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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.
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2003-2004 |
WINTER 2004 COURSES
10100. Critical
Perspectives-Section 1
Rothfield, Larry
TuTh 1:30-2:50
This course develops practical skills in close reading, historical contextualization,
and the use of discipline-specific research tools and resources and encourages
conscious reflection on critical presuppositions and practices. The course
prepares students to enter into the discussions that occur in more advanced
undergraduate courses. Because English 101 serves as an introduction to
the concentration, and because this course is a prerequisite for some
English courses, newly declared English concentrators and potential concentrators
are urged to take it as early as possible in their undergraduate careers.
English 101 is offered every year and is required of all English concentrators.
10100. Critical
Perspectives - Section 2
Myers, Joanne
TuTh 12:00-1:20
In Search of Innocence: English Poetry from Milton to BlakeFrancesca Simkin
10300. Problems
in Gender Studies-2
Michaels, Stuart
TuTh 3:00-4:20
TBA
10700. Introduction
to Fiction
Veeder, William
MW 3:00-4:20 (3 disc)
E
In the first half of this course, we focus on the principal elements that
contribute to effect in fiction (setting, characterization, style, imagery,
and structure) in order to understand the variety of effects possible
with each element. We read several different writers in each of the first
five weeks. In the second half of the course, we bring the elements together
and study how they work in concert. This detailed study concentrates on
one or, at most, two texts a week.
11001. Theory
of the Novel
Brown, Tony
TuTh 3:00-4:20
E
No other genre is so widely embraced as the novel (we find them read in
high school and university classrooms, in offices, homes, airports, on
buses, trains, and airplanes, at numberless other places, and at all times).
Why is the novel so popular? Why are novels read with such devotion and
in such quantities rather than, for example, lyric poetry or telephone
books? Why do we still have novels? Why do they remain to a certain extent
unsurpassed by television and film? Is there something in the novel ensuring
its survival beyond these and other electronic entertainments? And, above
all, what makes a novel a novel? This course will introduce students to
a broad range of theories of the novel in an attempt to understand the
peculiar phenomenon that is the novel. For example, we will look at the
novel's origins in the eighteenth century in order to come to terms with
the novel's proximity to popular entertainment-a proximity that initially
set it apart from poetry and other forms of what we would perhaps call
"high culture." Furthermore, situating the novel within an historical
frame we will consider what events lead to the novel splitting into a
form that, in the early nineteenth century and beyond, could be considered
either "low" (Stephen King, Jeffrey Archer) or "high"
(Henry James, James Joyce)? In answering some of these questions we will
read alongside accounts of the novel's development various novels that
provide vivid practical examples of the theoretical issues under discussion.
11200.
Philosophical Perspectives
Strier, Richard
TuTh 1:30 -2:50
12206. The
Form of the Essay
Stielstra, Megan
Tu 3:00-5:50
Elec
PQ: consent of instructor, email a short sample manuscript to Eva Wilhelm
in Cl 45G by 12-1-03.
12502. Writing
Fiction
Obejas, Achy
Tu 6:00-8:50p
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.
12700.
Writing Biography
Weiner, Tracy McEnerney, Larry Cochrane, Katherine
MW 1:30-2:50
Elec
Writing Biography is, as its name implies, a course in writing biography.
Our goal will be to identify successful biographical writing techniques
in the class readings and then practice these techniques in frequent assignments.
Texts will include Janet Malcolm on Sylvia Plath, Joseph Ellis on Thomas
Jefferson, Quentin Bell on Virginia Woolf, , and Malcolm X's autobiography.
We'll practice the techniques biographers use to transform into a coherent
whole the diverse and often contradictory materials of biography - letters
and diaries, media reports and previous biographies, gossip and government
records, the fond (but sometimes misleading) memories of friends and the
malicious (but occasionally illuminating) accounts of enemies. We will
construct narratives that aspire to do two things: represent another person's
life, and make that life represent something beyond itself - a historical
period, a social group, or a particular kind of achievement (admirable
or otherwise).
12800.
Theories of Media
Mitchell, W.J.T.
