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Undergraduate 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. Graduate course information is also available on this Web site.
2008-2009 |
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2004-2005 |
2003-2004 |
AUTUMN 2003 COURSES
10100. Critical Perspectives
Rivett, Sarah
MW 3:00-4:20
History, Memory and the Work Of Narrative
10800. Introduction
to Film I
Lastra, James
MWF 3:30-5:30
F
An introduction to basic concepts of film analysis, which are discussed through examples from different national cinemas, genres, and directorial oeuvres. Along with questions of film technique and style, we consider the notion of the cinema as an institution, comprising an industrial system of production, social and aesthetic norms and codes, and particular modes of reception. Films discussed include works by Hitchcock, Porter, Griffith, Eisenstein, Lang, Renoir, Sternberg, and Welles. get from CMST
11400. Writing
Argument
Cochran, Kathryn
TuTh 10:30-11:50
Elec.
Writing Arguments is a pragmatic course in the rhetoric of arguments. By "rhetoric," we mean that we won't be asking whether an argument is internally valid--we'll ask why it is more or less successful in persuading readers. By "pragmatic," we mean that we'll focus mainly on your own arguments. We'll use arguments from politics, academics and the professions to develop an analysis of argument, but the main goal is for you to use this analysis to enhance your ability to write arguments that succeed with your readers. We'll spend each Tuesday discussing your writing and each Thursday expanding, refining and criticizing the analysis. So you can expect three kinds of work: critiquing arguments, writing new arguments, and revising. In the final weeks of the course, we will look at arguments that class members have chosen for discussion, and we'll look at competing theories. But we're teaching this course for the first time, so all the above is subject to dramatic change.
11600. Writing
Arts Reviews
Sartin, Hank
W 3:00-5:50
Elec
This class was formerly titled “Writing Criticism”. One good way to understand how something works is to do it yourself. One good way to understand how criticism works is to write criticism yourself. This is a pragmatic course in writing (and understanding) criticism of the arts for the popular press. We will examine samples of journalistic criticism drawn from a wide range of publications, both “ high brow” ( e.g. The New Yorker) and more popular ( e.g. Entertainment weekly). Students will criticize the critics, first by discussing the goals and strategies of the different kinds of criticism they read and then by writing assignments that imitate, explore, challenge, and improvise on those strategies. Students will write every week, focusing on specific aspects of making critical assessments of the arts ( painting, theater , film, music, performance art, etc.) and writing those assessments in a style suited to publication in newspapers, magazines, and other popular venues. Each week, we will use one class session to discuss the students' own work.
12000. Greek
Thought and Literature
von Nolcken, Christina
TuTh 12:00-1:20
Provided from the core.
12200. The
Art of Narrative Non-Fiction
Morris, Edward
W 1:30-4:20
This course will--through both reading and writing--explore the art form of what is often called literary or narrative nonfiction, or what John McPhee calls "the literature of fact." The best of nonfiction narrative wields a fierce power, poking and prodding our preconceptions of the world, pushing us to look at ourselves and others through a different prism. What makes for a compelling story? (What tools might we borrow from fiction?) Why employ the use of narrative? How does it help form our view of people and events? We'll explore the craft of reporting and research (which borrows from a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, history and sociology)--and work with rigor and discipline on the art of writing. We'll read nonfiction narratives--both books and magazine articles--on a host of subjects, ranging from war and poverty to the environment and sports. We'll work in this class as a professional writer might, from draft to draft. There will be regular writing assignments, and students will be asked to craft a long narrative on a subject of interest to them. The course will be run as a seminar, so there will be an emphasis on critical class discussion.
