Spring 2019 Class Schedule: Department of English

Spring 2019 Class Schedule

Course	Title	Instructor	Day/Time
English 206	Reading & Writing Poetry	Mehigan	MW 9:30-10:50
English 206 Reading & Writing Poetry [Prerequisite to English Major in Writing] Course Description: An introduction to the major forms of poetry in English from the dual perspective of the poet-critic. Creative work will be assigned in the form of poems and revisions; analytic writing will be assigned in the form of critiques of other class members’ poems. A scansion exercise will be given early on. All of these exercises, creative and expository, as well as the required readings from the anthology, are designed to help students increase their understanding of poetry rapidly and profoundly; the more wholehearted students’ participation, the more they will learn from the course. Prerequisites: No prerequisites. No P/N registration. Attendance of first class is mandatory. Freshmen are NOT permitted to enroll until winter quarter. Seniors require department permission. Prerequisite for the writing major and sequence-based minor. Literature Majors are also welcome. Teaching Method: Discussion; one-half to two-thirds of the classes will be devoted to discussion of readings and principles, the other classes to discussion of student poems. Evaluation Method: Evidence given in written work and class participation of students’ understanding of poetry; improvement will count for a great deal in estimating achievement. Texts include: An anthology, a critical guide, a 206 Reader prepared by the instructor, and the work of other students. Note: This course may also be counted toward the English Literature major.
English 206	Reading & Writing Poetry	Mehigan	MW 11-12:20
English 206 Reading & Writing Poetry [Prerequisite to English Major in Writing] Course Description: An introduction to the major forms of poetry in English from the dual perspective of the poet-critic. Creative work will be assigned in the form of poems and revisions; analytic writing will be assigned in the form of critiques of other class members’ poems. A scansion exercise will be given early on. All of these exercises, creative and expository, as well as the required readings from the anthology, are designed to help students increase their understanding of poetry rapidly and profoundly; the more wholehearted students’ participation, the more they will learn from the course. Prerequisites: No prerequisites. No P/N registration. Attendance of first class is mandatory. Freshmen are NOT permitted to enroll until winter quarter. Seniors require department permission. Prerequisite for the writing major and sequence-based minor. Literature Majors are also welcome. Teaching Method: Discussion; one-half to two-thirds of the classes will be devoted to discussion of readings and principles, the other classes to discussion of student poems. Evaluation Method: Evidence given in written work and class participation of students’ understanding of poetry; improvement will count for a great deal in estimating achievement. Texts include: An anthology, a critical guide, a 206 Reader prepared by the instructor, and the work of other students. Note: This course may also be counted toward the English Literature major.
English 206	Reading & Writing Poetry	Webster	TTh 11-12:20
English 206 Reading & Writing Poetry [Prerequisite to English Major in Writing] Course Description: An introduction to the major forms of poetry in English from the dual perspective of the poet-critic. Creative work will be assigned in the form of poems and revisions; analytic writing will be assigned in the form of critiques of other class members’ poems. A scansion exercise will be given early on. All of these exercises, creative and expository, as well as the required readings from the anthology, are designed to help students increase their understanding of poetry rapidly and profoundly; the more wholehearted students’ participation, the more they will learn from the course. Prerequisites: No prerequisites. No P/N registration. Attendance of first class is mandatory. Freshmen are NOT permitted to enroll until winter quarter. Seniors require department permission. Prerequisite for the writing major and sequence-based minor. Literature Majors are also welcome. Teaching Method: Discussion; one-half to two-thirds of the classes will be devoted to discussion of readings and principles, the other classes to discussion of student poems. Evaluation Method: Evidence given in written work and class participation of students’ understanding of poetry; improvement will count for a great deal in estimating achievement. Texts include: An anthology, a critical guide, a 206 Reader prepared by the instructor, and the work of other students. Note: This course may also be counted toward the English Literature major.
English 206	Reading & Writing Poetry	Kinzie	TTh 12:30-1:20
English 206 Reading & Writing Poetry [Prerequisite to English Major in Writing] Course Description: An introduction to the major forms of poetry in English from the dual perspective of the poet-critic. Creative work will be assigned in the form of poems and revisions; analytic writing will be assigned in the form of critiques of other class members’ poems. A scansion exercise will be given early on. All of these exercises, creative and expository, as well as the required readings from the anthology, are designed to help students increase their understanding of poetry rapidly and profoundly; the more wholehearted students’ participation, the more they will learn from the course. Prerequisites: No prerequisites. No P/N registration. Attendance of first class is mandatory. Freshmen are NOT permitted to enroll until winter quarter. Seniors require department permission. Prerequisite for the writing major and sequence-based minor. Literature Majors are also welcome. Teaching Method: Discussion; one-half to two-thirds of the classes will be devoted to discussion of readings and principles, the other classes to discussion of student poems. Evaluation Method: Evidence given in written work and class participation of students’ understanding of poetry; improvement will count for a great deal in estimating achievement. Texts include: An anthology, a critical guide, a 206 Reader prepared by the instructor, and the work of other students. Note: This course may also be counted toward the English Literature major.
English 207	Reading & Writing Fiction	Bouldrey	MW 9:30-10:50
English 207 Reading & Writing Fiction [Prerequisite to English Major in Writing] Course Description: A reading and writing course in short fiction. Students will read widely in traditional as well as experimental short stories, seeing how writers of different culture and temperament use conventions such as plot, character, and techniques of voice and distance to shape their art. Students will also receive intensive practice in the craft of the short story, writing at least one story, along with revisions, short exercises, and a critical study of at least one work of fiction, concentrating on technique. Prerequisites: English 206. No P/N registration. Attendance of first class is mandatory. Course especially recommended for prospective Writing Majors. Literature Majors also welcome. Teaching Method: Discussion of readings and principles; workshop of student drafts. Evaluation Method: Evidence given in written work and class participation of students’ growing understanding of fiction; improvement will count for a great deal in estimating achievement. Texts include: Selected short stories, essays on craft, and the work of the other students.
English 207	Reading & Writing Fiction	Seliy	MW 11-12:20
English 207 Reading & Writing Fiction [Prerequisite to English Major in Writing] Course Description: A reading and writing course in short fiction. Students will read widely in traditional as well as experimental short stories, seeing how writers of different culture and temperament use conventions such as plot, character, and techniques of voice and distance to shape their art. Students will also receive intensive practice in the craft of the short story, writing at least one story, along with revisions, short exercises, and a critical study of at least one work of fiction, concentrating on technique. Prerequisites: English 206. No P/N registration. Attendance of first class is mandatory. Course especially recommended for prospective Writing Majors. Literature Majors also welcome. Teaching Method: Discussion of readings and principles; workshop of student drafts. Evaluation Method: Evidence given in written work and class participation of students’ growing understanding of fiction; improvement will count for a great deal in estimating achievement. Texts include: Selected short stories, essays on craft, and the work of the other students.
English 208	Reading & Writing Creative Non Fiction	Burke	TTh 9:30-10:50
English 208 Reading & Writing Creative Non Fiction [Prerequisite to English Major in Writing] Course Description: An introduction to some of the many possible voices, styles, and structures of the creative essay. Students will read from the full aesthetic breadth of the essay, including memoir, meditation, lyric essay, and literary journalism. Discussions will address how the essay creates an artistic space distinct from the worlds of poetry and fiction, and how truth and fact function within creative nonfiction. Students will be asked to analyze the readings closely, and to write six short essays based on imitations of the style, structure, syntax, and narrative devices found in the readings. Students can also expect to do some brief writing exercises and at least one revision. Prerequisites: English 206. No P/N registration. Attendance of first class is mandatory. Course especially recommended for prospective Writing Majors. Literature Majors also welcome. Teaching Method: Discussion; one-half to two-thirds of the classes will be devoted to discussion of readings and principles, the other classes to discussion of student work.