MW 1:30-2:50, Tu 7:00-9:00 Scr C 307
Elec
This course will explore the concept of media and mediation in very broad terms, looking not only at modern technical media and mass media, but at the very idea of a medium as a means of communication, a set of institutional practices, and a habitat" in which images proliferate and take on a "life of their own." The course will deal as much with ancient as with modern media, with writing, sculpture, and painting as well as television and virtual reality. Readings will include classic texts such as Plato's Allegory of the Cave and Cratylus, Aristotle's Poetics, and modern texts such as Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media, Regis Debray's Mediology, and Friedrich Kittler's Gramaphone, Film, Typewriter. We will explore questions such as the following: What is a medium? What is the relation of technology to media? How do media affect, simulate, and stimulate sensory experiences? What sense can we make of concepts such as the "unmediated" or "immediate"? How do media become intelligible and concrete in the form of "metapictures" or exemplary instances, as when a medium reflects on itself (films about films, paintings about painting)? Is there a system of media? How do we tell one medium from another, and how do they become "mixed" in hybrid, intermedial formations? We will also look at recent films such as The Matrix and Existenz that project fantasies of a world of total mediation and hyperreality. Students will be expected to do one "show and tell" presentation introducing a specific medium. There will also be several short writing exercises, and a final paper. PQ: Any 100-level ARTH or COVA course, or consent of instructor. Crosslisted courses are designed for advanced undergraduates and graduate students.
13000.
Academic and Professional
Writing (Little Red Schoolhouse)
McEnerney,Larry Cochran,Kathryn Weiner, Tracy
TuTh 3:00-4:20
Elec
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. Materials fee $25
13200.
Beginning Poetry Writing
Sloan, Mary Margaret
Th 3:00-5:50
D
The Writing of Poetry is designed to give poets at all levels a workshop
atmosphere in which to present poems for group discussion and criticism.
Assignments will be offered to emphasize various elements of poetry: rhythm
and meter, imagery, person, tone and diction, form theme and mood, but
students will be free to present work of their own choice if they prefer.
Emphasis will be placed on the fact that writing can and should be a matter
for hard work and improvement. Though the course will focus on student
work, poems by contemporary American poets as well as works from English
and foreign literature will be brought in as time allows. Topics for continuing
discussion will include clarity, economy, revision, translation, imitation,
publication, prevailing styles, fixed forms, and the cultivation of a
writer's life and career. P.Q. Consent of instructor, Sample submission
of 3-5 poems due to Gates-Blake 309 by December 1, 2003.
13501. TV
Writing: Situation Comedy
Ferrara, Ed
M 3:00-6:00
The Course: In this intensive workshop-oriented seminar, students will
learn the basics of the TV sitcom writing process by participation, culminating
in the creation of their own 1st draft, half-hour spec script. Students
will also examine many of the basic principles of comedy writing, focusing
on comic characters, comedic premises, and story structure. Class meetings
will involve lectures/discussions about various concepts pertinent to
the sitcom form, exercises designed to reinforce comedic analysis techniques
presented, as well as in-class viewing and deconstruction of exemplary
sitcom scenes and episodes. Students will be responsible for completing
a variety of sequential assignments that will, in effect, chart their
progress as they build their first-draft script. Students will be required
weekly to watch sitcoms out-of-class. Classroom participation is mandatory.
Strict attendance policy. Writing sample & application required for
admission.
13700.
Advanced Playwriting
Claudia Allen
W 3:00-5:50
F
This course presumes the basic principles and techniques of playwriting and explores the steps toward developing a production worthy script for contemporary theater. Prerequisite: Introduction to Playwriting. Consent of instructor required: Contact Heidi Thompson: hnthomps@uchicago.edu or call 702-3414.
13900. History
and Theory of Drama-2
Bevington, David Rudall, Nick
TuTh 12:00-1:20 (2 disc)
C,F,H
History and Theory of Drama I is not a prerequisite. A survey of major
trends and theatrical accomplishments in Western drama from the late-seventeenth
century into the twentieth: Molière, Goldsmith, Ibsen, Chekhov, Strindberg,
Wilde, Shaw, Brecht, Beckett, Stoppard. Attention will also be paid to
theorists of the drama, including Stanislavsky, Artaud, and Grotowski.
