Major Courses
ENGL A100 Expository Writing 3 crs.
This course is an introduction to English composition that focuses on grammar, paragraph and essay structure, and critical reading skills. This course is for students who are not yet ready to take ENGL T122. Students are assigned to the course on the basis of a placement test administered by the English department. Students may not take ENGL A100 for degree credit after successful completion of ENGL T122.
ENGL A120 Magis Composition Enrichment 1 crs.
ENGL A120 offers enhanced instruction for Magis students enrolled in ENGL A100.
ENGL A205 Writing about Texts 3 crs.
This is the introductory composition course for English majors and minors substituting for ENGL T122; other interested students must receive permission from the department chair. It covers rhetorical, argumentative, and representational dimensions of literary and non-literary texts, and serves as a general introduction to the practice of literary criticism.
Please note: ENGL-A205 is required of all English majors, regardless of AP or other credit by examination or of transfer credits equivalent to ENGL-T122. Students changing their majors to English who have already taken ENGL-T122 are still required to take A205. All such credits for ENGL-T122 will be counted as general elective credit for English majors.
ENGL A206 Reading Poetry 3 crs.
This course is an introduction to the basic tools needed to read and write about English and American poetry, including the concepts of genre, form, meter, figurative representation, and history.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
This course introduces students to reading films and gives some familiarity with film criticism. Students focus on different aspects of film, such as mise en scene, acting, editing, sound, photography, and ideology in order to understand both the aesthetic and the political role film plays in modern life.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
This course replaces ENGL A370, How To Read A Film
ENGL A208 Writing from Sources 3 crs.
This course focuses on the research process, evaluation of sources, and in-depth writing assignments with emphasis on primary research.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
ENGL A211 Introduction to Creative Writing 3 crs.
This is a multi-genre introductory course in the theory and practice of creative writing. Students learn critical reading skills, writing skills, and the elements of creative writing by reading and analyzing a wide range of literature across genres including poetry, short fiction, creative nonfiction, drama, and screenplay. Student work is read and critiqued in a workshop setting. Students complete a portfolio of revised original creative work.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
ENGL A212 Introduction to Major British Authors 3 crs.
This course is designed to treat works of literature as representative parts of the continuous evolution/growth of the English literary tradition. It introduces students to the works of major British authors from three contiguous modern or pre-modern historicatl periods.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
ENGL A215 World Literature I 3 crs.
This course is an introduction to literature from around the world from the beginnings of written texts to 1650. Ancient Greece, early China, the Roman Empire, India’s classical age, the rise of Islamic literature, the cultural flowering of medieval Japan, African literary cultures, and the European Renaissance are covered. Emphasis is on recurring themes and techniques, as well as on the influence of distinct cultures and belief systems.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
ENGL A216 World Literature II 3 crs.
This course focuses on the literature of the world from 1650 to the present. It highlights the effects of the Enlightenment in Europe; Asia’s movement into global dialogue; the Ottoman Empire; and African, American, and European revolutions in art, politics, and industry as reflected in literature. A major difference from A215 is the emergence of global literary forms, including the novel, modern drama, and forms of personal and lyric poetry.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
ENGL A217 Reading Historically I 3 crs.
This course provides a foundation in English literary history from the medieval period through the 17th century. Reading works across contiguous historical periods, students explore their significance in historical, formal, and aesthetic contexts, and we consider how contemporary critical approaches enhance our understanding of this material.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
ENGL A218 Reading Historically II 3 crs.
This course explores developments in English literary history from 1700 to the present. Reading works across contiguous historical periods, we consider their significance in historical, formal, and aesthetic contexts, and we experiment with critical approaches to enhance our understanding of this material.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
ENGL A220 Media and Mediation 3 crs.
This course provides an introduction to the means by which creative narratives are being re-interpreted through film and other digital media.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
ENGL A222: How to Do Things with Videogames 3 crs.
This course considers videogames as a cultural form. It prepares students to analyze and compare the ways videogames make meaning and participate in the social lives of their players. It introduces students to critical discussions surrounding videogames and some methodologies for interpreting them.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
ENGL A241 Modern Nonfiction 3 crs.
This course provides a history and survey of American creative nonfiction, with the emphasis on its development into a major genre in the second half of the twentieth century. Assignments focus on both writing nonfiction as well as crafting critical analyses of its techniques, themes, and impact.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
ENGL A242 Contemporary Nonfiction 3 crs.
This course is an introduction to contemporary nonfiction writing in a variety of forms including autobiography, travel writing, and the personal essay.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
ENGL A246 Modern Short Fiction 3 crs.
This course introduces the student to modern short fiction, beginning with Chekhov. The emphasis is on authors writing in languages other than English.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
ENGL A255 Intro to Shakespeare 3 crs.