English 208	Reading & Writing Creative Non Fiction	Stielstra	TTh 12:30-1:50
English 208 Reading & Writing Creative Non Fiction [Prerequisite to English Major in Writing] Course Description: An introduction to some of the many possible voices, styles, and structures of the creative essay. Students will read from the full aesthetic breadth of the essay, including memoir, meditation, lyric essay, and literary journalism. Discussions will address how the essay creates an artistic space distinct from the worlds of poetry and fiction, and how truth and fact function within creative nonfiction. Students will be asked to analyze the readings closely, and to write six short essays based on imitations of the style, structure, syntax, and narrative devices found in the readings. Students can also expect to do some brief writing exercises and at least one revision. Prerequisites: English 206. No P/N registration. Attendance of first class is mandatory. Course especially recommended for prospective Writing Majors. Literature Majors also welcome. Teaching Method: Discussion; one-half to two-thirds of the classes will be devoted to discussion of readings and principles, the other classes to discussion of student work.
English 210-2	British Literary Traditions Part 2	Lane	MW 10-10:50
English 210-2 British Literary Traditions Part 2 This course surveys exemplary and outstanding English literature by major authors from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries, putting literary texts in conversation with such historical developments as the French revolution, the industrial revolution, the rise of nationalism and imperialism, new print and transportation technologies, rapidly increasing literacy rates, and a wealth of related cultural arguments. Teaching Methods: Lectures paired with seminar-style discussions, all focusing intensively on passages and background arguments. Evaluation Methods: 2 short analyses, final paper, periodic quizzes, and participation. Texts include: The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors (8th ed., Vol. B: ISBN 0393928314); Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility (Penguin; ISBN 0141439661); George Eliot, The Lifted Veil (Oxford; ISBN 0199555052); Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (HBJ; ISBN 0156628708). Please follow the editions assigned; comparable pagination will greatly advance our discussions. Note: English 210-2 is an English Literature major and minor requirement; it is also designed for nonmajors and counts as an Area VI WCAS distribution requirement.
English 273	Intro to 20th Century American Literature	Cutler	MW 12:30-1:50
English 273 Intro to 20th Century American Literature Course Description: When Henry Luce, the publisher of Time magazine, declared in 1941 that it was time to create “the first great American Century,” he meant to advocate for the spread of quintessential American values—freedom, democracy—throughout the globe. But the idea of the American Century has also been invoked to call attention to the United States’ perceived harmful influence in world affairs. This course surveys some of the most important works of modern American literature by examining the intense ambivalence of American writers—including Ernest Hemingway, Nella Larsen, Margaret Atwood, and Junot Díaz—about their place in the world. How have some writers sought to escape the perceived provincialism of their American identities? How have writers grappled with the legacy of American military interventions abroad? What are the United States’ ethical obligations to the world? Teaching Method: Two lectures per week and a discussion section. Evaluation Method: Quizzes, one short essay, one group project, and a final exam. Texts include: Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (978-0743297332) Nella Larsen, Passing (978-0142437278) Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale (978-0385490818) Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (978-1594483295) Course packet including other readings.
English 275	Intro to Asian American Literature	Huang	TTh 11-12:20
English 275 Intro to Asian American Literature Course Description: Asian American, Asian-American, Asian/American—what does the changing subject of Asian American literature tell us about the instability of the category itself? Asian American literature may be thought of as a literature of continual alienation from the nation/notion of America—in terms of land, citizenship, and cultural belonging. To trace the plastic relationship between “Asian” and “American,” this course explores how critical issues of identity, national formation, aesthetics, globalization, assimilation, and canonicity shape Asian American literature. Additionally, we will interrogate the constructed, pan-ethnic nature of “Asian America” as an imagined nation. In the process, we will familiarize ourselves with the richness and diversity of Asian American literature by considering a variety of genres, including short stories, novels, drama, poetry, and film. Teaching Method: Lecture, Discussion. Evaluation Method: Regular reading responses; two short essays; one long essay; active class participation; class presentation. Texts (subject to change; please confirm final text list on Canvas before purchasing): Julia Otsuka, When the Emperor Was Divine Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee Chang-rae Lee, Native Speaker Note: This course is combined with Asian American Studies 275-0.
English 300	Seminar in Reading & Interpretation: Medieval Pop Culture	Breen	TTh 9:30-10:50
English 300 Seminar in Reading & Interpretation: Medieval Pop Culture Course Description: The earliest reference to the legend of Robin Hood occurs in the fourteenth-century religious poem Piers Plowman. There, a character named Sloth confesses to a character named Repentance that, instead of memorizing the Lord’s Prayer and other basics of the Christian faith as instructed by his parish priest, he has learned by heart numerous “rhymes of Robin Hood and Randolf Earl of Chester.” Taking Sloth’s comment as its starting point, this course will investigate a series of works that people in the Middle Ages read (or listened to) for fun, rather than out of a sense of obligation. In addition to reading “rhymes of Robin Hood” and other outlaw tales, we will look at animal stories featuring the trickster-hero Reynard the Fox, scurrilous fabliaux in which adulterous couples are celebrated rather than punished, and romances focused on knightly adventures rather than the quest for the Holy Grail. As we seek to come to grips with these stories, we will draw on a wide range of intellectual tools, from scholarly articles to modern analogues. In what ways, for instance, do the mid-twentieth-century Coyote-Road Runner cartoons shed light on the antics of Reynard the Fox? An important goal of this course is to develop the skills in writing and textual analysis that you will need for more advanced English courses. Teaching method: Mostly discussion, some workshopping. Evaluation method: Class participation; several short papers, with some opportunity for revision; oral presentation. Texts Include: A course reader available at Quartet Copies. Notes: English 300 is an English Literature major and minor requirement. First class mandatory. No P/N registration. This course does NOT fulfill the WCAS Area VI distribution requirement. This course may not be repeated for major or minor credit.
English 300	Seminar in Reading & Interpretation: Knotted, Not Plotted	Swanner	TTh 2-3:20
English 300 Seminar in Reading & Interpretation: Knotted, Not Plotted Course Description: With open-world videogames, hypertext internet novels, and structurally intricate films like Inception, it may seem as if we are living in an age of unprecedented narrative experimentation. As students in this course will discover, however, there has been a long history of structural weirdness in literature. While the colloquial understanding of a narrative is “a story with a beginning, middle, and an end,” there have always been narratives attempting to disrupt, upend, or discard that formula. What, for instance, is Laurence Sterne saying about Enlightenment science by beginning his eighteenth-century novel not with the protagonist’s birth but with his microscopic voyage as a sperm? And what are the gender implications of Jen Bervin’s Nets, which gets its title and poetic form by cutting sections of Shakespeare’s Sonnets? By analyzing structurally unconventional texts like these, students will explore the radical political and cultural meanings behind forms that are flipped, chopped, spliced, or tangled. Teaching method: Seminar discussion. Evaluation method: Class participations, papers, and one presentation. Texts Include: Jen Bervin’s Nets (ISBN: 9780972768436) Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler (ISBN: 9780156439619) Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves (ISBN: 9780375703768) Laurence Stern’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (ISBN: 9780141439778) Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire (ISBN: 9780679723424) Notes: English 300 is an English Literature major and minor requirement. First class mandatory. No P/N registration. This course does NOT fulfill the WCAS Area VI distribution requirement. This course may not be repeated for major or minor credit. Instructor Bio: Seth Swanner (Ph.D. Northwestern University) specializes in early modern English literature, environmental criticism, seventeenth-century theories of governance, and book history. His recent work includes a forthcoming article analyzing the shifts in formal posture across several editions of George Herbert's The Temple (Studies in Philology, 2018). As an instructor at Northwestern in 2016, he received the student-nominated Graduate Teaching Excellence Award. He has taught courses on an array of topics, including Shakespearean adaptation, the environments of horror literature, and the politics of form. His current book project, "Quartering the Wind: Early Modern Nature at the Fringe of Politics," explores the seditious political values that undermined seventeenth-century arguments for what was "natural" in human governance. By analyzing literary treatments of early modern ruptures in the “natural” order of things—including the Gunpowder Plot, the 1625 plague, and the English Civil War—he discovers political visions of the natural world that seemed to legitimize subversive political categories like treason, tyranny, and rebellion.
