English

Mission and Goals

The Department of English at Loyola University Chicago seeks to promote the university's mission to encourage freedom of inquiry, the pursuit of truth and care for others through teaching, scholarship and service of the highest caliber.

In its teaching, the Department of English seeks to provide students with an education of the highest quality in the English language, in literature written in English and in critical and creative writing, judiciously combining breadth with depth, tradition with contemporaneity. It seeks to attract the best possible students from diverse geographical, professional, racial and ethnic backgrounds; it encourages minority and foreign applicants and those returning to school after an interruption of their academic lives. It encourages students throughout their programs so as to enable them to progress expeditiously to their degrees and to gain the maximum benefit from their experience.

Through the work of its faculty, the Department of English also strives to participate in and contribute to the wider community of scholarship, research and pedagogical theory and practice in the disciplines of literary and critical studies; in creative and critical writing; in comparative literature; in gender, ethnic and cultural studies; in teacher training; and in linguistics.

The Department of English also seeks to serve the larger university and greater Chicago community through public event programming, collaborative projects with secondary schools and other colleges and universities, and general assistance.

Graduate Programs in English

The Department of English's interdisciplinary M.A. and Ph.D. programs each offer courses across three broad historical areas, with a special emphasis in textual studies. Our programs

Maintain a curriculum and examination structure that facilitates the advanced study of literature in English in its cultural context, as experienced in any one of our three broad historical areas and textual studies: Medieval and Renaissance Literature, Nineteenth-Century Studies, Modern Literature and Culture, and Textual Studies and Digital Humanities
Allow students to learn relevant literary and social history as well as acquire training in careful textual analysis
Provide students with training in research and bibliographic methods, acquaint them with basic issues in the area of textual criticism, develop their reading and analytical skills, and offer study in the history and theory of literary criticism
Promote interest in and knowledge about the linguistic contexts in which literary works exist
Strive by example, precept, and encouragement to enable students to improve their research writing skills, to apply these skills professionally outside the classroom and to become publishing scholars
Prepare students to become effective teachers, equipping them to teach composition and literature courses at the college, university and advanced secondary-school level, and assisting them to develop their teaching potential through experience tutoring in the Writing Center, teaching composition and assisting in the teaching of literature courses in the department
Support scholarly development of the faculty and students by promoting teaching and research assistantship programs that bring faculty and students together inside and outside the classroom to work on pedagogical and scholarly issues of mutual interest
Strive to assist students in finding professional employment that makes effective use of the skills and knowledge acquired in their training, both inside and outside the academic community

ENGLISH (ENGL)

ENGL 400 Intro to Graduate Study (3 Credit Hours)

The course serves as an introduction to the profession of literary studies for students new to the graduate programs in English. It offers a review of current critical theories and methodologies, research techniques, bibliographic methods, and issues in textual criticism.

ENGL 402 Teaching College Composition (3 Credit Hours)

The course deals with practical matters related to the teaching of college composition. It is organized around an examination of recent theories, methods, and materials used in the teaching of writing.

ENGL 403 Composition Theory (3 Credit Hours)

This course examines major and current advances in composition theory and reviews current scholarship in the teaching of writing, with some attention to the relationship between composition and literary theory.

ENGL 404 Pedagogy: Theory and Practice (3 Credit Hours)

Pre-requisites: ENGL 402

This course is designed to help students integrate theory and practice in teaching literature and cultural studies courses at the college level.

Students will demonstrate an understanding of pedagogical theories by writing a teaching philosophy in which they explain and defend their theoretical approach; students will put their theory into practice by preparing a course proposal for a literature course, which includes a description and goals, syllabus and guidelines, classroom format, and assignments and evaluations procedures

Outcomes

ENGL 406 History of the English Language (3 Credit Hours)

The course is a study of the causes, mechanisms and consequences of language variation over time, with prominent examples taken from the history of English and its parent languages. All major areas of linguistic theory are considered: phonology, lexis, morphology, syntax, and semantics.

Course equivalencies: X-ENGL426/WOST406/WSGS406

ENGL 410 Contemporary Literary Criticism (3 Credit Hours)

This course presents studies in major contemporary theoretical and critical issues through a survey of major types of critical analysis, such as formalism, structuralism, semiotics, reader-response, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, and feminist criticism.

ENGL 412 History of the Book to 1800 (3 Credit Hours)

Pre-requisites: Graduate status

This course will examine the history of written and printed texts from their beginnings to 1800, including such topics as book production and distribution, early ideas about textual editing, literacy, copyright, and censorship.