This courses acts as a student's introduction to Shakespearean drama. In addition to covering the cultural and thematic content of the plays, close attention is given to Shakespeare's use of the visual, spatial, and temporal elements of stagecraft that distinguish his drama as a performance art.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
ENGL A270 History of Film 3 crs.
History of Film is an introduction to the rich history and legacy of the motion picture as a commercial art form. The goal of the course is to educate students on the major figures and developments in cinema. Students who successfully complete the course will be able to demonstrate their knowledge of major events, figures, and films in the history of cinema and will be comfortable with writing about film as a narrative art.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
ENGL A311 Writing Fiction 3 crs.
This course offers intermediate instruction in writing short fiction. Focusing on the form and theory of the genre, the course employs a workshop format and individual conferences with the instructor to critique student writing. Students read widely and analyze published short stories as well as peer work.
Prerequisites: ENGL A211; sophomore standing or permission of instructor
ENGL A312 Writing Poetry 3 crs.
This course offers intermediate instruction in writing poetry. Focusing on the form and theory of the genre, the course employs a workshop format and individual conferences with the instructor to critique student writing. Students read widely and analyze published poems as well as peer work.
Prerequisites: ENGL A211; sophomore standing or permission of instructor
ENGL A313 Screenwriting I 3 crs.
This course is the first in a two-part sequence on screenwriting. Students learn formatting and elements of screenwriting by adapting a short story into a script for a short film. Each student also develops a story and completes as the final project a treatment for an original feature-length screenplay to be written in ENGL A314. Upon completion of the course, students have a foundation in the craft of screenwriting necessary to complete a feature-length screenplay.
Prerequisites: ENGL A211; sophomore standing or permission of instructor
ENGL A314 Screenwriting II 3 crs.
This course is the second in a two-part sequence on the craft of feature screenwriting. In the first weeks of the semester, students begin writing a screenplay based on the treatment they wrote and revised in ENGL A313. Each student writes an original feature-length screenplay as the final project, a draft of which is completed by mid-term. These drafts are critiqued in a workshop and revised over the second half of the semester.
Prerequisites: ENGL A211; ENGL A313; sophomore standing or permission of instructor
ENGL A316 Medieval Literature 3 crs.
This courses offers a broad introduction to texts written in the British Isles between the beginning of the eighth century and the end of the fifteenth. Students study a wide array of medieval literary genres and their conventions. Further reading and discussion are devoted to the literary, historical, political, cultural, artistic, philosophical, and theological contexts for the various modes of written expression studied in the course.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; sophomore standing
ENGL A317 Writing the Short Script 3 crs.
Writing the Short Script focuses on monologues, dialogues and short scripts. Designed to strengthen the dialogue and blocking skills of students interested in writing fiction, nonfiction, screenplays and stage plays, the course combines readings of modern and contemporary literature with workshop discussions and individual conferences with the instructor about writing assignments.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; sophomore standing
ENGL A324 Early Shakespeare 3 crs.
This course provides an introduction to the dramatic and poetic works from Shakespeare's literary “apprenticeship” of the early 1590s to 1600. Situating Shakespeare’s works in their dynamic historical context—including the Protestant Reformation, the age of exploration, the rise of capitalism, the urban landscape of London, and the popular new public theatres—we study how these plays and poems spoke to Renaissance auditors and how they pose timeless questions for new audiences.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; sophomore standing
ENGL A325 Late Shakespeare 3 crs.
This course focuses on Shakespeare's works after 1600. Established by this time as a successful playwright and poet, Shakespeare takes greater risks with language, form, and themes in this second half of his career. Tracking these innovations through his late comedies and the genres of tragedy and romance that he preferred during this time, we attend to Shakespeare's work in its broader cultural and artistic context.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; sophomore standing
ENGL A331 Introduction to African-American Literature 3 crs.
This course is a survey of African-American literature from the late 18th-century through Reconstruction to 1900. The course examines various types of African-American literary and cultural productions, including folk narratives, autobiographies, slave narratives, essays, speeches, poetry, and short fiction, as well as the historical, cultural, socio-political and literary contexts in which they were produced.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; sophomore standing
ENGL A332 African-American Literature Since 1900 3 crs.
This course is a survey of African-American literature after 1900, providing an historical and cultural study of the foundational writers, themes, and genres of African-American literary production of the era. The course provides a conceptual framework for this literature, evaluates key terms, ideas, literary periods, constructions and representations of African-American identity and race, and the contributions of African-American writers to American literature and culture.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; sophomore standing
ENGL A333 Narrative Across Media 3 crs.
This course tracks narrative across multiple media forms. It prepares students to analyze and compare the ways narrative gets implemented by different media, as well as chart stories that extend beyond individual media objects. In the process, they will consider narrative's media-specificity even as it seems to transcend media.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; junior standing
ENGL A335 Postcolonial Literatures 3 crs.
