[Fourth-Run-of-the-Term Syllabus]
ENGL 2145-02: Introduction to English
Studies
Spring 2007
(CRN 11271)
MW 12:30-1:45p,
EB231
Professor Robert W. Hill
Office Hours, EB 117: Monday/Wednesday, 11:30a-12:15p, by
appointment, and often online.
Phone and voicemail: (770) 423-6346
E-mails: rhill@kennesaw.edu AND rhill41@gmail.com (always send to both
addresses)
RWH website at KSU: http://ksuweb.kennesaw.edu/~rhill
WebCT: http://vista.kennesaw.edu
Nicenet (CLASS KEY = 7Z8874ZE74): http://www.nicenet.org
INTRODUCTION
TO ENGLISH STUDIES. This course introduces students to the reading, writing,
research, and critical strategies essential to the KSU English and English
Education majors. The course draws connections among the four content areas in
the English Department (Literature, Language, Writing, and Theory) and focuses
on their relationship to broader social and personal contexts, enabling
students to make informed choices about their program of study and their
careers. If you have already taken either ENGL 2140 or 2150, do not take this
class.
REQUIRED TEXTS:
Bishop,
Elizabeth. “At the Fishhouses.”
---. “In the Waiting Room.”
---. “One Art.”
a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon.”
---. “The Lovers of the Poor.”
---. “We Real Cool.”
Chesnutt, Charles W. The Marrow of Tradition. 1901. 13 Nov. 2005 http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=49181.
Dunbar, David, and Brad
Reagan. Debunking9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can’t Stand Up to the
Facts.
Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers
of Research Papers, 6th ed.
Harmon, William, and C. Hugh
Holman. A
Handbook to Literature. 10th ed.
Hopkins, Gerard
Manley. “Pied Beauty.”
---. “The Windhover.”
Powers, Richard. The Echo Maker.
Shakespeare,
William. Sonnet XXIX [“When in disgrace with fortune and
men’s eyes”].
---. Sonnet LXXIII [“That time of year thou mayst
in me behold”].
---. Sonnet CXXX [“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”].
Melville, Herman. “Benito Cereno.” 1856. 13 Nov. 2005 http://books.mirror.org/melville/benitocereno/.
Ohmann, Richard. “Teaching and Studying
Literature at the End of Ideology” from English
in
Richter, David, ed. Falling into
Theory: Conflicting Views on Reading Literature. 2nd ed.
Smoke Signals.
Dir. Chris Eyre. Writ.
Stevens, Wallace.
“The Idea of Order at
---. “Of Modern Poetry.”
---. “The Plain Sense of Things.”
---. “Sunday
Morning.”
COURSE OBJECTIVES:
COURSE REQUIREMENTS:
During the course of the semester, students will:
(1) perform a “close reading,” or explication, of a literary work;
(2) write a critical essay;
(3) take three objective tests on genre-specific and literary/critical terms;
(4) write a documented research essay;
(5) engage in weekly online response writings; and
(6) present an oral report for the final exam.
In addition to these requirements, students are expected to read the assigned materials in their entirety, to participate actively in class discussion, and to attend class regularly. The requirements break down as follows:
· The Close Reading—600-750 words, formatted and documented in accordance with MLA style—asks you to analyze a poem in accordance with the principles and practice of New Criticism. These principles and their application will be discussed in class.
· The Critical Essay you’ll write this semester will analyze a text from a particular theoretical/critical perspective and employ at least two relevant secondary sources. The essay should be 1200-1500 words, formatted and documented in accordance with MLA style. I will suggest some topics for this essay, but, upon consultation with me, you may pursue one of your own.
· The Objective Tests will cover generic and critical terms/vocabulary/nomenclature/jargon (e.g., personification, point of view, deconstruction, discourse community) described in your textbooks and in class discussion. These will be short-answer tests.
· The Research Essay you’ll write this semester, employing at least three relevant secondary sources, should be 1800-2000 words formatted and documented in accordance with the MLA style. In it, you will explore at length one of the theoretical, pedagogical, or professional issues raised in class. The topic you select will depend upon your own particular interests: if, for example, you are interested in literary theory, you might take a theoretically informed approach to a literary text; if you are an English education major, you might discuss how one or more of the issues discussed in class affects teaching.
