Undergraduate Course Descriptions

Autumn | Winter | Spring | Graduate Courses

SPRING 2002
(click for course descriptions)

10100 Critical Perspectives; multiple sections and instructors
10400 Introduction to Poetry; Ruddick, Lisa
11000 Novel Subjects: Theory and History of the Novel; Asalami, Zarena
120 Greek Thought and Literature; Sachs, Jonathan.
12000/31900 Topics in Critical Theory; Schleusener, Jay
12500/32500 Fiction Writing; Stielstra, Megan
13000 33000 Academic and Professional Writing (Little Red Schoolhouse); Staff
13200 33200 Writing Poetry; Sloan, Mary Margaret
14200 Reading Cultures; multiple sections and instructors
15500 Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales; von Nolcken, Christina
16100 Media Aesthetics; multiple sections and instructors
16600 Shakespeare II: Tragedies and Romances; Strier, Richard
16800 Advanced Shakespeare: Scene Study; Witt, Gavin
20200 The Romantic Period; Sachs, Jonathan
21700 42400 The Politics of Culture; Rothfield, Larry
22300 Henry James: the Fiction of Crisis; Veeder, William
25000/45000 Contemporary Book-Length Poems and Lyric Sequences; Volkman, Karen
26700 Masculinities: U.S. Literature and Culture, 1789-1860; Layson, Hana
27300 The Harlem Renaissance; Warren, Kenneth
28800 Contemporary Poetry and its Critical Context; Regan, Matthias
29100 Confessional Poetry in Post-World-War America; Gee, Shaleane

For a description of the numbering guidelines for the following courses, consult the course catalog on page 15.

Boldface letters in parentheses refer to courses that fulfill the following program requirements: (A) Period; (B) Pre-1700; (C) 1700 to 1900; (D) Poetry; (E) Fiction; (F) Drama/Film; (G) American; (H) British.

10100. Critical Perspectives.

10100. TTH 12:00-1:20. 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. R. Strier.

10100. MW 1:30-2:50. Critical theory since New Criticism, or formalism, has destabilized both the texts and the assumptions with which we read texts, pushing us beyond the essential first step of examining texts for structure, meaning, and formal techniques, and enabling us to read texts in relation to their historical, social, and cultural contexts. The course is divided into three sections: 1) "Defamiliarizing the Text and the Past" in which we will read Shakespeare's King Lear and explore issues of textual stability and new historicism; 2) "Questions of History and Politics, Genre and Form," which examines four prospect poems by John Denham, Alexander Pope, William Wordsworth, and Adrienne Rich in conjunction with formalist, deconstructive, and Marxist critical theory; 3) "Questions of Subjectivity and Identity," in which we will read Wilkie Collins' novel, The Moonstone, considered the first detective story, in light of feminist and Freudian theory. Staff.

10100. TTH 9:00-10:20. 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. Staff.

10400. Introduction to Poetry. TTH 10:30-11:50.This course involves intensive readings in both contemporary and traditional poetry. Early on, the course emphasizes various aspects of poetic craft and technique, setting terminology and providing extensive experience in verbal analysis. Later, emphasis is on contextual issues: referentiality, philosophical and ideological assumptions, and historical considerations. L. Ruddick.

11000. Novel Subjects: Theory and History of the Novel. TTH 1:30-2:50. This course examines the novel which has tended to dominate the field of narrative study and popular culture, by working through the arguments of both “the grand novel theorists” and more recent scholars. We will pay special attention to how critics have partially credited the novel with both the modern production of subjectivity and the modern objectification of “society”. By close-reading novels and developing a historical narrative of this genre's existence, we will be working toward a consideration of this form in our own changing present. Starting with the most recent novel by Winterson, The Power Book, which thematizes internet technology and subjectivity, we will then move to Scott's Waverly, Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Gissing's The Odd Women, Richardson's Pamela, Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, and Rushdie's Midnight's Children. Our cannon of critical thinkers will include theoristis and historians of the novel such as Dorrit Cohn, Fredric Jameson, Nancy Armstrong, and Michael McKeon. In addition to reading and discussing the assigned material and writing two short papers and one long paper, students will be required to follow ongoing technological and legal developments in e-publishing and e-book systems, and to bring in articles from the media of their choice (such as newspapers,or publising and advertising trade magazines) to build up a class archive on current literary- technological culture of novels. Z. Aslami.

