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Courses
Refer to letters after course descriptions for courses that fulfill program
requirements: (A) Period; (B) Pre-1700; (C) 1700-1900;
(D) Poetry; (E) Fiction; (F) Drama/Film; (G)
American; (H) British.
101. Methodologies and Issues in Textual Studies. Required
of English concentrators. This course introduces students to the concerns
and critical practices of English. It provides some grounding in critical
methodologies and controversies across a range of genres and prepares students
to enter into the discussions that occur in more advanced courses. J.
Chandler, Staff, Winter; J. Mueller, Staff, Spring.
102-103. Problems in Gender Studies (=GS Hum 228-229, Hist 180-181, Hum
228-229, SocSci 282-283; Eng 103=ArtH 171, Philos 217). PQ: Second-
or third-year standing and completion of a Common Core social science or
humanities course or the equivalent. 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 reconceptualizations 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 for local, national,
and global politics. Topics might include the politics of reproduction;
gender and postcolonialism; women, sexual scandal, and the law; race and
sexual paranoia; and sexual subcultures. E. Alexander, L. Berlant, Staff,
Autumn; P. Rogers, C. Vogler, Staff, Winter.
104. Introduction to Poetry. 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. J. P. Hunter. Spring. (D)
107. Introduction to Fiction. 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. W.
Veeder. Winter. (E)
109. Introduction to Film II (=CMS 102, GS Hum 201). PQ: This is
the second part of a two-quarter course. The two parts are offered in alternate
years and may be taken in sequence or individually. This quarter builds
upon the skills of formal analysis, knowledge of basic cinematic conventions,
and familiarity with the institutions of cinema acquired in the first quarter.
In this course we address intertextual and contextual problems, such as
those associated with genre, authorship, stars, and various responses to
the classical Hollywood film. Alternatives studied include documentary,
European national cinemas, "art cinema," animation, and various
avant-garde movements. Staff. Autumn. (F)
115. Literature and Society in the Culture Wars. Literature and literary
study have become a battleground, as fierce public debates have erupted
over such questions as which texts students should read and how one should
read them. Universities have come under attack for allegedly replacing the
canonical great books with texts by women and ethnic minorities, and for
generally politicizing the humanities. These debates lead to wider divisions
in the culture over multiculturalism, political correctness, hate speech,
and sexual harassment. Through selected canonical and revisionist literary
texts, works of criticism, and journalism, we survey the main areas of dispute
and major positions in the controversy, with an eye to clarifying the issues,
if not resolving them. G. Graff. Spring. (E, G)
130/330. The Little Red Schoolhouse (Academic and Professional Writing).
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, J. Williams, Staff. Winter, Spring.
131/331. Writing Fiction. PQ: Consent of instructor after submission
of a short sample manuscript. Much of the course centers on student
stories. These are (painlessly) mixed with stories from an anthology of
good fiction. R. Stern. Autumn. (E)
134. Creative Writing: Poetry (=GS Hum 225). PQ: Consent of instructor
after submission of three to six shorter poems by December 6, 1996, to Gates-Blake
309. Enrollment limited. In this course we read and write poetry intensively.
Class time is spent on short, focused writing exercises, discussion of seasoned
and recently published poetry (expect to read one volume of poetry per week,
as well as miscellaneous essays, interviews, and poems), and constructive
discussion of each other's work. E. Alexander. Winter. (D)
135/335. Writing Fiction and Poetry. PQ: Consent of instructor after
submission of a short sample manuscript. Discussion of student writing
and the problems of literary composition. R. Stern. Spring. (E)
138-139/310-311. History and Theory of Drama I, II (=ComLit 305-306,
GS Hum 242/342-243/343). This course covers Aeschylus to Ayckbourne
and Sophocles to Sade. D. Bevington, N. Rudall. Autumn, Winter. (F)
149/349. Old English (=German 310). This course aims to provide the
student with the linguistic skills and historical and cultural perspectives
necessary for advanced work on Old English. C. von Nolcken. Autumn.
(B, D, H)
152/352. "The Vercelli Book." PQ: Eng 149/349 or equivalent.
