Susan
Cannon Harris
Susan Cannon Harris
220 Decio
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/~sharris2/43505.htm
DESCRIPTION
The
Gathering. Anne Enright.
A Green and Mortal Sound:
Short Fiction by Irish Women Writers. Ed. Louise DeSalvo.
The
Country Girls Trilogy. Edna O’Brien.
The
Land of Spices. Kate O’Brien.
The
Dark. John McGahern.
At
Swim, Two Boys. Jamie O’Neill.
Course packet available in 131 Decio (later, 301 O’Shaughnessy)
Electronic reserve.
Occasional handouts.
You are responsible for reading
everything mentioned on the syllabus unless I specifically tell you otherwise.
(I will update the course outline on the web as it changes and notify you of
changes via email; please check your email regularly.) Because most of class
time will be spent working with the reading, failure to do the required reading
will hurt you, your group, and the class in general. It will also lower your
in-class work grade.
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, that counts as an unexcused absence.
The only excuses for absence that I
accept are religious holidays, physical or mental illness (verified by the
appropriate health care professional), or serious emotional trauma. I will
allow 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 have four unexcused absences you will
fail the course. I will notify you if you are in danger of failing due
to absences.
You will write one major seminar paper of 15-25 pages, which will be submitted to
me electronically before 8:00am Friday,
May 11. There will be shorter assignments to prepare you for this paper.
Reading Journals.
You will keep a reading journal, which
you will turn in once a week. (Half of you will turn it in on Tuesdays; half of
you will turn it in on Thursdays.) The reading journal has three purposes: 1)
to encourage you to engage with the reading assignments before coming to class
to discuss them, 2) to provide you with a place to work out your ideas about
the seminar paper before you begin to write it, 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 in hard copy on time or they will not be accepted. Individual
entries are given a credit/no credit mark and written feedback. You will not
receive credit for entries that do not meet the basic 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, are less than a
full page long, or are late). 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. Your “credit rating” for your journal accounts
for 5% of your final grade. The amount of effort you put into your reading
journal will be factored into your course participation grade. Save your
journal entries when you get them back, because you will be asked to
resubmit them along with your final paper. Due dates for the journal are not
listed on the syllabus.
Statement of
Interests.
Midway through the semester you will
write an 3-5 page essay in which you identify and
discuss the issues or questions that have most interested you, and identify
research topics that you might wish to pursue in your seminar paper. This will
give you a chance to focus your ideas before you have to actually begin writing
the paper, and it will give me an opportunity to make suggestions about what to
look for as you begin planning for your research paper.
Topic Proposal and
Bibliography.
Several weeks before your final paper is
due I will ask you to turn in a 3-5 page topic proposal and bibliography
explaining what your final paper will be about and listing works you plan to
use.
Draft.
Before the final paper is due I will
require you to turn in a complete draft. I will give it back to you with
feedback that will help you revise, but you will not be graded on it. However,
doing the draft is a basic requirement of the course. If you fail to turn the
draft in on time, or if your draft is not complete, your final paper will be
docked a full letter grade. If you NEVER turn in a draft, your final grade for
the COURSE will be docked a full letter grade.
A draft is “complete” if it fulfills the
requirements of the assignment. The rule of thumb I use is that if you could
hand the paper in as it is and still receive a passing grade, then it's a
complete draft. If the draft is, for instance, three pages long, 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, caffeine-fueled desperation, then
the draft is incomplete.
All assignments will printed out and
turned in at the beginning of class on the days they are due. 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 class
begins that day.
Short assignments—journals
plus the statement of interests and topic proposal and bibliography—must be
turned in on time or they will not be
accepted.
Unless I ask you to turn your work in electronically, all assignments must be
handed to me on hard copy at the beginning of class on the day on which they
are due. If your draft is turned in late, your final paper will be docked a full letter grade. If you
turn your final seminar paper
late, it will be docked a full
letter grade for every day it is late. For instance, if you turn your final paper in after 5:00 on the
day it is due, it will be considered half a day late and your final paper will
be docked half a letter grade--an A will go down to a B+, etc. If your paper is
due on Tuesday, and it is turned in at 8:00 am Wednesday, it will be docked a
full letter grade: an A goes down to a B, and so on. When the sun rises on
Thursday morning, that A paper is a C; a C paper is an
F. The clock does not stop on weekends; if the final paper is due Friday and I
get it Monday, it is three days late and will be docked accordingly.
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 research groups. Each group will be responsible for leading one
class discussion. Your research and preparation (documented in a bibliography
and lesson plan) will be assessed along with the actual presentation and
discussion of the assigned text(s) in class to determine your group's overall
grade. Everyone in your group will receive the same grade.
Plagiarism--attempting to pass off
someone else's writing as your own--is a serious offense and will not be
tolerated. All outside sources must be cited correctly and in accordance with
MLA guidelines. This goes for your
drafts, journals, 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 by the Academic Honor Code.