This course is a survey of postcolonial literatures from Africa, India, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Postcolonial literature largely emerged in the second half of the twentieth century, after people across the global South gained political independence from Western colonizers. Readings focus on both the counter-narratives of history, memory, and identity that were central literary concerns after independence and more recent literary trends that explore globalization, cosmopolitanism, multilingualism, and migration.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; sophomore standing
ENGL A336: Indigenous Literatures of the Americas in Translation, 3 crs
This course examines the literary and cinematic works of indigenous authors across the Americas. In this writing intensive course, students learn how to read, think and write critically about literature while exploring the historical and cultural realities of indigenous peoples in the Americas. The study of this literature adds nuance to the anthropological, sociological and historical “facts” to these different groups and their literatures. A focus on translation theory as the point of departure allows students a critical approach to these texts. This course is cross-listed with LAS-A336: Students only receive credit for successfully completing the first instance of the course/s.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
ENGL A340 Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales 3 crs.
This course explores the variety and complexity of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Students approach the Tales as an anthology of literary forms current in fourteenth-century England and consider Chaucer’s genius in subverting the conventions of these forms. Students analyze selected tales from a variety of critical positions while also attending to the influence of 14th-century politics, religion, science, and art on the development of Chaucer’s poetry.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; sophomore standing
ENGL A346 Renaissance Poetry 3 crs.
This course surveys English lyric poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by poets such as Wyatt, Sidney, Spenser, Whitney, Donne, Herbert, and Wroth. We consider how poets imagine, structure, and transform their craft at this time of both classical revival and extraordinary innovation.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; sophomore standing
ENGL A348 Modern Poetry 3 crs.
This course surveys the major figures in England and America from Whitman to the beginning of World War II, such as Yeats, Pound, Eliot, Frost, Stevens, Williams, and Auden.
Prerequisites: A206; sophomore standing
ENGL A349 Twentieth-century American Fiction 3 crs.
This course examines American novels and short stories from 1900 to the turn of the twenty-first century, exploring such movements as realism, naturalism, regionalism, modernism, ethnic writing, and postmodernism.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; sophomore standing
ENGL A350 New Orleans in Literature 3 crs.
This course examines the relationship between literature and place focusing on literary representations of New Orleans from the 1830s to the present. Readings include drama, poetry, and prose by natives and non-natives whose work both represents and constructs the mystique of the city.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; sophomore standing
ENGL A351 Louisiana Literature 3 crs.
This course explores the writers and literary traditions of Louisiana in the context of local, regional, and national concerns. Readings include works of fiction, drama, and poetry from the colonial period to the present.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; sophomore standing
ENGL A352 Literature and Environment 3 crs.
This course explores shifting definitions and concepts of nature, environment, and ecology in a range of literary texts across different time periods, forms, and modes of aesthetic experimentation.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; sophomore standing
ENGL A353 American Masterworks 3 crs.
A varying selection of American writers from the colonial period to the present, highlighting specific writers and texts that have shaped our national identity and literary canons.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; sophomore standing
ENGL A354 American Literature Since 1865 3 crs.
A survey of American literature from the Civil War to the present, posing a series of questions in order to understand both the literature and the culture that produced it: What constitutes literature and how does it change? What does it mean to call literature “American?” What social and cultural factors affect the production and understanding of literature? How do we choose what to read and what not to read?
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; sophomore standing
ENGL A372 Studies in American Cinema 3 crs.
This is a special topics course that offers students the opportunity to study film directors, genres, or ideological films. This course may be repeated when topics change.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; sophomore standing
ENGL A373 The Black Writer in America 3 crs.
This course highlights the contributions of African-American writers to the literary traditions of the United States. Those contributions are virtually contemporary with the colonization of North America and shapes the themes and genres of American literature for the next three hundred years: from the slave narrative to local color fiction, from the Harlem Renaissance and the Civil Rights movement to contemporary writers.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; sophomore standing
ENGL A374 Holocaust in Literature and Film 3 crs.
This course analyzes primary documents from victims, survivors, novelists, and historians in order to understand the origins and consequences of Nazi genocide. The course examines how the film industry has influenced the way audiences view the Nazis rise to power, the laws pertaining to Jews and other minorities, and the final solution. The course also examines other genocides of the later 20th and early 21st centuries to understand ethnic and religious animosities.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; sophomore standing
ENGL A376 Studies in Technoculture 3 crs.
This special topics course investigates the ways culture shapes and is shaped by technology. It explores the reception, theory, and representation of technology and treats, but is not limited to, questions of poetics, aestetics, history, politics and the environment. Specific topics change each semester. This course may be repeated with permission.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; junior or senior standing
ENGL A385 Women Writers 3 crs.
This course explores the literary tradition of women writers, reading a variety of texts and genres across a range of history and cultural backgrounds, primarily British and American, considering such issues as the relationship between gender and culture and the impacts of race, class, and sexuality on literary achievement.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
ENGL A388 How Language Works 3 crs.