This course meets at the Newberry Library. For further information,
students should contact the Center for Renaissance Studies at the Newberry
Library, 312-943-9090. T. Hall. Winter. (B, D, H)
155. Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales. PQ: Prior knowledge of
Middle English or of Chaucer's poetry not required. 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. Winter. (B, D, H)
156. Medieval English Literature. The course focuses on the poetry of
Chaucer's major contemporaries: Langland, Gower, and the anonymous author
of Pearl. Other readings sketch the intellectual and cultural environment
of late medieval England. These include texts in philosophy, theology, and
more popular literary forms--the sermon, the saint's life, and the devotional
and penitential manual. J. Schleusener. Autumn. (A, B, D, H)
165. Shakespeare I: Histories and Comedies. Shakespeare's major histories
and comedies are read with some attention to questions of genre, generational
conflict, the search for sexual identity, family conflict, and political
struggle. Essay assignments stress close analysis of texts, which include
Richard II; Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2; Henry V; A Midsummer Night's
Dream; Much Ado about Nothing; Twelfth Night; and Measure for Measure.
D. Bevington. Autumn. (B, F, H)
166. Shakespeare II: Tragedies and Romances. This course studies Shakespeare's
major tragedies and romances. Plays read include Hamlet, King Lear, Othello,
Corialanus, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest. R. Strier. Spring.
(B, F, H)
169. The Renaissance. This course explores various works from the English
Renaissance, which was a time of great social, intellectual, and linguistic
dynamism. Sonnets, plays, prose works, and longer poems by such authors
as Thomas More, Philip Sidney, Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spenser, William
Shakespeare, Mary Wroth, John Donne, Ben Jonson, John Webster, George Herbert,
and John Milton are studied in relation to their historical and literary
context. D. Bevington. Winter. (A, B, D, H)
175/375. Milton. This course studies Milton's poetic and political career
in the context of the English Revolution. Readings include some of his political
pamphlets, as well as his major poems. R. Strier. Spring. (B,
D, H)
178. Restoration and Early Eighteenth Century Literature. This course
addresses a range of writers from John Bunyan to Alexander Pope, or, put
otherwise, from Mary Carleton to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. We examine the
significance that religion, social status, gender, sexuality, commerce,
and nationality held for the literature and the literary culture of the
period. In doing so, we enter into some of the debates that center around
what it means to view the literature of this period "otherwise."
Our reading list likely includes Mary Carleton and John Bunyan; Aphra Behn
and John Dryden; Delariviere Manley and Daniel Defoe; Joseph Addison and
Richard Steele; Elizabeth Rowe and Isaac Watts; and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
and Alexander Pope. A. Yadav. Autumn. (C, D, H)
188/388. Dr. Johnson and His Circle. This course concentrates
on the works of Johnson, Boswell, and Goldsmith, viewed in their cultural
milieu. Burney and Reynolds also receive consideration. B. Redford. Winter.
(C, H)
206. Jane Austen. Adopting a developmental approach, we follow Austen's
fictional career from its origins in exuberant parody to the compact ironies
of Persuasion. Key issues include the relationship between satire
and sympathy, Austen's changing narrative strategies, and her oblique but
unmistakable political engagement. B. Redford. Spring. (C, E,
H)
210. The Victorian Period. The term "Victorian" evokes powerful
images and themes: a certain kind of sexuality; the industrial revolution,
with its attendant horrors and class conflicts; British imperialism in full
flower; and foggy London streets roamed by decadents, paupers, murderers,
and detectives. This course takes up the Victorian age as seen through its
own eyes and by later periods, including our own. Reading works of poetry,
fiction, and criticism by writers such as Dickens, Carlyle, Browning, Brontë,
Pater, Wilde, and Conan Doyle, we try to flesh out and complicate received
ideas about Victorianism. L. Rothfield. Spring. (A, C,
E, H)
219/423. Victorian Women Writers. Difficulties and possibilities for
women writing in nineteenth-century Britain, as these are variously encountered
and exploited in works by Victorian poets and novelists. Likely texts include
Charlotte Brontë, Villette; Emily Brontë, Wuthering
Heights and selected poems; Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South (and
possibly her Life of Charlotte Brontë); Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
poems; Christina Rossetti, poems; and George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss.
We also evaluate recent approaches to Victorian women's writing (Armstrong,
Homans, Mermin, and Leighton) and look at various analyses of sex and gender
roles in the Victorian period (Davidoff, Hall, and Poovey, etc.). E.
Helsinger. Autumn. (C, D, E, H)
222. The Detective and the Judge: Crime Fiction in English and Chinese (=ComLit
321, EALC 225, Hum 213). The aim of this course is to juxtapose two
genes from different traditions (Western detective fiction and Chinese court
case fiction) and explore the issues that arise from reading them together.
