ENGL 547

Fall 2026 Part of Term 1

Part of Term 1
Aug 24-Dec 9

Seminar Earlier American Lit

Credit: 4 hours.

May be repeated if topics vary. Prerequisite: One college course devoted entirely to an aspect of American studies or consent of instructor.

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ENGL 547 class schedule data for fall 2026
	Status		CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
			39492	Lecture-Discussion	R	2:00PM -4:20PM	M	Davenport Hall	Murison, J	Availability: Open (Restricted) Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/24/26-12/09/26 Section Info: FA26 ENGL 547 - Seminar in Earlier American Literature - Justine Murison - The Real and the Obscene in the Nineteenth-Century American Novel - What do we mean when we describe a novel as “realistic”? What qualities—in form or aesthetics—announce “the real” to readers? In colloquial conversations and online discourse, it often can be code for sex, violence, or unhappy endings. However, this debate about what makes a novel realistic is hardly new. In fact, since its emergence, the novel has self-consciously posed itself as a “realistic” genre, but how a realistic effect is produced, whose concerns are considered the center of “realism,” and what of the real world is left out—all of these have been perennial debates. This class will offer three vital things for those who want to study and write about the novel form: 1) we will begin with the history of the novel in English, particularly in relation to the vexing question of realism; 2) we will examine the debates and read representative novels from the high point of American literary realism (roughly the 1870s-1890s); and 3) we will look at critiques lodged in the era of the limited scope of High Realism, especially as to sex, race, violence, and other “obscenities” that were tacitly left “off scene,” and we will read contemporary scholarship on realism for context and depth of discussion. Overall, this class will provide students with a literary history of the American novel from midcentury to WWI, which can serve as a launching pad into other research projects in any era in which the novel form is culturally significant. Authors are likely to include: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, William Dean Howells, Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton, Charles Chesnutt, Theodore Dreiser, and James Weldon Johnson. Restriction(s): Restricted to Graduate - Urbana-Champaign.