ENGL 455

Fall 2017 All Classes

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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 2017
	CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
	40444	Lecture-Discussion	1G	11:00AM -12:15PM	TR	119 English Building	Loughran, P	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/28/17-12/13/17 Credit: 4 hours Section Title: Weird Writers Section Info: Topic Section 1G: Weird Writers: Poe, Lovecraft, VanderMeer, Miéville This course will be devoted to three centuries of the strange, as imagined in the minds of Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Jeff Vandermeer, and China Miéville. “Weird fiction” is now a legitimate generic designation (Google it!), carrying with it an implicit celebration of the otherworldly, the deviant, the unimaginable—the weird. For these four authors, that means a series of encounters with madmen, mushroom-people, extra-terrestrials, and other Lovecraftian blob-monsters of the deep. Some questions we might ask this semester include: what is the relationship between weird literature today and earlier (also weird) literary modes like the Gothic and science fiction? Why are weird stories, which often carry with them some form of horror or discomfort, so pleasurable and so popular, especially today? But most of all, what makes something weird—and does the when of that weird matter? In what sense, in other words, are Poe’s maniacs nineteenth-century maniacs? How are Lovecraft’s monsters archaeological artifacts from the early twentieth century? And what might we learn about the norms of our own moment from the post-apocalyptic fantasies of Jeff VanderMeer and China Miéville? Along the way we’ll read novels and stories from these four major authors, play at least one videogame based on their imaginings, and investigate supporting scholarship from a range of posthuman theorists—a body of work that, it turns out, is just as interested in weird things as these four weird writers are. Restriction(s): Restricted to Graduate - Urbana-Champaign.
	39507	Lecture-Discussion	1U	11:00AM -12:15PM	TR	119 English Building	Loughran, P	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/28/17-12/13/17 Credit: 3 hours Section Title: Weird Writers Section Info: Topic Section 1U: Weird Writers: Poe, Lovecraft, VanderMeer, Miéville This course will be devoted to three centuries of the strange, as imagined in the minds of Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Jeff Vandermeer, and China Miéville. “Weird fiction” is now a legitimate generic designation (Google it!), carrying with it an implicit celebration of the otherworldly, the deviant, the unimaginable—the weird. For these four authors, that means a series of encounters with madmen, mushroom-people, extra-terrestrials, and other Lovecraftian blob-monsters of the deep. Some questions we might ask this semester include: what is the relationship between weird literature today and earlier (also weird) literary modes like the Gothic and science fiction? Why are weird stories, which often carry with them some form of horror or discomfort, so pleasurable and so popular, especially today? But most of all, what makes something weird—and does the when of that weird matter? In what sense, in other words, are Poe’s maniacs nineteenth-century maniacs? How are Lovecraft’s monsters archaeological artifacts from the early twentieth century? And what might we learn about the norms of our own moment from the post-apocalyptic fantasies of Jeff VanderMeer and China Miéville? Along the way we’ll read novels and stories from these four major authors, play at least one videogame based on their imaginings, and investigate supporting scholarship from a range of posthuman theorists—a body of work that, it turns out, is just as interested in weird things as these four weird writers are. Restriction(s): Restricted to Undergrad - Urbana-Champaign.