12201. Psychoanalytic
Interpretation
Ruddick, Lisa
MW 1:30-2:50
C
This course explores fundamental concepts of psychoanalytic theory, as well as recent developments in psychoanalysis and criticism. At each meeting, we pair a theoretical or critical text with a poem or short story for discussion. Psychoanalytic readings emphasize classical theory (including works by Freud, Abraham, and Chasseguet-Smirgel), object relations theory (by Winnicott, Chodorow, and Benjamin), postcolonial theory with psychoanalytic dimensions (by Fanon, Bhabha, and Nandy), and recent work in trauma theory which, while assuming psychoanalysis as a framework, focuses on traumatic injury and violence as phenomena that expose the limits of psychoanalytic understandings of the self (a constellation that includes work by Cathy Caruth, Shoshana Felman, Dori Laub, and Robert Jay Lifton). Crosslisted courses are designed for advanced undergraduates and graduate students.
12205. Screenwriting
Petrakis, John
W 3:00-5:50
F
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.
12400. Beginning
Fiction Writing
Schaeffer, Susan
TuTh 1:30-2:50
E
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.
12501. Writing
Fiction
Obejas, Achy
Tu 6:00-8:50p.m.
E
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.
12902. Radical
Poetics
Izenberg, Oren
TuTh 9:00-10:20
D, C
An intensive study of the texts and contexts of a few 20th-century literary movements or "scenes" - the Gaelic Revival, The Objectivist Poets, the San Francisco Renaissance, the New York School, and the "Language" poets - in which poets have aspired both to be a social group (whether understood as a local or universal "movement," a publishing collective, a band of friends or lovers) and to use poetry to reconstruct social formations in crisis. Crosslisted courses are designed for advanced undergraduates and graduate students.
12905. Beginning
Poetry Workshop: Letters to Young Poets (=ISHU 23200/33200 MAPH 33200)
Redd.y, Srikanth
Tu 3:00-5:50
D
This workshop will introduce you to the writing of lyric poetry alongside the study of famous letters written by major authors. In the correspondence of writers such as Dickinson, Rilke, Hopkins, Stevens, and others, we will encounter "the burden of the mystery" of poetic language - and we will compose our own weekly letters in response to the questions raised by these writers. During one unit, you may respond to Keats' letter on negative capability; in another, you may write to Marianne Moore with questions or ideas concerning poetic form. Along with workshopping your own writing, these weekly "epistolary assignments" will be integrated with classroom discussions of technique, tradition, and experimental approaches to the lyric. By the end of the semester, you will have written at least ten original poems and ten letters on poetry; you will also, hopefully, be on intimate terms with several major poets from the British, American, and European traditions.
13600. Playwriting
Allen, Claudia
Tu 3:00-6:00
F
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
Contact Heidi Thompson:hnthomps@uchicago.edu
or call 702-3414
13650. Fairy Tales
Murrin, Michael
TuTh 9:00-10:20 (2 F disc)
C,E,H
A historical approach to fairy tale in the West, beginning with the first collections in the seventeenth century and ending with Ursula LeGuin. Attention will be given to the historically relevant theories and to related genres like some stories of E. T. A. Hoffmann. Other authors include Perrault, Tieck, Anderson, Baum, Tolkien, and lewis. Other collections include those of Basile and the brothers Grimm and The Arabian Nights. Requirements include a paper and perhaps an examination.
13800. History
and Theory of Drama 1
Bevington, David & Rudall, Nick
TuTh 1:30-2:50 (2 F disc)
B,F,H
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. Crosslisted courses are designed for advanced undergraduates and graduate students.
14000. Reading
Cultures
Goldsby, Jacqueline
TuTh 9:00-10:20
or
TuTh 12:00-1:20
14303. Advanced
Poetry Workshop: Viewing & Re-viewing Poetry
Reddy, Srikanth
Th 3:00-5:50
D
In this poetry workshop, we will complement the writing of our own creative
work with the careful study of current trends in contemporary American
lyric writing. By the end of the semester, you will have compiled a "creative
portfolio" of approximately ten original poems and a "critical
portfolio" of at least four publishable reviews of recent books of
poetry. (As in all workshops, however, the primary reading material will
be the participants’ own work-in-progress). We will also explore
the world of small literary journals and magazines in order to survey
new directions in lyric writing, and we will attend readings by emerging
American poets at various venues in the Chicago area. While this course
is primarily intended to be taught at the graduate level, qualified undergraduates
are welcome to apply.
