Undergraduate Course Descriptions

Autumn | Winter | Spring | Graduate Courses

WINTER 2001/2002
(click for course descriptions)

10200 Problems in Gender Studies - 1; Michaels, Stuart
10700 Introduction to Fiction; Veeder, William
12500 32500 Fiction Writing; Stielstra, Megan
12800 32800 Theories of Media; Mitchell, W.J.T.
12700 Writing Biography; Weiner, Tracy.
12900 42900 Poetry Workshop: Radical Strategies; Volkman, Karen
13000 33000 Academic and Professional Writing (Little Red Schoolhouse); McEnerney, Larry; Cochran, Katie; Weiner, Tracy
13700 33700 Advanced Playwriting.
13900 31100 History and Theory of Drama - 2; Bevington, David; Rudall, Nick
14100 Reading Cultures; Strier, Richard
15100 35100 Old English Seminar at the Newberry Library: The Exeter Book; Hall, Tom
15600 Medieval English Literature; Miller, Mark
15800 35800 Medieval Epic; Murrin, Michael
16100 Media Aesthetics; multiple sections and instructors
16300/36300 Renaissance Epic; Murrin, Michael
16500 Shakespeare I: Histories and Comedies; Bevington, David
16700 Shakespeare in Performance; Witt, Gavin
17500 English Poetry from Wyatt to Milton; Cormack, Bradin
21100 Victorian Wives, Mothers & Daughters; Hadley, Elaine
21200 Sex and Citizenship; Layson, Hannah
21500 31500 John Locke In a Historical Context; Pincus, Steven
23300 The Genres of Atrocity; Ramayya, Anil
23400 Virginia Woolf; Ruddick, Lisa
25900 Reading the American Renaissance; Bertolini, Vincent
26100 Dramaturgy; Shteir, Rachel.
28000 Film Aesthetics, Spectatorship and Cinema Experience; Hansen, Miriam
28800 Contemporary Poetry and its Critical Context; Regan, Matthias
29600/48900 History of International Cinema II - Sound Era to 1960; Gunning, Thomas
29801 Senior Seminar 2: Shakespeare and the Senses; Mazzio, Carla

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.

10200-10300. Problems in Gender Studies (=ENGL 10200-10300, GNDR 10100-10200, HUMA 22800-22900, SOSC 28200-28300). PQ: Second-year standing or higher. Completion of the general education requirement in social sciences or humanities, or the equivalent. May be taken in sequence or individually. This two-quarter interdisciplinary sequence is designed as an introduction to theories and critical practices in the study of feminism, gender, and sexuality. Both classic texts and recent conceptualizations of these contested fields are examined. Problems and cases from a variety of cultures and historical periods are considered, and the course pursues their differing implications in local, national, and global contexts. Both quarters also engage questions of aesthetics and representation, asking how stereotypes, generic conventions, and other modes of circulated fantasy have contributed to constraining and emancipating people through their gender or sexuality.

10200. MW 3:00-4:20. C 116. This course addresses the production of particularly gendered norms and practices. Using a variety of historical and theoretical materials, it addresses how sexual difference operates in the contexts of nation, race, and class formation, for example, and/or work, the family, migration, imperialism, and postcolonial relations. S. Michaels, Autumn; L. Salzinger, .

10300. TTH 3:00-420.C116. This course focuses on histories and theories of sexuality: gay, lesbian, heterosexual, and otherwise. This exploration involves looking at a range of materials from anthropology to the law, and from practices of sex to practices of science. M. Miller, ; S. Michaels, .

10700. Introduction to Fiction. MW 1:30-2:20 Fri Disc 2@9:00-10:20 1@10:00-11:20. HM 103. 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.

12500 59000. Fiction Writing. W 3:00-5:50. C 101. PQ: Consent of instructor; submit writing sample to G-B 309 by November 15, 2001 (Winter); or January 31, 2002 (Spring). 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.

12700 Writing Biography. Weiner, Tracy. MW 1:30-2:50. TBA. 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 32800. Theories of Media. MW 1:30-2:50 Disc F1@ 12:30-1:20 CWAC 157; Scr Tu 7:00 CWAC 157. 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.