The winter-quarter course, like the autumn-quarter 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
Miller, Mark
MW 1:30-2:50
from the core
14100. Reading
Cultures
Miller, Mark
MW 3:00-4:20
from the core
14405. Advanced
Fiction Writing
Obejas, Achy
W 6:00-8:50pm
E
In order to gain admission to this class, students must be working on
longer narratives, whether novels, novellas, or connected short stories.
The workshop meets once weekly to read, discuss and analyze students'
original work. Students re-write, revise and re- evaluate from week to
week. In addition students will be expected to critique peer writing in
depth. Outside readings will be provided. Admission is by instructor consent
only. PQ: consent of instructor, email a short sample manuscript to ewilhelm@uchicago.edu
by 12-1-03.
15000. Old
English Poetry
von Nolcken, Christina
TuTh 9:00-10:20
B,D,H
A reading of some of the major poems in Old English. In addition to the
texts, the course will examine the nature of the textual and critical
problems encountered in studying this literature. There will be a term
paper and a final examination.
15101. Seminar
at the Newberry Library-Holy Men and Holy Women
Szarmach, Paul
F 2:00-5:00
B, H
The cult of saints produced a remarkable body of literature about holy
men and holy women both in the English vernacular and in Latin. With Special
but not exclusive focus on the saints' lives written by AElfric of Eynsham
this course will consider the various examples of the vita and/or passio
as they developed from late antique models through prose and verse forms
in Old English. The interdisciplinary context will be one theme of the
course, as will comparative analysis and gender criticism. Through readings
in original language and translated materials, presented either in a seminar
or a translation workshop as well as through direct engagement of origional
manuscript evidence, this course will consider many of the issues that
the genre poses. PQ: Eng 149/349 or equivalent; for more information,
consult Christina von Nolcken (702-7977, mcv4@midway.uchicago.edu).
Crosslisted courses are designed for advanced undergraduates and graduate
students.
15500. Chaucer:
The Canterbury Tales
von Nolcken, Christina
TuTh 3:00-4:20
B,D
We examine Chaucer’s art as revealed in selections from The Canterbury
Tales. Our primary emphasis is on a close reading of individual tales,
although we also pay attention to Chaucer’s sources and to other medieval
works providing relevant background.
16000. Media
Aesthetics
Izenberg, Oren
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
Izenberg, Oren
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).
16180. Media
Aesthetics
Cormack, Bradin
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).
16180. Media
Aesthetics
Stewart, Jacqueline
TuTh 9:00-10:20
from the core
16180. Media
Aesthetics
Stewart, Jacqueline
TuTh 12:00-1:20
from the core
16180. Travellers
on the Silk Road
Murrin, Michael
MW 3:00-4:20
B
We will read some of the major travel narratives of the Silk Road and
Tibet, from Xuanzang, the most famous of the Chinese Buddhist pilgrims
who went West, through Marco Polo and others, who went East, including
a diplomat like Clavijo, who went to see Tamerlane, to modern travellers
like the spies the British government sent from India to explore and map
the area, the prototypes for Kipling's Kim, and archaeologists like Aurel
Stein who went both ways on the Silk Road. Choice among all the travelers
will be limited, of course, by time and by the availability of texts.
Through slide lectures students will gain a sense of the physical characteristics
of the region and its art at various periods. At the same time the student
will learn indirectly about the different religions and political regimes
travelers experienced, which changed dramatically over the eleven centuries
and more which we will cover in the course. Crosslisted courses are designed
for advanced undergraduates and graduate students.
16500. Shakespeare
I: Histories and Comedies-Section 1 (=ISHU 26550)
Strier, Richard
TuTh 10:30-11:50
B,F,H
An exploration of Shakespeare's major plays in the genres of history play
and romantic comedy, from the first half (roughly speaking) of his professional
career: Richard II, Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, A Midsummer Night's Dream,
Much Ado about Nothing, Twelfth Night, and Troilus and Cressida.
16701. Skepticism
and Sexuality in Shakespeare (=ISHU 26701)
Bevington, David
TuTh 1:30-2:50
B,F,H
This course will look at plays that center on problems of sexual conflict
and of crisises of faith : all's Well that Ends Well, Troilus and Cressida,
Measure for Measure, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Antony
and Cleopatra, Cymbeline, The Tempest. The approach will be one of seeing
these as plays in the theatre, for both and Elizabethan and a modern audience.