This course is a study of modern English practical linguistics. Topics include phonetics, semantics, grammar-syntax, and writing systems, including new electronic media. Other general linguistic topics are covered, such as a brief history of English, American English dialects, English as a world language, and language death. The course provides future teachers with a systematic understanding of the language but topics are also of interest to students of psychology, sociology, and anthropology.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
ENGL A404 Creative Nonfiction Workshop 3 crs.
This is an advanced writing workshop on the art and craft of creative nonfiction in which students read and write in a wide range of genres such as memoir, autobiography, narrative journalism, personal essay, travel and food writing, profiles, reviews, science and nature writing. Students complete a portfolio of revised original short creative nonfiction.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; ENGL A208 or ENGL A211; junior standing
ENGL A405 Editing and Publishing 3 crs.
This course introduces the student writer to the world of contemporary editing and publishing, print and digital, with an emphasis on an understanding of these as they affect both the creative writer and the writer of nonfiction.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; junior standing
ENGL A406 Internship: Editing and Publishing 3 crs.
In this course students work on the editing and publication of the New Orleans Review, a nationally-distributed literary journal published at Loyola since 1968. Students work with the editorial staff to produce an issue of the print journal and to maintain the journal’s website.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; junior standing
ENGL A408 Writing: Technique and Technology 3 crs.
This class addresses the ways in which the task of composition changes in digital and online contexts. It is divided equally between tutorials on digital composition best practices and historical and theoretical perspectives on writing and technology. The course requires substantial computer work, but no prior experience is necessary.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; junior standing
ENGL A409 Contemporary Topics in Rhetoric 3 crs.
This course examines significant trends in contemporary theories of rhetoric and the writing process with special emphasis on how these theories relate to the teaching of composition at all levels.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; junior standing
ENGL A410 Writing Gender 3 crs.
The course examines the impact of contemporary feminist thought on rhetorical theory and introduces students to writing practices resulting from that impact. Readings from leading feminist theorists, critics, and literary authors provide a foundation for nonfiction writing assignments that combine personal experience with critical theory and encourage experimentation with voice and form.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; junior standing
ENGL A411 Fiction Workshop 3 crs.
This course examines advanced topics in the writing of fiction, with special attention to contemporary trends in the genre. Some attention is paid to publishing. The course employs a workshop format and individual conferences with the instructor to critique student writing. In addition to writing short fiction, students read extensively and analyze contemporary fiction.
Prerequisites: ENGL A211; junior standing
ENGL A412 Poetry Workshop 3 crs.
The course examines advanced topics in the writing of poetry, with special attention to contemporary trends in the genre. Some attention is paid to publishing. The course employs a workshop format and individual conferences with the instructor to critique student writing. In addition to writing poems, students read extensively and analyze contemporary poetry.
Prerequisites: ENGL A211; junior standing
ENGL A415 Creative Writing Workshop 3 crs.
This is an advanced special topics workshop that focuses on a select topic or genre such as film writing, nature writing, travel writing, flash fiction/prose poetry, and experimental writing. In addition to writing, critiquing, and revising their own work, students read widely and critique published work related to the topic. Students complete a portfolio of revised original creative writing related to the topic. This course may be repeated with permission.
Prerequisites: ENGL A211; junior standing
ENGL A417 Playwriting Workshop 3 crs.
This course is a workshop examining the writing of plays as well as aspects of writing film scripts. In addition to writing dramatic exercises and plays, students read extensively and analyze examples of plays and films.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; junior standing
ENGL A420 Tudor and Stuart Drama 3 crs.
From magic and mistaken identity to revenge and jealousy, English Renaissance playwrights created a vibrant theatrical world that defined an age. This course explores non-Shakespearean drama spanning from the 1550s, before the first public theaters were built, through the tense moments before Parliament closed them in 1642. We consider how dramatists engaged the conventions of classical drama and used their craft to confront changing attitudes about religion, politics, gender, and economy.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; junior standing
ENGL A422 Studies in Renaissance Literature 3 crs.
This seminar explores the development of a specific theme or genre in a transnational early modern context. Topics include Renaissance Women Writers, Renaissance Epic, The Literature of Empire, or Gender and Sexuality in Renaissance Literature. Primary texts are drawn from both English and continental literatures, while secondary readings include current critical and theoretical approaches, making this course excellent preparation for graduate study in literary and cultural fields. This course may be repeated with permission.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; junior standing
ENGL A424 Medieval Drama 3 crs.
This course surveys Roman-style comedies, Latin liturgical drama and Anglo-Norman religious plays in medieval England before turning to Middle English biblical, morality and saints' plays. Dramatic texts are supplemented by non-dramatic literature. Music, theological writing, and visual materials are considered with some emphasis placed on stagecraft.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; junior standing
ENGL A425 Restoration/18th-century Literature 3 crs.
