Spring Teaching at UIC

There's almost a month left in the Fall semester, but I've been planning for my Spring courses for some time now. For those not in the bidness, you'd be amazed at how much time goes into drafting these course descriptions. At least for those of us who are relatively young and new to the game.

The sad truth of the matter is that for 100-level courses, many students enroll blindly, taking a class simply because it fulfills a gen-ed requirement and is available. Nonetheless, I generally expend a great deal of intellectual energy crafting my descriptions, in part because it helps me to narrow my focus, both in the classroom and in my research and writing.

Here, then, are the two courses I'll be teaching next semester.

Engl 105: English and American Fiction (Call #s 14334, 20942)
Eric Dean Rasmussen
11:00 AM-12:15 PM TR / 307 SH

Narrative, Textuality, Subjectivity: The Transatlantic Postmodern Novel from 1950 to 2001

A sampling of some of the most innovative and critically acclaimed novels written in the English language during the last half century, with a focus on (1) the narrative techniques deployed in these texts and (2) the questions about subjectivity these texts raise. We will explore, in depth, how five exemplary modern/postmodern novels play with readers’ expectations, foreground the extent to which our experience of reality is thoroughly textualized, and—through their narrative experiments—suggest different models (grammatical, politico-legal, and philosophical) of the human subject.

This class will help you understand what narratives are, how they are constructed, how narratives act upon us and vice versa, how narratives are transmitted, how a narrative’s significance (though not its meaning) can change when its medium or cultural context changes, and why all these topics are so relevant to our sense of selfhood. By the end of this class, you will be smarter, more thoughtful readers, better equipped to identify and respond to the ways in which our subjectivities emerge in, through, and because of our engagement with language.

Beckett, Samuel. Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable. 1951–3. New York: Grove, 1995.

Burgess, Anthony. A Clockwork Orange. 1962. New York: W. W. Norton, 2004.

DeLillo, Don. The Body Artist. New York: Scribner, 2001.

Fowles, John. The French Lieutenant’s Woman. 1969. Boston: Little, Brown, 1998.

Hall, Donald. Subjectivity. New York: Routledge, 2004.

Hughes, George. Reading Novels. Nashville: Vanderbilt UP, 2002.

Nabokov, Vladimir. The Annotated Lolita. New York: Vintage 1991.

Pifer, Ellen, ed. Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita: A Casebook. New York: Oxford UP, 2003.

Students should read Nabokov’s The Annotated Lolita over the Christmas break.

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Engl 109 : American Literature and American Culture (Call # 14338)
Eric Dean Rasmussen
12:30-01:45 PM TR / 316 SH

Novel Ideologies: Mapping the Social and Political in Postmodern American Literature

This reading-intensive course offers an introduction to postmodern American prose literature with a focus on four acclaimed authors—Don DeLillo, Joan Didion, E.L. Doctorow and Thomas Pynchon. These authors share a fascination with post-WWII cultural paranoia and political hysteria and an interest in interrogating various American ideologies in their writings. We will read both fiction and non-fiction by these authors, aiming to discern how their texts assert or imply positions about politicized issues: how meaningful or significant communication occurs, how knowledge and power are interrelated, how beliefs and values are transmitted, and how we can exert our agency given various systemic constraints.

If you’re uncertain what is meant by ‘ideology,’ that’s fine. One of our primary goals will be to understand different uses of this loaded term and to recognize the ways in which we produce, consume, and transmit ideologies all our lives. The following literary and theoretical texts will be our guides in this endeavor.

Belsey, Catherine. Poststructuralism: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford UP, 2002.

DeLillo, Don. Underworld. New York: Scribner, 1997.

Didion, Joan. Vintage Didion. New York: Vintage, 2004.

Doctorow, E.L. The Book of Daniel. 1971. New York: Plume, 1996.

Doctorow, E.L. Reporting the Universe. 2003. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2004.

Freeden, Michael. Ideology: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford UP, 2003.

Pynchon, Thomas. The Crying of Lot 49. 1965. New York: Harper Perennial, 1986.

Students should read the first 272 pages of Underworld over the holiday break.

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Yes, I know that the bit about reading over the holiday break is wishful thinking, but there might be a couple serious students who will dig in early.