14400. Advanced
Fiction Writing
Schaeffer, Susan
TuTh 3:00-4:20
E
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.
14600. Dialect
Voices in Literature
Mufwene, Sali
TuTh 9:00-10:20
Elec.
In this course we will use linguistic techniques to analyze literary texts, especially to assess how successfully dialect is represented, whether it matches the characters and cultural contexts in which it is used, and what effects it produces. About half the quarter will be spent articulating linguistic features which distinguish English dialects (including standard English!) from each other and identifying some features that are associated with specific American dialects, such as African-American English, White Southern English, and Appalachian English. (We will work on dialects which interest the class!) During the second half of the quarter we will read and critique some writers, applying techniques learned during the first half of the quarter. My primary candidates include Toni Morrison, Zora Neal Hurston, Mark Twain, William Faulkner, and Richard Wright, but the list is by no means closed. Students will be encouraged to select their favorite writers of dialect, especially for their term papers.
14900. Old English
von Nolcken, Christina
TuTh 9:00-10:20
B,D,H
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.
15600. Medieval
English Literature
Miller, Mark
MW 12:30-1:20 (2 F disc)
A,B,D,H
This course examines the relations among psychology, ethics, and social theory in fourteenth-century English literature. We pay particular attention to three central preoccupations of the period: sex, the human body, and the ambition of ethical perfection. Readings are drawn from Chaucer, Langland, the Gawain-poet, Gower, penitential literature, and saints' lives. There are also some supplementary readings in the social history of late medieval England.
16000. Media
Aesthetics
Macpherson, Sandra
TuTh 9:00-10:20
from the core
16000. Media
Aesthetics
Mazzio, Carla
MW 1:30-2:50
Provided from the core. All experience of the arts involves a medium, and this course draws particular attention to that involvement. We construe "aesthetics" rather broadly: as a study in sensory perception, as a study in value, as a study in the stylistic and formal properties of artistic products. We understand "medium," too, along a spectrum of meanings that range (in Aristotle's terms) from the "material cause" of art (stone for sculpture, sounds for music, words for poetry) to the "instrumental cause" (the apparatus of writing or printing, film, the broadcast media, the internet). The vehicle of communication conditions aesthetic experience-mediates between producers and receivers--and thus our larger questions will include some of the following: Can artistic media be distinguished in a rigorous and systematic way from non-artistic media? What, for instance, is the relation between artistic and non-artistic use of photography? What is the relation between the media and human sensations and perceptions? Do we learn new ways of seeing and hearing from inventions like drawing, painting, photography, the phonograph, cinema, and video? What happens to objects when we adapt or "translate" them into other media: written narratives into film narratives or architecture into photography? We will be asking questions aimed at fostering sensitivity to, and analysis of, the sensory, cognitive, and emotional shaping of the aesthetic experience, and how that shape is shaped by the medium in which it occurs. Each quarter of the three-quarter sequence will array a mix of objects and media for examination but will also carry a particular thematic emphasis. The autumn quarter will focus on seeing, especially on the problems that arise when objects and texts seem to offer themselves as "reflections" or "imitations" of the world (e.g., Velàzquez's Las Meninas, Plato's allegory of the cave, Aristotle's Poetics, Hitchock's Vertigo, Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray, Cindy Sherman's photographs). The winter quarter will focus on hearing, with particular emphasis on how sounds are "composed" for effect in various ways--in this quarter we will attend to issues of musical form, to the prosodic analysis of poetry, to representations of composed sound in fiction and cinema, to philosophical discussions of hearing, and to the analyses of sound composition in such writers as diverse as Poe and Adorno. The spring quarter will focus on reading and the questions routinely associated with the aesthetic object considered as a "text" to be "interpreted" (e.g., Plato's Phaedrus, Genesis, Hamlet, Welles's Citizen Kane, Woolf's To the Lighthouse).
