UPPER DIVISION LITERATURE COURSES
3000 Critical Practices and Processes in Literary Studies
Course Title: "Reading Minds: Psychology, History and Forms"
Course Description: The ability to read complex texts and make sense of them is the most important skill you can develop now that will change the rest of your life. Cognitive science demonstrates what English majors have always known--that reading nuanced, allusive, imaginative, and historically and culturally unfamiliar texts wires our brains not only to read any and all texts better, but to reason, empathize, plan, compromise and do all sorts of other important acts of “metacognition.” To practice and refine these skills, this course will integrate three forms of literary criticism: formalism, historicism, and cognitive criticism. They will help you “get into” some of the most beautiful, enlightening and moving works of English literature written over the past three centuries. Having got the hang of these approaches, you’ll be able to keep adding new ways of discovering meaning in literary and non-literary texts, from novels to scientific abstracts to haikus to contracts.
Readings: Longmans Anthology of British Literature (vols. 2A, 2B & 2C); George Eliot, Middlemarch (Penguin); Richard Lanham, Revising Prose; short readings on formalism, historicism and cognitive criticism (web).
Assignments:
Graded assignments: Two essays, three exams, participation.
Non-graded: Memorization and recitation, reading aloud, group work, worksheets.
Course Description: This course is an introduction to Shakespeare’s art and some of its major themes. The course will include representatives of Shakespeare’s four major dramatic genres - comedy, romance, history, and tragedy.
Readings: A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, Measure for Measure, As You Like It, The Tempest, Richard II, Henry IV, Macbeth, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, and King Lear.
Assignments: Students will be expected to come prepared to discuss specific problems they discern in the plays, read passages aloud in class, and serve as discussion leaders on at least three occasions. Further assignments will include three analytic papers (5 pages each) and a final exam.
4422 British Literature of the Long 18th Century
Course Title: Legal Fictions of the Enlightenment
Fulfills English Major Requirement: 1700-1900
Course Description: From bigamy and robbery to treason and murder, eighteenth-century novels obsessively depict illicit behavior. In this course, we consider the centrality of law and lawlessness to early English fiction, while exploring the ways in which novels can help us understand the nature and consequences of illicit acts. Reading fiction alongside criminal biographies, legal treatises, and statutes, we examine questions concerning justice and judgment, crime and punishment, gender and marriage, testimony and evidence, and legal terror and popular violence. Our texts include the lively and checkered autobiography of Moll Flanders, a four-time bigamist and successful thief who claims to have repented for her crimes even as she proudly narrates them; a novel by the founder of modern feminism, Mary Wollstonecraft, recounting the struggles of a young woman whose husband confines her in a madhouse; and a brilliant work of historical fiction that interrogates the duty to obey unjust laws. The course should appeal to students with interests in law and ethics as well as to anyone with an appetite for stories of transgression, punishment, and revenge.
Note: This course satisfies the 1700-1900 requirement for English majors and also counts toward the new minor in Law and Society.
Readings: Novels by authors such as Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, Jane Austen, and Walter Scott; secondary readings by Martha Nussbaum, Douglas Hay, Michel Foucault, Jeremy Bentham, and others.
Assignments: Two papers; short reading responses; lively participation; and a final exam.
4432 US Literatures of the Revolution and New Republic
Course Description: This course will cover the literature produced in and about the American continents from the period just before the American Revolution up through the early national period. The themes of “captivity,” “freedom,” “romance,” and “revolution” will loosely structure our study, as we look at the convoluted and tightly imbricated rhetorics of citizenship, nation-building, race, and gender. We will focus closely on the impacts of Puritanism and the Enlightenment on the formation of the emerging United States, and will consider carefully the debates surrounding the rise of an indigenous imaginative literature alongside the literature of the trans-Atlantic English diaspora. Students will pursue self-generated individual and group research projects throughout the semester.