12900/42900 Poetry Workshop: Radical Strategies. TU 3:00-5:50. C 319. For this workshop, we will read poems and documents from some of the major avant-garde movements of the last century (including French Surrealism, Russian Futurism, and Oulipo), discussing and borrowing strategies from each. Students will write poems each week and keep a reading journal. Workshop discussion will necessarily focus on how to critique and evaluate innovative work, and will engage current debate over the problematic nature of terms such as experimental and avant-garde. P.Q. Consent of instructor, Sample submission of 3-5 poems due into Gates-Blake 309 by December 15, 2001.

13000 33000. The Little Red Schoolhouse (Academic and Professional Writing). TTH 3:00-4:20. K 120. 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. L. McEnerney, K. Cochran, T. Weiner.

13700 33700 Advanced Playwriting. W 3:00-6:00. C 304. Allen, Claudia. This course presumes the basic principles and techniques of playwriting and explores the steps toward developing a production worthy script for contemporary theater. In addition to main instructor Claudia Allen, students will have the benefit of Michelle Volansky, Dramaturg and Literary Manager at Steppenwolf Theater, who will discuss dramatic structure and what she looks for in a play, and Sandy Shinner, Artistic Associate at Victory Gardens Theater, who will share a directors viewpoint for bringing the text to production. Prerequisite: Introduction to Playwriting.

13900/31100. History and Theory of Drama II (=CMLT 20600/30600, ENGL 13900/31100, GSHU 24300/34300). TTH 12:00-1:20 F Disc 1@ 12:00-1:20, 1@1:30-2:20. SS 302. May be taken in sequence with GSHU 24200/34200 or individually. This course is 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, and Stoppard. Attention is also paid to theorists of the drama, including Stanislavsky, Artaud, and Grotowski. The goal is not to develop acting skill but, rather, to discover what is at work in the scene, and to write up that process in a somewhat informal report. Students have the option of writing essays or putting on short scenes in cooperation with some other members of the class. End-of-week workshops, in which individual scenes are read aloud dramatically and discussed, are optional but highly recommended. D. Bevington, D. N. Rudall. . (C, F)

14100 Reading Cultures.

14101. TTH 10:30-11:50. Provided from the core
Focusing on the literary conventions of cross-cultural encounter, this quarter concentrates on how individual subjects are formed and transformed through narrative. We investigate both the longing to travel and the trails of displacement. We read several forms of travel literature, from the Renaissance to the present, including Columbus's Diario, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa the African, Basho's Narrow Road to the Deep North, and contemporary tourist literature. Strier, Richard.

14102. MW 3:00-4:20. Provided from the core. 141. Reading Cultures: Traveling. Focusing on the literary conventions of cross-cultural encounter, this quarter concentrates on how individual subjects are formed and transformed through narrative. We investigate both the longing to travel and the trails of displacement. We read several forms of travel literature, from the Renaissance to the present, including Columbus's Diario, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa the African, Basho's Narrow Road to the Deep North, and contemporary tourist literature. Goldsby, Jacqueline.

14103. MW 1:30-2:50.Miller, Mark. Provided from the Core.

15100 35100. Old English Seminar at the Newberry Library: The Exeter Book. MW 1:30-2:50. PQ: ENGL 14900/34900 or equivalent. This course meets at the Newberry Library; for more information, consult Christina von Nolcken (702-7977, mcv4@midway.uchicago.edu). T. Hall.

15600. Medieval English Literature (=ENGL 15600, GNDR 15600). 3:00-3:50 Fri Disc: 1@9:30-10:20 1@10:30-11:20. C 119. 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. M. Miller.

15800 35800. Medieval Epic (=CMLT 25900/35900, ENGL 15800/35800). TTH 3:00-4:20. C 106. Major works such as Beowulf, The Song of Roland, The Cid, and II Pergerio are examined, and attention is also given to poems such as the alliterative Morte d'Arthur. M. Murrin.

16100 Media Aesthetics. 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).

16101. TTH 9:00-10:20. Cormack, Bradin.

16102. MW 1:30-2:50. Slauter, Eric.

16103. TH 10:30-11:50. Stewart, Jacqueline.

16300 36300. Renaissance Epic (=CMLT 39100, ENGL 16300/36300, RLIT 30900). TTH 10:30-11:50. PSY G110. The emphasis of this class is on the neoclassical epic, its theory, and its connections with history. We read Camoe's Lusiads, the epic about the first European voyage around Africa to India; Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, the epic about the First Crusade that influenced The Faerie Queene; plus his Discourses on the Art of Poetry, in which he sets up a theory of neoclassical epic that also affected Milton. Finally, we read Milton's Paradise Lost. M. Murrin.