English 300	Seminar in Reading & Interpretation: Race and Representation	Huang	TTh 3:30-4:50
English 300 Seminar in Reading & Interpretation: Race and Representation Course Description: In 2014, the novelist Chang-rae Lee queried, “Isn’t all immigrant fiction essentially dystopian fiction?” Extending Lee’s provocation that we might better grasp the alienation of immigration through a deeper engagement with the tropes of science fiction, this class foregrounds how racial representation and literary representation are inextricable from one another. This quarter, we will survey contemporary Ethnic American literature by African American, Latinx, Asian American, and Native American authors whose formal experimentation challenges conventional understandings of racial, ethnic, and cultural representation through their narrative world-building. We’ll explore the sprawling highways of Los Angeles and the skyscrapers of noir New York to examine the asymmetrical distribution of space in cities; we’ll talk to “aliens”—both human beings ineligible for citizenship as well as otherworldly creatures—to learn about radical difference; and we’ll examine interracial coalitions that imagine shared speculative futures. In the process, we’ll familiarize ourselves with critical approaches to reading such as Marxism, deconstruction, biopolitics, feminism, and posthumanism, with particular attention to how these intellectual traditions can be enriched through an engagement with critical race theory. Authors include: Colson Whitehead, Karen Tei Yamashita, Louise Erdrich, Octavia Butler, Justin Torres, Ted Chiang, Cristina Henriquez, and others. Teaching method: Seminar discussion. Evaluation method: Regular short writing assignments, midterm paper, final paper, class presentation, active participation. Texts Include: Colson Whitehead, The Intuitionist Karen Tei Yamashita, Tropic of Orange Texts will be available at: Primary texts will be available at the Norris Bookstore and on reserve in the library. Other texts will be available online and in a course packet available at Quartet. Notes: English 300 is an English Literature major and minor requirement. First class mandatory. No P/N registration. This course does NOT fulfill the WCAS Area VI distribution requirement. This course may not be repeated for major or minor credit.
English 302	The History of the English Language (Pre 1830/TTC)	Breen	TTh 11-12:20
English 302 The History of the English Language (Pre 1830/TTC) Course Description: Have you noticed that, unlike many other languages, English often has two different names for the same animal? These double names can be traced back to 1066, when the French-speaking Normans, led by William the Bastard, conquered England and installed their countrymen in positions of power. In the aftermath of this victory, William the Bastard became William the Conqueror and cows and pigs and sheep became beef and pork and mutton – at least when they were served up to the Normans at their banquets. Like many other words associated with aristocratic life, these terms all derive from French. In this course we will investigate this and many other milestones in the history of the English language, focusing on the period from the early middle ages through the eighteenth century. We will pay particular attention to the relationships among “high” and “low” forms of language, including efforts to elevate the status of English and the dynamics of self-consciously “low” registers of language such as slang and obscenity. In addition to offering an introduction to the linguistic, literary, and social history of England, this course will help you to develop a more sensitive understanding of modern English that you can bring to other classes and to life in general. Teaching Methods: Mostly discussion, some lecture. Evaluation Methods: Midterm and final examinations, paper, short written exercises, oral presentation. Texts may include: David Crystal, The Stories of English, ISBN 1585677191; Tore Janson, The History of Languages, ISBN0199604290; a course reader available at Quartet Copies.
English 306	Advanced Poetry Writing: Theory & Practice of Poetry Translation	Gibbons	TTh 3:30-4:50
English 306 Advanced Poetry Writing: Theory & Practice of Poetry Translation *Course Description: A combination of seminar and workshop. Together we will translate several short poems and study theoretical approaches to literary translation and practical accounts by literary translators. We will approach language, poems, poetics, culture and theoretical issues and problems in relation to each other. Your written work will be due in different forms during the course. In your final portfolio, you will present revised versions of your translations and a research paper on translation. Prerequisite: A reading knowledge of a second language and experience reading literature in that language. If you are uncertain about your qualifications, please e-mail the instructor at rgibbons@northwestern.edu to describe them. Experience writing creatively is welcome, especially in poetry writing courses in the English Department. Teaching Method: Discussion; group critique of draft translations; oral presentations by students. Evaluation Method: Written work ("Canvas" responses to reading, draft translations, revised translations, and final papers) as well as class participation should demonstrate students’ growing understanding of translation as a practice and as a way of reading poetry and engaging with larger theoretical ideas about literature. Texts include: Essays on translation by a number of critics, scholars and translators, in two published volumes and on the Course Management web site ("Canvas”). Note*: This course is combined with COMP_LIT 311-0 and COMP_LIT 414-0. If the ENGLISH side of the course is full, you may register for the course under the co-listed department and receive the same credit toward your English major.
English 307	Advanced Creative Writing: Writing the Unspeakable	Ahmad	TTh 2-3:20
English 307 Advanced Creative Writing: Writing the Unspeakable Course Description: As writers of fiction, we try to delve deep into uncomfortable emotions: desire, loss, belonging, madness, personal and historical trauma. We start with our own raw experiences, but all too often find them hard to formulate, and end up self-censoring or resorting to clichés and conventional narrative strategies. How then do we create works of insight, clarity, and narrative power? In this class, we will learn from contemporary writers who have successfully engaged this difficult terrain. Since writing the unspeakable depends on creating innovative forms--and reinventing existing ones--we will focus intensively on the narrative structure of these published pieces. Reading like writers, we will also take them apart to examine craft issues like point-of-view, time management, characterization, and dialogue. Five short, craft-based writing assignments will approach the unspeakable in different ways, and spark ideas/forms for your final project, a full-length short story. A draft of this will be workshopped in class, and you will also provide critical feedback for one other student’s story. The final grade will be based on a writing portfolio consisting of the short assignments and a second draft of your full-length story. This is an intensive class aimed at creating a community of engaged, thoughtful writers, and class participation is essential. Teaching Methods: Class discussion, workshop. Evaluation Methods: TBA. Texts include: Short stories, novellas and novel excerpts by Cormac McCarthy, Toni Morrison, Paul Harding, Ian McEwen, Junot Diaz, Michael Cunningham, Haruki Murakami, Rohinton Mistry, Doris Lessing, Sam Shepard, David Means, Dinaw Mengestu.
English 309	Advanced Creative Cross-Genre Writing: Reading and Writing Science	Bouldrey	MW 12:30-1:50
English 309 Advanced Creative Cross-Genre Writing: Reading and Writing Science Course Description: The World Book Encyclopedia can take the complex descriptions of the Nobel Prize Committee and transform remarkably technical descriptions of accomplishments in Chemistry, Physics, Economics, and Medicine into language that a high school student can understand. It’s important that professionals in these areas do know how to communicate with lay readers, because those readers might be patients, clients, and professionals in other areas of scientific expertise who need guidance, narrative, and transformation. In short, we search for complexity that is not complicated. We must all provide a kind of translation that brings our knowledge to a wider audience. Through literature that is spans from ancient Greece to contemporary work—in nonfiction, fiction, and poetry, we will consider all the modes of rhetoric science writers must master: description, exposition, argumentation, summary, definition, process analysis, and perhaps, above all, narration, for finding the story is critical for understanding. Readings may include works by Aristotle, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Oliver Sacks, Jane Goodall, Rachel Carson, Stephen Jay Gould, Edward O. Wilson, Joy Williams, Eula Biss, Jane Hirshfield, Andrea Barrett and Jim Shepard. STEM students are especially welcome to take this course.
