time information, please refer to the University Time Schedules. Undergraduate course information is also available on this Web site.
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2003-2004 |
AUTUMN 2004 COURSES
30100 Intro.
to Relig. & Lit.
Yu, Anthony
PQ: Divinity School students have priority to register; students of other units per consent of instructor.
13800 31000 History and Theory of Drama 1
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.
12205 32205 Beginning Screenwriting
Petrakis, John
The course will introduce students to the basic elements of a literate screenplay, including format, exposition, characterization, dialogue, voice-over, adaptation and the vagaries of the three-act structure. Weekly meetings will include a brief lecture period, screenings of scenes from selected films, extended discussion, and assorted readings of class assignments. Students will be expected to write a four to five page weekly assignment related to the script topic of the week. It should be noted that this is primarily a writing class.
32300 Marxism & Modern Culture
Kruger, Loren
This course covers the classics in the field of marxist social theory (Marx, Engels, Lenin, Gramsci, Reich, Lukacs, Fanon) as well as key figures in the development of Marxist aesthetics (Adorno, Benjamin, Brecht, Marcuse, Williams) and recent developments in Marxist critiques of new media , post-colonial theory and other contemporary topics. It is suitable for graduate students in literature depts., art history and possibly history. It is not suitable for students in the social sciences. All students must register via the discussion section, however it will not be required for Ph.D. students to attend the F discussion, only the TuTh class time.
12400 32400 Beginning Fiction Writing
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 the short story will be expected to write at least three to five new 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. 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 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.
12506 32506 AdvFict: Research for Writers
Obejas, Achy
Weekly sessions feature in-class writing, discussion, and readings with a focus on writing from perspectives outside the mainstream and alternative view points. One critical annotation is required during the term. Attendance and active class participation are required. Students keep a folder of all work for class. At semester's end, folders are used to evaluate work as a whole and to more closely examine growth. Grades will be based on quality of work, improvement, completion of assignments, and class contributions/participation. The annotation will be 25percent of the grade, quality of work 25 percent, completion and improvement 25 percent, and participation 25 percent. Generally, one half of class will be devoted to presentation and exercises, the other to student work and discussion. PQ: Consent of Instructor.
12905 32905 BegPoetry: Ltrs to Young Poets
Reddy, Srikanth
This course will introduce students to the writing of poetry. Because the course is designed as a creative writing workshop, the majority of class time will be devoted to the discussion and critique of one another’s poems. We will also read essays on poetic craft, history, and theory while exploring the work of many poets both contemporary and past. PQ: Consent of instructor. Submit samples to: jnklein@uchicago.edu.
12920 32920 Creative Writ:CreativeReading
Sloan, Mary Margaret
Beginning Creative Writing: Creative Reading for Writers: "I am a derivative poet," said Robert Duncan. "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal." T.S. Eliot. This course will examine the processes of how writers turn their reading of literary and non-literary materials towards their own creative purposes. First we will look at poems and fiction the way writers do, less to arrive at a critical position, more to find out how the works are put together in order to learn from their strategies. If, as Williams says, "The poem is a small (or large) machine made out of words," we'll be looking at the parts laid out on the pavement. Next we'll look at how some writers import the rewards of their reading excursions directly into their own works; for instance, Susan Howe's Pythagorean Silence incorporates a variety of literary, historical, and philosphical materials as well as formal structures learned from Charles Olson. Finally we'll see how poets and fiction writers create works which are imaginative responses to predecessors whose works they admire; we will look at how Robert Duncan addresses Catullus, Jack Spicer writes letter-poems to the dead Gabriel Garcia Lorca in After Lorca, and the contemporary poet Lisa Cooper in turn addresses Spicer and Gertrude Stein in her work, Calling It Home. How do writers involve themselves in influence, inspiration, and tradition? In addition to the writers mentioned above, we will also look at works by Herman Melville, Virginia Woolf, Michael Palmer, Joseph Donahue and others. Students will be responsible for at least one presentation to the class and one substantive creative reading work involving a writer or reading material of choice.
33000 Acad/Prof Writing (LRS)
McEnerney,Larry Cochran,Kathryn Weiner, Tracy
Academic and Professional Writing (Little Red Schoolhouse)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. PQ: Third- or fourth-year standing. P/F grading optional for English Language and Literature nonconcentrators. Materials fee $25.
14305 34305 Adv. Poetry: Writing Practices
Reddy, Srikanth
This poetry workshop is designed to introduce advanced students of creative writing to a wide array of techniques and strategies for generating lyric poetry which fall outside of the Romantic model of "spontaneous utterance." Collage, "cross-outs," and various procedures involving chance operations will be explored along with a variety of other techniques and practices associated with avant-garde movements of the twentieth-century. The goal of the course, however, is not to make "avant garde writers" out you; rather, we will explore ways in which these experimental techniques may be harnessed in the service of quite everyday problems faced by every writer: overcoming "writer's block," generating first lines and first drafts, and revising work which seems mired in an unsatisfactory form. Because this is a workshop, your own writing will be the primary text in this course; we will spend the majority of every class period reviewing and critiquing one another's work. PQ: Consent of instructor.