This course is a survey of the major poets and prose writers of the Restoration and the 18th century with an emphasis on Dryden, Swift, Pope, Johnson, and Boswell.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; junior standing
ENGL A426 18th-century British Fiction 3 crs.
This course is a study of the development of the novel in England through the French Revolution, with readings from Defoe, Swift, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; junior standing
This course in British Romanticism is fundamentally about revolution. It begins with the historical context of revolution in France, America, and industrial production, and examines shifting conceptions of society and the self in the aftermath of those revolutions. It focuses on revolutions in poetry and the novel in texts by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Austen, Byron, Keats, the Shelleys, and more.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; junior standing
ENGL A428 Victorian England 3 crs.
This course examines Victorian England, which saw major changes in structures of class, ethnicity and gender, an expanding empire, and a revolution in how things were made and who made them. The course looks at innovations in narrative and poetic form at the intersection of what Victorians called “Life and Art,” in essays by Arnold, Pater, and Wilde; poetry by Tennyson, the Brownings, the Brontës, the Rossettis, Hopkins, and Hardy; and fiction by Dickens, George Eliot, and Thackeray, and more.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; junior standing
ENGL A429 19th-century British Fiction 3 crs.
This course is a continuation of A426, examining the development of the novel in the 19th century with study of the works of Austen, the Brontës, Thackeray, Dickens, George Eliot, Hardy, among others.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; junior standing
ENGL A430 20th-century British Fiction 3 crs.
This course is a continuation of A426 and A429, examining the fiction of writers such as Conrad, Ford, Forster, Joyce, Lawrence, and Woolf with some attention given to contemporary fiction.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; junior standing
ENGL A433 19th-century American Fiction 3 crs.
A study of the development of American fiction--the novel and the short story--highlighting influential figures and specific literary movements through the course of the nineteenth century.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
ENGL A434 American Romanticism 3 crs.
The course examines two major 19th-century movements in American literature, Romanticism and Transcendentalism, in order to understand how they influenced and were influenced by Americans’ perceptions of race, class, and gender. The course focuses on literary and philosophical works in the light of deconstructionist and gender criticism to consider the varied approaches to defining America.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; junior standing
ENGL A438 Southern Literature 3 crs.
This course examines the literature of perhaps the most distinctive region of the United States: the American South. From its colonial roots, through slavery and secession and civil war and reconstruction, from its twentieth-century renascence to its presumed disappearance into the homogeneity of twenty-first century America, this literary tradition offers a peculiarly rich perspective on our national identity.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; junior standing
This course is a comparative media investigation of a variety of topics under the heading of posthumanism. Focusing on a selection of novels, flim, and video games concerned with technological and/or biological augmentations, we will explore such questions as what does it mean to be human or is "human" even a meaningful category, what is the relationship between science and nusture, and what is the work of the humanities in a posthuman condition.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; junior standing
ENGL A466 Southern Women Writers 3 crs.
This course explores the contributions of women writers to the distinctiveness of the South, the range of their achievement as artists, and the complex relationships they developed with each other and to the structures of their singularly traditional culture.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; junior standing
ENGL A470 Film and the Art of Literary Adaptation 3 crs.
This course provides students with an understanding of how a work of literature is translated into a film. The core material for the course varies from semester to semester, but is comprised of fiction that has successfully been adapted to the screen, especially short stories, novels, and theatrical plays. The course also deals with films created from classic drama, including Shakespeare, as well as folklore and historical records.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; junior standing
ENGL A472 Studies in Global Cinema 3 crs.
This is a special topics course exploring European cinemas, including Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, in relation to the individual cultures from which they arise. Aesthetic and sociocultural differences between these national cinemas and Hollywood are stressed. The specific topic changes each term. This course may be repeated with permission.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; junior standing
ENGL A474 Studies in Global Literature 3 crs.
This seminar explores the development of a specific theme or genre in contemporary global literature and/or cinema. Topics vary by semester, but might include Magical Realism, the African Novel, or Global Human Rights Literature. Primary texts are drawn from African, Asian, Caribbean, and/or Latin American traditions. Students gain facility with theoretical trends that challenge traditional critical perspectives and foreground those that emerge from the global South. This course may be repeated with permission.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; junior standing
ENGL A475 Great Figures– Medieval 3 crs.
This special topics course is an intensive study of one or two great medieval literary figures. The course traces the development of the author’s art, noting influences, historical and philosophical contexts, critical receptions, and modern assessments. This course may be repeated with permission.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; junior standing
ENGL A476 Great Figures– Renaissance 3 crs.
This course is an intensive study of one or two great medieval literary figures. The course traces the development of the author’s art, noting influences, historical and philosophical contexts, critical receptions, and modern assessments. This course may be repeated with permission.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; junior standing
ENGL A478 Great Figures– 19th-century 3 crs.