The point is not to try to conflate the two or subsume them in one, larger
or universal genre but to help students come to a better understanding of
each through attention to the questions raised between them. Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle and his contemporaries, writing between 1890 and 1914, furnish
most of our readings in English. One anonymous collection, the Bao Longtu
Pan Baijia Gongan (Bao Longtu Adjudicates 100 Court Cases) and a few
other collections from the late Ming (ca. 1590-1640 C.E.) furnish most of
the Chinese stories. J. St. André. Winter. (E, H)
232/432. Toward Modernity. This course centers on important twentieth-century
texts. Questions about the nature of modernity radiate from the texts. The
radiation creates not so much a context for literary discussion as a mental
constellation of which the texts are important elements. R. Stern. Autumn.
(E)
235/443. What's Love Got to Do with It? The Genres of Modern Romance (=ArtDes
260, CMS 255). Love brings with it romantic promises that are supported
by an elaborate culture of representation. Using materials from cinema,
literature, the visual arts, and cultural theory, we pose questions about
the genres of romance and the construction of romantic subjectivity. This
involves rethinking gender, sexuality, desire, love, narrative, pain, and
modes of representation. Subjects include the relation of the pornographic
and the erotic; of high, avant-garde, and popular culture; of hetero- and
homoerotic scenes of pleasure; conventional "women's culture"
sites like magazines and talk shows; popular music; and sex-radical art.
L. Berlant, L. Letinsky. Winter. (E, F, G)
240. Ulysses and Its Critical Contexts. This course combines
close attention to the text of Ulysses with readings designed to
give a sense of the range of critical approaches available for interpreting
Joyce. These include selected Joyce criticism as well as material from the
culture of early twentieth-century Dublin (including newspapers, music hall
lyrics, and magazines) that we can place alongside Ulysses in order
to formulate ideas about Joyce's relation to popular culture. L. Ruddick.
Autumn. (E, H)
241. Women and Colonialism. We read various English-language texts written
by women concerned in various ways with the different spaces and subjectivities
opened up (and closed off) by colonialism. Very often these writers call
to one another across history, explicitly, as in the case of Charlotte Brontë
and Jean Rhys, or implicitly, as in the case of Sarah Gertrude Millin and
Zoe Wicomb. Texts might include Oronooko (Aphra Behn), The Cape
Journals (Anne Barnard), Roughing It In the Bush (Susanna Moodie),
Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë), From Man to Man (Olive
Schreiner), God's Stepchildren (Millin), Wide Sargasso Sea
(Rhys), The Journals of Susanna Moodie (Margaret Atwood), Maru
(Bessie Head), and You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town (Wicomb). D.
Driver. Autumn. (E, H)
244. Brecht and Beyond (=CMS 285, GS Hum 248, German 244). Brecht is
indisputably the most influential playwright in the twentieth century. In
this course, we explore the range and variety of Brecht's own theater, from
the anarchic plays of the 1920s to the agitprop Lehrstücke to
the classical parable plays, as well as the works of his heirs in Germany
(Heiner Müller, Franz Xaver Kroetz, and Peter Weiss), Britain (John
Arden, Edward Bond, and Caryl Churchill), and sub-Saharan Africa (Soyinka,
Ngugi, and various South African theater practitioners). We also consider
the impact of Brechtian theory on film, from Brecht's own Kuhle Wampe
to Jean-Luc Godard. L. Kruger. Winter. (F, H)
250. The African Diaspora III: The Slave Trade as Experience, Construct,
and Imaginary (=AfAfAm 203, GS Hum 215, Hist 200/300). This is an interdisciplinary
course organized by the Committee on African and African-American Studies.
We deal with the Atlantic slave trade through the study of literary works,
films, ideological debates, and analysis of "hard" economic, linguistic,
and social data. R. Austen, K. Warren. Spring. (E, F, G)
251. The Literature of Colonial America. Beginning with the literature
of exploration and concluding with Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography,
we survey the "classic" texts that have constituted the canon
of early American Literature, and we read texts that challenge that tradition.