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.
Unless I have notified you in advance, 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.
Your final grade for the course breaks
down as follows:
Seminar paper: 60%
Presentation: 10%
Statement of Interests and Topic Proposal/Bibliography: 15%
Class participation: 15%
The paper, presentation, statement of
interests and topic proposal/bibliography will be assigned letter grades.
Journals will be marked credit/no credit. Your reading journal credit rating
will account for 1/3 of your class participation grade, or 5% of your final
grade for the course.
The remaining 2/3 of your class
participation score is based on your attendance, the quality of your reading
journal, your contributions to group work, your contributions to class
discussion, and your conduct in the classroom.
I. Sex, Violence, and The
Censorship, 1924-1942
January
17
Introduction
January 19
Handout:
A Brief History of Ireland Before Partition
Liam
O’Flaherty:
“The
Sniper,” “Civil War,” “Spring Sowing,” “Milking Time”
January
24
Handout or course packet:
A Somewhat More Detailed History of Ireland After Partition
Sean O’Faolain:
“Midsummer Night Madness,” “The Small Lady”
January 26
Course Packet 1-18, 40-53:
Selections from The Problem of
Undesirable Printed Matter
Addresses to men and women from Dublin Eucharistic Congress
of 1932
January
31
Kate O’Brien, Land Of Spices (Part One: Rosary Sunday)
Course Packet:
February 2
Kate O’Brien, Land Of Spices (Part Two: La Pudeur Et La Politesse)
Week Four: Something Understood
February
7
Kate O’Brien, Land of Spices (Part Three: June)
February 9
Handout:
Eibhear Walshe,
“Banned: 1934-41”
Course Packet:
“New Novels” (Irish Times March 8, 1941);
Sean O’Faolain, “Standards and Taste,” “Our Nasty Novelists,”
C. B. Murphy, “Sex, Censorship, and the Church,” “Censorship: Principle and
Practice;” Monk Gibbon, “In Defence of Censorship”
II. Writing In The Dark, 1942-1969
Week
Five: Safe Home?
February
14
Handout:
Selections
from the Constitution of Ireland, 1947
James M. Smith, “The Politics of Sexual Knowledge:
The Origins of Ireland’s Containment Culture and the Carrigan Report (1931)”
February
16
Mary
Lavin: “Sunday Brings Sunday,” “Sarah”
Week
Six: Wild Irish Girls
February 21
Edna
O’Brien, The Country Girls chapters
1-12
(3-112 in The
Country Girls Trilogy)
February
23
Edna O’Brien, The
Country Girls chapters 13-end
(112-175
in The Country Girls Trilogy)
Course Packet:
“The
Lady’s Not For Burning”
Week
Seven: Confessions
February
28
John McGahern,
The Dark, Chapters 1-20 (7-126)
Michel
Foucault, “The Incitement to Discourse”
March
1
John McGahern,
The Dark, Chapters 21-31 (126-191)
Course Packet:
Point
of View in The Dark
Week
Eight: Limbo
March 6
Mary Lavin, “The Lost Child”
March
8
Statement of
Interests Due.
Film: Sex In
A Cold Climate
March 11-17: Spring break.
III. Comings Out,
1978-2007
Week
Nine: Dirty Laundry
March 20
DeSalvo: 31-38, 62-78, 244-257
Leland Bardwell, “The
Dove Of Peace;” Eilis ni Dhuibhne, “Midwife To The
Fairies;” Julia O’Faolain, “Melancholy Baby”
March
22
Kathryn Conrad, “Fetal Ireland: Reproduction, Agency, and
Irish National Discourses”
Week
Ten: Another Country
March 27
Mary
Dorcey: “A Noise from the Woodshed,” “Introducing Nessa”
March 29
Jamie O’Neill, At Swim, Two Boys chapters 1-7 (3-152)
Week
Eleven: Green Triangles
April
3
Jamie O’Neill, At Swim: Two Boys chapters 8-10 (153-249)
April
5
Jamie O’Neill, At Swim, Two Boys
Chapters 11-15 (250-369)
Week
Twelve: Excess of Love?
April 10
Jamie O’Neill, At Swim, Two Boys
Chapters 16-18 (437-482)
April 12
Jamie O’Neill, At Swim, Two Boys
Chapters 19-22 (483-end)
Week
Thirteen: Lost and Found
April
17
Anne Enright, The Gathering chapters 1-21(1-140)
APRIL 18
TOPIC PROPOSAL/BIBLIOGRAPHY SUBMITTED ELECTRONICALLY BY
5:00pm.
April
19
Conferences. No class.
Week
Fourteen: Secrets and Lies
April
24
Anne Enright, The Gathering chapters 22-39 (141-261)
April
26
DRAFT OF FINAL PAPER DUE.
Week
Fifteen
May
1
Drafts returned. Last class day.
PAPER
#3 submitted ELECTRONICALLY by 8:00a.m. Friday, May 11