English 40529: Gender And Irish Drama
Spring 2011
M W 3:00-4:15
334 DeBartolo Hall
Susan
Cannon Harris
Contact Information:
Susan Cannon Harris
220 Decio
Hall
University of Notre Dame
Email:
sharris2@nd.edu
Office phone: (574)
631-5088
Website: http://www.nd.edu/~sharris2/
Web address for this
syllabus: http://www.nd.edu/~sharris2/40529.htm
Web address for
Electronic Reserve list: https://www.library.nd.edu/reserves/ereserves/course.cgi?course=2011S_ENGL_40529_01&submit=GO
Office Hours: Monday &
Wednesday 9:30-11:00 a.m.
In this course, we will examine the relationship
between national and sexual politics through our study of gender and
twentieth-century Irish drama. Beginning with the first controversies
surrounding the representation of women on the Irish stage at the beginning of
the twentieth century, we will study representations of gender and sexuality in
the major canonical figures of the Irish renaissance--W. B. Yeats, J. M.
Synge, Sean O'Casey--while investigating lesser-known female Irish playwrights
from that time such as Lady Augusta Gregory and Teresa Deevy. We will also look at how the treatment of
gender and sexuality changes in the work of postwar and contemporary
Irish playwrights, including Samuel Beckett, Brian Friel,
Anne Devlin, Frank McGuinness, and Marina Carr.
Along with the plays we will study their historical and cultural context and
the sometimes quite vehement responses that these plays evoked in their
audiences. Students will write three papers and do one in-class
presentation.
Books
Harrington, John, ed. Modern and Contemporary Irish Drama. 2nd Edition. W.W. Norton and Company, 2009.
Carr, Marina. Plays One. Faber and Faber, 2000.
Devlin, Anne. Ourselves Alone.
McDonagh, Martin. The
Beauty Queen of Leenane and other plays.
O’Casey, Sean. Three
*not ordered through bookstore
Contextual Materials
Course
packet available in Decio Hall; readings on
electronic reserve; occasional handouts.
Coursework and Policy Statement
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.
Electronic Reserves
To save you money on the course packet, I
have put as much of the reading as possible on electronic reserve. The URL for
this course’s e-reserve list is https://www.library.nd.edu/reserves/ereserves/course.cgi?course=2011S_ENGL_40529_01&submit=GO. There are direct links
embedded in the online syllabus. Print out your own paper copy of the
e-reserves reading and bring it to class on the day that we are discussing it.
Written
Work
You will keep a reading
journal, which you will turn in once a week. (Half of you will turn it in on
Mondays; half of you will turn it in on Wednesdays.) The reading journal has
three purposes: 1) to encourage you to engage with the reading assginments before coming to class to discuss them, 2) to
provide you with a place to work out your ideas about the papers before sitting
down to write them, and 3) to give me a sense of how you are responding to the
reading. The reading journal requirements are as follows:
Reading journal entries must be turned in
on time or they will not be accepted. Individual entries will be graded
on a check/check plus/check minus scale. You will not receive any credit
for entries that do not meet the requirements (i.e., do not deal with that
day’s reading, do not show that you are caught up on the reading, do not engage
in a thoughtful manner with the text, or are less than a full page long). If you do not turn in a journal entry on
time, or it does not receive credit, you will get a zero for that week. I will allow you one opportunity to
“make up” a missed journal by writing one for a different day; after that, if
you miss a journal, you are stuck with the zero. Your reading journal counts
for 10% of your final grade.
Papers
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 have the opportunity
turn in a complete draft ahead of
time and get my feedback on it. 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 receive a passing grade, then you have a complete draft.
If you couldn’t, then you don’t. I will not provide feedback on drafts that
are turned in after the date indicated on the syllabus. After you turn in
the final paper, you will not have the opportunity to revise.
Reading
journals 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 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.
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.
Staged
Scenes
At the beginning of the semester I will
divide you into four working groups. At the end of the semester, each group
will be responsible for staging a scene from one of the plays we have read.
Each group will turn in a 1-2 page paper 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 each presentation.
Attendance
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.
Conferences
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
Plagiarism--attempting to pass off someone
else's work 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 prosecute you to the fullest extent allowable under 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. If questions about citation arise at a time when I am not
available to answer them, please consult the most recent MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers or http://www.nd.edu/~writing/resources/AvoidingPlagiarism.html .
Grading
Your final grade for the course breaks down
as follows:
Paper 1: 20%
Paper 2: 20%
Paper 3: 30%
Staged scenes: 10%
Reading journal: 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.
While
in this classroom, you are expected to treat everyone in the room with respect
at all times. Failure to do so will significantly lower your class
participation grade.
Course Outline
This syllabus is subject to
change. I will inform you of any changes in advance.
I.