16000. Media
Aesthetics
Mazzio, Carla
MW 3:00-4:20
Provided from the core. All experience of the arts involves a medium, and this course draws particular attention to that involvement. We construe "aesthetics" rather broadly: as a study in sensory perception, as a study in value, as a study in the stylistic and formal properties of artistic products. We understand "medium," too, along a spectrum of meanings that range (in Aristotle's terms) from the "material cause" of art (stone for sculpture, sounds for music, words for poetry) to the "instrumental cause" (the apparatus of writing or printing, film, the broadcast media, the internet). The vehicle of communication conditions aesthetic experience-mediates between producers and receivers--and thus our larger questions will include some of the following: Can artistic media be distinguished in a rigorous and systematic way from non-artistic media? What, for instance, is the relation between artistic and non-artistic use of photography? What is the relation between the media and human sensations and perceptions? Do we learn new ways of seeing and hearing from inventions like drawing, painting, photography, the phonograph, cinema, and video? What happens to objects when we adapt or "translate" them into other media: written narratives into film narratives or architecture into photography? We will be asking questions aimed at fostering sensitivity to, and analysis of, the sensory, cognitive, and emotional shaping of the aesthetic experience, and how that shape is shaped by the medium in which it occurs. Each quarter of the three-quarter sequence will array a mix of objects and media for examination but will also carry a particular thematic emphasis. The autumn quarter will focus on seeing, especially on the problems that arise when objects and texts seem to offer themselves as "reflections" or "imitations" of the world (e.g., Velàzquez's Las Meninas, Plato's allegory of the cave, Aristotle's Poetics, Hitchock's Vertigo, Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray, Cindy Sherman's photographs). The winter quarter will focus on hearing, with particular emphasis on how sounds are "composed" for effect in various ways--in this quarter we will attend to issues of musical form, to the prosodic analysis of poetry, to representations of composed sound in fiction and cinema, to philosophical discussions of hearing, and to the analyses of sound composition in such writers as diverse as Poe and Adorno. The spring quarter will focus on reading and the questions routinely associated with the aesthetic object considered as a "text" to be "interpreted" (e.g., Plato's Phaedrus, Genesis, Hamlet, Welles's Citizen Kane, Woolf's To the Lighthouse).
16000. Media
Aesthetics
Valenza, Robin
TuTh 9:00-10:20
Provided from the core. All experience of the arts involves a medium, and this course draws particular attention to that involvement. We construe "aesthetics" rather broadly: as a study in sensory perception, as a study in value, as a study in the stylistic and formal properties of artistic products. We understand "medium," too, along a spectrum of meanings that range (in Aristotle's terms) from the "material cause" of art (stone for sculpture, sounds for music, words for poetry) to the "instrumental cause" (the apparatus of writing or printing, film, the broadcast media, the internet). The vehicle of communication conditions aesthetic experience-mediates between producers and receivers--and thus our larger questions will include some of the following: Can artistic media be distinguished in a rigorous and systematic way from non-artistic media? What, for instance, is the relation between artistic and non-artistic use of photography? What is the relation between the media and human sensations and perceptions? Do we learn new ways of seeing and hearing from inventions like drawing, painting, photography, the phonograph, cinema, and video? What happens to objects when we adapt or "translate" them into other media: written narratives into film narratives or architecture into photography? We will be asking questions aimed at fostering sensitivity to, and analysis of, the sensory, cognitive, and emotional shaping of the aesthetic experience, and how that shape is shaped by the medium in which it occurs. Each quarter of the three-quarter sequence will array a mix of objects and media for examination but will also carry a particular thematic emphasis. The autumn quarter will focus on seeing, especially on the problems that arise when objects and texts seem to offer themselves as "reflections" or "imitations" of the world (e.g., Velàzquez's Las Meninas, Plato's allegory of the cave, Aristotle's Poetics, Hitchock's Vertigo, Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray, Cindy Sherman's photographs). The winter quarter will focus on hearing, with particular emphasis on how sounds are "composed" for effect in various ways--in this quarter we will attend to issues of musical form, to the prosodic analysis of poetry, to representations of composed sound in fiction and cinema, to philosophical discussions of hearing, and to the analyses of sound composition in such writers as diverse as Poe and Adorno. The spring quarter will focus on reading and the questions routinely associated with the aesthetic object considered as a "text" to be "interpreted" (e.g., Plato's Phaedrus, Genesis, Hamlet, Welles's Citizen Kane, Woolf's To the Lighthouse).