Anglo-American representations of the colonies as a "new world,"
of the self as a citizen-saint, and of history as sacred prophecy are read
in tandem with Native American myths of origin, tales of captivity, and
slave narratives. This course is designed to introduce students to a variety
of early American texts and genres. J. Knight. Winter. (A, B,
C, G)
252. American Embodiments, 1855-1905. Beginning with Whitman's Leaves
of Grass, this course tracks a variety of literary investments in human
corporeality. In particular, we explore the tension between, on the one
hand, a vision of the body as a site of pleasure and transformative potential
and, on the other, a recognition of the body as a boundary that limits personal
and social achievement. Literary texts are read in conjunction with texts
from American intellectual, legal, and social history. Major authors include
Rebecca Harding Davis, Mark Twain, Frances Harper, Henry James, Frank Norris,
and Edith Wharton. W. Brown. Spring. (A, C, E, G)
253. Naturalism, Modernism, and the Veblenesque. This course integrates
the economic/sociological works of Veblen, from 1899 to 1914, with literary
texts by Norris, London, Stein, Barnes, and Eliot, in order to articulate
some relation between familiar aspects of Naturalism (its perverse Darwinism,
its interest in atavism and barbarism, its racism) and more recently historicized
and theorized aspects of Modernism (its primitivism, its interest in racial
masquerade). How does Veblen's account of modernity's failure seem to account
for the aesthetic triumph of Modernism? In order to contextualize Veblen's
thought, we briefly examine some American ethnography from the period, some
other sociological work (Weber and Simmel), and subsequent classics in economic
anthropology (Mauss and Bataille). W. Brown. Winter. (E,
G)
257. American Culture and the Environment (=EnvStd 257). This course
examines texts that illuminate the bearing of American history and culture
on the growing impact of human activity on the natural world. Major themes
considered include concepts of the relationship of humans to nature; science
and the emergence of industrialism; values underlying colonialism and economic
activity (capitalism and exploitation); and frontierism, individualism,
and conservationism versus preservationism in the United States. Texts include
The Mythic World of the Zuni, Jefferson's Notes on the State
of Virginia, Martin's Sacred Revolt, Ulrich's A Midwife's
Tale, Thoreau's Walden, Droeber's Ishi: A Tale of Two Worlds,
Davis's Life in the Iron Mills, and Turner's The Significance
of the Frontier in American History. L. Rigal. Winter. (C,
G)
260/466. African-American Poetry. This discussion course surveys the
work of a number of poets, with emphasis being on twentieth-century poets.
Students write essays on one of the major figures in the course, such as
Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Hayden, Baraka, Jay Wright, or
Rita Dove. R. von Hallberg. Winter. (D, G)
261. Native American Literature (=Hum 263). This course is a broad introduction
to literature by and about native Americans. Readings cluster around three
historical/cultural moments: eastern Indian removal, the closing of the
western frontier, and the contemporary native America literary renaissance.
Readings include novels from the Last of the Mohicans to Ceremony,
autobiographies by William Apess, Black Hawk, and others, and ethnographic
texts such as Black Elk Speaks. These readings are occasionally supplemented
by film screenings. The focus of the course is on the ways in which a native
American tradition of writing in English can be constructed as both separate
from and engaged with the "main currents" of American literature
and mass culture. P. Gilmore. Spring. (E, G)
266. American Autobiography (=GS Hum 221). This course emphasizes the
rhetoric of autobiographies and the adaptation of self-writing to ideological
ends, mostly (1) classic American autobiographers (e.g., Mary Rowlandson,
Cotton Mather, Benjamin Franklin, Henry James, and Henry Adams), (2) African-Americans
(e.g., Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois, Richard Wright, and Henry Louis
Gates), and (3) Jewish Americans (e.g., Henry Roth, Alfred Kazin, and Philip
Roth). M. Krupnick. Autumn. (C, G)
269. Postwar U.S. Literature. This survey of postwar U.S. literature
begins with Arthur Miller's The Crucible and concludes with Tony
Kushner's Angels in America. These works, haunted by the Rosenberg
and McCarthy trials, frame a course that considers a variety of genres and
formal experiments in poetic language in terms of the political and cultural
upheavals of the Cold War. In addition to the two plays, we are likely to
read prose works by Jack Kerouac, Malcolm X, Joan Didion, Thomas Pynchon,
Norman Mailer, and Toni Morrison, and poetry by Charles Olson, Allen Ginsberg,
Amiri Baraka, Robert Lowell, Frank O'Hara, Elizabeth Bishop, Audre Lorde,
Adrienne Rich, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, and Paul Monette. D. Nelson.