Crosslisted courses are designed for advanced undergraduates and graduate
students.
17601. The
Century of Seduction 1667-1782
Simkin, Francesca
TuTh 12:00-1:20
C,E,H
"Anyone who was seduced wanted to be seduced..." Is this true?
If so, does it free the seducer of responsibility or simply divide the
guilt between the two parties? What if the seducer were not a person,
but rather money, power, the excitement and possibilities of the big city,
or simply the hope of a better future? Is this figurative use of seduction
even valid? Is there a fundamental difference between sexual seduction
and other kinds of temptation? We will begin with the first seductions
in Judeo-Christian culture those of Adam and Eve (as depicted in Paradise
Lost) and end on the ultimate novel of seduction, Dangerous Liaisons.
Our constant theme will be the single trait on which seduction always
supposedly pivots, namely, weakness. What constitutes weakness, which
factors make it justifiable, and importantly, how does its operation affect/reflect
the genre in which it appears (poetry, drama, the epistolary novel, fictional
autobiography, pornography, etc)? During the course of our reading we
will encounter various portrayals of gender, sexuality, desire, personal
responsibility, familial, religious, & social duty, villainy and criminality,
and equity and judgment. This should allow us to understand how tensions
between duty, desire, and necessity are resolved, and how we attribute/distribute
agency, responsibility, and guilt.
19401. The
Ninetheenth-Century Britsh Novel
Sachs, Jonathan
TuTh 10:30-11:50
C,E,H
This course will focus on the moral and aesthetic concerns raised by nineteenth-century
novels. Through our discussion of works by Austen, Thackeray, Eliot, Dickens,
Trollope, and Hardy, we will address such issues as: the use of the form
as a vehicle for social commentary; the ethics of novel reading and how
novels envision themselves as producing ethical subjects; realism and
other representational strategies and techniques that the novel uses to
constitute its world; the distinct lack of economy in novels that so consistently
represent economic matters; and the fictional representation of historical
events. Cross-listed courses are designed for advanced undergraduates
and graduate students.
20401. Limit
Cases in Brit Rom Novel
Strang, Hilary
TuTh 3:00-4:20
B,E,H
Romantic period novels teem with disconcerting forms of life outcasts,
prisoners, madwomen, fiends in human form. The most famous of these is
the creature in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, but he is only one of many
figures that test the limits of sympathy, education, sociality and perhaps
even the human itself in the period of political struggle that followed
the French Revolution. This course will investigate such figures in British
novels from 1790-1830, asking what their function is in the development
of the novel as a genre; what their role is in political arguments about
social hierarchy and democratic representation; how they effect emergent
debates over gender and the rights-bearing individual; and why such figures
are often linked to the uncanny, the supernatural and the irrational.
In addition to novels by, among others, Mary Shelley, William Godwin,
Walter Scott and Charlotte Dacre, readings will include prose (Edmund
Burke, Mary Wollstonecraft) and poetry (Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical
Ballads) of the period.
20402. Sex,
Social Class, and Medicine in the Nineteenth-Century Novel (=CMLT
24300 HUMA 28701)
Anderson, Melissa
TuTh 9:00-10:20
C,E,H
This course examines how major nineteenth-century British and French novelists
used medicine and medical issues in order to examine the connection between
the mind and the body, interrogate gender and sexuality, and question
the role and relevance of social class. We will discuss why medicine works
the way it does in particular novels, and whether there are differences
in the way medicine is represented in novels in England and in France.
In order to help us place these stories in their historical and cultural
context, we will examine a wide variety of cultural documents, including
images of illness and medicine from nineteenth-century art and excerpts
from nineteenth-century medical texts. We will also consider the general
connections between medical study and literary realism in the nineteenth
century. Texts include Honoré de Balzac's The Country Doctor, George
Eliot's Middlemarch, Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Mary Elizabeth
Braddon's The Doctor's Wife (a rewriting of Flaubert's text), and Anthony
Trollope's Doctor Thorne. All texts will be read in English.
20701. Modern
Anglo-Irish Literature: Revival and Reversals (=CMLT 24700)
Baltasi, Michael
TuTh 9:00-10:20
C,H
In this course, we will read a broad selection of texts from roughly the
beginning of the Irish Literary Revival in the 1890s through to the mid-1970s.