This special topics course is an intensive study of one or two great literary figures from the 19th century. The course traces the development of the author’s art, noting influences, historical and philosophical contexts, critical receptions, and modern assessments. This course may be repeated with permission.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; junior standing
ENGL A479 Great Figures - American Pre-1900 3 crs.
This course offers an intensive study of one or two great American literary figures of the pre-1900s. The course traces the development of the author’s art, noting influences, historical and philosophical contexts, critical receptions, and modern assessments. Authors may include, Melville, Hawthorne, Thoreau and Emerson, and Henry James.This course may be repeated with permission.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; junior standing
ENGL A485 Interpretive Approaches 3 crs.
This course looks at influential developments in literary theory and cultural criticism across the twentieth century and up to the present.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; junior standing
ENGL A487 Contemporary Critical Issues 3 crs.
This is a special topics course focusing on different contemporary issues in literary criticism, such as environmental theory, new media, food studies, and post-humanism.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; junior standing
ENGL A490 Great Figures 3 crs.
This special topics seminar is an intensive study of one or two influential literary figures. It traces the development of the author’s art, noting influences, historical and philosophical contexts, critical receptions, and contemporary assessments. This course may be repeated with permission.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; junior standing
ENGL A491 Practicum in Teaching Writing 1 cr.
This practicum focuses on methods and materials for teaching writing. Students work in the Writing across the Curriculum lab.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205; permission of instructor
ENGL A493 Directed Readings 3 crs.
Course content varies and is keyed to the participants' interests in relevant professional topics.
ENGL A495 Special Project credits vary
This project focuses on the creative or productive efforts of one or more students.
ENGL A496 Seminar/Workshop credits vary
A seminar is a supervised group of students sharing the results of their research on a common topic. A workshop is a supervised group of students participating in a common effort.
ENGL A497 Internship/ Practicum credits vary
An internship is supervised practical experience. A practicum is supervised practical application of previously studied theory.
ENGL A498 Research Project credits vary
This project focuses on empirical or historical investigation, culminating in a written report.
ENGL A499 Independent Study credits vary
This course includes work leading to the English Honors thesis or the University Honors senior thesis, as well as work done independently under professorial supervision.
Loyola Core
ENGL T121 First-Year Seminar 3 crs.
Foundation Courses: First Year Seminar
All first-year students take a 3-credit First-Year Seminar during their first semester as one of the core course in the Loyola Core. First-Year Seminars at Loyola are small, discussion-based seminars that introduce new college students to academic inquiry at the university level by investigating a relevant topic. Specially-trained faculty lead these seminars in a way that instills in students the academic skills necessary to become successful Loyola students. A list of upcoming First-Year Seminars can be found on the First-Year Experience homepage.
ENGL T122 Critical Reading and Writing 3 crs.
Foundation Courses: Critical Reading and Writing
This is a writing instructive course that focuses on critical reading and analysis of arguments to help students to think and write analytically. Reading critically and writing analytically train students to make their own effective written arguments using sources
ENGL N200: WAL: Autobiography 3 crs.
Knowledge-Values Courses: Writing About Literature
This course uses critical reading as a foundation for developing critical thinking and writing skills while exploring autobiography in a broad context, looking at a wide range of approaches to the construction and presentation of the self in literature, in different literary forms and cultural traditions. Students begin by reading carefully and making observations about the way in which the self, and the text itself, are constructed, and arrive through critical thinking and writing at interpretations of these observations about the texts.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
This course replaces ENGL T125
ENGL N202: WAL: Barbarism 3 crs.
Knowledge-Values Courses: Writing About Literature
This course uses critical reading as a foundation for developing critical thinking and writing skills. Reading literary representations of “the barbaric,” from its classical origins as a linguistic category to contemporary representations in the discourse of terrorism, we trace the representation of the “barbarous” other alongside the “civilized” self. Students learn to fashion their own ideas about what they read and to argue those ideas persuasively in writing.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
This course replaces ENGL T125
ENGL N204: WAL: Cyberpunk and Apocalyptic Fiction 3 crs.
Knowledge-Values Courses: Writing About Literature
This course uses critical reading as a foundation for developing critical thinking and writing skills by reading and analyzing cyberpunk and apocalyptic literature. The course examines how images of the future evoked in this literature can help us face the cultural, political, and environmental problems of today.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
This course replaces ENGL T125
ENGL N205: WAL: Videogames and Literature 3 crs.
Knowledge-Values Courses: Writing About Literature
This course focuses on the relationship between videogames and literature. Though some have suggested videogames supposedly threaten the long-term future of reading good literature, the two have much more in common than one would first expect. Students in this course will encounter games that aspire to be literature and literature that aspires to be game-like as well as games about writing fiction and fiction about playing games, as they explore how these different narrative media conceive of each other.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
This course replaces ENGL T125
ENGL N206: WAL: Form & Adaptation 3 crs.