Winter. (D, E, G)
270. Introduction to Contemporary Chicana/o Cultures. This course considers
various forms of expression in contemporary Chicana/o cultures: literature,
film, visual arts, music, and folklore. Topics include the relationships
between particular forms and their histories of domination and resistance;
the "Brown Power" movement of the 1960s; the intersections of
race, gender, and class in border cultures; and the politics of Chicana/o
style. We read works by Acuna, Castillo, Cisneros, Fregoso, Moraga, and
Paredes; study murals and discuss the art works in the "Chicano Art:
Resistance and Affirmation" catalogue; listen to and read about music
from Tex-Mex to hip hop; and watch films, including I Am Joaquin, Yo
Soy Chicana, The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez, and Born in East L. A.
C. Márez. Spring. (E, F, G)
273/476. Contemporary African-American Literature and Culture (=GS Hum 220/320).
We read African-American literature of the contemporary era, from the
Black Arts and Black Aesthetic movements of the 1960s to the post-1970 publishing
boom of black women's writing, to the critical and theoretical texts of
the 1980s and 1990s. We also look at concurrent developments in African-American
film and performance, emphasizing the literary and performative conjunctions
of texts such as Anna Deavere Smith's Fires in the Mirror, Charles
Burnett's To Sleep with Anger, Wendell Harris's Chameleon Street,
and Marlon Riggs's Tongues Untied. E. Alexander. Autumn. (E, F,
G)
283. Classical Film Theory (=CMS 270, GS Hum 206). This course examines
basic questions associated with the film medium through the writings of
some of its earliest and most influential theorists. Beginning with the
question of what constitutes a "theoretical" or "philosophical"
approach to film, we pursue a series of persistent issues. What is the nature
of film's relationship to reality? Are there "essential" features
of the medium that determine (or should determine) its form? How do images
and editing make meaning? We place writers (such as Vachel Lindsay, Hugo
Münsterberg, Sergei Eisenstein, Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin,
André Bazin, and others) in historical and cultural terms, and use
their work to frame our own theoretical questions about the cinema. J.
Lastra. Spring. (F)
285. American Cinema to 1934 (=CMS 201, GS Hum 202). This course
moves through, roughly, three phases of American film history: early cinema,
the elaboration of the classical Hollywood mode of film practice, and the
transition to sound. We focus on the following issues: the emergence of
cinema in the public sphere of turn-of-the-century commercial entertainments;
the social composition of early audiences and the role of mixed audiences
into a mass culture of consumption; the development of the star system and
fan cults; the interplay of technological, economic, and aesthetic factors
in the transition to sound; and the threat of censorship and the implementation
of the Production Code in 1934. M. Hansen. Winter. (F,
G)
290. Fictions' Fictions. One of the prominent features of fiction produced
since World War II is the inclination to "rewrite" earlier masterpieces.
King Lear, Robinson Crusoe, Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, and The
Turn of the Screw, for example, have been "recast" by Jane
Smiley, J. M. Coetzee, Alasdair Gray, Jean Rhys, and Joyce Carol Oates.
By studying both the "original" and the "rewrite" through
close-textual and contextual analyses, we can explore how different historical
epochs confronted intricate issues of gender, politics, psychology, and
form. In the process we take part in the current determination to question
the very concept of "originality." W. Veeder. Spring. (C,
E, G)
294/494. Studies in Narrative. We give close examination to a great
variety of narrative by a great variety of writers. The idea is to deal
with not only the texts and their authors but with narrative itself, what
it is and how it functions. R. Stern. Spring. (E)
295. Children's Literature and the History of Childhood (=GS Hum 227).
This course considers a series of famous eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and early
twentieth-century texts for and about children (from the writings of Isaac
Watts, William Blake, Maria Edgeworth, and Mrs. Sherwood to Louisa Alcott's
Little Women, Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, A. A. Milne's
The House at Pooh Corner, and P. L. Travers's Mary Poppins)
in relationship to the social history of childhood, questions of socialization,
gender, and child psychology, and formal issues ranging from didacticism
and "simplicity" of form to the relationship of text and illustration.
K. Trumpener. Autumn. (C, E, H)
298. Reading Course. PQ: Consent of College adviser and instructor.
Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Course
Form. Must be taken for a letter grade. The kind and amount of work
to be done is determined by an instructor within the Department of English
who has agreed to supervise the course. Staff. Autumn, Winter, Spring.
299. Independent B.A. Paper Preparation.
PQ: Consent of instructor. Students are required to submit the College
Reading and Research Course Form. May not be counted toward the distribution
requirements for the concentration, but may be counted as a departmental
elective. In consultation with a faculty member, students devote the
equivalent of a one-quarter course to the preparation of a B.A. paper. Staff.
Autumn, Winter, Spring.
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