120 Greek Thought and Literature. TTH 12:00-1:20. An introduction to theories of language and mind - and their relations to literary theory - from the beginning of the century through the 1970’s. The course tracks the Continental and the Anglo-American schools from Frege and Saussure to Wittgenstein, Quine, and Davidson on the one side, and to Derrida and Foucault on the other. Sachs, Jonathan.

12000/31900. Topics in Critical Theory. TTH 10:30-11:50. An introduction to theories of language and mind - and their relations to literary theory - from the beginning of the century through the 1970’s. The course tracks the Continental and the Anglo-American schools from Frege and Saussure to Wittgenstein, Quine, and Davidson on the one side, and to Derrida and Foucault on the other. J. Schleusener.

12500 59000. Fiction Writing. W 3:00-5:50. This class is run as a workshop, meaning that student writing is its soul and subject. Our concentration is on language and craft, and we'll talk about some of the practical aspects of the writing life. Each student submits two stories or chapters from a work in progress for group discussion, and then meets with the instructor for a conference. Each student substantially rewrites one of his/her stories. In addition, we'll read a number of recent works of fiction by contemporary writers. Finally, there are brief, periodic lectures on different elements of fiction writing (e.g., plot, character, and point of view) followed by open discussion. Stielstra, Megan.

13000/33000. The Little Red Schoolhouse (Academic and Professional Writing). TTH 3:00-4:20. PQ: Third- or fourth-year standing. P/N grading optional for non-English concentrators. 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 $20. Staff.

13200/33200. Writing Poetry. T 3:00-5:50. 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: rythm 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 foriegn literature will be brought in as time allows. Topics for continuing discusssion 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 March 1, 2002. Sloan, Mary Margaret. (D)

14200 Reading Cultures. Provided from the Core.

14200. MW 1:00-2:50. Hadley, Elaine.

14200. MW 3:00-4:20. Hadley, Elaine.

14200. TTH 9:00-10:20. Provided from the core. Capitalist Cultures. This quarter works toward understanding the relation (in the modern and post-modern periods) between economic development and processes of cultural transformation. We examine literary and visual texts that celebrate and criticize modernization and urbanization. Beginning with Baudelaire's response to Paris in his prose poems, we then concentrate on novels that address economic, social, and cultural change in the 1930s, including Abdelrahman Munif's Cities of Salt and Richard Wright's Native Son. As the quarter concludes, students develop projects that investigate the urban fabric of Chicago itself.
Nelson, Debbie.

14200. TTH 3:00-4:20. Provided from the core. Capitalist Cultures. This quarter works toward understanding the relation (in the modern and post-modern periods) between economic development and processes of cultural transformation. We examine literary and visual texts that celebrate and criticize modernization and urbanization. Beginning with Baudelaire's response to Paris in his prose poems, we then concentrate on novels that address economic, social, and cultural change in the 1930s, including Abdelrahman Munif's Cities of Salt and Richard Wright's Native Son. As the quarter concludes, students develop projects that investigate the urban fabric of Chicago itself. Nelson, Debbie.

14200. TTH 10:30-11:20. Provided from the core. Capitalist Cultures. This quarter works toward understanding the relation (in the modern and post-modern periods) between economic development and processes of cultural transformation. We examine literary and visual texts that celebrate and criticize modernization and urbanization. Beginning with Baudelaire's response to Paris in his prose poems, we then concentrate on novels that address economic, social, and cultural change in the 1930s, including Abdelrahman Munif's Cities of Salt and Richard Wright's Native Son. As the quarter concludes, students develop projects that investigate the urban fabric of Chicago itself. Warren, Kenneth.

15500. Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales (=ENGL 15500, FNDL 25700). TTH 1:30-2:50.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. C. von Nolcken.