English 312	Studies in Drama: Feminisms and the American Stage (Post 1830/ICSP)	Manning	TTh 3:30-4:50
English 312 Studies in Drama: Feminisms and the American Stage (Post 1830/ICSP) Course Description: American actresses, playwrights, dancers and choreographers did not always participate in the organized feminist movements of the 20th century. Yet their representations of gender and sexuality challenged preexisting images of women onstage and offstage. This course follows changing representations of women in theatrical performance from the late 19^th century through the early 21^st century. Of particular interest are domesticity as setting and problematic, solo performance, all-female ensembles, dream ballets and anti-realist breaks in the action, and works that fuse dance, music, and theatre. Readings, lectures, discussions, and video viewings are supplemented by attendance at live theatre. Teaching Method: Discussion. Evaluation Method: TBA Texts include: TBA Note: This course fulfills the Dance Studies requirement for Dance majors and minors, the History/Literature/Criticism requirement for Theatre majors, and the Identities Communities and Social Practices (ICSP) requirement for English majors. Open registration through English and Gender and Sexuality Studies; no permission number required.
English 313	Studies in Fiction: American Fiction in the 1950s (Post 1830)	High	TTh 3:30-4:50
English 313 Studies in Fiction: American Fiction in the 1950s (Post 1830) Course Description: This course reads deeply within the American 1950s, a decade which saw the publication of major books, from Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952) to Dr. Seuss’ Cat in the Hat (1957). Focusing on the writings of James Baldwin, Truman Capote, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Patricia Highsmith, we will investigate the ways their writing takes up adolescence, race, self-discovery, fear, sexuality, and personal courage in the mid twentieth century. We will also explore the relationships between these writers and their public celebrity: Brooks, for example, won the Pulitzer prize for poetry in 1950 for Annie Allen and Capote’s novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958) was an overnight sensation, causing a stir of speculation around whom the story’s heroine might have been modeled. How do the concerns of these authors ignore, redirect, and/or bear witness to the major public issues of the day? What does it mean to be a critical, cult, or commercial success in the 1950s? To answer these questions, we will read pulp novels, best-sellers, poems, a picture book, and a few short stories, in addition to viewing at least two films. Teaching Method: Discussion, collaborative group work. Evaluation Method: Two short, exploratory essays (1-2 pages); a close reading essay (4-5 pages); and one longer essay (7-8 pages). Preparation and participation, reading quizzes, one in-class presentation. Texts include: Readings will include James Baldwin, Go Tell it on the Mountain; Gwendolyn Brooks, Annie Allen and Bronzeville Boys and Girls; Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s; and Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt. Texts will be available at: Norris campus bookstore. Instructor Bio: Ean High’s research and writing join ongoing efforts to revitalize critical knowledge of religious life and expression in the study of American literature. His work has been supported by the Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation, the Peabody Essex Museum, and the Libraries of Haverford College. His commitment to the classroom has been recognized by a teaching award from the Northwestern English Department.
English 333	Spenser (Pre 1830)	Evans	TTh 2-3:20
English 333 Spenser (Pre 1830) Course Description: Unlike his rough contemporaries William Shakespeare and John Milton, Edmund Spenser does not enjoy a reputation for sexiness. Milton called him “sage and serious Spenser,” a characterization that persists today in academia, where Spenser is often invoked as a representative of those dreaded DWMs—Dead White Males—who populate the stuffy, if hallowed, halls of the English canon. This course will attempt to challenge that (mis)representation of Spenser’s literary legacy. Conceptually, that aim will entail focusing on the radicalism of Spenser's gender politics, the experimentality of his literary form, and the subversiveness of (some of!) his political agenda. Methodologically, this course will focus on the creation and curation of a digital archive of Spenserian texts, commentary, explication, illustrations—a digital "Spenserworlds" site whose content will be determined by class consensus and whose life will extend beyond the quarter and beyond the institution. Prior experience with early modern texts will be helpful but is not required; particularly helpful will be English Literary Traditions (210-1) or Introduction to Shakespeare. No special technological experience is required. Teaching Method: Lecture, discussion, small group work. Evaluation Method: Class participation; short papers (2-3 pages); individual and group projects in digital content production and curation. Texts include: Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, ed. A.C. Hamilton, 2nd ed., ISBN 1405832819; shorter readings posted on Canvas.
English 338	Studies in Renaissance Literature: Religious Controversies (Pre 1830)	Schwartz	MW 12:30-1:50
English 338 Studies in Renaissance Literature: Religious Controversies (Pre 1830) Course Description: Some of the most compelling poets of early modern England were also religious thinkers. John Donne was an Anglican priest, who preached to thousands as the Dean of St Paul’s in London. George Herbert was a parish priest in a small village who wrote about the duties of his office. John Milton engaged in high-risk political efforts to transform England into the new Promised Land. This course will focus on the religious controversies that prevailed in early modern England and the ways these thinkers responded to them in their remarkable poetry. The controversies issued in new definitions of what the Good is, how power should be apportioned, and how signs have meaning. The specific arguments can seem odd in our more secular era: Why was so much blood shed over the meaning of the wafer and the wine in the Mass? Why did anyone care what the priest wore? Why were there fights over where the altar was placed in the church? But our goal will be to understand what was at stake in these and related questions as they are engaged in the very different styles of Donne, Milton and Herbert. Teaching Method: Discussion
English 338	Studies in Renaissance Literature: The Birds and the Bees (Pre 1830)	Swanner	TTh 9:30-10:50
English 338 Studies in Renaissance Literature: The Birds and the Bees (Pre 1830) Course Description: Renaissance literature often represented the natural world as a place where humans might express their sexualities or even assume alternate genders. But it was not just humans who caressed, cross-dressed, or undressed in the natural environs of early modern poetry and drama; nature itself could be read as fundamentally sexual, often radically so. In this course, students will learn the essential skills of ecocriticism in order to explore both how humans’ “natural” sexualities were refracted through their environment and how nature’s own eroticism could reflect, subvert, or exceed human patterns of gender and sexuality. What, for instance, was John Donne thinking when he expressed his desire through the flea, an animal that Renaissance zoologists didn’t even think reproduced sexually? Why was the sea getting handsy with Leander as he swam through it in Christopher Marlowe’s most famous poem? And were queen bees actually king bees, Renaissance entomologists wondered, or were queen bees just cross-dressing with that sword-like stinger? Throughout this course, we will explore questions like these in order to understand the political and environmental stakes of Renaissance England’s multiple formulations of desirous nature—animal, vegetable, and mineral alike. Teaching Method: Seminar Discussion. Evaluation Method: Two papers, Canvas posts, and class participation. Texts include: Shakespeare, Macbeth, The Tempest, and “Phoenix and the Turtle”; Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, A King and No King; Margaret Cavendish, Paper Bodies: A Margaret Cavendish Reader, John Donne, Major Works; Christopher Marlowe, “Hero and Leander”; Philip Sidney, The Old Arcadia. Texts will be available at: Norris Campus Bookstore or through the Canvas site. Instructor Bio: Seth Swanner (Ph.D. Northwestern University) specializes in early modern English literature, environmental criticism, seventeenth-century theories of governance, and book history. His recent work includes a forthcoming article analyzing the shifts in formal posture across several editions of George Herbert's The Temple (Studies in Philology, 2018). As an instructor at Northwestern in 2016, he received the student-nominated Graduate Teaching Excellence Award. He has taught courses on an array of topics, including Shakespearean adaptation, the environments of horror literature, and the politics of form. His current book project, "Quartering the Wind: Early Modern Nature at the Fringe of Politics," explores the seditious political values that undermined seventeenth-century arguments for what was "natural" in human governance. By analyzing literary treatments of early modern ruptures in the “natural” order of things—including the Gunpowder Plot, the 1625 plague, and the English Civil War—he discovers political visions of the natural world that seemed to legitimize subversive political categories like treason, tyranny, and rebellion.