16001. Mass Media
and Society
Soderlund, Gretchen
TuTh 3:00-4:20
This course serves as an introduction to the study of mass media throughan examination of both traditional communication paradigms and more interpretive and critical modes of analysis. We will survey some of the key debates about the social and political influence of mass-mediated communication in modern and late-modern societies. Topics covered include the nature of publics and the role of media in a liberal democracy, the rise of media industries and mass culture, the mass culture/popularculture debates, and the late twentieth-century controversy over media effects.
16302. Renaissance
Romance
Murrin, Michael
TuTh 3:00-4:20
B,D,H
Selections from a trio of texts will be studied: Ovid's Metamorphoses (as the recognized classical model), Boiardo's Orlando innamorato (which set the norms for Renaissance romance), and Spenser's Faerie Queene. A paper will be required and perhaps an oral examination. Crosslisted courses are designed for advanced undergraduates and graduate students.
16303. Renaissance
Literary Imagination
Scodel, Joshua
TuTh 10:30-11:50
A,B,D,H
This course will explore the distinctive modes of literary imagination that characterized the early modern period. Topics will include Renaissance self-consciousness about itself as a period in relation to the past; new conceptions of self, society, and rhetoric as a personal and social instrument; and the relationship between creativity, criticism, and imitation. We will read works in a variety of genres -- love poetry, didactic, polemical, autobiographical, and imaginative prose; and drama. Authors will include Petrarch, Castiglione, Machiavelli, Erasmus, Luther, Ronsard, Montaigne, Wyatt, Sidney, Shakespeare, and Donne. All texts will be read in English, but students will be encouraged to read Latin, French, and Italian texts in the original when possible.
18101. The
Exotic, the Primitive, and the Savage in the 18th Century Novel
Brown, Tony
TuTh 12:00-1:20
C,E,H
The period 1700-1820 is marked by a massive European expansion across the globe in the form of exploration and settlement, and a major site for the registering of this expansion's impact on the European imagination is the novel. The genre's origins are, in fact, coterminous with those of modern empire. In this course we will read various novels of the period alongside related materials in order to understand the significance of such historical proximity. The main critical orientation of the class will be to pay attention to the veritable emporium of exotic, primitive, and savage figures that appear in novels written by the likes of Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Eliza Heywood, Charles Brockden Brown, and Mary Shelley. We will ask to what extent the appearance of such figures delineate a certain attitude towards the non-European? Is this attitude consistent, coherent, debasing or valorizing? Can it be said to constitute a form of colonialism or a subversion thereof? (E, H)
19600. Glorious
Revolution in Comparative Perception
Pincus, Steven
TuTh 12:00-1:20
B,H
England's Revolution of 1688-89 does not usually merit a place among the pantheon of modern revolutions. In England itself it has lost ground against the events of 1640-1660. This class asks whether the revolution of 1688-89 should be considered a revolution. Readings will include theoretical discussions of revolutions and a range of primary materials including works of political theory, plays, poems, memoirs, and diaries.
