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ENGLISH 2312, AMERICAN LITERATURE I

Fall 2006, 10:00-10:50 MWF, Irby 201

 

Dr. Mike Schaefer                                                                                                     Office phone: 450-5119

Office: Irby 408                                                                                                          Home phone: 329-0538

e-mail: schaefer@uca.edu

course website: http://faculty.uca.edu/~schaefer

 

Office Hours: 9:00-10:00, 11:00-12:00 MWF; 8:15-9:15, 11:00-12:00 TTh; and by appointment

 

COURSE FOCUS: Literature provides "a clarification of life--not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but . . . a momentary stay against confusion."—Robert Frost, “The Figure a Poem Makes”

 

"Literature, whether handed down by word of mouth or in print, gives us a second handle on reality . . . enabling us to encounter, in the safe, manageable dimensions of make-believe the very same threats to integrity that may assail the psyche in real life; and at the same time providing through the self-discovery which it imparts a veritable weapon for coping with these threats whether they are found within our problematic and incoherent selves or in the world around us."—Chinua Achebe, “What Has Literature Got to Do with It?”

 

“It is not the literal past that rules us, but images of the past.”—cultural historian George Steiner, quoted in The Last Bolshevik

 

“That which we remember is, more often than not, that which we would like to have been; or that which we hope to be.  Thus our memory and our identity are ever at odds; our history ever a tall tale told by inattentive idealists.”—Ralph Ellison, Shadow and Act.

 

“For every attitude that is supposed to be distinctively American one can find an opposite stance that is no less so . . ..There is no such thing as an essentially American world view any more than there is an essentially American landscape.  Anyone who thinks otherwise shows that they have not grasped the most important fact about America, which is that it is unknowable.”—British historian John Gray, writing in Granta magazine, 2002

 

“In art as in science there is no delight without the detail, and it is on detail that I have tried to fix the reader’s attention.  Let me repeat that unless these are thoroughly understood and remembered, all ‘general ideas’ (so easily acquired, so profitably resold) must necessarily remain but worn passports allowing their bearers shortcuts from one area of ignorance to another.” —Vladimir Nabokov

 

TEXT: The Norton Anthology of American Literature, sixth edition, volumes A & B (boxed together as package 1)

 

READING SCHEDULE:

 

Aug. 25:                 Introduction to course

 

Weeks 1-2:            “Literature to 1700”; John Smith—all selections; William Bradford—all selections

 

Weeks 3-4:            Iroquois Creation Story; Pima Stories of the Beginning of the World;
Native American Trickster Tales—Winnebago, Mourning Dove

 

Week 5:                  Anne Bradstreet—“The Author to Her Book,” “Before the Birth of One of Her Children,” “To My Dear and Loving Husband,” “A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment,” “In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet,” “In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Anne Bradstreet,” “On My Dear Grandchild Simon Bradstreet,” “Here Follows Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House”

 

Week 6:                  Mary Rowlandson--A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson            FIRST ESSAY DUE MONDAY, OCT. 2

                               

Weeks 7-8:            “American Literature 1700-1820”; Jonathan Edwards—“Personal Narrative”; Benjamin Franklin—The Autobiography MIDTERM DUE MONDAY, OCT. 16

 

Week 9:                  Phillis Wheatley—“On Being Brought from Africa to America,” “Thoughts on the Works of Providence,” “To S. M., a Young African Painter,” “To His Excellency General Washington”        

 

Week 10:                Philip Freneau—“On the Emigration to America and Peopling the Western Country,” “The Indian Burying Ground”; “American Literature 1820-1865”; James Fenimore Cooper—The Pioneers Chapter III. [The Slaughter of the Pigeons]

 

Week 11:                Ralph Waldo Emerson—“The American Scholar”

 

Week 12:                Walt Whitman—“Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,” “The Wound-Dresser”

 

Weeks 13-14:        Nathaniel Hawthorne—“The May-Pole of Merry Mount,” “Young Goodman
                                 Brown,” “My Kinsman, Major Molineux”
                                
SECOND ESSAY DUE FRIDAY, DEC. 1

 

 Week 15:               Herman Melville—“The Portent,” “The March into Virginia,” “A Utilitarian View of the Monitor’s Fight,” “The House-Top”

 

ATTENDANCE:  Attendance--on time--is mandatory.  Four or more absences will lower your class participation grade, as will recurrent late arrival.  If you miss six classes, you'll have one week after the last absence to see me with a believable excuse and a promise to sin no more; if you don't make this deadline, you'll be dropped from the course with a WF grade.  And if you miss a seventh class following our conference about the six absences, you'll likewise be dropped with a WF.