English 359	Studies in Victorian Literature: The Brontës: Testimony, Critique, and Detachment (Post 1830)	Lane	MW 2-3:20
English 359 Studies in Victorian Literature: The Brontës: Testimony, Critique, and Detachment (Post 1830) Course Description: The Brontë sisters were a source of intense fascination to their Victorian admirers and occasional detractors. Because of their talent and premature deaths, that fascination has grown into a full-scale mythology that celebrates their genius and apparent isolation on the Yorkshire moors. Like all myths, this one contains an element of truth, but it’s hampered readers wanting a deeper understanding of their artistic strengths and intellectual perspectives. In this course, we will not ignore the mythology, but we’ll try to set it aside to study how several remarkable novels and poems by Anne, Emily, and Charlotte Brontë established a powerful critique of Victorian society, including its almost unbridled support for industrialization, its intensive focus on domesticity and marriage (and related laws), and its judgments against single women. We’ll also trace the formal development of their fiction, including its debt to Romanticism, its preoccupation with narrative voice, its commitment to partial detachment, and its movement toward a distinctly “modern” narrative, full of intriguing philosophical riddles. Teaching Methods: seminar-style discussion, focusing intensively on passages and background arguments. Evaluation Methods: Weekly discussion posts on Canvas, one response paper, final essay, and in-class participation. Texts may include (available at Norris Center Bookstore and in order of use): Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (ISBN 9780140434743); Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (ISBN 9780141439556); Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (ISBN 9780141441146); and Villette (ISBN 9780375758508). Please follow the editions assigned; comparable pagination will greatly advance our discussions.
English 365	Studies in Postcolonial Literature: Postcolonial Posthumanisms (Post 1830/TTC)	Mwangi	MW 11-12:20
English 365 Studies in Postcolonial Literature: Postcolonial Posthumanisms (Post 1830/TTC) Course Description: The course will read creative and theoretical texts from the global South to explore the intersections of posthumanism and postcolonialism in non-western cultures. We’ll examine theoretical work by Fanon, Memmi, and Mbembe as well as novels, poetry, and dramas by a variety of writers from the global south. Why are posthuman tropes so prevalent in postcolonial texts? Is the “post” in “postcolonial” the “post” in “posthumanism”? Why is there need to recuperate the human in posthumanism of the global south? In what ways does the human and the post-human intersect in postcolonial societies? What is the relationship between the posthuman and Anthropocene and environmental issues in postcolonial cultures? As we grapple with these questions, we will read, discuss, and write about literary texts to consider the different ways the human and the non-human are constituted against the background of colonial legacies. We will put the texts in the cultural and political contexts within which they are created, read, and circulated. Readings will include short pieces on the major debates in postcolonial studies (eg., the language question, postcolonialism and postmodernism, and gender/sexuality themes) in relationship with the use of posthuman tropes in literary texts. Teaching Method: Interactive lectures, debates, role-play, one-on-one meetings, and small group discussions. Evaluation Method: Two 6-page papers, weekly Canvas postings, regular self-evaluation, peer critiques, class participation, take-home exam, pop quizzes (ungraded), and 1-minute papers (ungraded). Texts include: Kang Han’s The Vegetarian: A Novel. London: Hogarth, [2016] ©2016. ISBN-13: 978-1101906118 Jan Crew’s Black Midas. London: Peepal. ISBN-13:978-1845230951 Zakes Mda’s The Whale Caller. Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN-13:978-0312425876 Alejandro Zambra’s The Private Life of Trees. Publisher:Open Letter; ISBN-13: 978-1934824245 Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti. Publisher: Tor.com ISBN-13: 978-0765385253. Note: This course is combined with COMP LIT 390
English 368	Studies in 20th Century Literature: Global Novel (Post 1830/TTC)	Mwangi	MW 2-3:20
English 368 Studies in 20th Century Literature: Global Novel (Post 1830/TTC) Course Description: The course will study the treads in the 20th- and 21st-century global novel, paying attention to its features, its historical developments, and its socio-political contexts. We will discuss the various methods of reading novels from diverse backgrounds and how they interact with forces of globalization. How does a novel become global? How does the local relate to the global in the novels, if at all? How do readers from different parts of the world respond to the novels? What is the role of prizes, translation, and publishing networks in making a novel global? Performing distant and close readings of works will consider novels by Zadie Smith, Joseph Conrad, Jean Rhys, Roberto Bolaño, Chinua Achebe, Gabriel García Márquez, V.S. Naipaul, David Dabydeen, Han Kang, Amitav Ghosh, Alejandro Zambra, and Chimamanda Adichie, among other writers, as "global" texts and discuss their interventions in solving problems of global scale (e.g., imperialism, abuse of human rights, environmental disasters, etc.) We will also read short theoretical works on the global and transnational circulation of cultures. Teaching Method: Interactive lectures, debates, role-play, one-on-one meetings, and small group discussions. Evaluation Method: Two 6-page papers, weekly Canvas postings, regular self-evaluation, peer critiques, class participation, take-home exam, pop quizzes (ungraded), and 1-minute papers (ungraded). See the grade scale below. Readings (May change) Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Publisher: Value Classics. ISBN-13:978-1945644344. Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Paradise. Publisher: Penguin. ISBN-13: 978-0140233117. Kang Han’s The Vegetarian: A Novel. London : Hogarth. ISBN-13: 978-1101906118. Roberto Bolaño’s By Night in Chile. Publishers: New Directions. ISBN-13: 978-0811215473. David Dabydeen’s The Intended. Publisher: Peepal. ISBN-13: 978-1845230135. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah. Publisher: Anchor. ISBN-13: 978-0307455925. Note: This course is combined with Comp Lit 301.
English 370	American Literature Before 1914: Visionary Women & the American Colonies (Pre 1830/ICSP)	High	TTh 12:30-1:50
English 370 American Literature Before 1914: Visionary Women & the American Colonies (Pre 1830/ICSP) Course Description: This course explores major touchstones of women’s lives and writing in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, paying particular attention to women’s disobedience and radical expression. How, why, and with what success did visionary women challenge the structures of power in the early Americas? To answer these questions, we will consider poems, novels, journals, and other manuscript writings, tracing women’s mark on religion, literature, and revolutionary politics in the American colonies. There will be a significant archival component in this course and students will have the opportunity to pursue original research in small writing groups. Teaching Method: Discussion, collaborative group work. Evaluation Method: Participation and preparation; two essays (5-7 pages); and a final collaborative archival project with in-class presentation. Texts include: Anne Bradstreet, The Tenth Muse, Lately Sprung Up in America; Mary Dyer, “Petition to the Massachusetts General Court”; Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Young Goodman Brown”; Judith Sargent Murray, “On the Equality of the Sexes”; Lucy Terry Prince, “Bars Fight”; Mercy Otis Warren, “Observations on the New Constitution”; and Phyllis Wheatley, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. Texts will be available at: Norris campus bookstore. Instructor Bio: Ean High’s research and writing join ongoing efforts to revitalize critical knowledge of religious life and expression in the study of American literature. His work has been supported by the Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation, the Peabody Essex Museum, and the Libraries of Haverford College. His commitment to the classroom has been recognized by a teaching award from the Northwestern English Department.
English 371	American Novel: Big Books (Post 1830)	Grossman	MW 3:30-4:50
English 371 American Novel: Big Books (Post 1830) Course Description: One could search through the annals of American literature without being able to find two bigger books than Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Moby-Dick. In the first place, , of course, both books are long, and part of this class will consider the specific pleasures and challenges of reading big books. How do we gauge, and thereby engage with, narratives of disproportionate scale and encyclopedic ambition? How do we lose--or find--our place in colossal fictional worlds? But Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Moby-Dick have also both been big in another sense: they are hugely influential and profoundly consequential novels. Indeed, one cannot really understand American literary, cultural, and political history if one is not familiar with them. Stowe’s novel was a watershed text for both sides in the Civil War. Upon meeting Stowe, Abraham Lincoln reportedly said to her, “So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!” Stowe’s novel sold 300,000 copies in the first year—an unprecedented number—and her story became the basis for countless stage adaptations, spin-offs, parodies, editorials, refutations, and re-writes. (Check out some of them here: <http://utc.iath.virginia.edu>) The reputation of Melville’s novel took longer to take shape—its early readers enjoyed the material about whaling, but didn’t quite know what to make of the story of Ahab’s obsession with the White Whale. But over the course of the twentieth century these views reversed themselves, and Ahab’s maniacal quest has come to be widely recognized as a work of unparalleled resonance and ambition. Our work will be, like Ahab, to take on these Leviathans better to understand them and the worlds they shaped—including, by no means incidentally, our own. Teaching Method: Mostly Discussion. Possible student oral presentations. Evaluation method: It is essential to keep up with the reading in this course, and there may be occasional quizzes to gauge compliance. Regular, short writing assignments. A longer paper (5-7 pages) on each novel. Texts may include: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly (first published 1851). Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (first published 1851).