· For the Final Exam, you will make a brief presentation of the substance of your research essay and your reflections on the experience of researching and composing it. I will distribute a guideline for this report shortly before the date of the final; the presentation itself should be no less than three and no more than five minutes in length. A short written statement (no longer than one page) of your presentation is due on the date scheduled for our final.
· Class Participation is a vital part of your learning experience and crucial to the success of this course as a whole. Our class will be a collaborative enterprise, with students actively contributing to our classroom community’s understanding of the texts and topics we’ll explore throughout this semester. Obviously, one cannot contribute much to discussion without first having read the material, nor can one participate at all without attending class. Thus class participation—raising questions or responding to discussion, offering answers, thoughts, or suggestions—together with REGULAR ATTENDANCE, will be important factors in determining your final grade for the course. Three or more unexcused absences constitute grounds for lowering your final grade, as does excessive TARDINESS or early departures; more than four absences, excused or unexcused, will result in a failing grade for the course. In the event that you are late, it is your responsibility to inform me after class. Otherwise, you will be counted absent.
Final Grades will be factored as follows:
Close
reading 10%
Critical
essay 15%
Research
Essay 30%
Objective
Tests 15%
Response
Writing 10%
Class
Participation 10%
Final
Exam 10%
ACADEMIC HONESTY & CLASSROOM CONDUCT:
Every KSU student is responsible for upholding the provisions of the Student Code of Conduct, as published in the Undergraduate and Graduate Catalogs. Section II of the Student Code of Conduct addresses the University’s policy on academic honesty, including provisions regarding plagiarism and cheating, unauthorized access to University materials, misrepresentation/falsification of University records or academic work, malicious removal, retention, or destruction of library materials, malicious/intentional misuse of computer facilities and/or services, and misuse of student identification cards. Incidents of alleged academic misconduct will be handled through the established procedures of the University Judiciary Program, which includes either an “informal” resolution by a faculty member, perhaps resulting in a grade adjustment, or a formal hearing procedure, which may subject a student to the Code of Conduct’s minimum one-semester suspension requirement or worse. (Pertinent hyperlinks to more university information on this subject are readily visible on my main web page: http://ksuweb.kennesaw.edu/~rhill).
ENGLISH STUDIES: HISTORY AND DISCIPLINE
Focus: What is English Studies? When did English become a “discipline”? What does it mean to “study” English, and how is the KSU English major organized?
First Day of Class: Stuff and tone
Week 1 (January 8, 10):
1. David
Richter, “Why We Read: The University, the Humanities, and the
2. Richard Powers’s The Echo Maker, through p. 274.
3. Bring copy of KSU undergraduate catalogue.
4. For next week’s class: (a) email to me info about which three essays from Richter that you will read immediately; (b) browse Harmon’s Handbook and bring your list of recommended items for us all.
STUDYING ENGLISH: WHAT AND HOW WE READ
Focus: What is “language,” and how does it work? What kinds of books do English majors read, and why? What is “the canon,” and who gets to decide? Are there “right ways” to read a text?
Week 2 (January 15 [Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, no KSU classes], 17):
1. Richter, “What We Read: The Literary Canon and the Curriculum after the Culture Wars” (121-36).
2. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., “Canon-Formation, Literary History, and the Afro-American Tradition: From the Seen to the Told” (175-82).
3. Have finished reading Richard Powers’s The Echo Maker.
4. Dennis R.
Preston, “Myth 17: They Speak Really Bad English Down South and in
5. Richter, “How We Read: Interpretive Communities and Meaning” (235-52).
6. Patrocinio Schweickart, “Reading Ourselves: Toward a Feminist Theory of Reading” (http://social.chass.ncsu.edu/wyrick/debclass/schwe.htm).
7.
8. Miall, David S., and Teresa Dobson. “Reading Hypertext and the Experience of Literature” (http://jodi.tamu.edu/Articles/v02/i01/Miall/).