16500. Shakespeare I: Histories and Comedies. TTH 1:30-2:50 Fri Disc 1@10:30-11:20 1@12:00-1:20. SS 302. This course is an exploration of Shakespeare's major plays in the genres of history plays and romantic comedy, from the first half (roughly speaking) of his professional career: Richard III, Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, Henry V, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado about Nothing, Twelfth Night, and Measure for Measure. We also give serious attention to issues of political conflict, formation of national identity, self-fashioning, gender role-playing, courtship, maturation, innovations in genre, and staging (including, when we have time, film). D. Bevington.

17500. English Poetry from Wyatt to Milton. TTH 3:00-4:20. C 112. This course explores the field of Renaissance poetry in the context of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century culture more generally. Although we focus on the lyric in such writers as Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne, and Milton, our readings also include historical poetry and selected literary and rhetorical criticism from the period. B. Cormack.

21100 40000. Victorian Wives, Mothers, and Daughters (=ENGL 21100/40000, GNDR 21300). TTH 10:30-11:50. This introduction to modern theoretical debates concerns the role of gender in Victorian society with a focus on the female gender in history, as well as instructive and medical texts. We begin with readings by Armstrong, Poovey, and Langland. We then concentrate on several contested and much-studied modes of identity: marriage, motherhood, the role of daughters, and related categories such as leisure and labor. E. Hadley.

21200 Sex and Citizenship. TTH 1:30-2:50. C 402. This course will explore relationships between sexuality, gender, and the public sphere in American literature and culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. We will approach these relationships on two levels. On the one hand, we will study how the rise and transformation of the bourgeois public sphere entailed the historical and ideological ascendance of the conjugal family. We will investigate the idealization of the intimate as the sphere in which the male citizen cultivates the qualities that enable him to participate in political discourse, as well as the increasing organization of the public around the protection of the intimate. On the other hand, we will study the ways that sexuality could be defined as a public concern. Some of the texts that we will read address sexual practices that violate the norms of privatization (ie. seduction, prostitution) and therefore require public intervention. Other texts represent social and political crises in terms of the disruption of the intimate, the de-privatization of sexuality and femininity (ie. depictions of sexual assault in Revolutionary War propaganda and in abolitionist literature). Three historical problems will structure our examination of sex and citizenship: the production of national identity; the development of domestic ideology (including the rise of the affectionate family and the consolidation of bourgeois hegemony); and the organization of counterpublics based in social and political reform movements such as temperance and abolition. Layson, Hannah.

21500/31500. John Locke in Historical Context (=ENGL 21500/31500, HIST 21500/31500). MW 4:30-5:50. C 103. Observers agree that John Locke's thought is at the heart of liberal political thinking. Yet very few have sought to understand his writings in the political and social contexts in which they were written. This course begins by discussing the value of historical approaches to political thought. We then proceed to examine his notions of government, his political economy, and his religious arguments in dialogue with his contemporaries. The course focuses heavily on primary texts, both by Locke and others. S. Pincus. . (B, H)

23300 The Genres of Atrocity. TTH 12:00-1:20. C 103. In the latter half of the twentieth century, from the Holocaust and Hiroshima to the recent events of genocide and "ethnic cleansing" in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and East Timor, atrocities have tested our powers of understanding and posed seemingly insoluble moral, ethical, and aesthetic dilemmas for those who have tried to come to terms with them. Taking our cue from Theodor Adorno's oft quoted remark that "to write lyric poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric," we will ask how and whether atrocity changes the way we think about the role of form in aesthetics. Are some modes of representation more or less appropriate for staging encounters with atrocity? What is it in an event or experience of atrocity that representation should reveal or keep silent? What do different forms uncover or repress? Who, if anyone, has the moral authority to write, paint, or make films about such events, and (how) does the perspective or position of artist, writer, filmmaker, scholar , or journalist change what can be expressed and the forms of expression? What kinds of limits and responsibilities, if any, do atrocities impose upon those who would attempt to represent them? To address these and other questions, we will read scholarship from several disciplines including literary and film criticism, history and historiography, and philosophy. We will also examine a wide variety of aesthetic and non-aesthetic genres including films, novels, poems as well as visual and print journalism. Ramayya, Anil