20107. LONDON
PROGRAM- London and the British Theater
Bevington, David
B,F,H
This course will take advantage of the unparalleled richness of the London and British stage to study a few plays in their cultural context. We will see at least two plays onstage in London and make those productions the basis of a detailed literary and theatrical reading of the plays as scripts for performance. We will take a field trip or trips to Stratford and Oxford if appropriate performances are available. The new Globe Theater on the south bank of the Thames is a likely target of opportunity. Plays may run the gamut from Shakespeare to Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard, depending on what is available in the theatres. Two short essays, second and third week, and we hope you will keep a journal. London London
20108. LONDON
PROGRAM- Elizabeth's London
Mueller, Janel
B,H
This course, coinciding with the 400th anniversary of the death of Elizabeth
I, will trace the dual trajectory of her queenship and authorship through
readings of her own works (letters, public speeches, poems, and prayers)
and readings in historical narratives, contemporary tracts, dramatic texts
(plays, poetry), and poetry in which Elizabeth is either the main subject
or the addressee. Authors other than the queen herself may include Foxe,
Spenser, Sidney, Ralegh, Bacon, Shakespeare, as well as some lesser names
(Richard Mulcaster, Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton, George Gascoigne,
John Stubbs). Coordinated local excursions in greater London will take
the group to the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, Greenwich Palace,
Hatfield House, National Portrait Gallery, Victoria & Albert Museum, and
on a walk through central London that retraces Elizabeth's coronation
procession from the City to Westminster Abbey and highlights the Inns
of Court -- the base of operations for so many aspiring writer-courtiers
of the Elizabethan era. Texts and course requirements subject to further
specification. London in London
20109. LONDON
PROGRAM- Postwar Theater in Britain and the U.S.
Nelson, Debbie
C,F,G,H
With the constant exchange of actors, directors, and writers between the West End and Broadway, British and American theater can hardly be called separate entities in the year 2003. This course will look back at the crosscurrents in British and American theater from the end of World War II to the present moment. We will read (and with any luck see) plays by some of the following: Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Joe Orton, John Osborne, Tom Stoppard, Caryl Churchill, Hanif Kureishi, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Lanford Wilson, Sam Shepard, David Mamet, Anna Deveare Smith, Susan Lori-Parks, and Tony Kushner. London in London
20301. The
Bible and English Literature
Yost, Jason
TuTh 3:00-4:20
B,H
An impressive collection of imaginative writings in its own right as well as the cornerstone of Judeo-Christian faith, the Bible exerts a tremendous influence both as inspiration and obstruction over much of English literature. This course is designed to acquaint students with those sections of the Bible most relevant to a deeper understanding of the English literary tradition. We will study the Bible as literature, as an anthology of literary and religious genres, and discuss the political and theological forces behind how it was composed, compiled, and then transmitted through translation. The class will pay especially close attention to those re-occurring themes and images such as pastoral wandering, cycles of sin and redemption, the Edenic garden, and animal sacrifice which provided conceptual cruxes for writers as diverse as Spenser, Steinbeck, and Morrison. While the King James Authorized Version will be our primary text, we will examine significant portions of Spenser's Faerie Queene and Milton's Paradise Regained as well as shorter selections from Langland, Melville, Herbert, and other English writers for their deployment of Scriptural images and issues. Course requirements include classroom discussion and two papers.
22401. Post-Colonialism
Babli, Sinha
MW 3:00-4:20
C,E,H
This course will seek to investigate some of the central issues in the
field of postcolonial literature and theory. Among the questions we will
be considering are how did literature written in the colonial era represent
the colonized, how did this impact those who were depicted, how did people
deploy literature as a way of resisting colonial representations and exploring
new ways of describing a postcolonial national identity? Also, how can
we understand identity, as a cohesive entity or a fractured one? How have
migration and globalization impacted postcolonial countries? In studying
these and other questions, we will be reading some of the chief literary
and theoretical figures in postcolonial studies, including Rushdie, Naipaul,
Achebe, Said, Spivak, Bhabha and Fanon.