POETRY
Focus: What kind of language is “poetry,” and how does it work? Are there terms, techniques, and conventions unique to the genre? How shall we read, write, and talk about poetry?
Assignment: Objective Test #1, Wednesday, 1/24/07:
Forty
Literary Terms to Study for Objective Test #1 (Test #1 will include twenty of
these) 1. humanism 2. intentional
fallacy 3. image 4. canon 5. Romantic novel 6. light verse 7. literary ballad 8. fatalism 9. stichomythia 10. metonymy 11. dissonance 12. minimalism 13. realist theory 14. elements 15. Lost Generation 16. unities 17. expressionism 18. semantics 19. irony 20. metaphor 21. hedonism 22. enlightenment 23. double entendre 24. pastoral 25. hermeticism 26. ara 27. gothic 28. Gnosticism 29. onomatopoeia 30. Victorian 31. jargon 32.
Week 3 (January 22, 24):
Week 4 (January 29, 31):
READING CLOSELY: POETRY AND NEW CRITICISM
Focus: What is a “close reading,” and how is it done? What makes a close reading different from any other kind of reading? What’s “new” about New Criticism?
Assignment: Essay.1 = Close
Week 5 (February 5, 7):
STRATEGIES FOR
LITERARY THEORY
Focus: Why “theory,” and what is it for? What’s the difference between literary theory and literary criticism? What does literary theory have to do with reading and writing about literature?
Week 6 (February 12, 14):
FICTION
Focus: What is fiction? Are there terms, techniques, and conventions unique to the genre? What is the difference between “fiction” and “non-fiction”? How shall we read, write, and talk about fiction?
Assignment: Objective Test #2
Forty Literary Terms to Study for Objective Test #2 (Test #2 will
include twenty of these) 1. acrostic; 2. aestheticism; 3. affective fallacy;
4. Age of Johnson; 5. Age of Reason;
6. antihero; 7. Calvinism; 8.
carpe diem; 9. cynicism; 10. diction; 11. distich; 12. dramatic monologue; 13. elision; 14.
essentialism; 15. flat
character; 16. Freytag’s Pyramid; 17. idiom; 18. implied author; 19. indeterminacy; 20. interior monologue; 21. intrusive
narrator; 22. Jacobean Age; 23. loose
sentence; 24. mimesis; 25. melopoeia; 26. mystery play;
27. nemesis; 28. objectivism;
29. pantheism; 30. pathos; 31.
priapic; 32. ratiocination; 33. rationalize; 34.
reggae; 35. samizdat; 36. sentimentalism; 37. surrealism; 38.
symbolism; 39. symploce;
40. uchronia
Week 7 (February 19, 21): Herman Melville’s “Benito Cereno.”
Week 8 (February 26, 28): Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition.
March 2 = LAST DAY TO WITHDRAW WITHOUT ACADEMIC PENALTY
March 3-9 = KSU Spring Break, no classes
WRITING AS AN ENGLISH MAJOR
Focus: How and what do English majors write? What are the differences between summary, explication, and analysis? What is MLA style of citation, and how is it used?
Assignment: Critical Essay
Week 9 (March 12, 14):
DRAMA
Focus: What is drama? Are there terms, techniques, and conventions unique to the genre? What is the difference (or the relationship) between a play and its performance? How shall we read, write, and talk about drama? How may we, and may we not, reasonably and usefully speak of “drama” and “film” together?
Assignment: Objective Test #3
Week 10 (March 19, 21):
Week 11 (March 26, 28): Any Shakespeare play you’ve already studied.
Week 12 (April 2, 4): Any other play you’ve seen or studied.
WRITING THE RESEARCH PAPER
Focus: What do English Majors need to know, and how can they find out? What kinds of sources are available to English Majors?
Assignment: Research Paper
Week 13 (April 9, 11):
ENGLISH STUDIES AND INTERDISCIPLINARITY: LITERATURE, POLITICS, AND CULTURE
Focus: How do cultural and historical conditions affect literary texts and the ways in which we read them? What is the difference between the “literary” and the “non-literary”? Can strategies for analyzing literary texts be applied to other forms of writing or communication, e.g., visual, electronic, or digital?