Students will be able to relate textual forms to cultural practices

Outcomes

Students will be able to relate textual forms to cultural practices

ENGL 413 Textual Criticism (3 Credit Hours)

An introduction to major textual theories and their history. Topics may include such issues as analytic and descriptive bibliography, theories of copy-text, theoretical and practical issues in editing, and forms of textuality, including manuscript, print and digital.

ENGL 415 Media and Culture (3 Credit Hours)

This course examines the important and evolving roles that media plays in the construction, reformulation, and critique of contemporary culture. Topics will vary but may include digital textuality; visual culture studies; information technologies; postcoloniality and globalization; and web-based communities.

ENGL 419 Contemporary Issues in Literature and Culture (3 Credit Hours)

The course is an intensive study of a particular cultural issue in relation to literature.

ENGL 420 Topics in Critical Theory (3 Credit Hours)

Focused study of a particular problem or movement within critical theory--for example, globalization; the "new aesthetics"; high and low culture; psychoanalytic theory; whiteness studies.

ENGL 422 Postcolonial Theory (3 Credit Hours)

This course traces the origins, key developments, and practice of postcolonial theory, focusing on classic texts in the field (e.g., Senghor, Fanon, Cabral); issues raised by contemporary theorists (e.g., Said, Spivak, Bhabha, Chatterjee); and current challenges to postcolonial theory.

ENGL 423 Marxist Literary Theory (3 Credit Hours)

Intensive study of selected writers and issues within the Marxist tradition of literary and cultural criticism.

ENGL 424 Cultural Studies (3 Credit Hours)

An examination of the theory and practice of cultural studies, with special attention to the role of literary and critical theory in its development.

ENGL 426 Feminist Theory and Criticism (3 Credit Hours)

An intensive study of recent feminist theory in a range of disciplines--including literature, philosophy, history, and law--and covering a variety of approaches, such as psychoanalysis, post-structuralism, post-colonialism, queer theory, and cultural studies.

Interdisciplinary Option: Women & Gender Studies

Course equivalencies: X-ENGL426/WOST406/WSGS406

ENGL 427 Dramatic Theory (3 Credit Hours)

This course presents selected theoretical approaches to drama from the Greeks to the present. Readings may include both theoretical works and plays. Topics may include genre, dramaturgies such as realism, epic theatre, and theatre of the absurd, reception, semiotics, feminist dramatic theory, and performance theory.

ENGL 428 Postmodernism (3 Credit Hours)

Pre-requisites: Graduate status

This course investigates "postmodernism" in its various uses--as a literary period, an aesthetic style, an historical moment, a cultural problematic, and a theoretical imperative. The course includes readings in literature and theory as well as other art forms, such as architecture and the graphic arts.

Students will demonstrate their ability to define postmodernism in relation to modernism and postmodernity and to analyze postmodern literature and art through seminar papers, oral presentations, and exams

Outcomes

ENGL 430 Topics in Literature Studies (3 Credit Hours)

The course is an intensive study of a particular problem, genre, theme or body of work in literature.

ENGL 433 Seminar in Individual Authors (3 Credit Hours)

Intensive study of a single author. Includes a comprehensive reading of the author's major works, and a review of the critical reception.

ENGL 436 Women Writers in English (3 Credit Hours)

This course focuses on significant issues raised in and by women-authored works, including representations of gender roles and sexualities, and the cultural status and uses of women's literature. Authors from any period(s) in British, American and World literature may be included.

ENGL 437 Topics in Drama (3 Credit Hours)

This course may deal with topics that cut across historical and national boundaries, such as dramatic genres, women in drama, modern reappropriations of earlier drama; with more specialized topics such as performance or feminist dramatic theory; or with historical movements in drama.

ENGL 440 Topics in Medieval Literature (3 Credit Hours)

Studies in a range of Middle English writing serve as a focus for special topics, including mysticism and historical prose from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries.

ENGL 441 Old English Language & Literature (3 Credit Hours)

This course introduces Old English language and literature through readings in poetry and prose, with attention, as time allows, to major critical issues in texts of the period.

ENGL 443 Middle English Literature (3 Credit Hours)

This course may address texts that bridge the Old and Middle English periods or texts (excluding Chaucer) that date from the fourteenth-century, such as Langland, Malory, the Gawain-poet, Gower, and women writers.