23400. Virginia
Woolf
Ruddick, Lisa
MW 9:30-10:20 (2 F disc)
C,E,H
Readings will include The Voyage Out, Jacob’s Room, Mrs. Dalloway, To
the Lighthouse, The Waves, Between the Acts, and selected essays. Crosslisted
courses are designed for advanced undergraduates and graduate students.
24201. The
Historical Novel
Myers, Joanne
TuTh 9:00-10:20
C,E
The historical novel has long been a popular but slightly amorphous genre.
In this class we think about what makes a novel 'historical,' why novels
might choose to engage consciously with historical incidents, and what
kind of truth emerges from this blend of fact and fiction. We look at
these questions in light of two main preoccupations of the genre: historical
fiction as a place for the creation of historical perspective and national
consciousness, and the notion of the historical novel as an alternative
court of justice, a place where 'the real story' can (at last) be told.
Texts will include novels by Defoe, Walpole, Edgeworth, Scott, Melville,
Bowen, and Rushdie.
24405. Three African
Women Writers
Driver, Dorothy
MW 1:30-2:50
C,E
Although Olive Schreiner, Bessie Head, and Zoë Wicomb belong to different
historical periods and write about different geographical spaces, there
are important connections between them, not least the attempt each of
them made to address and redirect gender relations in Africa. Looking
closely at various novels, short stories, and essays, we'll address these
connections as well as the contribution the work of these three writers
has made and is making to feminist postcolonial thought. Crosslisted courses
are designed for advanced undergraduates and graduate students.
24500. Contemporary
Drama
Coleman, Heidi
TuTh 12:00-1:20
F
This course will investigate how new works for the theater may reflect
the philosophical and ideological thought of our time. Readings require
that students analyze the push for innovation in dramatic structure, linguistic
structure, and form.
24800. Gender
and Southern African Writing
Driver, Dorothy
MW 4:30-5:50
E,C
Through reading a variety of Southern African material (novels, autobiographies,
short stories, and a few essays), primarily from the 1950s to the present,
this course aims to develop a) a preliminary understanding of Southern
African literature, and b) an awareness of some of the ways in which the
textual representations of gender (masculinities and femininities) interact
with representations of race, ethnicity, community and nation, as well
as with contemporary political ideologies. We'll read from the work of
several of the key Southern African writers. Crosslisted courses are designed
for advanced undergraduates and graduate students.
25001. Jewish
Latin American Literature.
A. Obejas
W 3:00-5:50
C,G
A survey of Latin American literature by Jewish writers, including U.S. Latino Jewish authors such as Ilan Stavans and Ruth Behar. The course will look at Jewish literature in countries such as Argentina, which have historically vibrant Jewish communities, as well as places such as Cuba, where Jews have been more of a hidden influence. Studentswill be expected to read and discuss materials, as well as research literary and historical issues. Readings will be in English.
25901. American
Modern: Experimental Fiction
Brown, Bill
MW 12:30-1:20 (2 F disc)
C,E,G
This course concentrates on the formal experiments of American fiction in the first three decades of the 20th century. On the one hand, we will examine those experiments within the context of a more general understanding of "modernism"-a context established through other genres (such as poetry) and other media (such as painting, photography, and film). On the other, we will locate these experiments within a broader cultural milieu-the world of war, mass production, consumer culture, and the age of jazz. Still, the primary engagement will be with the texts themselves, major works by Charles Chesnutt, Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jean Toomer, William Faulkner, Willa Cather, and Nella Larsen.
26400. Reading American Environmental
Classics. (=ENST 28200)
J. Opie
TuTh 1:30-2:50
G,C
Both historic and modern environmental classics, mostly American, will
be analyzed. The pace will be about one book a week. Brief critical reviews
by students will serve as the basis for class discussion. Authors might
include Thomas Jefferson, George Perkins Marsh, William Faulkner, Annie
Dillard, Gretel Ehrlich, Terry Tempest Williams and perhaps Joseph Conrad's
"Heart of Darkness" in parallel with the movie, "Apocalypse
Now."
