ENGL 455

Spring 2021 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 spring 2021
	CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
	59515	Online	00G	12:30PM -1:45PM	TR	n.a.	Nazar, H	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 01/25/21-05/05/21 Credit: 4 hours Section Title: Jane Austen and Feminism Section Info: English 455 - Topic: “Jane Austen and Feminism” -The politics of Jane Austen’s fiction continues to spark lively debate within the vast critical industry that has sprung up, since the 1980s, around all things Austen. For some, Austen was a quintessentially conservative novelist, seemingly untouched by the revolutionary changes taking place in Europe during her teenage years—a staunch defender of tradition and duty over individual rights, and of oppressive gender norms over women’s agency. For others, Austen was a novelist ahead of her time, whose commitment to gender equality is implicit in her novels’ call to women to cultivate good judgment and seek “rational happiness,” and in her highly satirical depiction of patriarchs and other pillars of society in virtually all her novels. Outside of academia, we see a similar division of opinion about Austen’s politics, with her work being invoked, on the one hand, by Alt-Right websites, and, on the other hand, by the ever-growing ranks of “Janeites,” predominantly young women who feel liberated by the experience of reading novels like Pride and Prejudice and Emma. This course enters these debates by situating some of Austen’s most popular works against the backdrop of feminism as it developed from the seventeenth century to the present. We will focus on the contributions of three crucial feminist figures: the philosophers Mary Astell (sometimes described as the “first English feminist”) and Mary Wollstonecraft (known as “the mother of liberal feminism”), and the recently deceased Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose work has profoundly impacted women’s rights in the United States and whose pop-culture fame (as “the notorious RBG”) rivals Austen’s. Readings for the course will include at least four of Austen’s six major novels (and definitely Pride and Prejudice), selected legal opinions and other writings by RBG, Astell’s A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, By a Lover of Her Sex (1694) and Some Reflections upon Marriage (1700), and selections from Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). Restriction(s): Restricted to Graduate - Urbana-Champaign.
	59514	Online	00U	12:30PM -1:45PM	TR	n.a.	Nazar, H	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 01/25/21-05/05/21 Credit: 3 hours Section Title: Jane Austen and Feminism Section Info: English 455 - Topic: “Jane Austen and Feminism” - The politics of Jane Austen’s fiction continues to spark lively debate within the vast critical industry that has sprung up, since the 1980s, around all things Austen. For some, Austen was a quintessentially conservative novelist, seemingly untouched by the revolutionary changes taking place in Europe during her teenage years—a staunch defender of tradition and duty over individual rights, and of oppressive gender norms over women’s agency. For others, Austen was a novelist ahead of her time, whose commitment to gender equality is implicit in her novels’ call to women to cultivate good judgment and seek “rational happiness,” and in her highly satirical depiction of patriarchs and other pillars of society in virtually all her novels. Outside of academia, we see a similar division of opinion about Austen’s politics, with her work being invoked, on the one hand, by Alt-Right websites, and, on the other hand, by the ever-growing ranks of “Janeites,” predominantly young women who feel liberated by the experience of reading novels like Pride and Prejudice and Emma. This course enters these debates by situating some of Austen’s most popular works against the backdrop of feminism as it developed from the seventeenth century to the present. We will focus on the contributions of three crucial feminist figures: the philosophers Mary Astell (sometimes described as the “first English feminist”) and Mary Wollstonecraft (known as “the mother of liberal feminism”), and the recently deceased Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose work has profoundly impacted women’s rights in the United States and whose pop-culture fame (as “the notorious RBG”) rivals Austen’s. Readings for the course will include at least four of Austen’s six major novels (and definitely Pride and Prejudice), selected legal opinions and other writings by RBG, Astell’s A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, By a Lover of Her Sex (1694) and Some Reflections upon Marriage (1700), and selections from Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792).