Shortly after the major writers of the Revival began making headway towards
consolidating a national identity for anti-colonial purposes, their work
- that is, their work of reviving a possibly irretrievable or at least
irrelevant mythical past to be set as the cornerstone of a new national
voice and literary tradition - came under serious scrutiny by a new generation
of Irish writers. What follows is an open, cross-generational dialogue
on the political goals and aesthetic principles of a specifically Irish
version of literature written in the English language. We will try to
reconstruct some important aspects of this dialogue, using both traditional
literary forms of poetry, drama, and fiction, as well as essays, speeches,
and pamphlets, all of which sought in their own way to define what it
means to be Irish. Some of the authors we will focus on include Edgeworth,
Yeats, Synge, Joyce, Bowen, Beckett, and Heaney.
22801. Caribbean
Literature: Charting Landscapes and Literary History
Tinsley, Natasha
TuTh 12:00-1:20
C,E,H
This course provides students with an overview of Caribbean literature
through an exploration of major literary movements from the mid-nineteenth
century to the present including slave narratives, Romanticism, Négritude/Negrismo,
realism, magical realism, feminism, and Créolité. Within each movement,
we will examine authors' changing imaginations of landscape and explore
shifting formulations of Caribbean identity that landscape is mobilized
to represent. Reading texts from the English-, French-, Spanish-, and
Dutch-speaking Caribbean, this course traces a regional literary history
both across time and across linguistic divisions, questioning the ground
on which regional identities are constructed in the West Indies. Authors
considered will include Mary Prince, Aimé Césaire, Nicolas Guillen, Louise
Bennett, C.L.R James, Jacques-Stephen Alexis, Mayotte Capécia, Jean Rhys,
Patrick Chamoiseau, and Franck Martinus Arion. All works will be read
in translation, but students will also be encouraged to work with the
original texts when possible.
24301 Asian
American Literature
Su, Karen
MW 3:00-4:20
C,E,G
This course will offer a general introduction to Asian American writings.
We will situate the development of Asian American literature within the
social and historical contexts that have shaped the formation of Asian
American identities and communities. How do the literary texts represent
the complexities of Asian experiences in the U.S. in light of national
and global circumstances? Some key topics include: racial/ethnic identity;
family relationships; immigration and assimilation; gender; class; sexuality;
nationalism; culture and community; history and memory; art and political
engagement. We will analyze the function of delineating a category such
as "Asian American literature" and how it inflects the reception
and critical interpretation of the writings. We will survey significant
themes, styles and genres, while engaging with critical debates over the
cultural politics of identity within the arena of arts and humanities.
Course requirements will include a series of short writing assignments,
one analytical paper, and one final exam. Possible authors to be covered:
Sui Sin Far, Hisaye Yamamoto, John Okada, Bienvenido Santos, Jessica Hagedorn,
Maxine Hong Kingston, Frank Chin, Frances Park, Theresa Cha, Lois-Ann
Yamanaka, Lisa Linn Kanae, Darrell Lum, Eric Chock, Dao Strom, Helen Zia,
Jhumpa Lahiri, and Sanjay Nigam.
Karen Su
24400. Brecht
and Beyond (= ISHU 26960)
Kruger, Loren
TuTh 9:00-10:20, Scr W 3:30-6:30 C425
F
Brecht is indisputably the most influential playwright in the twentieth
century. In this course we will explore the range and variety of Brecht’s
own theatre, from the anarchic plays of the 1920’s to the agitprop Lehrstück
to the classical parable plays, as well as the works of his heirs in Germany
(Heiner Müller, Franz Xaver Kroetz, Peter Weiss), Britain (John Arden,
Edward Bond, Caryl Churchill), and sub-Saharan Africa (Soyinka, Ngugi,
and various South African theatre practitioners). We will also consider
the impact of Brechtian theory on film, from Brecht’s own Kuhle Wampe
to Jean-Luc Godard.