14400 34400 Advanced Fiction Writing
Schaeffer, Susan
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 may be examined. Those writing short stories will be expected to write at least three NEW 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. PQ: Consent of Instructor.
14900 34900 Old English
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.
35410 Body & Soul
Miller, Mark
A course in the theory, practice, and phenomenology of embodiment and ensoulment/interiority/subjectivity in medieval literature and philosophy, with some attention to the way such issues get reformulated in modernity. Readings will be drawn from Aristotle, Paul, Augustine, Aquinas, Robert Mannyng, Gower, Chaucer, the "Debate of the Body and Soul," saints'' lives, and Margery Kempe.
15800 35800 Medieval Epic
Murrin, Michael
We will study a variety of heroic literature, including Beowulf, The Volsunga Saga, The Song of Roland, The Purgatorio, and the Alliterative Morte D'Arthur. A paper will be required, and there may be an oral examination.
39900 Intensive Reading Research
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. Consent of Instructor required.
40401 Romantic Progress
Canuel, Mark
Surely the idea of progress must be one of the Enlightenment's most tenacious legacies: triumphant in modernity, and persistent today-in common views about how technology makes life easier, or how knowledge enhances justice. Such notions have had their twentieth-century critics-Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment, for instance, or Lyotard's Postmodern Condition. But not many have paid sufficient attention to the way that Romantic writers in Britain already subjected assumptions about progress-in knowledge, government, the arts, and so on-to a heightened and creative scrutiny. We'll begin our work in this class by reading selections from Horkheimer and Adorno's work, in order to clarify some of the theoretical stakes of our discussions in the following weeks. After studying some important political writings-including Rousseau's Second Discourse and selections from Kant's Conflict of the Faculties-we'll spend the rest of our time studying Romantic poetry and novels (by Wordsworth, Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, and Lord Byron) which produce articulate and complex ways of formulating literature itself as a substantial mode of commentary on the versions of progress they represent.
21902 42102 Feel/Form:Affect & Vict. Novel
Aslami, Zarena
Feelings and Forms: Affect and the Victorian Novel. Contemporary critical theorists have shown how novels are involved in the project of teaching readers how and what to feel (for example, guilt, shame, anger, sympathy, happiness, boredom, bliss, etc.) in a range of contexts (such as national, domestic, legal, sexual, and aesthetic). These theorists have argued that feelings, which we often think of as the primary, spontaneous expression of our authentic selves, are in fact constructed and shaped by historical forces. This course will examine how Victorian novels in particular trained readers in the art and politics of feelings. We will first read excerpts from current scholars of affect and emotion. We will then ask how to think about these terms historically in relation to the Victorian period by reading not only novels but also nineteenth-century theories of feelings. Possible secondary readings include works by D. A. Miller, Brian Massumi, Eve Sedgwick, Ann Cvetkovich, and Lauren Berlant. Possible primary readings include novels by Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy, as well as psychological, philosophical, and scientific writings by Charles Darwin, George Henry Lewes, John Stuart Mill, and Alexander Bain.
22806 43502 Dostoevsky & James
Steiner, Lina
Innocence and Insight in the Novel: F.M. Dostoevsky and Henry James: In the novelistic worlds of Dostoevsky and James the most innocent characters are often the ones who are endowed with or come to develop a special insight, which allows them to see through the falsehoods and manipulations of society and to resolve difficult moral dilemmas. In this course we will examine and compare the correlation of the themes of innocence and insight in the works of the two novelists and near contemporaries, both of whom were preoccupied with the problem of the spiritual essence of their respective cultures. The primary texts will include selected novels and short stories by Dostoevsky and James. We will also read some philosophical and critical texts by Walter Benjamin, Giorgio Agamben, Martha Nussbaum, Peter Brooks, and some others.
13600 43600 Playwriting
Allen, Claudia
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. Prior theater experience not required. PQ: Consent of instructor required.
43710 Yeats
Izenberg, Oren
"Myself I must remake," wrote William Butler Yeats, and so he did: Over 40 years, Yeats remade himself as dreaming aesthete, cultural nationalist, pragmatic politician, High Modernist, visionary crank, reactionary radical. Along the way, he remade poetic modernism in his own image. In this class, we will read widely and deeply in Yeats's poetry, prose and plays from the 1899 to 1939 with an eye to understanding this powerful and complex writer's career of self-revision.