27800. American
Poetry from 1945-Present
Izenberg, Oren
TuTh 12:00-1:20
C,D,G
The poetry of the present comes After. After the great syntheses of the
High Moderns-Yeats, Eliot, Pound, Stevens. After the devastations of two
World Wars. After the total crises of mind in which human rationality
could seem compatible with the madness of Auschwitz and human creativity
could devise the destruction Hiroshima. "After such knowledge," as T.S.
Eliot asked, decades before the full force of the question would reveal
itself, "what forgiveness?"
This course has two goals. The first is to introduce you to a representative
sampling of important work done by American poets after WWII, including
poems by Robert Lowell, Allen Ginsberg, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath,
Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, Jorie Graham, Allen Grossman, Frank Bidart
and others. Our close attention to the forms, modes and themes of American
poetry in the last half-century will enable us to see the poetry of the
present, in all its volume and variety, for all its originality and innovation,
as deeply continuous with the poetry of the past.
The second goal will be to pose to the poetry of the present two recurrent
and related questions. The first: Can there be a poetry of the present?
Not just, that is, a poetry being written in the present, but one that
responds to or represents the fleeting urgency of the lived moment without
either refusing the unfinished present by taking refuge in the authoritative
cultures and solutions of the past, or skipping over the imperfect present
for the visionary perfection of an imagined future. And the second: How
do poets make sense of the thing that happens only one time, or to only
one person? Deprived of the confidence that they are players in a history
that progresses toward triumph, or part of a species with a blessed fate
and a certain future, how do our poets (and how can we) come to value
or grant significance to the singular person: to my life, my family, my
turmoil, my perception, my mind?
28802. Detective
Fiction
Regan, Matthias
TuTh 3:00-4:20
C,E
Detective fiction is one of the most popular genres in English--and world--literature.
This class will provide a survey of some of the most influential writers
and detectives, such as Edgar Allan Poe's Dupin, Dorothy L. Sayers's Lord
Peter Whimsey, and Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op. One of our goals
will be to determine what forms and concepts--voice, plot, the development
of characters, landscape description, etc--are necessary for us to determine
what constitutes good and bad detective fiction. At the same time, we
will investigate the connections between detective fiction and broader
issues of modernity, such as materialism, alienation, mass culture, and
postcolonial perceptions of the city and the nation. During the first
half of the course, we will read nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century
short stories and novels alongside sociological and critical essays by
Friedrich Engels, Raymond Williams, Walter Benjamin, and others. During
the second half of the course, we will read and watch stories and films
made after 1945 alongside recent work on pulp and noir culture by William
Marling, Sean McCann, and Edward Margolies, among others. We will focus
on modern approaches to race in the detective fiction of Chester Himes,
and on depictions of gender in the detective fiction of Sue Grafton and
Sara Paretsky. Finally, we will look at the influence of American detective
fiction in contemporary Japanese, Italian, and Scottish books and films.
29402. Ernst Lubitsch
and Hollywood
Gregg, Ron
TuTh 3:00-4:20;
TuTh 4:30-6:30
Scr C 307
F
This course examines the Hollywood career of Ernst Lubitsch, one of the
most successful directors and producers in the Hollywood studio system
(1920s-1940s). We will explore what his career reveals about the studio
system and the genre of romantic comedy in which he excelled. We will
also consider the infamous "Lubitsch touch" and its subversion of the
Hays Code, theatrical adaptation, and the representation of national character,
politics, class, gender and sexuality in his films. Screenings will include
Rosita, The Marriage Circle, Trouble in Paradise, Design for Living, Ninotchka,
To Be or Not to Be, Heaven Can Wait, and Cluny Brown.
29900. Independent
B.A. Paper Preparation
Staff
ARR
PQ: Consent of instructor and Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies.
Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Course
Form. For more information and an electronic version of the Petition form,
go to http://humanities.uchicago.edu/depts/english/undergrad/forms.shtml.
This course may not be counted toward the distribution requirements for
the concentration, but may be counted as a departmental elective.
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