Week 14 (April 16, 18):
WRITING WORKSHOPS AND PORTFOLIOS
Week 15 (April 23, 25—LAST CLASSES):
Here are several ways
we’ll establish and maintain an active learning community during this semester:
(a)
Inform me immediately about your
access to and skill with computer technology;
(b)
Follow our evolving syllabus at my
KSU web site and its reiterations in Nicenet
and WebCT;
(c)
Send a “Here I am” message to BOTH my
e-mail addresses above, including your most accessible telephone number(s);
(d)
Using the Class Key that I will
announce the first day (Class
Key: 7Z8874ZE74),
join our class at http://www.nicenet.org;
(e)
Using your WebCT number and PIN
number, join our WebCT class at http://vista.kennesaw.edu;
(f)
Spend at least fifteen minutes once a
week online, writing thoughtful responses to our readings/viewings, class
discussions, classmates’ writings, etc., being sure all the while to maintain
civil, respectful, considerate rhetoric in dealing with our co-workers in this
important enterprise. (I will read everything but intrude rarely.) Do NOT
duplicate responses, but you must have roughly equal numbers of responses at
each site.
(g)
Meeting only twice a week, we need
always to attend class unless a genuine emergency prevents (usually medical).
RESPONSE WRITING:
“Response writing” includes in-class writing assignments and online
responses. These will not be graded for grammar, spelling, mechanics,
etc., but for their regular, conscientious contribution to our ongoing class
discussion. Bluntly, either it’s done or it isn’t. These are graded twice, A or
F, at midterm and at the end of the course. Unless otherwise instructed, you
should post these responses to Nicenet or WebCT for classmates’ edification and
delight. Spend at least fifteen minutes twice a week online, writing thoughtful
responses to our readings/viewings, class discussions, classmates’ writings,
etc., being sure all the while to maintain civil, respectful, considerate
rhetoric in dealing with our co-workers in this important enterprise. (I will
read everything but will intrude rarely.) Do NOT duplicate responses, but you
must have roughly equal numbers of responses at each site.
[I must say that it grieves me
to have to lay out such prescriptive, quantitative details. Writing these
responses should become second nature, proceeding from your active engagement
in this conversation of scholars. When and if you think of this assignment as a
task to be completed only with numerical exactitude, you have already limited
the way you can be drawn into genuine exchanges with your classmates and—to
speak somewhat abstractly—with ideas. Engagement is really the key—honest
engagement, which will inevitably produce more than the minimum of “assignments
met.” As students of yourselves as well as of subject matter, you ought to feel
some obligation to think about how and why you think the way you do. Playing on
the relatively safe testing-ground of academia, you’ll gain much more strength
and subtlety by entering the game without the impediment of legalistic
numbers-counting.—RWH, 10/17/03, ditto 8/27/06, 1/1/07]
Response writings serve several functions in this class. They can be the basis for class discussion when they are written at the beginning of class; they can guide your preparation for the following class when they are written during or at the end of the period. Those responses written at the end can also indicate to me material that needs further explanation or development at the next meeting. I expect you always to use those writing assignments to develop your ideas and to improve and strengthen your writing abilities. They serve you as an ongoing dialogue with yourself about issues raised in the course and in the process of our ideas’ evolving in class discussions.
EXPECTATIONS:
I expect students to take their work seriously, to come to class prepared and willing to participate, and to treat peers and their ideas with respect.
Formal writing assignments,
especially the documented essay, must demonstrate good academic writing
practices as well as a serious effort to deal with writing problems that may
have been pointed out in earlier written work.
In addition to my comments on
your papers and in class lectures, I will be glad to work with you during
office hours to facilitate your improvement as a writer. You may also go to the
excellent staff in the
I expect students to read well, think well, write well, and speak well as members of this English Studies community. And enjoy the ride.—RWH, 1/7/04 (ditto, 11/25/05, 8/27/06, and 1/1/07).
[This page last revised, January 292007.—RWH]