Knowledge-Values Courses: Writing About Literature
This course uses critical reading as a foundation for developing critical thinking and writing skills. The course involves literary texts drawn from the genres of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and film. Students read works in English or translated into English from the original language in order to gain a broad understanding of literary devices and to develop the practice and learn the terminology of literary analysis. Form and Adaptation requires that students demonstrate their understanding of the material through the composition of papers and participation in class discussion.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
This course replaces ENGL T125
ENGL N208: WAL: Genre and the Hybrid 3 crs.
Knowledge-Values Courses: Writing About Literature
This course uses critical reading as a foundation for developing critical thinking and writing skills paying particular attention to genre. Beginning with a brief survey of the traditional genres of short stories, poetry, and the novel, the course then considers nontraditional cross-genre texts that have emerged in the postmodern literary world. These hybrid texts challenge the way students read, encourage a deeper appreciation of non-traditional writing, provide tools for analyzing a broad range of literary texts, and raise the following question: Why do some contemporary writers gravitate toward hybridity in genre, and how might their choices reflect other changes in our postmodern society?
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
This course replaces ENGL T125
ENGL N210: WAL: Global Identities 3 crs.
Knowledge-Values Courses: Writing About Literature
This course uses critical reading as a foundation for developing critical thinking and writing skills. This course takes as its starting point the contradictions that ground our experiences of globalization and explores how the globalization of economic, political, and cultural systems produces at the same time a euphoric sense of freedom and unbounded possibility and a fear of dislocation and loss.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
This course replaces ENGL T125
ENGL N212: WAL: How to Tell a True War Story 3 crs.
Knowledge-Values Courses: Writing About Literature
This course uses critical reading as a foundation for developing critical thinking and writing skills to examine written and visual representations of WWI, WWII, and the wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan to gain an understanding of how politics, social values, and the culture in which films and texts are produced shape the retelling of the war experience. The course explores combat trauma, shifting definitions of courage, the process of defining the enemy, heroism, gender identity, the language of war, the experience of soldiers returning from war and the importance of narrative and community in healing trauma.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
This course replaces ENGL T125
ENGL N214: WAL: Interpreting the Other 3 crs.
Knowledge-Values Courses: Writing About Literature
This course uses critical reading as a foundation for developing critical thinking and writing skills. The goal of this class is to examine literature with a critical eye and apply what we learn to our own lives by examining literary conventions, especially the idea of the "other," and how these conventions developed over time. Students discuss the importance of placing stories into a broader context, compare how a character or author operates within his or her context, and apply this knowledge to our own cultural, historical and political context. Students learn why the study of literature is crucial in developing critical thinking skills and why these skills are important in creating our own "stories."
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
This course replaces ENGL T125
ENGL N216: WAL: Postcolonial and Ethnic American Literature 3 crs.
Knowledge-Values Courses: Writing About Literature
This course uses critical reading as a foundation for developing critical thinking and writing skills, and looks at texts that align with two major trends in contemporary literary study: postcolonial and ethnic American literature. Discussion of the major issues related to each of these fields of study and how literature responds to social and political contexts is the central focus of this course.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
This course replaces ENGL T125
ENGL N218: WAL: Spy Stories 3 crs.
Knowledge-Values Courses: Writing About Literature
This course uses critical reading as a foundation for developing critical thinking and writing skills by introducing novels, short stories, poetry, and films by several giants of twentieth-century literature that feature spies as protagonists. Students learn how to analyze these spy stories in terms of genre, structure, and character and how to discuss literature from different critical perspectives. The course considers the affinities between the professional spy and the literary critic, both of whom are called upon to interpret signs and to search for their deeper meanings.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122
This course replaces ENGL T125
ENGL N220: WAL: Texts & Textuality 3 crs.
Knowledge-Values Courses: Writing About Literature
This course uses critical reading as a foundation for developing critical thinking and writing skills and focuses on reading literary texts, on examining literary conventions, and on writing analytically about literature.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
This course replaces ENGL T125
ENGL N222: WAL: Thinking Critically about Food 3 crs.
Knowledge-Values Courses: Writing About Literature
This course uses critical reading as a foundation for developing critical thinking and writing skills. The guiding theme of this course is food: how we talk about and represent it, how it influences culture and shapes our individual and collective identities, and how it reflects and affects the physical, psychological, and ecological health of our nation and globe.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
This course replaces ENGL T125
ENGL N224: WAL: Work and the City 3 crs.
Knowledge-Values Courses: Writing About Literature
This course uses critical reading as a foundation for developing critical thinking and writing skills. The course explores how Americans of different times and places have considered work in the sense of remunerative employment. In modern literature, city settings have often been the scene of critiques of the modes of labor (types of jobs) and the focus of how people have felt about them in industrial capitalist societies.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
This course replaces ENGL T125
ENGL N226: WAL: Millennial Identity 3 crs.