ENGL 444 Medieval Drama (3 Credit Hours)

The course focuses on English drama from its beginnings to the early Renaissance, including liturgical drama, saints' plays, miracle plays, the cycles, and interludes.

ENGL 447 Chaucer (3 Credit Hours)

This course may focus on the Canterbury Tales or Troilus and Criseyde and the dream visions, and may include some of Chaucer's less frequently studied texts (e.g., his translation of the Consolation of Philosophy).

ENGL 450 Topics in Early Modern Literature & Culture (3 Credit Hours)

This course presents selected studies in poetry and prose of the English Renaissance.

ENGL 455 Shakespeare (3 Credit Hours)

The philosophical, esthetic, and historical problems of Shakespeare's plays are covered in this course, which also focuses on Shakespearean scholarship.

ENGL 456 Early Modern Drama (3 Credit Hours)

This course presents English drama of the period 1550 to 1642. Among the topics to be covered are the rise of the permanent theaters; Elizabethan and Jacobean contemporaries of Shakespeare; Caroline plays and masques. Historical background, theatrical developments, and critical approaches are also studied.

ENGL 457 Seventeenth-Century Literature (3 Credit Hours)

This course is an intensive study of a particular problem, genre, theme or body of work in seventeenth-century literature. Milton's poetry, prose, ideas, and projects are studied against the background of seventeenth-century events; special problems in Milton scholarship are also examined.

ENGL 458 Milton (3 Credit Hours)

Milton's poetry, prose, ideas, and projects are studied against the background of seventeenth-century events; special problems in Milton scholarship are also examined.

ENGL 460 Topics in Restoration & 18th Century Literature (3 Credit Hours)

This course is an intensive study of a particular problem, genre, theme or body of work in Restoration and eighteenth-century literature.

ENGL 466 Eighteenth-Century Novel (3 Credit Hours)

This course includes prose fiction in the Restoration and earlier eighteenth century; the mid-century novels of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett; the novel after 1760, including the Gothic novel and the sentimental novel; Sterne and Burney.

ENGL 470 Topics in Romanticism (3 Credit Hours)

The course is an intensive study of a particular problem, genre, theme or body of work in Romantic literature.

ENGL 471 Poetry of Romantic Period (3 Credit Hours)

The poetry of major and minor Romantic figures is studied in this course, which includes a critical study of their esthetics, philosophical concepts, and critical standards.

ENGL 475 Topics in Victorian Literature (3 Credit Hours)

The course is an intensive study of a particular problem, genre, theme, or body of work in Victorian literature.

ENGL 476 Victorian Poetry (3 Credit Hours)

This course presents the historical, political, social, and intellectual influences on Victorian poetry and examines its artistic and formal innovations and achievements. The authors studied include: Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Swinburne, and the Rossettis.

ENGL 477 Victorian Prose (3 Credit Hours)

The course examines the major critical and philosophical prose writers of the years 1837-1900: Macaulay, Carlyle, Arnold, Ruskin, Newman, and Pater. It also explores the intellectual, social, and political backgrounds of the period, and identifies Victorian prose styles.

ENGL 478 Victorian Novel (3 Credit Hours)

The course examines the major Victorian novelists: Dickens, Thackeray, the Brontes, Trollope, Eliot, Meredith, and Hardy; religious, social, scientific, historical, and philosophical influences on the novel are also explored.

ENGL 480 Topics in Modernism (3 Credit Hours)

Topics include modernism, the Symbolist movement, Edwardian Period, and other contextual issues that transcend genre boundaries and address larger concerns of social and intellectual history.

ENGL 481 Modern Poetry (3 Credit Hours)

The course examines tradition and experiment in modern poetry and includes English, Irish, and American poets.

ENGL 482 Modern Drama (3 Credit Hours)

This course presents selected studies in dramatists from Ibsen on, including British, American, Continental, and Irish dramatists.

ENGL 483 Modern Novel (3 Credit Hours)

The course concentrates on selected studies in Conrad, Galsworthy, Bennett, Wells, Joyce, Lawrence, Huxley, Woolf, Maugham, Forster and other novelists, but may include additional American, Irish, and Continental novelists.

ENGL 484 Literature and Culture of the Jazz Age (3 Credit Hours)

Taking an interdisciplinary approach to a crucial era, this course will consider such topics as the construction of race in literature and popular culture, the rise of the New Woman, the Harlem Renaissance, and the relationship of jazz to aesthetic modernism.

