ENGL 455

Fall 2014 Part of Term 1

Part of Term 1
Aug 25-Dec 10

Major Authors

Credit: 3 OR 4 hours.

Intensive study of the work of one or two major authors.

3 undergraduate hours. 4 graduate hours. May be repeated with permission of English advising office to a maximum of 6 undergraduate hours if topics vary. May be repeated for graduate credit if topics vary. Prerequisite: One year of college literature or consent of instructor.

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ENGL 455 class schedule data for fall 2014
CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
40444	Lecture-Discussion	1G	2:00PM -3:15PM	TR	English Building	Nazar, H	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/25/14-12/10/14 Credit: 4 hours Section Title: Jane Austen Section Info: Topic Section 1G: Jane Austen Amanda Price, the heroine of the ITV miniseries Lost in Austen (2008), is a spirited, present-day Londoner with a boring job and an equally boring boyfriend. Amanda's idea of heaven-on-earth is a quiet evening at home, immersed in the pages of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Defending her obsession with Austen's novel, she observes: "I love the love story?I love the manners and the language and the courtesy. It has become part of who I am and what I want. I?have standards." Amanda is by no means alone in her admiration for Austen's second published novel, which ranked second in the BBC's 2003 survey of the British public's favorite fiction (and the only book in the top five to be published before the twentieth century). Today, Jane Austen is a cult figure: a classic writer with remarkable popularity in the English-speaking world, whose six novels have spawned not only a massive academic industry but also a "Janeite" popular culture, which includes weekly blogs, online games, literary spinoffs (such as Bridget Jones's Diary and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies), and seemingly endless film and television interpretations. In her own lifetime, however, Austen enjoyed only minor celebrity, traveled little, lived quietly in the bosom of her family, and was buried without any pomp in a grave that makes no mention of her ever having been a writer. The quietness of her life, the marriage plots of her novels, and her own representation of her art as that of the miniaturist (who painted on "two inches wide of ivory"), has led many observers to describe her as one of the most apolitical of English novelists. On these accounts, the lady-like Austen resolutely ignored the great historical changes taking place in her lifetime?for example, the social and political upheavals wrought by the French revolution of 1789?to focus on small private matters, such as the love and manners that Amanda Price cherishes so greatly. This course seeks to "politicize" Austen?s fiction, as well as recent responses to her work, both academic and popular. It vivifies the historical and political contexts of Austen's novels and asks questions such as the following: Are there any meaningful connections to be made between the 1790s, when Austen began to write, and the 1990s, when interest in her fiction reached new heights? What are the "standards" that Austen celebrates in her work and how do these compare with those upheld by Austen fans like Amanda Price? We will read not only major works such as Pride and Prejudice (1813), Emma (1815), and Persuasion (1818), but also Austen?s outrageously funny teenage writings or "juvenilia." Class assignments will include regular forays into the popular culture surrounding Austen's work, including a consideration of films such as Amy Heckerling's Clueless (1995) and Gurinder Chadha's Bride and Prejudice (2004). Restriction(s): Restricted to Graduate - Urbana-Champaign.
39507	Lecture-Discussion	1U	2:00PM -3:15PM	TR	English Building	Nazar, H	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/25/14-12/10/14 Credit: 3 hours Section Title: Jane Austen Section Info: Topic Section 1U: Jane Austen Amanda Price, the heroine of the ITV miniseries Lost in Austen (2008), is a spirited, present-day Londoner with a boring job and an equally boring boyfriend. Amanda's idea of heaven-on-earth is a quiet evening at home, immersed in the pages of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Defending her obsession with Austen's novel, she observes: "I love the love story?I love the manners and the language and the courtesy. It has become part of who I am and what I want. I?have standards." Amanda is by no means alone in her admiration for Austen's second published novel, which ranked second in the BBC's 2003 survey of the British public's favorite fiction (and the only book in the top five to be published before the twentieth century). Today, Jane Austen is a cult figure: a