Knowledge-Values Courses: Writing About Literature
This course uses critical reading as a foundation for developing critical thinking and writing skills. The course examines, through analysis of several different genres, three disasters/cataclysms of the early twenty-first century in order to understand how events in the world influence the writing and the reading of literature. The course covers The bombings of the World Trade Center in New York, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a projected nuclear catastrophe.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
This course replaces ENGL T125
ENGL N232: WAL: Culture of the Sixties 3 crs.
Knowledge-Values Courses: Writing About Literature
This course examines several political and cultural movements of the sixties through the literature that grew out of and defined each one. Students analyze fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, letters, and memoirs to understand the impact of the decade.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
This course replaces ENGL T125
ENGL N234: WAL: American Gothic Literature 3crs.
Knowledge-Values Courses: Writing About Literature
This section of Writing About Literature is designed to develop critical reading and writing skills through a cross-genre study of poetry, fiction, and film. Gothic literature is a reaction to mainstream culture. By understanding this reactionary literature, students gain a better understanding of American history and culture.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
This course replaces ENGL T125
ENGL N236: WAL: Coming of Age in the South 3 crs.
Knowledge-Values Courses: Writing About Literature
This section of Writing About Literature examines Southern literature about adolescence. By reading poetry, novels, plays, essay, and film, we learn what it means to grow up in the South and how class, race, gender, violence and sexuality shape coming of age.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
This course replaces ENGL T125
ENGL N238: WAL: New Orleans Literature 3 crs.
Knowledge-Values Courses: Writing About Literature
This Writing about Literature course focuses on literature about New Orleans. We will read fiction, drama, and verse set in the city, from the early 19th century to the present. Writing assignments will ask students to compare the works of imaginative literature to each other, to the historical record, and to theories regarding New Orleanian society and aesthetics.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
This course replaces ENGL T125
ENGL O210 Narratives: Illness & Trauma 3 crs.
Knowledge-Values Courses: Creative Arts and Cultures
This course examines narratives that attempt to make sense of the problem of disease. Readings and films focus on physical traumas such as cancer, Alzheimer's Disease, amputation, and paralysis as a way of exploring larger themes such as radical body transformation, the sense of the loss of self, and empathy. Is disease salvific? Is it meaningless? The texts explore an array of emotional and ideological responses to human frailty.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
ENGL O236 Anime: Cinema and Culture 3 crs.
Knowledge-Values Courses: Creative Arts & Cultures
Anime encompasses history, literature, culture, politics, religion, technology, and aesthetics. this course focuses on anime from Anime that sparked American interest and analyzes the impact of anime on American popular culture and high art.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
ENGL O242 Ireland Through Film 3 crs.
Knowledge-Values Courses: Creative Arts & Cultures
Ireland Through Film introduces students to the world of Irish film. The course is designed to provide students with a way to see the relationship between Irish film and the creation of an Irish political and cultural identity. The class looks at images of the Irish from the stock Irishman to more complex contemporary versions of the Irish. Ireland Through Film will help students understand the historical, political, cultural, and religious conflicts that have made modern Ireland.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
ENGL O252 New Orleans as Myth, Perform 3 crs.
Knowledge-Values Courses: Creative Arts & Cultures
New Orleans is one of the United States' most mythologized places. Its long history of representation in the national culture affects the way locals, visitors, and distant onlookers perceive the city today. New Orleans as Myth and Performance will look at the ways in which New Orleans functions as a myth in the national culture, and the ways in which New Orleanian identity is performed in multiple genres, including the mass public spectacle of carnival.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
ENGL O256 American Regionalism
Knowledge-Values Courses: Creative Arts and Cultures
This course traces the role of place in the literary traditions of North America, questioning the continuity and significance of regionalism as a defining element of our cultural and literary heritage--and of our future in increasingly global and diverse contexts.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
ENGL O288 Vikings: Warrior-Poets 3 crs.
Knowledge-Values Courses: Creative Arts and Cultures
This course introduces the literature, history, and culture of medieval Scandinavia. It opens with readings in Norse mythography and legendary history before turning to the portrayal of the Viking Age in the Old Norse sagas. Half of the semester is devoted to a careful reading of these complex narratives of politics, love, adventure, and violence, which comprise Europe’s first great corpus of prose literature.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205
ENGL O299 Arthurian Legend 3 crs.
Knowledge-Values Courses: Creative Arts and Cultures
This course introduces students to the Arthurian tradition through a study of the origins and development of the Arthurian narrative, situating it within the historical, religious, and social context of Medieval Europe. The course begins with a survey of both the development and influence of Arthurian themes in early musical, visual, and literary traditions. Then the course proceeds to present the Perceval/Grail tradition from the 12th to the 20th century in literature, music and film.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122 or ENGL A205