25902. Art
and the Politics of Culture in the American 1930s
Brown, Bill
MW 1:30-2:50
C,E,G
The economic crisis of 1930s provoked an unprecedented challenge to the
arts in America. It called into question the interest and relevance of
the avant-garde, it seemed to necessitate some new sociopolitical role
for art, and it prompted efforts to re-imagine the artist's role within
various institutions (from the Communist Party to the federal government).
This course will track some of the major debates about the visual, literary,
and theatrical arts (debates taking place in the New Masses, the Partisan
Review, Art Front, and the Daily Worker), and we'll use those debates
to frame our engagement with particularly notable works of era: fiction
by John Steinbeck, Mike Gold, John Dos Passos, Nathaniel West, Zora Neal
Hurston, and Richard Wright; paintings and prints by Ben Shahn, Stuart
Davis, Gordon Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, Norman Wilfred Lewis, Elizabeth
Olds, Philip Evergood, and James Lesesne Wells; and photographs by Dorothea
Lange and Walker Evans. We'll examine so-called regionalist and social-realist
responses to the depression, as well as the persistence and redeployment
of formal experimentation (within the graphic arts as within literature).
Final projects for the course will require considerable research.
26000. Anglo-American
Gothic Fiction in the Nineteenth Century
Veeder, William
MW 1:30-2:50
C,E,G,H
In the nineteenth century, gothic fiction in English is an Anglo-American
phenomenon. America’s first internationally recognized literary masterpiece,
Rip Van Winkle, is written in England and appears the same year as Frankenstein.
Our course will study the transatlantic aspect of the gothic tradition,
while we also give full attention to the particular qualities of individual
texts. Close reading will be central to our project. Attention to textual
intricacies will lead to questions about gender and psychology, as well
as culture. Our authors will include Washington Irving, Mary Shelley,
James Hogg, Poe, Hawthorne, Emily Bronte, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Joseph
Sheridan LeFanu, Henry James, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Thomas Hardy.
Mid-term and final papers. Crosslisted courses are designed for advanced
undergraduates and graduate students.
27401. Late
Nineteenth-Century American Literary Realism
Warren, Kenneth
TuTh 9:00-10:20
A,C,E,G
This course takes up major 19th-century American novelists in conjunction
with philosophical and scientific essays that reflect on the project of
representing "the real".
27702. Mexican
American Literature Before the Chicano Movement
Orchard, William
TuTh 3:00-4:20
C,E,G
This course will survey the literature written by Mexican Americans from
their inception as such, after the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo incorporated
large sections of Mexico into the United States, until the dawn of the
Chicano Movement in the 1960s. While this period can be divided into a
number of different ways, we will chart its course by focusing on three
major developments. The first part of the course will consider Mexican-American
landowners' reactions to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo through readings
of Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton's The Squatter and the Don and Cleofas
Jaramillo's Romance of a Little Village Girl. We will consider both the
historical realities each text responds to and attempt to locate the texts
within traditions of the sentimental romance and testimonio. The second
section of the course will consider the ways in which the Mexican Revolution
influenced writers on the United States side of the border. Through readings
of Fabiola Cabeza de Baca's We Fed Them Cactus and Josephina Niggli's
Mexican Village, we will consider the ethnographic turn made in the cultural
production of the period and the ways in which their evocation of a pastoral
Mexico uneasily locates the work in an American literary tradition and
within the aims of the Mexican Revolutionary Project. The discussion of
the Mexican Revolution will continue with further examinations of Niggli's
oeuvre and the short fiction of Maria Cristina Mena in relation to modernism
and modernity. Especially relevant here will be the ways in which each
author imagines a reform of racial conceptions as integral to the project
of modernity. Finally, the class will consider the issues of immigration,
assimilation, and resistance-concerns that are at the heart of the Chicano
Movement and that are represented here by two figures firmly entrenched
in the Chicano canon: Americo Paredes and Jose Antonio Villareal.
