8/12/2019 207 Syllabus - Fall 14

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Dr. Mike DuvallAssociate ProfessorDepartment of English74 George St. #302843.953.4833duvalljm@cofc.eduOffice Hours: TBA

Tis course will introduce you to a wide range of American literary texts and genresfrom the present back to the pre-colonization and will afford you numerous oppor-tunities to practice literary interpretation from various angles. In the process we willexplore some of the key questions and debates raised by these texts and by Americanliterary studies in general.

If you are an English major, this required course will help put you on a solid footingfor advanced coursework in the major. If you are a non-English major, this coursewill satisfy a humanities distribution requirement in the core curriculum.

Course Goals

Students successfully completing this class will demonstrate ability to:

analyze American literary texts from a variety of angles: formal, historical, cul-tural, inter-textual, and so forth

draw stylistic and thematic connections between American literary texts acrosswriters, genres, and literary periods

identify and interpret key strands of American thought and ideology as they aredeveloped within and across American literary texts

identify and explore signicant problems in and questions about American liter-ary texts and their study

College of Charleston General Education Student Learning Outcomes Applicableto this Class

Students analyze how ideas are represented, interpreted, or valued in various

Texts

1.Te Concise Heath

Anthology of AmericanLiterature, vol. 2ISBN: 9781285080000

2. Numerous texts avail-able only via OAKS inPDF format. You maywish to print these.

expressions of human culture. Students examine relevant primary source materials as understood by the

discipline and interpret the material in writing assignmentsTese outcomes will be assessed using the take-home portion of the nal examina-tion (see below).

Class WebsitesTere are two class websites: http://blogs.cofc.edu/engl207-002crn10594 and ourCofC OAKS site.

Te rst is the main site, where I will post information about the class, includingassignemnt sheets, announcements, handouts, and so forth. OAKSis where youwill turn in assignments, check your grades, and access required readings that arein PDF format.

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Assignments & Grading

Your nal class grade will be determined according to your performance on the assignments describedbelow. For major assignments, instructions will be posted on the main course website. I will also be usingOAKS for collecting assignments and posting grades.

Miscellaneous Short Assignments & Quizzes (10% of the nal grade) short in-class and out-of-class reading quizzes and other assignments designed to help you think about the readings, respond tothe readings, formulate problems and questions for class discussion, and so on. Please note: grades formissed in-class assignments cannot be made up. Te lowest two of these grades will be dropped for thenal course grade.

Synthesis Papers (SPs - 3) (40% of the nal grade) three short papers (3-4 pages) that are designedto bring together the ideas and texts discussed in a unit of study. Tis class has seven units of study (seethe reading and assignment schedule, below). SPs are due afer we complete a unit, on the followingclass day. You will write an SP for Unit I; an SP for Unit II, III, orIV; and an SP for Unit V, VI, orVII.Assignment sheets for each units SP will be posted.

Self-Directed Learning Assignments (SDLAs) (20% of the nal grade) SDLAs are various kinds ofassignments (with varying point values) designed to further your understanding of the courses subjectmatter through a variety of tasks. Te SDLA assignment sheet provides a menu of the available assign-ments and even allows you to develop your own assignments (with prior approval). One half of yourSDLAs must be submitted by 10/9; the second half must be submitted by 11/25.

Final Examination (30% of the nal grade)- a cumulative examination emphasizing content knowl-edge, analysis, interpretation, and synthesis of connections between texts across the whole semester. Itwill consist of a take-home written portion and an in-class objective and short-answer section.

Percentage equivalents for nal grades in this class are as follows:

A= 94-100, A-= 91-93

B+ = 88-90, B = 84-87, B- = 81-83C+ = 78-80, C= 74-77, C- = 71-73D+ = 68-70, D= 64-67, D- = 61-63F = 60 and below

Attendance, Preparation for Class, Missed and Late Assignments

Tere is no official grade penalty in this class for failure to attend a certain number of class meetings. Simi-larly, there is no reward for simply showing up to class meetings.

If you are serious about your education, and I am serious about offering something that goes beyond whatyou could just as easily do on your own, then the attendance issue will sort itself out on its own. Being inclass is the minimal condition for success; frequently not being in class is invariably correlated with not do-

ing well.Since the conversations we will be having about American writing in this class are so important, its worthsaying a few words here about the class climate we need to cultivate in order to have productive and enjoy-able meetings. We will inevitably broach controversial issues in this class: religion, race, gender, ideology,sexuality, and more. Literary studies puts everything on the table. I will do my best to nurture an atmo-sphere of mutual respect, openness, and fairness, balanced with high intellectual standards for backing upthe positions we may take. I ask you to do the same.

I will penalize late major assignments (SPs, SDLAs) at the rate of 5% offthe nal grade per calendar daylate. Other late assignments I will take on a case-by-case basis.

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Use of Personal Technology during Class

You may use tablets or personal computers during class for tasks directly related to the class. For instance, you maytake notes or reference the reading for the day (when the reading is in electronic form). Even quickly looking up aword in an online dictionary would be a good use of technology during class meetings.

You may not use tablets or personal computers for any other purposes during class. Also, please silence your mobilephone when you are in class. And never, ever text (or tweet, or whatever) during class: I nd it terribly distracting,and it may distract your fellow students as well.

If you plan to use a computer in class, since an upright screen in the line of sight can draw attention, even if it is justdisplaying a word processor document or a class text, I ask that you sit on the periphery of the classroom.

Academic Dishonesty and Plagiarism

I treat plagiarism and other forms of academic dishonesty with great seriousness. If I suspect an assignment to be pla-giarized or in some other way not the students own workregardless of whether the assignment is major or minorIassign the grade of zero for the assignment, and I report the violation to the Honor Board for further review and ac-tion. Please consult Te Honor System at the College of Charleston, available online at http://studentaffairs.cofc.edu/

honor-system, for a full statement on the Colleges honor code.Accommodations for Students with Disabilities

If you require academic accommodation due to a disability, please make me aware of the fact in a condential mannerwithin the rst week of class. Should you have questions about disability services at the College of Charleston, pleasecontact the Center for Disability Services at 953-1431 or visit their website at http://disabilityservices.cofc.edu.

Calendar of Readings & Assignments

Please note: this schedule is by no means set in stone. Dates for readings and due dates for assignments may change asneeded. Any changes will be announced in class with ample lead time for you to also make needed adjustments, andyou will be responsible for keeping up with the changes.Te nal exam date and time is included in the schedule (andthats a rm date): please do not make travel arrangements that conict with this (if you already have a conict, please

make the necessary changes to your plans or consider another section of 207).

A note on the readings: you can expect to read up to 50 pages of writing (poetry, prose, and biographical headnotes)before each class meeting, and the reading will be rich in content and ofen challenging in form, style, ideas, and soforth. You will notice that we will read more than we can discuss within class meetings.Tats the nature of the surveybeast: we have a wide territory to cover, but we also need to engage deeply, and attention to one idea or phenomenonmeans not attending to others.

Date Day Topics, Reading, Other Assignments (please note: reading assignments include biographical headnotes)

8/19 Tu Beginnings:the big questions, the small questions, the plan, and the policies

Unit I Contemporary Prose and Poetry: A Starting Endpoint

8/21 T Junot Diaz, Fiesta, 1980 (1674-85)ZZ Packer, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere (1686-1701)John Updike, Varieties of Religious Experience (1652-69)

Please note:numbers in parenthesis are the pages for the reading in the Heath Anthology, vol. 2;readings without page numbers (not in the Heath) can be found on OAKS in the content section

8/25 M Last Day to Drop/Add Classes

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8/26 Tu ENGL 207 Departmental Assessment 1 (not graded, but for in-class credit)

Natasha Tretheway, Poetry (1671-74)Gary Jackson, Poetry (OAKS)Emily Rosko, Poetry (OAKS)

8/28 T Toni Morrison, Recitatif (1398-1415)Sherman Alexie (1599-1600), Because My Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian Who Saw JimiHendrix Play Te Star-Spangled Banner at Woodstock (OAKS)

Unit II Cold War America

9/2 Tu Unit I Synthesis Paper Due on OAKS by start of class

Adrienne Rich, Poetry (1319-24)Allen Ginsberg (1124-25), America (1135-38)

9/4 T Tim OBrien, How to Tell a true War Story (OAKS)Yusef Komunyakaa (1262-63), Facing It (1266-67)

9/9 Tu Kurt Vonnegut, Harrison Bergeron (1175-81)Tomas Pynchon, Entropy (1157-68)

9/11 T Robert Lowell, Jr. (1150-51), For the Union Dead (1153-55)Elizabeth Bishop (970-71), At the Fishhouses & Filling Station (975-78)

Unit III Modernist Experimentation & the New Negro Renaissance

9/16 Tu Unit II Synthesis Paper Due on OAKS by start of class

Langston Hughes, Poetry (805-9)Claude McKay, Poetry (828-30)

9/18 T William Carlos Williams, Poetry (646-51)E. E. Cummings (686-7), [Buffalo Bills] (687), [i like my body when it is with your], [my sweet old etcet-era], & [i sing of Olaf glad and big] (688-90)

9/23 Tu Ernest Hemingway (742-44), On the Quai at Smyrna, Indian Camp, & Soldiers Home (OAKS)

Unit IV Representing the Real

9/25 T Unit III Synthesis Paper Due on OAKS by start of class

Edith Wharton, Roman Fever (545-55)William Dean Howells, Editha (78-90)

9/30 Tu Hamlin Garland, Up the Coul (205-38)

10/2 T Stephen Crane, Te Open Boat (442-62)

10/4 Sat Designated Storm Makeup Day

Unit V Poetic Innovation, Romanticism, and Transcendentalism

Please note: from this point on, all readings are posted on OAKS

10/7 Tu Unit III Synthesis Paper Due on OAKS by start of class

Walt Whitman, selections of Song of Myself

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10/9 T All SDLAs for the 1st half of the semester must be submitted

Emily Dickinson, selected poems

10/14 Tu Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

10/16 T Nathaniel Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown

Edgar Allan Poe, Te Fall of the House of Usher

Unit VI Reason and its Limits

10/21 Tu Unit V Synthesis Paper Due on OAKS by start of class

Benjamin Franklin, from Te Autobiography

10/23 T NO CLASS

10/28 Tu J. Hector St. John de Crvecoeur, from Letters from an American Farmer

10/30 T Tomas Jefferson, fromAutobiography of Tomas Jefferson

Frederick Douglass, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?11/4 Tu ELECTION DAY - NO CLASS

Unit VII An Ending Starting Point: Before the Nation - Contact & Colonization

11/6 T Unit VI Synthesis Paper Due on OAKS by start of class

ENGL 207 Departmental Assessment 2 (not graded, but for in-class credit)

Phillis Wheatley, selected poems

11/11 Tu William Bradford, from Of Plymouth Plantation

11/13 T Anne Bradstreet, selected poems11/18 Tu John Smith, fromA Description of New England

11/20 T lvar Nez Cabeza de Vaca, from Te RelationChristopher Columbus, Letters

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11/25 Tu Unit VI Synthesis Paper Due on OAKS by start of class

All SDLAs for the 2nd half of the semester must be submitted

Review for Final Examination

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12/6 Sat FINAL EXAM: 8-11AM

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