23901 43901 Wom/Wrtng/Spirtualty/Col Amer
Knight, Janice
Women, Writing , & Spirituality in Colonial America: We will read the works of selected women authors in America, focusing on the relationship between spirituality and literary production. We will read a variety of genres, including heresiographies, advice manuals, conversion and captivity narratives, letters, poems, and diaries. Our selections will be attentive to such issues as class affiliation, the production of public and "domestic" utterance, and the disciplining of female speech. This course will examine the relationship between literature and its cultural context, and will draw on a variety of critical approaches.
47200 Elements of Poetry & Poetics
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.
48000 Mthds/Issues in Cinema Study
Lastra, James
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. (Priority to CMST & MAPH cinema concentrators.)
50300 Principles of Teaching Writing
McEnerney , Larry
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.
50400 Teaching Ugrad Eng Pedagogy
Nelson, Deborah L.
51000 PhD Colloquium
Ferguson, Frances
This course will include an introduction to what New Criticism was (with Wimsatt and Brooks being the examples), an explanation of structuralism (featuring Saussure and Levi-Strauss), a discussion of how Foucauldian and deconstructive work emerged in relation to and in reaction against both formalism and structuralism (Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze). The course will end up discussing work by Leo Bersani, D.A. Miller, Eve Sedgwick, and Mary Poovey, to situate their arguments and locate them in relation to ongoing critical debates.
59900 Reading & Research: English
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. Consent of instructor and advisor required.
62201 Ideology in Eng Ren Drama
Bevington, David
*Issues of Gender and Political and Religious Ideology in English Renaissance Drama. This seminar will look intertextually at a number of English Renaissance plays that engage with controversial topics: cross-dressing, young men playing the roles of women onstage, male anxieties about domineering women, anxieties in the Elizabethan court about Queen Elizabeth, factionalism between militant Protestants and those inclining to Catholicism, the role of acting companies in this controversy, conflicting attitudes about witchcraft, and much more. A substantial essay is required, along with active involvement in the seminar. Members of the seminar will be free to work on plays not on the reading list. The seminar will be wide-ranging and will embrace a number of methodologies. Course will begin the third week of the quarter. Days/times TBD.
63800 Beauty/Being Just: Long 18th C
Macpherson, Sandra
On Beauty & BEing Just in the Long 18th Century: This course is conceived as a sequel, of sorts, to the Ph.D. seminar "Thinking and Acting in the Long Eighteenth Century." We will focus on aesthetic theory and moral philosophy from 1660 to Kant's Third Critique, and on literary texts that raise the question of what it means to be beautiful and/or good. Texts include: Bunyan's Pilgrim's Project, Shaftesbury's Characteristiks, Books II and III of Hume's Treatise, Burke's Enquiry, Kant's Critique of Judgement, Hutcheson's Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, Fielding's Amelia, Sarah Scott's Millenium Hall.
64800 History & Fiction 19C Britain
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.”
65202 From Sentiment to Trauma
Berlant, Lauren
From Sentimentality to Trauma: Aesthetic Legacies of American Liberalism
This course will explore the centrality of pain to the ideas of social belonging and sovereign personhood since the migration of sentimental fiction to the U.S. in the 1780s and the rise of abolitionist and indigenous rights rhetoric thereafter. While an image of the universal subject enlightened by rationality suffuses most descriptions of constitutional/Enlightenment personhood, at the same time emotions akin to disenchantment typically describe the mass subjective experience of the same period. This course focuses on aesthetic scenes, narratives, and tableaux of negative emotion involving pain, suffering, abjection, lassitude, and shock, addressing the emergence of cultivated irrationality as the vernacular measure of a subject's and a culture's humanity, virtue and value. We will be reading between social theory and aesthetic genres to get a sense of how members of the social were trained to have and to value certain kinds of emotion-for-others. The first unit will focus on rhetorics of sentimental engagement, the second on the public rhetoric of trauma: both will involve enumerating the genres through which public affect worlds (such as, but not only, the nation) were shown to be organized not around thought per se, but as realms of the senses. Readings will include theoretical selections from Ellison, Leys, Seltzer, Ranciere, Terada, Bennett, Balibar, Agamben, Bourdieu, and Carruth; the novels The Coquette (read for day two---), Uncle Tom's Cabin; Of One Blood, Imitation of Life; The Bluest Eye; Maus; Was; films such as Gone with the Wind, the Manchurian Candidate, Night and Fog, Hiroshima, Mon Amour, Home of the Brave, and Safe. Students will give one class presentation and write a seminar essay, but not necessarily on the aesthetic materials we engage in class.
65801 American Lit 1930-1950
Warren, Kenneth
In this course we will look at how literary art and the problem of social inequality were articulated during these decades. Texts on which we will focus include: F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night, George Schuyler's Black No More, Henry Roth's Call It Sleep, William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom, Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God. This course will meet in conjunction with Walter Benn Michaels's seminar at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Students who enroll should be prepared to travel to the UIC campus on alternate weeks.
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