28003. Lit.
Sem: The Cinematic Lyric
Reddy, Srikanth
Tu 3:00-5:50
C,E
There is a long tradition in literary study of regarding poetry and painting
as "sister arts." The ut pictura poesis tradition in criticism, however,
has tended to obscure the emerging relationship between lyric writing
and the new, twentieth-century aesthetic medium of film. This course will
consider the impact and influence of cinematic art on poetry in this century,
exploring the ways in which the rise of film has inflected representation,
narration, and and formal procedure in the lyric. Montage, "real time,"
and the camera eye have each, in their own way, transformed contemporary
poets’ ways of seeing the world in lyric writing; studying the work of
filmmakers from Eisenstein to Tarkovsky to Brakhage, and various poets
including Olson, O’Hara, and Graham, we will explore the affinities and
influences between the filmmakers and poets who have helped to construct
a new, "cinematic" mode of lyric utterance in the twentieth-century. Students
may (optionally) count a creative project toward partial fulfillment of
the course requirements. Crosslisted courses are designed for advanced
undergraduates and graduate students.
28901. Narratives
of Suspense in European and Russian Literature and Cinema
Bird, Robert
MW 3:00-4:20
E,F
Suspense is a vital (perhaps the vital) element in fictional narrative.
This course will explore the source of suspense, its role in narratives,
and its implications for narrative theory. Examples will be taken from
various genres and national literatures, including narrative poems by
Byron, Blok, and Eliot, and prose by E. A. Poe, Ivan Turgenev, Henry James,
Fedor Dostoevsky, and Samuel Beckett. Consideration will also be given
to suspense in cinematic narratives, especially by Hitchcock, Bresson,
and Tarkovsky. Theoretical readings (ranging from Kierkegaard and Benjamin
to Burke, Genette, Ricoeur, Derrida, and others) will link suspense to
other key concepts such as detachment, distance, distraction, suspension
of belief, and engagement. Requirements: Essay 1: A structural analysis
of a suspenseful (or suspense-less) narrative, highlighting the role of
suspense in the creation of a fictional world. Essay 2: Define suspense
and support your definition using two narratives and making reference
to critical readings from our course. Some of the readings: R. L. Stevenson,
“A Gossip on Romance,” Memories and Portraits 1887. “Certain dark gardens
cry aloud for murder; certain old houses demand to be haunted.” PR5488.M53
1887a, Beckett, Rockaby, Part, Canto, Henry James, “Turn of the Screw”.
29300. History
of International Cinema I-Silent Era
Gunning, Tom
TuTh 10:30-11:50 ;
M 7:00-10:00 Scr C 307 & W 3:30-6:30 Scr C 307
F
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.
29807. Staging
Melodrama
Hadley, Elaine
TuTh 12:00-1:20
C,H
This will be a course that investigates the generic conventions of melodrama
in fiction, drama, film and on the "social stage." We will read a variety
of critical texts from drama studies, film studies and literary criticism
in order to develop a working definition of melodrama, and to see its
transmutations throughout history. At the same time, we will read a variety
of novels and non-fiction prose and view a few films to see melodrama
in action. With this generic knowledge in hand, students will then do
their own investigation of a melodramatic formation. Texts might include
plays by Holcroft and Boucicault, novels by Dickens and Braddon, films
by Griffiths and Sirk. On the first day of class, enrollment preference
will be given to fourth-year English concentrators and then if space permits,
third year students will be most welcome to enroll in this course.
29808. R.W. Emerson and Emily Dickinson
Knight, Janice
TuTh 10:30-11:50
C,G
This seminar course is designed for seniors working for honors and for other students who wish to write a longer course paper. Over the course of seven weeks, we will read deeply from the works of Emerson and Dickinson. Our inquiry will focus on close analysis of these authors' primary works, (including their personal writing in journals, diaries, and correspondence), in light of their struggles to produce an adequate articulation of personal identity, a resonant poetics of meaning, and an effective political criticism in the years surrounding the American Civil War. Students wil then work independently with instructor and preceptor for final two weeks to develop a research paper of 25 pages.
Janice Knight
29809. Advanced Seminar:Poetry
Reddy, Srikanth
W 3:00-5:50
D
P.Q. Consent of instructor, email submission of 3-5 poems to Eva Wilhelm, Cl 45G by 12-1-03.
29810. Advanced Seminar:
Fiction
M. Stielstra
Th 12:00-2:50
E
PQ: Consent of instructor, email a short sample manuscript to Eva Wilhelm
in Cl 45G by 12-1-03.
29900. Independent
B.A. Paper Preparation
Sfaff
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. PQ: consent of instructor and associate chair for undergraduate studies.
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