English 371	American Novel: Major Authors: Toni Morrison (Post 1830/ICSP)	Vaughn	TTh 12:30-1:50
English 371 American Novel: Major Authors: Toni Morrison (Post 1830/ICSP) This course description will be available at a later date.
English 377	Special Topics in Latina/o Literature: Border Literature and Film (Post 1830/TTC)	Cutler	MW 3:30-4:50
English 377 Special Topics in Latina/o Literature: Border Literature and Film (Post 1830/TTC) Course Description: The US-Mexico border has been the site of intense cultural conflict since the mid-nineteenth century. It marks both the connection and the division between two nations, and many of our most fraught conversations concern whether the border should be a bridge or a wall. As an entry point into these conversations, this course will survey literature and film centering on the US-Mexico border. Students will become familiar with the history of the border, beginning with the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo in 1848 and extending through NAFTA and up to the current political climate. Together we will consider how the border has become such a potent site for contemporary mythmaking, a flashpoint for anxieties about race, labor, gender, and sexuality. How are borders made? How have writers and filmmakers depicted the cultural anxieties and potentials created by the border? How has the militarization of the border affected Latinx individual and communities? Texts will include Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands / La Frontera, Carmen Boullosa’s Texas: The Great Theft, Américo Paredes’s George Washington Gómez, Sandra Cisneros’s Woman Hollering Creek, Valerie Martinez’s Each and Her, and Roberto Bolaños’s 2666. Films may include Touch of Evil (1958), Born in East LA (1987), Lone Star (1996), Señorita Extraviada (2003), and Sleep Dealer (2008). Teaching Methods: Discussion. Evaluation Methods: Three essays and an exit interview. Required Texts: Gloría Anzaldúa, Borderlands / La Frontera (978-1879960855) Carmen Boullosa, Texas: The Great Theft (978-1941920008) Américo Paredes, George Washington Gómez (978-1558850125) Sandra Cisneros, Woman Hollering Creek (978-0679738565) Valerie Martinez, Each and Her (978-0816528592) Roberto Bolaños, 2666 (978-0312429218)
English 378	Studies in American Literature: The Chicago Way: Urban Spaces and American Values (Post 1830)	Savage	TTh 2-3:20
English 378 Studies in American Literature: The Chicago Way: Urban Spaces and American Values (Post 1830) Urbanologist Yi Fu Tuan writes, "What begins as undifferentiated space becomes place when we get to know it better and endow it with values." In The Untouchables, Sean Connery tells Kevin Costner, "You want to get Capone? Here's how you get Capone. He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He puts one of yours in the hospital, you put one of his in the morgue. That's the Chicago way." In this class, we will examine "the Chicago way" from many different angles in order to interrogate the values with which various artists have endowed Chicago. We will read in a broad range of media: journalism, poetry, song, fiction, film, and sequential art to see how a sense of Chicago as a place works over time. We will pay close attention to depictions of the construction of American identity, and to the role of the artist and intellectual in the city. Teaching Method: Discussion, brief lectures, guest speakers, and an optional urban tour. Evaluation Method: Class participation; brief written responses to each text; several options for papers of various lengths. Texts Include: Nelson Algren's Chicago: City on the Make and The Neon Wilderness; Richard Wright's Native Son; Stuart Dybek's The Coast of Chicago; journalism by Ben Hecht, Mike Royko and others; short fiction by Sandra Cisneros, James T. Farrell and others; poetry by Carl Sandburg, Gwendolyn Brooks, Tony Fitzpatrick and others; the films The Untouchables, The Blues Brothers, Call Northside 777, and Barbershop; the graphic novel 100 Bullets: First Shot, Last Call. Note: Texts will be available at Comix Revolution, 606 Davis Street.
English 378	Studies in American Literature: American Women Auteurs (Post 1830/ICSP)	Stern	TTh 3:30-4:50
English 378 Studies in American Literature: American Women Auteurs (Post 1830/ICSP) Course Description: This course challenges students to engage in the intense close reading of fictional and cinematic texts created or brought to expressive life by American women artists (writers and actresses) working between the nineteenth-century fin de siècle and the beginning of World War II. Our Canvas archive features eight films starring Bette Davis, arguably the greatest film actress of Hollywood's classic period. We will talk during the quarter about terminology for the analysis of cinema, particularly the four so-called central principles through which to read and interpret filmic texts: cinematography; mise en scene; sound; and editing. We will read films through the methods of psychoanalysis, historicism, feminism, critical analysis of sexuality, gender, and race and in consideration of the studio system, star culture, and modes of spectatorship. This syllabus marks an early experiment toward thinking about Davis's films as literary works. Teaching Method: Discussion. Evaluation Method: Participation, Close Reading Exams, Final paper. Texts include: Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs, (1896); Kate Chopin, The Awakening (1900); Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth (1905); Willa Cather, Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940); Nella Larsen, Quicksand (1928); Nella Larsen, Passing (1929).
English 385	Topics in Combined Studies: Medical Humanities: The Other Side of “Pro-Choice”: Representing Reproduction, Gender, and Medicine (Post 1830)	Roth	MW 4-5:20
English 385 Topics in Combined Studies: Medical Humanities: The Other Side of “Pro-Choice”: Representing Reproduction, Gender, and Medicine (Post 1830) Course Description: Debates surrounding reproductive justice endlessly parse the meanings and consequences of abortion. Much less attention has been paid to the rhetoric, politics, and ideologies surrounding the other choice in the pro-choice dyad: participation in acts of reproduction, particularly pregnancy and childbirth. Students will be challenged to consider the gendered rhetoric surrounding ideas such as the biological clock, the pregnancy glow, and drug-free natural childbirth. We will investigate the way reproducing bodies are represented culturally, using media coverage of issues like Serena Williams’ 2017 Australian Open win, Beyonce’s baby bump “reveals,” as well as the homebirth movement, transgender pregnancies, “breast-feeding Nazis,” parental leave policies, and the CDC’s 2016 recommendation that women of reproductive age refrain from drinking alcohol unless they are using contraception. Such case studies will help us ask about how these discourses affect not only feminist ideas and activism, but medical care and the medical system. Students will be encouraged to apply critical thinking to some of the most fundamental and long-standing assumptions of our public culture. Two central questions will guide the course: What assumptions are made about reproductive bodies? What are the social consequences of these assumptions? Teaching Method: Seminar-style discussion. Evaluation Method: Class participation, weekly short response and analysis papers (alternating), final research paper. Texts include: Selections from Henderson and Solomon, Labor Day; Julia Kristeva, “Stabat Mater”; Hera Cook, “Doing the History of Reproductive Sexuality”; Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts; Pamela Erens, Eleven Hours; Elisa Albert, After Birth
English 388	Studies in Literature and Religion: Christian-Muslim Encounters (Post 1830)	Costa	MW 11-12:20
English 388 Studies in Literature and Religion: Christian-Muslim Encounters (Post 1830) "My grandmother puts her feet in the sink of the bathroom at Sears," writes the poet Mohja Kahf, "to wash them in the ritual washing for prayer." Kahf's ensuing description of "respectable Sears matrons [who] shake their heads and frown ... a clash of civilizations brewing in the Sears bathroom" offers a productive springboard for considering contemporary zones of AngloIslamic interaction -- a theme that the hit Showtime series, Shameless, develops in a different direction through its depiction of the romantic liaison between a married Muslim business owner and his Irish-Catholic employee. In this course, we will take literary representations of Christian-Muslim encounters as our focus, tracing the long and involved prehistories of interfaith conflict and coalition and considering their abiding relevance today. We will situate complex narratives of warfare, religious 63 Return to Calendar conversion, and amorous desire against the historical backdrops of the Crusades and the sixteenthcentury development of international commerce, investigating how medieval and Renaissance writers incorporate social, political and theological exchanges between Christians and Muslims into popular poems like The Canterbury Tales and canonical plays like Othello. Putting earlier formulations of religious, racial, cultural, sexual, and gender difference in frank conversation with more recent treatments of Christian-Muslim interaction (like Diana Abu-Jaber's "Lamb Two Ways"), we will reflect on the discontinuities as well as powerful through lines between 'then' and 'now.' Teaching Method: Seminar discussions and occasional short lectures. Evaluation Method: Participation, occasional reading quizzes, oral presentation, and two essays. Texts Include: Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Man of Law's Tale"; The Sultan of Babylon; Mandeville's Travels (selections); William Lithgow, The Totall Discourse (selections); William Shakespeare, Othello; Robert Daborne, A Christian Turned Turk; Diana Abu-Jaber, "Lamb Two Ways"; Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran; Mohja Kahf, E-mails from Scheherazad; and excepts from the Showtime series Shameless. Note: This course fulfills the Area V (Ethics and Values) and Area VI (Literature & Fine Arts) distribution requirements.