classic writer with remarkable popularity in the English-speaking world, whose six novels have spawned not only a massive academic industry but also a "Janeite" popular culture, which includes weekly blogs, online games, literary spinoffs (such as Bridget Jones's Diary and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies), and seemingly endless film and television interpretations. In her own lifetime, however, Austen enjoyed only minor celebrity, traveled little, lived quietly in the bosom of her family, and was buried without any pomp in a grave that makes no mention of her ever having been a writer. The quietness of her life, the marriage plots of her novels, and her own representation of her art as that of the miniaturist (who painted on "two inches wide of ivory"), has led many observers to describe her as one of the most apolitical of English novelists. On these accounts, the lady-like Austen resolutely ignored the great historical changes taking place in her lifetime?for example, the social and political upheavals wrought by the French revolution of 1789?to focus on small private matters, such as the love and manners that Amanda Price cherishes so greatly. This course seeks to "politicize" Austen?s fiction, as well as recent responses to her work, both academic and popular. It vivifies the historical and political contexts of Austen's novels and asks questions such as the following: Are there any meaningful connections to be made between the 1790s, when Austen began to write, and the 1990s, when interest in her fiction reached new heights? What are the "standards" that Austen celebrates in her work and how do these compare with those upheld by Austen fans like Amanda Price? We will read not only major works such as Pride and Prejudice (1813), Emma (1815), and Persuasion (1818), but also Austen?s outrageously funny teenage writings or "juvenilia." Class assignments will include regular forays into the popular culture surrounding Austen's work, including a consideration of films such as Amy Heckerling's Clueless (1995) and Gurinder Chadha's Bride and Prejudice (2004). Restriction(s): Restricted to Undergrad - Urbana-Champaign.
60089	Lecture-Discussion	A	3:00PM -4:20PM	TR	Foreign Languages Building	Sobol, V	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/25/14-12/10/14 Credit: 3 hours Section Title: Tolstoy Section Info: Meets with RUSS 323 and CWL 323
43386	Lecture-Discussion	B3	11:00AM -12:50PM	MW	David Kinley Hall	Kaplan, B	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/25/14-12/10/14 Credit: 3 hours Section Title: Alain Resnais/Marguerite Duras Section Info: TOPIC: Alain Resnais and Marguerite Duras Marguerite Duras (1914-1996) has, in the words of a New York Times essay about her, ?awed and maddened the French public for more than 40 years.? A colorful life, a rich filmography, a fantastic literary scribe, Duras?s works have the power to engage and, indeed, enrage. Her themes stretch from colonialism, to loss, to the bombing of Hiroshima, to love, and beyond. Alain Resnais (1922-2014), who collaborated with Duras on the creation of the cinematic masterpiece, Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959), has made some of the classics of French cinema including Last Year At Marienbad (1961), and one of the earliest films about the Holocaust, Night and Fog (1955). This film and literature course will use these figures as springboards from which to examine larger questions of memory, trauma, loss, and the relationship between the past and present. Restriction(s): Restricted to Undergrad - Urbana-Champaign.
43387	Lecture-Discussion	B4	11:00AM -12:50PM	MW	David Kinley Hall	Kaplan, B	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/25/14-12/10/14 Credit: 4 hours Section Title: Alain Resnais/Marguerite Duras Section Info: TOPIC: Alain Resnais and Marguerite Duras Marguerite Duras (1914-1996) has, in the words of a New York Times essay about her, ?awed and maddened the French public for more than 40 years.? A colorful life, a rich filmography, a fantastic literary scribe, Duras?s works have the power to engage and, indeed, enrage. Her themes stretch from colonialism, to loss, to the bombing of Hiroshima, to love, and beyond. Alain Resnais (1922-2014), who collaborated with Duras on the creation of the cinematic masterpiece, Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959), has made some of the classics of French cinema including Last Year At Marienbad (1961), and one of the earliest films about the Holocaust, Night and Fog (1955). This film and literature course will use these figures as springboards from which to examine larger questions of memory, trauma, loss, and the relationship between the past and present. Restriction(s): Restricted to Graduate - Urbana-Champaign.