23400. Virginia Woolf (=ENGL 23400, GNDR 23400). TTH 9:00-10:20. C 110. Readings include The Voyage Out, Jacob's Room, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, The Waves, Between the Acts, and selected essays. L. Ruddick. . (E, H)

25900. Reading the American Renaissance. MW 10:30-11:20 Fri Disc 2@10:30-11:20. C 303. This course introduces students to surveys of the "classic" texts of the antebellum cannon and theoretical and historical questions concerning canon-formation and literary periodization. We examine American Renaissance writers' intense concern with the relations between literary practice and social and political ideology and with the productive relations that their own literary practices may have on readers. Authors include Emerson, Whitman, Hawthorne, Dickinson, Douglass, and Melville. V. Bertolini.

26100 Dramaturgy. 2:00-5:50 ARR. What is a Dramaturg? Who is this Mysterious creature? What does he/she do? What is his/her place in our theatre? As a way of answering these questions this course is designed to familiarize students with the tools, methodologies, and practices I’ve designated Action Dramaturgy. The course begins with the origins and evolutions of dramaturgy as a profession. We attempt to historically define the dramaturg’s function and duties both inside and outside the rehearsal hall as well as establish the role of the resident dramaturg function and duties both inside and outside the rehearsal hall as well as establish the role of the resident dramaturg in season planning and shaping a theater’s aesthetic. We create production casebooks; and cut a classic text. More broadly, Action Dramaturgy investigates the dramaturg’s “questioning” spirit and the creative process through the prism of students’ work; contemporary issues in dramaturgy and playwriting and the future of dramaturgy as an evolving profession. Shteir, Rachel.

28000. Film Aesthetics, Spectatorship, and Cinema Experience (=CMST 27100, ENGL 28000, GSHU 20700). TTH 1:30-2:50 Scr: W 7:00-10:00 p.m. C 310. This course focuses on the relation between the film medium, its aesthetic possibilities and practices, and the forms of reception mandated by and available within the institution of cinema. Beginning with a few classical film theorists (i.e., Balazs, Kracauer, Eisenstein, and Benjamin), we explore questions of film aesthetics and spectatorship through more contemporary theorists in the psychoanalytic-semiotic vein (i.e., Metz, Baudry, and Mulvey). We also consider the perspective of recent film history (i.e., Gunning, Musser, Tsivian, Carbine, and Hansen) that emphasizes the significance of the entire cinema experience (i.e., the social space of the theater, music, programming, and the public horizon of the audience) for the process by which films convey meaning, pleasure, and subjectivity. M. Hansen.

28800 Contemporary Poetry and its Critical Context. TU 5:00-8:00. C 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.

29600 48900. History of International Cinema II: Sound Era to 1960 (=ARTH 28600/38600, CMST 28600/48600, COVA 26600, ENGL 29600/48900, MAPH 33700). TTH 10:30-11:50 Scr: M 3:30-6:30 C307, Tu 7:00-10:00 C307. C 307. PQ: ENGL 29300/48700 or consent of instructor. This is the second part of the international survey history for film covering the sound era up to 1960. The crystallization of the classical Hollywood film in terms of style and genre, as well as industry organization, is a key issue. But international alternatives to Hollywood are also discussed, from the unique forms of Japanese cinema to movements such as Italian Neo-Realism and the beginnings of the New Wave in France. Texts include Thompson Bordwell, Film History, An Introduction, and works by Bazin, Belton, Sitney, Godard, and others. Screenings include films by Hitchcock, Welles, Rossellini, Bresson, Ozu, Antonioni, and Renoir. T. Gunning. (F)

29801. Senior Seminar 2: Shakespeare and the Senses.. MW 1:30-2:50. HM 155. This course will explore metaphors and models of sense perception and cognition in Shakespearean drama. We will focus in depth on visual, auditory, and tactile modes of transmission, communication and miscommunication in a number of comedies, tragedies, and romances, where plots often hinge on moments of sensory unreliability. In addition to exploring literary tropes of sense ( where characters, for example, might look without seeing, hear without listening, touch without feeling, or where the senses are confused or work in isolation from each other). Further, we will consider the place of the senses in the domain of performance more generally, where "audiences" "spectators" and "assemblies" gather in a communal setting requiring a complex interplay of bodily and cognitive "sense". Students will explore early documents on sensory perception and produce a substantial research paper for the course. Mazzio, Carla.

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