English 393-3	Theory & Practice of Poetry	Trethewey	MW 3:30-4:50
English 393-3 Theory & Practice of Poetry This selective-enrollment, yearlong "Sequence" is designed to make students 64 Return to Calendar increasingly informed readers and self-sustaining apprentices of poetry. The Fall portion of the course begins with summer reading and intensive study in which poets learn to identify operative modes in poetry -- including description, rhetoric, story and song -- and begin connecting contemporary participants with root systems in the tradition. We support our studies with reading exercises and "imitation" assignments, in which students convert close reading into fodder for original writing. Students will write at least four papers and will write, workshop and revise four poems during the Fall term. They also will lead presentations on one chosen poet and one classmate during workshop. In the Winter term, students will continue to read and complete close reading assignments and will stretch their skills as they complete a week of "Daily Poems," thereby drawing on original energy and stamina to bring their work to the next level of accomplishment. Finally, in the Spring term, students will focus entirely on their own work, drafting, revising, workshopping and completing one long poem of at least 120 lines that combines autobiographical material with writing from research. Throughout the year, our close reading assignments hone skills in sensitive and critical thinking; our imitation poems challenge existing habits as they introduce new strategies; our Daily Poems exercise agility and confidence; and our workshops cultivate the openness and humility necessary to serious writing and lifelong learning. Through this intensive and nurturing Sequence, students become careful readers of each others -- work and complete a polished portfolio of original writing. Note: No P/N registration. Attendance at first class mandatory. Admission by application only.
English 394-3	Theory & Practice of Fiction	Abani	MW 3:30-4:50
English 394-3 Theory & Practice of Fiction This course will allow you to explore how fiction works. We’ll be looking at, discussing, writing about, commenting on, and researching the elements of fiction, but mostly what we’ll be doing is writing buckets (you will be turning in a completed piece every other week during the Fall quarter), so we’ll be reading mostly to steal: we’ll figure out what works and we’ll use it for our own material. We’ll be engaged in the reading of a concise, funny book on the craft of fiction, and we’ll also be reading a wide and varied array of short stories. Again, though, this work is geared to do one simple thing: to find out what means and modes of expression you best respond to, and to figure out ways to approach this question: Given all the other potentially more awesome forms of entertainment out there, what is the role of sitting around scribbling things and reading other people’s scribblings? Why do it? Just so you know, what we’re doing in class closely replicates what all successful fiction writers do on a daily basis: reading the work of their peers and those of established and emerging authors with care, attention, and greed, and writing copious amounts to see what sticks. The more you do both of these activities, the better and more confident you’ll get. Teaching Method: Lectures, discussion, small- and large-peer workshops. Evaluation Method: This is a portfolio- and participation-based course. Grade based on timely delivery of all assigned work, with equal weight placed on your own stories and revisions and on your peer feedback. Texts Include: TBA Note: No P/N registration. Attendance at first class mandatory. Admission by application only
English 395-3	Theory & Practice of Creative Nonfiction	Bresland	MW 3:30-4:50
English 395-3 Theory & Practice of Creative Nonfiction An advanced year-long course in reading for writers, critical analysis of techniques of creative nonfiction, and intensive creative writing. Reading of primary works will concentrate on longer creative nonfiction works, and the creative project for the latter part of the sequence is a work of creative nonfiction of approximately 15,000 words. A guest non-fiction writer will visit in May as writer-in-residence. Teaching Method: Discussion. Evaluation Method: Based on creative and critical work; class presentations and participation. Texts Include: Varies each quarter. Texts will be available at Norris Center Bookstore and Quartet Copies. Note: No P/N registration. Attendance at first class mandatory. Admission by application only.
English 397	Research Seminar: Medievalism	Newman	MW 2-3:20
English 397 Research Seminar: Medievalism Course Description: The Middle Ages ended 500 years ago, yet we still live in a world profoundly shaped by medieval inventions. Among these are universities, the Catholic Church, trial by jury, parliamentary government, trade fairs, international banking, herbal medicine, Gothic architecture, and romantic love. “Medievalism” is the scholarly field that studies the influence, reception, and reinvention of this medieval legacy from the Renaissance to the present. There are medievalisms of the Left (Christian socialism, the Arts & Crafts movement) and of the Right (crusading, ethnic nationalism). In literature, medievalism had its most profound impact in the Romantic and Victorian periods, which were fascinated by chivalry, courtly love, and the tales of King Arthur. The fantasy genre—from Tolkien to Harry Potter, from “Dungeons and Dragons” to The Game of Thrones—is steeped in medieval legend. There is a “gothic” medievalism of torture chambers and haunted convents, as well as a postmodern medievalism. In this seminar we will sample a few of these many medievalisms as we discuss novels, poems, and critical essays, exploring their varied aesthetics and ideological commitments. Oral and written exercises will teach the skills involved in writing a research paper: developing a topic, consulting with librarians, preparing an annotated bibliography, writing critical abstracts, evaluating print and online resources, outlining a project, giving oral presentations, documenting sources, drafting, editing, and revising. Your work will culminate in the submission of a polished 15-page paper. Teaching Method: Discussion, oral presentations, writing workshops. Texts include: Wayne Booth, The Craft of Research; Dante Gabriel Rossetti, “The Blessed Damozel” and other poems; Alfred Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King; J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring; Italo Calvino, The Castle of Crossed Destinies; Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose; and a course reader available at Quartet Copies.
English 412	Studies in Drama: American Bodies in Motion	Manning	W 2-4:50
English 412 Studies in Drama: American Bodies in Motion Course Description: Starting with the myriad of performances staged as part of the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago, this course surveys diverse genres of avant-garde and popular dance in US culture from the late 19th-century to the early 21st-century. In so doing, the course also surveys varied methods and theories for performance research. Readings are drawn from several disciplines and are supplemented by feature fi lms and documentaries. Taken together, the course materials sketch an intracultural and transnational historiography that complements, and perhaps complicates, new scholarship in adjacent fi elds. Graduate students with interests in American culture from any disciplinary perspective are welcome.