 

EXAMS: Our midterm exam will cover the course material through October 13.  The final exam will have one section covering the course material from October 16 to the end of the semester and then a second section taking in the whole course, asking you to make connections between the various works and periods we've studied.  Both of these exams will consist of essay questions and both will be take-home in format.  I'll discuss these exams and their make-up in greater detail in class about a week before their dates.

 

PAPERS:  I'll hand out a detailed explanation of the out-of-class essay assignments several weeks before each one is due.  I'll discuss specific grading criteria in class, but note from the outset that although your essay's content is the most important factor in determining your grade, how well you write (i.e., thesis, organization, style, coherence, grammar, etc.) will affect this grade as well, since even the best ideas in the world aren't really useful if you can't communicate them intelligibly to a reader.  You have the option to rewrite one of these essays, with the revision grade averaged in with the original to produce the final grade for that paper; you may turn in this rewrite at any time through 5 pm Friday, Dec. 15.  All essays are due at the beginning of class on the date assigned.  I'll accept a paper late, but it will lose one letter grade for every class meeting it's late.  Note: You must submit all required written work to receive a grade other than F for the course.  Please type your essays, and use only a paper clip to fasten your pages, not staples or plastic binders or any other form of attachment.  Regarding other matters of form, follow MLA (Modern Language Association) style, which can be found in writing manuals such as the Holt Handbook, the Harbrace Handbook, and the MLA Handbook.  All of these are available in the University Center for Communication Support and the library if you don't have a copy of one.

 

JOURNALS: Each student must keep a journal of his or her thoughts on each of the assigned readings, with one entry devoted to the reading before we discuss it in class.  Ordinarily, I’ll pose a question for you to respond to in each entry, with that response consisting of at least three paragraphs, but beyond that requirement you're also free to write as much more as you wish about whatever intrigues you, inspires you, confuses you, or upsets you about the work in question, and about this work's relationship to other works you've read and its relevance to human life in general and your own life in particular.  There are two goals to this assignment, both of which you're probably already aware of.  First, the act of writing stimulates thinking: even if at the outset you feel you have nothing at all to say about a given work, you'll find that putting fingers to keyboard will bring ideas forth; if you do have some ideas to start with you'll find that writing them down will cause you to extend and refine them.  Second, as is obvious from what's just been said, these entries will prove a rich source of class discussion and exam topics.

You'll submit these journals by e-mail to the address listed for me at the top of the syllabus.  Each entry must reach me no later than 24 hours prior to the first class meeting during which we'll discuss that work.  I won’t accept a journal entry after the due date, but you are allowed to miss one journal with no penalty.  I'll grade you for each submission: if your entry shows an honest, thoughtful effort to come to grips with the work, you'll get somewhere from 8 to 10; if it shows a solid but not all that insightful effort, you'll get somewhere from 4 to 7; if you don't do the entry, or if you blow it off with superficial comments, or if you just crib ideas from critics and label them as your own, you'll get somewhere from 0 to 3.  This does not mean that you're forbidden to read criticism to get your ideas going; you're welcome to do so, and to address critics' ideas in your journal, as long as you clearly identify which ideas are the critic's and which are your own in response to what that critic has to say.  At the end of the semester, I’ll figure your final journal grade by taking the ratio of the total points you’ve earned to the total points possible.  If we do twelve journals, for instance, then the total possible score will be 120; if you earn 100, then your percentage is 84, which means a B for your final journal grade.  (My grading scale is 91-100=A, 80-90=B, 70-79=C, 60-69=D, below 60=F.)

 

GRADES:  Your final grade will come from the following percentages:

Attendance/Participation:           20%

Journal:                                          20%

Midterm Exam:                              15%

Final Exam:                                     15%

First Essay:                                    15%

Second Essay:                               15%

 

ACADEMIC HONESTY:  Knowingly presenting someone else’s work as your own, whether on an exam, journal, or any other format, constitutes plagiarism.  Plagiarism carries serious penalties, from failure on a particular assignment to failure for the course.  If you ever have any questions on this subject, please feel free to ask me about them, without fear of embarrassment.

 

UNIVERSITY POLICIES: If you have questions about the university’s academic policies, guidelines regarding sexual harassment, or any other matters, please consult the relevant sections of the UCA Student Handbook.  UCA adheres to the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act.  If you need an accommodation under this act due to a disability, contact the UCA Office of Disability Services at 450-3135.