ENGL 485 Contemporary Literature (3 Credit Hours)

This course concentrates on literature and literary movements of the second half of the twentieth century. Possible topics include postcolonialism (Achebe, Jhabvala, Naipaul, Soyinka, Walcott), postmodernism (Acker, Calvino, Pynchon, Reed), and African-American writing (Baldwin, Morrison, Walker).

ENGL 487 Postcolonial Literature (3 Credit Hours)

This course examines the issues of modern-day colonization as depicted in selected fiction, drama, and poetry from Africa, South Asia, the West Indies, and Australia.

ENGL 488 20th Century Literature in English (3 Credit Hours)

Focusing on the relation between texts and their literary and cultural contexts, this course may include any twentieth-century text written in English and may address a particular theme, literary movement, period, nation, or historical event. We may also interrogate the foundation of such categories.

ENGL 489 Magic Realism (3 Credit Hours)

Fusing realistic and symbolic forms, "Magic Realism" raises boundary issues of many kinds, between history and myth, empirical and non-empirical experience, objective and subjective knowledge. This course examines magic realism from its modernist origins to contemporary postmodern and postcolonial fiction in many countries.

ENGL 490 Topics in American Literature (3 Credit Hours)

This course is an intensive study of a particular problem, genre, theme, or body of work in American literature.

ENGL 491 Early American Literature (3 Credit Hours)

This course examines Hispanic, native American, Puritan, colonial, and early nationalist literature in the United States, and explores its American and European backgrounds.

ENGL 492 American Romanticism (3 Credit Hours)

The course includes selected studies in Poe, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, and others.

ENGL 493 American Realism (3 Credit Hours)

The course features selected studies in American realism, tracing its origins and development as a national literary movement, and reviewing its regional variations and sub-genres, with special attention to Twain, Howells, and James.

ENGL 494 American Literature Since 1914 (3 Credit Hours)

The course is composed of selected studies in representative American writers of poetry, fiction, drama, and prose in the twentieth century.

ENGL 495 Latino/a Literature (3 Credit Hours)

Pre-requisites: Graduate standing and consent of the GPD in English

Latino/a literature has become an important focus in American literary studies because of its unique relation to questions of language, cultural hybridity, and borders. This course takes an interdisciplinary approach to Latino/a fiction, poetry, and drama, including analysis of Latino/a genres like corridos, testimonios, and teatro campesino. Topics include identity politics, transnationalism, cultural traditions and literary forms, textual recovery, gender and sexuality, and (im)migration.

Students will gain an understanding of the diversity of forms, politics, themes, and identities in Latino/a Literature and the scholarly criticism about it; Students will learn how to teach and write about this literature through oral and written assignments

Outcomes

ENGL 496 African American Literature (3 Credit Hours)

This course focuses on African-American literature over a range of periods and genres including 19th-century slave narratives (Douglass, Jacobs), the fiction and poetry of the Harlem Renaissance (Hurston, Hughes, McKay) and contemporary literature (Ellison, Shange, Morrison).

ENGL 501 Directed Readings (3 Credit Hours)

An independent study course supervised by a faculty member with the approval of the program director. Readings are initiated by the student.

ENGL 502 Independent Study-Doctoral Qualification (3 Credit Hours)

The course is composed of special readings in the field of the student's specialization under the supervision of a faculty member with the approval of the chair. Normally the director will be the professor with whom the student plans to write the dissertation. The written outcome of the course will be a draft of a proposal for the dissertation. The course is graded on a credit/no-credit basis.

ENGL 540 Newberry Seminar (3 Credit Hours)

Special topics in literary study offered by the Newberry Library.

ENGL 595 Thesis Supervision (0 Credit Hours)

Directed studies for students working toward a master's thesis.

ENGL 600 Dissertation Supervision (0 Credit Hours)

Directed studies for students working toward a doctoral dissertation.

ENGL 605 Master's Study (0 Credit Hours)

Directed studies for students working toward a master's thesis.

ENGL 610 Doctoral Study (0 Credit Hours)

Directed studies for students working toward a doctoral dissertation.

2024-2025 Academic Catalog

LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO

2024-2025 CATALOG

School and Academic Centers and Institutes

Academic Standards and Regulations

Professional License Disclosures

Accreditation

Faculty

English

Mission and Goals

Graduate Programs in English

Graduate Programs

ENGLISH (ENGL)

Outcomes

Outcomes

Outcomes

Outcomes

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