4452 British Literature of the Romantic Period, 1790-1837
Course Title: Modern Irish Literature and Culture
Fulfills English Major Requirement: Post-1900
Course Description:
This course will explore the imaginative, world-changing power of modern Irish fiction, poetry, drama, music, and film. We will begin with the premise proposed by Declan Kiberd that the Irish “invented” Ireland (in dialogue with England). In our study, we will ask how Irish artists have grappled with changing questions surrounding what it means to be Irish in an era of empire, war, revolution, and peace. Some key questions we will explore include: what is the responsibility of the Irish artist at moments of political transition? How have literature and film enabled the Irish people to remember their past and envision their future? Our study will begin at the turn of the twentieth century with two of the best-known writers of the century, W.B. Yeats and James Joyce, and it will end with the contemporary award-winning fiction of Colum McCann (winner of the National Book Award), Eimear McBride (winner of the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction), and Roddy Doyle (winner of the Booker Prize). Along the way, we will take a detour through Ireland’s rich musical tradition, from the Irish Rovers and the Pogues through U2 and Two Door Cinema Club. We will also view and discuss a number of films, including The Wind that Shakes the Barley, The Crying Game, and Brooklyn.
Assignments:
Will include a choice of one long (10-12 page) paper or two shorter (5-7 page) papers; a short film and music review; a final exam; daily, informal reading responses; one discussion lead; and active, informed participation.
4610 Individual Authors - J.R.R. Tolkien
Course Title: J.R.R. Tolkien
Fulfills English Major Requirement: Post-1900
Course Description: This decade has seen the hundredth anniversary of J.R.R. Tolkien’s earliest writings on Middle-Earth (The Book of Lost Tales, begun in 1917) alongside the completion of Peter Jackson’s career-defining twenty-year project to adapt The Lord of the Rings for film (1995-2015). This course asks the question: Who is J.R.R. Tolkien, looking backward from the perspective of the twenty-first century? Why have his works, and the genre of heroic fantasy that he remade so completely in his image, remained so intensely popular, even as the world has transformed around them? Our study will primarily trace the history, development, and reception of Tolkien’s incredible magnum opus, The Lord of the Rings (written 1937-1949, published 1954-1955)—but we will also take up Tolkien’s often contested place in the literary canon of the twentieth century, the uses and abuses of Tolkien in Jackson’s blockbuster films, the special appeal of Tolkien in politically troubled times, and the ongoing critical interests and investments of Tolkien fandom today. As Tolkien scholars we will also have the privilege of drawing upon the remarkable J.R.R. Tolkien Collection at the Raynor Library here at Marquette, which contains among other treasures the original manuscripts for The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and Farmer Giles of Ham.
Note: No prior knowledge of Tolkien is required. The course is designed for a mix of first-time readers, frequent re-readers, and people who are returning to the books for the first time as adults after many years away.
Readings: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and selected additional readings
Assignments: Final paper or creative project; weekly forum posts; one presentation; enthusiastic and informed class participation
Course Title: Animals and the Origins of Children’s Literature
Fulfills English Major Requirement: 1700-1900, Post-1900
Course Description:
Why are the great works of children’s literature filled with animals? Alice in Wonderland, The Jungle Books and Just So stories, Peter Rabbit, The Wind in the Willows, Winnie the Pooh, Paddington Bear, The Chronicles of Narnia, all feature talking animals (even if some are stuffed toys). The relationship between ideas about animals and young humans is central to the evolution of the genre of children’s literature. This course explores the human-animal connection by placing classic literary texts in the contexts of evolutionary biology, animal and child protection movements, anthropology, linguistics, and psychology from 1860s-1960s. Students will do independent research projects and group research presentations. Three hypothesis statements/annotated bibliographies (30%); three group presentations (30%); cumulative research paper (30%); class participation (10%).
4810 Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies
4825 Native American/Indigenous Literature
4997 Capstone - History of the Book and the Material Text