M W
O’Shaughnessy
208
Susan Cannon Harris
712 Flanner Hall
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN 46556
Email: Susan.C.Harris.90@nd.edu
Office phone: (574)
631-5088
Website: http://www.nd.edu/~sharris2/
Web address for this
syllabus: http://www.nd.edu/~sharris2/40129.htm
This course will
focus on a principle that underlies several of the critical methodologies
practiced widely today: understanding the relationship between literary works
and their cultural and historical context. We will focus specifically on how
the expansion (and, eventually, disintegration) of the
More specifically, in this course you will work on:
* understanding the critical methodologies and debates that influence
our approaches to the study of literature
* reading and analyzing texts in their literary, historical, ideological
and critical contexts
* researching these contexts
* writing clear, analytical and critical prose
* working collaboratively
Books
A Modest Proposal. Jonathan Swift. (in
packet)
Frankenstein. Mary Shelley.
Heart of Darkness. Joseph Conrad.
Things Fall Apart. Chinua Achebe.
Course packet available in 301 O’Shaughnessy ($20.40)
You are
responsible for reading everything on the syllabus unless I specifically tell
you otherwise. Because most of class time will be spent working with the
reading, failure to do the reading will hurt you, your group, and the class in
general. It will also lower your class participation grade.
You will write three papers:
* a 3-5 page contextualized close reading of Swift’s A Modest Proposal
* a 4-6 page analytical argument about Frankenstein
* an 8-10 page research paper involving Heart of Darkness or Things Fall Apart
There will be several short assignments designed to prepare you for the
papers.
All
assignments will be turned in at the beginning of class on the days that the
syllabus says they are due, unless I inform you that the due dates have been
changed. If you are absent on the day that an assignment is due, even if your
absence is excused, it is your responsibility to make sure it gets to me on
time.
Short assignments--any written work that is not a
major paper--must be turned in on time or they will not be accepted. Papers
turned in after the class period on the day they are due will be considered
half a day late and docked half a letter grade--an A will go down to a B+, etc.
Starting at dawn on the day after the paper is due, the paper will be docked a
full letter grade for every day it is late. For instance, if a paper is due on
Monday, and it is turned in at
Your work is
considered turned in when I find it. If you leave a paper at my office
Thursday and I do not come across it until Monday, I will assume you turned it
in Monday and dock you accordingly. For this reason, if you are turning in a
late paper, it is a good idea to contact me and arrange a delivery time.
I do not
normally accept papers submitted electronically. If due to some sort of
emergency it is impossible for you to produce a paper copy of your work in time, contact me before the deadline and we will work out a
solution.
For the
first and second papers you will have the opportunity to revise and resubmit.
That is, if you are unhappy with your performance, you have one week to work on
the paper and turn it in again. The higher of the two grades will be recorded
(i.e., if you make the paper worse when you revise it, your first grade will
stand; if you make it better, your first grade is thrown out). For the final
paper, you will turn in a complete draft a week ahead of time, and we will work
on it in class; you will then turn in the final version a week later, after
which you will not have the
opportunity to revise.
A draft is
“complete” if it fulfills the requirements of the assignment. The rule I use is
that if you could hand the paper in as it is and still receive a passing grade,
then you have a complete draft. If you couldn’t, then you don’t. If the draft
is, for instance, significantly shorter than the minimum length requirement, or
does not respond to the assignment, or was obviously written between
All
written work must be typed on a word processor. Papers must be
double-spaced throughout (except for block quotations and footnotes). Include
page numbers. Margins should be no wider than 1.25” on the right and left and
1” on the top and bottom (standard setting on most word processors). The font
size must be 12-point. Papers that do not meet these requirements will be
docked half a letter grade. All papers must include a title, the number of the
assignment, your name, my name, and the date.
At the beginning of the semester I will divide you into four research groups.
Your group will be responsible for one in-class presentation during the
semester. Each presentation will include as a written component an annotated
bibliography. Both the oral presentation and the written materials will be
assessed in determining your group’s overall grade for the presentation.
For units when your group is not doing a presentation, your group will
be required to generate a source report. We will discuss exactly what this
means later on. Your source report will be presented in class; you will also
submit a written version.
Because this
class places a tremendous importance on student interaction, your presence and
participation are crucial to the well-being of the class as a whole. Attendance
is mandatory. If you miss ten minutes or more of a class, either at the
beginning or at the end, that counts as an unexcused absence.
The only
excuses for absence that I accept are religious holidays, physical or mental
illness (verified by a health care professional), or serious personal trauma. I
will allow you one unexcused absence for the semester free of charge; after
that, your in-class work grade drops 20 points with each unexcused absence. If
you accumulate four unexcused absences (including your freebie), you will fail
the course. As required by
university policy, I will notify you in writing if you are in danger of failing
the course due to unexcused absences.
I will
always be available in my office during my office hours for conferences. If you
can't make those hours you can always set up an appointment with me for another
time.
Plagiarism--attempting
to pass off someone else's writing as your own--is a serious offense and will
not be tolerated. This goes for your drafts and short assignments as well as
the major papers. If I find evidence that you have plagiarized any part
of any assignment, I will turn the evidence over to the departmental
honesty committee, who will then prosecute you according to the procedure
outlined in the university's Academic Honor Code.
We will
discuss plagiarism in class, and work on how to cite sources properly to avoid
confusion about what is your work and what is someone else's. If at any point
you are uncertain about whether you may have plagiarized from a source you used,
please ask me about it before turning in the paper.
Your final
grade for the course breaks down as follows:
Paper 1: 20%
Paper
Paper
Shorter assignments: 10%
Presentations: 10%
Class participation: 10%
Papers and presentations will be assigned letter grades. Shorter
assignments (including source reports) will be graded on a check/minus/plus
system. These grades will be converted into percentages at the end of the
semester and averaged out, at which point final grades will be assigned.
Your class participation grade covers your attendance, group work,
contributions to class discussion, and source reports.
January 17
Introduction
January 22
Course Packet: 1-5
Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal
January 24
Course Packet: 6-28
(A Short View of
the State of Ireland,” note on religion; Irish history before 1800; William
Petty, excerpts from A Treatise of
January 29
Course Packet: 29-38
Map of the Cromwellian settlement
Selections from Abbott, “
January 31
Course Packet: 39-59
Thomas Malthus, An
Essay on the Principle of Population, introduction and chapters 1 & 2
February 5
Short Assignment #1 Due.
Course Packet: 60-76
Theodore Allen,
“Social Control and the Intermediate Strata;”
cartoons from Punch;
Augusto Monterroso, “Mister
February 7
Research
presentation with Laura Fuderer in 222 Hesburgh Library
February 12
Source reports due.
PRESENTATION #1.
February 14
PAPER #1 DUE.
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein,
5-90 (author’s preface, Percy Shelley’s preface, and all of Volume I).
February 19
Course Packet: 77-101
Mary
Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Women
February 21
Shelley: Frankenstein 91-152 (Volume II)
February 26
Course Packet: 144-163
Malchow,
“Frankenstein’s Monster and Images of Race”
February 28
Short Assignment #2 Due.
Course Packet:
125-143
Pitt and
Wilberforce’s speeches on the slave trade; Edmund Burke, Reflections on the
Revolution in
March 5
Shelley:
Frankenstein 153-225 (Volume III and conclusion).
March 7
Source Reports Due.
PRESENTATION #2
March 10-18: Spring Break. No Class.
March 19
Joseph Conrad: 3-31, 242-278, 292-293
Heart of
Darkness Part I
Conrad’s
letters, Congo Diary, etc.
March 21
PAPER #2 DUE.
Course packet: 164-168
G. W. F. Hegel, “
March 26
Conrad: 31-54, 160-171
Heart of Darkness Part II
Edmund D. Morel,
“Property and Trade versus Forced Production”
March 28
Conrad: 131-159
Roger Casement, “The
Course Packet: 169-179
Mark Twain, “King Leopold’s Soliloquy”
Week Eleven: Mistah
Kurtz
April 2
Conrad: 55-77, 171-181
Heart of Darkness Part III
Adam Hochschild, “Meeting Mr. Kurtz”
April 4
Conrad:
336-348
Chinua Achebe, “An Image of Africa: Racism in
Conrad’s Heart of Darkness”
Week Twelve: Another
Country Heard From
April 9
Easter Monday. No Class.
April 11
I am unavailable. No Class.
IV: Consequences
Week Thirteen: The
Empire Writes Back
April 16
Source Reports Due.
PRESENTATION #3
April 18
Short
Assignment #3 Due.
Achebe: Things Fall Apart, Part
I
Course Packet: 183-201
Chinua Achebe, “The Role of the Writer in a New
Nation;” “The Black Writer’s Burden;” James Jonson Sweeney and Paul Radin,
“Preface” to African Folk Tales and Sculpture
Week Fourteen: Onward
Christian Soldiers
April 23
Achebe: Things Fall Apart Parts
II & III
Handout:
David Livingstone, “
April 25
DRAFT OF PAPER # 3 DUE.
Course Packet: 219-end
Buchi Emecheta, “A Man Needs Many Wives”
Week Fifteen: The
Present Moment
April 30
Source Reports Due.
PRESENTATION # 4
May 2
LAST CLASS DAY.
Drafts returned. Wrap-up and TCEs.
MAY 8: PAPER #3 DUE by