Womanhood and Nationhood
Week One
January 19
Introduction
Week Two: Bridget vs. Cathleen
January 24
Norton: 3-11, 401-409,
417-423
Yeats and Gregory, Cathleen
ni Houlihan; Gregory, “Our Irish Theatre;” Colm Toibin, “The Collaborations of Yeats and Lady Gregory;”
Course packet: 1-7
(materials from United Irishman
and The Shan Van Vocht)
Elizabeth Butler Cullingford,
“Thinking of Her as
January 26
Norton: 429-432
Antoinette Quinn, “Cathleen ni Houlihan Writes Back”
Course packet: 8-18
(Yeats, “The Acting at St. Teresa's Hall;”
Week Three: Riders of the Storm
January 31
Synge: In the Shadow
of the Glen
Course Packet: 19-27
W. B. Yeats, “An Irish
National Theatre;” Jack Yeats, “
Handout:
Synge, The
February 2
Class canceled due to
university closing.
Week Four: Keening
February 7
Norton: 58-67
Synge, Riders to the
Sea
Gregory, “The Theatre in the Making”
Course packet: 28-30
Holloway's journal, 1904
February 9
Gregory, The Gaol Gate
Angela Bourke: “The Irish Traditional Lament and the Grieving
Process”
II. Sex and Violence
Week Five: Mythmakers
February 14
Handout:
Yeats, On Baile's
Jeremiah Curtin, selection from Myths and Folk-Lore of
Ireland
Electronic Reserve:
Gantz, “The Death of Aoife's
Only Son;” Gregory, “The Only Son of Aoife”
February 16
Lady Gregory, Grania
Week Six: The Power Of A Lie
February 21
PAPER #1 DUE
Norton: 68-112,
453-4
J. M. Synge, The Playboy of the Western World
Synge, “Preface to The
Playboy of the Western World;”
February 23
Norton: 456-472
Joseph Holloway’s Journal; W. B. Yeats, “The Controversy over
the Playboy of the Western World; Paige Reynolds, “The First Playboy,”
Ben Levitas, “The Playboy of the Western World”
Course packet: 30-34,
50-52, 57-61,
Nic Shiubhlaigh, The Splendid Years;
Kilroy, “The Playboy Riots” (“Pat”’s
review and Synge’s response; “Parricide and Public: Discussion at the Abbey
Theatre”)
Week Seven: Only a Poor Dead Son
February 28
O'Casey: Shadow of a
Gunman
Course packet: 62-83
(Patrick Pearse: "The Mother,"
"Renunciation,” selections from The Volunteer and The Irish
Worker)
March 2
Norton: 197-246
Sean O'Casey, Juno
and the Paycock
Norton: 496-506, 513-516
Joseph Holloway’s journal; Lady Gregory’s journal; Gabriel
Fallon’s memoir; Susan Cannon Harris, “Sensationalizing Sacrifice”
Week Eight: Revising the Rising
March 7
O'Casey: The Plough
and the Stars
O’Casey, “The Citizen Army is Born”
Course packet: 84-88
(Nevin, “The
Irish Citizen Army”)
March 9
Course packet: 89-102,
107-114
(Lowery, “The Whirlwind;” O'Casey vs. Sheehy-Skeffington)
March 13-19: Spring break. No class.
III. Gender Troubles
Week Nine: Misalliance
March 21
Teresa Deevy,
Katie Roche
March 23
Norton: 29-35, 440-442
Yeats, Purgatory
Terence Brown, “Purgatory”
Week Ten: He Said, She Said
March 28
PDF or handout:
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
John Harrington, “The Irish Beckett”
March 30
PAPER #2
DUE.
Film:
Waiting for Godot (Beckett On
Film)
Week Eleven: Bad Boundaries
April 4
Norton: 255-308, 540-552
Brian Friel, Translations
“Program Notes for Translations,” Friel,
“Making a Reply to the Criticisms...”, Morash, “ Translations: A Night at the Theatre”
April 6
Anne Devlin, Ourselves Alone
Norton: 600-606
Mary
Trotter, “Writing Women into Irish Theatre History”
Begona Aretxaga, “Shattering Silence”
Week Twelve: Loyal Sons and Daughters
April 11
Frank
McGuinness, Observe the Sons of
Handout:
Notes on Observe the Sons of
April 13
Frank
McGuinness, Carthaginians
Week Thirteen: Dirty Dancing
April 18
Brian Friel, Dancing at Lughnasa
April 20
Marina Carr: 1-99
Low in the Dark
Week Fourteen: Mother Ireland?
April 25
Easter
Monday. No class.
April 27
Staging
workshop. Revised Paper #2 due.
Week Fifteen: ...The Second Time As Farce
May 2
DRAFTS OF PAPER #3 DUE.
Norton:
352-397; 578-582
Marina Carr, By the
Bog of Cats
interview with Olwen
Fouere
May 4
LAST CLASS DAY. Drafts
returned.
STAGED
SCENES.
MAY 9
PAPER #3 DUE by 5:00 p.m. in Decio 220