English 422	Studies in Medieval Literature: Heresy, Rebellion, and the Book	Phillips	T 2-4:50
English 422 Studies in Medieval Literature: Heresy, Rebellion, and the Book Course Description: From the fi fteenth-century glossators to twenty-first century critics, readers of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales have sought to interpret and contain this constantly shifting text. The poem poses numerous interpretative puzzles—the “correct” order of the tales, the identity of their tellers, the objects of the poem’s irony, the politics of its author, and the demographics of its intended audience, to name a few—puzzles that have been “solved” in strikingly different ways at different historical moments. This course takes as its subject the Canterbury Tales and its reception history, exploring in detail both the poem and its multiple interpretative contexts. As we read the Tales, we will consider the narratives (and narrative conventions) that Chaucer transforms and the contemporary voices with whom he is in dialogue. We will investigate the ways in which the tales circulated both individually and as a collection (which tales were the most popular? how and by whom were they published? with which other texts did they travel?) and analyze the various paratexts that accompanied them (glosses, prologues, illustrations, and “spurious” links and tales). Along with the early publication context, we will explore recent Chaucer criticism and the scholarly history to which it responds (old and new historicist approaches, Marxist and exegetical analysis, psychoanalytic, feminist and queer theory readings, etc.) By the end of the course, students will be proficient in both Chaucer criticism and Chaucer’s Middle English. Texts will include: the Riverside Chaucer, or The Canterbury Tales (ed. Jill Mann) Texts will be available at Beck’s Book Store.
English 441	Studies in 18th Century Literature: Enlightenment Sex: Violence, Coercion, and Consent	Thompson	Th 2-4:50
English 441 Studies in 18th Century Literature: Enlightenment Sex: Violence, Coercion, and Consent Course Description: This seminar will examine foundational liberal articulations of feminine sexual consent—as well as their historical, political, philosophical, and corporeal failings. From the perspective of political theory, feminist legal studies, feminist and queer theory, and literary history, we will track the constitutive exclusion of feminine sexual consent from social contract theory over the long eighteenth century in Britain and its colonies (1660 – 1820). Social contract theorists like Thomas Hobbes and John Locke base political power on consent, not force; but they exempt domestic power—the power of husbands over wives, fathers over children, masters over servants and slaves—from contractual reform. The uneven development of liberal patriarchy is distilled in an ostensibly free woman’s agency: she has the contractual power to agree to marry, but in so doing she ratifies her natural inferiority to her husband. Become a wife or feme covert, she grants preemptive sexual consent irrespective of her desire. Even more constitutively repressed by the liberal polis is the intimate violence endured by enslaved African women. With these foundational occlusions, the seminar will consider pornographic constructions of women’s anatomy as performative figurations of feminine consent and pleasure; representations of sex work as potentially critical reflection on legally stipulated masculine conjugal right; sexual violence, rape law, and constraint (within and outside slavery); and women’s queer desire and resistance to marriage. We will also analyze two contemporary cruxes in feminism, feminist legal theory, and the late liberal public sphere: intersectional evaluations of racial difference and feminism; and the sex wars, dominance feminism, and, with resurgent debate over Title IX, critical claims for feminine weakness as a condition of disciplinary intervention. A tentative, non-exhaustive list of texts, some of which will be chapters or excerpts, includes: anonymous prostitute narratives; Mary Astell, Some Reflections on Marriage; Penelope Aubin, The Noble Slaves; Wendy Brown, States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity; John Cleland, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure; Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Close Encounters of Three Kinds: On Teaching Dominance Feminism and Intersectionality”; Daniel Defoe, Roxana; Eliza Haywood, Fantomina and/ or Love in Excess; Frances Ferguson, “Rape and the Rise of the Novel”; Janet Halley, “The Move to Affirmative Consent”; Saidiya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection; Annamarie Jagose, Orgasmology; Mary Hays, The Victim of Prejudice; Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan; Laura Kipnis, Unwanted Advances; John Locke, Two Treatises of Government; Catharine MacKinnon, “From Practice to Theory, or What is a White Woman Anyway?”; Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract; Samuel Richardson, Clarissa (abridged format); Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile (Chapter 5); Wendy Warren, “‘The Cause of Her Grief’: The Rape of a Slave in Early New England”; Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary or Maria.
English 461	Studies in Contemporary Literature: Translation Problems	Johnson	M 2-4:50
English 461 Studies in Contemporary Literature: Translation Problems Course Description: This course gives students grounding in contemporary topics in translation studies by focusing on some of the problems embedded in its history and practice: translation’s employment in the contexts of war, displacement, and empire; its role in national canon formation and transnational literary circulation amid the hegemonic force of Anglicization; and the importance of translation problems—mistranslation, pseudo-translation, “bad translation,” and untranslatability—to current discussions of translation's politics and ethics. Alongside a corpus that includes important translation theorists, we will work through case studies of translation problems and problematic translations of literary texts into and out of Middle Eastern languages. The course serves, then, as both a history of literary transmission between the Middle East and Europe—from the nineteenth century translations of the Thousand and One Nights to the contemporary literature of the Syrian civil war—and an introduction to the historical, linguistic, and political problems embedded in that transmission.
English 471	Studies in American Literature: Black Women Auteurs	Stern	W 2-4:50
English 471 Studies in American Literature: Black Women Auteurs Course Description: This course will focus primarily on the autobiographical and fi ctional narratives of 19th-century African American women, with works of visual culture constituting our concluding objects of study. Texts will be chosen among the following: Hannah Crafts, The Bondswoman’s Narrative (185?); Harriet Wilson, Our Nig (1859); Frank Webb, The Garies and Their Friends (1859); Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861); Julia Collins, The Curse of a Caste (1865); Elizabeth Keckley, 30 Years a Slave (1868); Frances Harper, Iola Leroy (1892); Pauline Hopkins, either Contending Forces (1900) or Of One Blood (1903); Deborah Willis & Barbara Krauthamer, Envisioning Emancipation: Black Americans and the End of Slavery (2012); Kara Walker, Narratives of a Negress (2007).
English 495	Cross-Genre Creative Writing	Webster	T 2-4:50
English 495 Cross-Genre Creative Writing Course Description: In this course, students will focus on workshopping their own creative writing. Students will be invited to write within their genre, and will examine the ways that genres overlap, influence and inform one another. Every student will submit original writing to each class, and the following week we will workshop those pieces. Students will develop the vocabulary and methods to provide thoughtful, constructive suggestions and critique for their peers. They will also learn to evaluate and integrate peer critique and instructor suggestions alongside their own goals and intentions. At least half of students’ workshopped pieces of will be revised for a final portfolio, ideally resulting in publishable work, and making up a portion of the MFA thesis. Although this course is not a reading-intensive course, but a writing-intensive course, we will buttress each week with a few short readings and discussion of a craft element—for instance, image and imagery; voice and point of view; jump cut and juxtaposition; and ways of integrating research. A focused look at these elements will allow us to build a shared vocabulary for use in our workshop and beyond as the cohort moves through the program. Notes: Northwestern graduate students in programs outside the English Department are welcome to apply for a space in English 495: MFA Cross-Genre Workshop with Professor Webster, scheduled on Tuesdays 2-4:50, spring 2019. This workshop will concentrate in poetry and creative nonfiction. Click here to fill out and submit the application. Application Deadline: February 18, 2019. If you are seeking to count this course as an elective in your own program, you must seek approval from your home department or program.
English 571	Teaching Creative Writing	Seliy	M 2-4:50
English 571 Teaching Creative Writing Course Description: In this course, we will engage with a wide range of possible approaches to the instruction of creative writing. To begin, we will look at the history of Creative Writing programs and the models of teaching that have traditionally guided MFA programs. We will then move on to discuss theories of learning as they apply to fine-arts courses. We will take into consideration intersectional challenges (race, gender, class, disability, etc). And we will think about the differences between teaching undergraduates and graduate students. In the second half of the course we will move into the practical work of designing creative writing courses that have a beginning, middle, and end, and also a clear set of achievable learning objectives. You will do the practical work of drafting syllabi, generating exercises, and selecting reading material for introductory courses in poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction.