T Th
DeBartolo Hall 208
Susan
Cannon Harris
Susan Cannon Harris
712 Flanner Hall
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN 46556
Email: sharris2@nd.edu
Office phone: (574)
631-5088
Website: http://www.nd.edu/~sharris2/
Web address for this
syllabus: http://www.nd.edu/~sharris2/40509.htm
Books
The Yeats Reader.
Norton Anthology of Modern Irish Drama. Ed. John
Harrington.
The
The Complete Plays. J. M. Synge
Three
Selected Plays. T. C. Murray
Course packet containing
supplemental readings available in 301 O'Shaughnessy; electronic reserves;
occasional handouts.
You are responsible for reading everything mentioned
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
in-class work grade.
You will write three 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 somehow gets to me at or before the start of class that day.
Papers turned in after the class period ends 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 Monday, and you turn it in at 8:00 am
Tuesday, it is a day late and will be docked a full letter grade (an A becomes
a B, and so on). When the sun rises Wednesday morning, that A paper is a C; a C
paper is an F. The clock does not stop on weekends; if the paper is due Friday
and I get it Monday, it is three days late and will be docked accordingly.
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.
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 ahead of time, and I will give you my feedback on it; you will then turn
in the final version a week later, after which you will not have the
opportunity to revise.
Short assignments--any written work that is not a
major paper--must be turned in on time or they will not be accepted. Major
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 8:00 am Tuesday, it will be
docked a full letter grade: an A goes down to a B, and so on. When the sun
rises on Wednesday morning, that A paper is a C; a C paper is an F. The clock
does not stop on weekends; if the paper is due Friday and I get it Monday, it
is three days late and will be docked accordingly.
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 4:00 a.m. and 4:45 a.m. that morning in a burst
of last-minute, caffeeine-fueled desperation, then the draft is incomplete.
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 several groups. At the end of each unit, one of the groups will be
responsible for performing a scene from one of the plays we have read. When
your group does your performance, you will also turn in a 1-2 page paper,
written collectively by your group, explaining and justifying the approach you
took to the scene. Both the performance and the written materials will be
assessed in determining your group's overall grade for the presentation.
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 doctor), 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 25 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
Paper
Paper 3: 30%
Short Assignments: 10%
Staged scenes: 10%
Class participation: 10%
Papers will be assigned letter grades. Shorter
assignments 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 includes your attendance,
group work, and contributions to class discussion.
January 17
Introduction
January 19
Dion Boucicault, Arrah-na-Pogue (handout)
Norton: Lady
Gregory, "Our Irish Theatre" (377-386)
January 24
Norton: Yeats, Cathleen ni
Houlihan (3-11)
Course packet:
1-28
(timeline, materials from United Irishman and The Shan Van Vocht,
Cullingford, Thuente)
January 26
Norton: Murphy,
“Lady Gregory, Co-Author and Sometimes Author…” (436-441)
Course packet: 29-39
(Yeats, “The Acting at St. Teresa's Hall;”
January 31
Synge: In the Shadow of the Glen (99-118)
Course packet:
40-41
(W. B. Yeats, “An Irish National Theatre;” Jack Yeats, “
Feburary 2
Course packet:
42-53
(Lady Gregory, Twenty-Five; Griffith,
Yeats, Connolly, Gonne McBride, '
Synge: Aran
Islands, Introduction and pages 22-23
Week Four:
Riders Of The Storm
February 7
Synge: Riders to the Sea (81-98)
Course packet:
54-65
(Gregory, “The Theatre In The Making;” Holloway's journal, 1904)
February 9
SHORT ASSIGNMENT #1 DUE.
Synge: The
(Everything up to page 50)
Week Six:
Opening Night
February 14
STAGED SCENE #1
February 16
Norton: Yeats, On Baile's
Course packet:
66-72
(Gantz, “The Death of Aoife's Only Son;” Gregory, “The Only Son of Aoife”)
Week Seven:
The Power Of A Lie
February 21
PAPER #1 DUE.
Norton: Gregory, Spreading the News
(40-53); 431-436 (Gregory, Saddlemeyer); 441-446 (Coxhead)
Course Packet:
73-81
February 23
(Gregory: The Gaol Gate; Bourke:
“The Irish Traditional Lament and the Grieving Process”)
Week Eight:
The Riot Act
February 28
Synge: The Playboy of the Western World (1-80)
Course packet: 82-91
(Nic Shiubhlaigh, The Splendid Years; Holloway's journal, 1907)
March 2
SHORT ASSIGNMENT #2 DUE.
Handout: Kilroy,
“The Playboy Riots”
Week Nine:
Quiet Riot
March 7
T. C. Murray, Birthright (27-58)
March 9
Class canceled due to illness.
March 12-18: Spring break. No class.
III. The Ultimate Sacrifice
Week Ten: Send
Lawyers, Guns, and Money
March 21
O'Casey: Shadow of a Gunman
Course packet:
92-121
(Patrick Pearse: "The Mother," "Renunciation,” selections from The
Volunteer and The Irish Worker ")
March 23
Norton: O'Casey, Juno and the Paycock
(204-254)
Week Eleven: A
Terrible State O’ Chassis
March 28
PAPER #2 DUE
Norton: 493-503
(Holloway, Gregory, Fallon)
Course packet:
122-128
(Harris, excerpt from Gender and Modern Irish Drama)
March 30
STAGED SCENE #2
Week Twelve:
Revising The Rising
April 4
O'Casey: The Plough and the Stars
Electronic
Reserve: O’Casey, “The Citizen Army is Born”
Course packet:
129-133
(Nevin, “The Irish Citizen Army”)
April 6
Course packet:
134-160
(Lowery, “The Whirlwind;” material from An Phoblacht; O'Casey vs.
Sheehy-Skeffington)
Week Thirteen
April 11
SHORT ASSIGNMENT #3 DUE
Course packet:
161-169
(Nicoll, “The
Expressionistic Movement”)
April 12
Course packet:
170-end
(O'Casey et al.,
“The Tassie Scorned”)
Week Fourteen:
Misbirth of a Nation
April 18
Norton: Yeats, Purgatory;
Torchiana essay (33-39, 423-430)
April 20
Handout: Yeats,
excerpts from On the Boiler
Week Fifteen:
The End of Sacrifice?
April 25
DRAFT OF PAPER #3 DUE.
The
Death of Cuchulain
April 27
Yeats Reader:
The Resurrection
Week Sixteen
May 2
LAST
CLASS DAY. Drafts returned. Wrap-up and TCEs.
MAY 12: PAPER
#3 DUE by