16100 Media Aesthetics. Provided from the Core.

16100. MW 1:30-2:50 Slauter, Eric.

16100. TTH 10:30-11:20 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). Rothfield, Larry

16600. Shakespeare II: Tragedies and Romances. TTH 3:00-4:20 Fri Disc 2@ 9:00-10:20. This course will study the second half of Shakespeare's career, from 1600 to 1611, when the major genres that he worked in were tragedy and "romance" or tragicomedy. Plays to be read will include: Hamlet, Measure for Measure, Othello, King Lear (2 versions), Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Pericles, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest. There will be one short and one longer paper. Section attendance is required. R. Strier.

16800. Advanced Shakespeare Scene Study (=ENGL 16800, GSHU 25700). TBA; TBA. How do you translate the politics, poetics, and cultural issues of Shakespeare's texts into actual staging? Moving beyond simply understanding and delivery of verse drama, this class will explore in depth the visual, physical, and thematic resonances of Shakespeare's plays. We will focus at length on individual scenes, discovering them from a range of approaches to unlock their inherently theatrical elements. Previous experience with Shakespeare is helpful but not required. G. Witt.

20200. The Romantic Period. TTH 3:00-4:20. The word ‘romantic’ suggests the lonely poet brooding in the woods or on the shore, a figure absorbed in nature but often alienated from the social life around him. But how well does this image hold when set against the actual works of the period? What is “romanticism”? What did it mean to be a romantic? The period from 1789 to 1832 was one of great social and political turbulence. There was a major revolution in France, and a prolonged period of European warfare. It was a period in which radical thinking was popularized and one that saw an emergent discourse of “women’s rights” and new ways of thinking about gender. In this course, we will focus on a selection of poetry and prose written during the so-called Romantic period, from the fall of the Bastille (1789) to the Reform Act (1832). We will read some of the greatest and most read works in the language as well as some of the greatest and least read. As we examine what is arguably one of the richest periods of literary history, we will focus on the development and elaboration of some of the concepts most prominently associated with romanticism—such ideas as imagination, nature, and the self—but we will also be asking just what constitutes specifically “Romantic” poetry and to what degree the works produced in this period conform to these criteria. In addition, by looking at the history of the period as well as by asking ourselves how literature and history are connected, we will think about how political and socioeconomic issues might inform our conception of what constitutes “great literature.”
Sachs, Jonathan.

21700 42400. The Politics of Culture. TTH 3:00-4:20. Whether focused on beauty and justice or on issues of race, class, and gender, critical work in the humanities tends to take for granted the assumption that—as ideology, ethical resource, swource of resistance, means of transcendence or moral improvement, and so on--culture matters politically. Yet that assumption is itself worth exploring. This course examines the history of the ways in which, beginning in the victorian period but intensifying over the last half century, culture has been defined as an object of political concern, an objective of political action, or a means to a political end. Topics to be discussed may include the understanding of the arts and humanities. In addition to reading key texts by a diverse group of cultural critics, philosophers, economists, and writers we will evaluate the arguments that have been made in several concrete policy debates from recent years. L. Rothfield.

22300. Henry James: Fiction of Crisis. MW 3:00-4:20. In 1895 Henry James suffered his first nervous breakdown. Over the next five years he produced several of the greatest novellas and novels of the nineteenth century. How fiction writing became a mode of self therapy for James is one of the issues this course will explore. In addition we will examine how self-analysis interacted with a mordant social analysis to produce fiction that simultaneously looks outward and inward. By a close reading of James’s texts and of various theorists, we will engage the forces that produced James’s masterpieces. Texts will include The Aspern Papers, The Pupil, The Spoils of Poynton, In the Cage, The Turn of the Screw, What Maisie Knew, The Awkward Age, and “The Great Good Place.” W. Veeder.

25000 45000 Contemporary Book-Length Poems and Lyric Sequences. M 3:00-5:50. We'll consider a number of recent book-length poems or lyric sequences exploring the book as a dynamic and malleable space, with questions basedaround the changed possibilities for order and play: What is the structural arc of each book? How do pacing and movement reflect the more spacious format? What alternate genres inform the projects, structurally and thematically? Reading will include A.R. Ammons' Glare, Lucie Brock-Broido's The Master Letters, Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red, Lyn Hejinian's My Life, Alice Notley's Descent of Alette, Rosmarie Waldrop's Reluctant Gravities, and C.D. Wright's Deepstep Come Shining. As a final project, students may write either a critical paper or a long poem or linked sequence of poems developed over the quarter. Volkman, Karen.

26700. Masculinities: U.S. Literature and Culture, 1789-1860. TTH 9:00-10:20. This course will explore the emergence of (and resistance to) a new, unifying ideal of “white manhood” as the ground for citizenship and for economic independence in U.S. literature and culture before the Civil War. We will investigate the relationships between masculinity and power, approaching gender as a site of struggle and instability and paying close attention not only to the citizen/”self made man” but also to competing verisons of masculinity (sentimental, savage, licentious). Drawing on feminist, queer, and race studies, literary criticism and social history, and on a range of literary texts. We will examine and rethink the gendered oppositions between public and private, abstraction and embodiment, reason and sentimentality. Three historical problems will structure our reading: the production of national identity and the definition of citizenship; the rise of industrial capitalism, the emergence of the middle class, and the attendant re-organization of the family; and the increasing material and symbolic importance of race, of slavery, and of western expansion. Our texts will include novels ( James Fenimore Cooper’s The Pioneers, Susanna Rowson’s Charlotte Temple), short fiction ( Hawthorne, Melville, and Whitman), Autobiography ( Benjamin Franklin, Frederic Douglas) social history and literary criticism. H. Layson.

27300. The Harlem Renaissance. TTH 1:30-2:50. In this course we first examine the major descriptions and evaluations of the Harlem Renaissance as a literary period (i.e., Nathan Huggins, David Levering Lewis, Houston Baker, and George Huchinson), and then we take up some of the chief creative and intellectual architects of the movement: Langston Hughes, Alain Locke, W. E. B. Du Bois, Nella Larsen, Jessie Fauset, Jean Toomer, and others. K. Warren.

28800 Contemporary Poetry and its Critical Context. T 5:00-8:00. Cobb 104. This year-long course, taught in conjunction with the "Poems Present" reading and lecture series, will examine the relationship between poetry and criticism as it has developed over the last quarter century. Considerable attention will be given to the recent poetry and critical essays written by the series' participants, including Jeff Clark, Allen Grossman, Heather McHugh, Robert Pinsky, Pam Rehm, and others. Rather than view criticism as secondary to "autonomous" poetic creation, we will look at the ways in which critical writing (by poets and scholars) not only defiens but also influences contemporary poetry. We will look at how criticism helps to define "schools" of poetry and at the different ways poets use criticism. We will meet with several of the poets and participate in both public and private discussions about their craft. The first class will be on Oct. 2. Regan, Matthias

29100. Confessional Poetry in Post-World War America. MW 1:30-2:50. The so-called confessional poets are some of the most influential of the twentieth century. This course’s primary goal is to develop, through close reading, a strong familiarity with five major poetry collections that helped define the confessional lyric and postwar literary culture in America: Allen Ginsberg's Howl, Robert Lowell's Life Studies, W.D. Snodgrass's Heart's Needle, Anne Sexton's To Bedlam and Part Way Back and Sylvia Plath's Ariel. We will also examine sequences in John Berryman's Dream Songs, listen to confessional poets reading from their work and, later in the quarter, examine collections of poetry that have been labeled "post-confessional". Among other questions we will ask: What formal and thematic characteristics make a work confessional? What claims can we make about confessional poetry's use of autobiographical detail and historical reference? Its use of voice, direct speech, and prose? How does a confessional lyric construct a public or private self? What compositional or technical patterns break through or break down among these collections? Among individual poets or poems? Why was confessional poetry often labeled offensive, anti-intellectual, or just plain bad? A secondary purpose of this course is to locate confessional poetry in the highly charged Cold War atmosphere in which it was produced and received. We will familiarize ourselves with the period's literary and political timeline and some critical reviews, personal essays, journalistic pieces, photographs, and trial transcripts of the period. We will question why confessional poetry was often labeled offensive, anti-intellectual or just plain bad. S. Gee.