Please let your freshmen advisees know about this English course offered in Spring 2014.  It’s open to James Scholars but also (by application) to other students who can show evidence of their academic preparedness.  Interested students who are not James Scholars can contact the professor by email at hutner@illinois.edu.

ENGL 198: Freshman Honors Seminar — The 21st-Century Novel
Meets Tuesday 10:00 AM – 11:50 AM
123 English Building
Prof. Gordon Hutner
4 credit hours
CRN 60127

This course is designed for freshman honors students to prepare them for future English courses as well as to give them the chance to learn about college-level research in the humanities. Our reading list is focused on the fiction of the last decade or so, as we discover something about the range and variety of this century’s novel production. Many–maybe most–of the authors may not seem well known, although that does not mean that they are not enjoying distinguished careers. In fact, our list is drawn from a broad spectrum of prize finalists. In this respect, the class will be conducting an exercise in precanonization, i.e., helping future generations discern the most important writing of our era. To that end, we will be reading a series of novels that help to typify many of the contemporary novel’s most vibrant directions. Students, in turn, will supplement our list with three kinds of reading: (a) a further examples of one of the rubrics: (a) historical, ethnic, global, regional, social novels, or novels of character or a category necessarily omitted; (b) contemporary criticism; (c) contemporaneous cultural analysis. We will attend to your writing through some short assignments and then give students practice in a longer research project.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++