M W F
Brownson
Hall 307
Susan
Cannon Harris
Susan Cannon Harris
712 Flanner Hall
University of Notre Dame
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/~sharris2/478E.htm
In this course,
we will study the drama written and produced in
Books
Beckett, Samuel. Endgame.
Behan, Brendan. The Complete Plays.
Euripides, Medea.
Friel, Brian. Dancing at Lughnasa.
Friel, Brian. Selected Plays.
Leeny, Cathy ed. Seen and Heard: Six New Plays By Irish Women.
McGuinness, Frank. Observe the Sons of
Carr,
MacDonagh, Martin. The Lieutenant of Inishmore.
Course packet available in 301 O’Shaughnessy.
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:
* a 3-5 page contextualized close reading of a scene from one of the
plays
* a 4-6 page analysis of two or three works by the same author
* an 8-10 page research paper
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
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, which we will work on in class; you will then turn in the final version a
week later, after which you will not have the opportunity to revise.
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.
Your work is considered turned in when I find it. If you leave a
paper at my office Thursday night and I do not come across it until Monday
morning, it will be docked four letter grades. For this reason, if you are
turning a paper in late, it is a good idea to contact me and arrange a delivery
time.
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 must be documented in either MLA or
Chicago style. 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 20 points
with each unexcused absence. If you accumulate six unexcused absences (including
your freebie), you will fail the course. 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 2: 25% Paper 3: 30%
Staged scenes: 15%
Class participation: 10%
Papers and staged scenes will be assigned letter
grades. 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 14
Introduction
January 16
Sean O’Casey, Juno
And The Paycock (handout)
Coursepacket: 4-14
(Terence Brown, “After the Revolution”)
January 19
Behan: The Quare Fellow
January 21
Coursepacket:
15-30
(O’Sullivan, “Six
Months of Freedom” and “Mountjoy Jail”)
January 23
Coursepacket:
31-38
(Littlewood,
“Thirty-Nine;” O’Sullivan, “Rise of the Quare Fellow”)
January 26
Coursepacket:
39-77 (Behan, An Giall; Brown, “An Irish Ireland”)
January 28
Behan: The
Hostage
Coursepacket:
78-87 (Littlewood)
January 30
Coursepacket:
88-98
(Brown,
“Stagnation and Crisis”)
Week Four: No Exit
February 2
Beckett, Endgame
February 4
Film of Endgame
February 6
STAGED SCENE #1.
Week Five: We’ve Got Trouble
February 9
Friel: Freedom
of the City
Coursepacket:
99-110
(Bloody Sunday
chronology, “A Short Historical Background…”)
February 11
Coursepacket:
111-133
(Deane,
“Foreword;” McCann, “Whitewash”)
February 13
PAPER #1 DUE.
Coursepacket:
134-140
(Times of
London coverage)
Week Six: The Fifth Province
February 16
Friel: Faith
Healer
Coursepacket:
141-143 (“Editorial1/Endodermis”)
February 18
Coursepacket:
144-158 (Kearney, “Myth and Terror”)
February 20
Coursepacket:
159-161 (O’Leary: “The Riddle of Sacrifice”)
Week Seven: The Landscape Of Fact
February 23
Friel: Translations
February 25
Coursepacket:
162-178
(Preface;
“Translations and a Paper Landscape;” “A New Look at the Language Question”
February 27
Coursepacket:
179-186 (Deane, “Civilians and Barbarians”)
Week Eight: Rituals
March 1
Friel: Dancing
at Lughnasa
March 3
Coursepacket: 187-200
(“Editorial”; “Women in Irish Mythology,” “Women in Early Irish Myths
and Sagas”)
March 5
STAGED SCENE #2.
March 6-14: Spring Break. No Class.
Week Nine: Maeve’s Revenge
March 15
Seen and Heard: Mary Elizabeth Burke-Kennedy,
Women in Arms
March 17
PAPER #2 DUE.
Coursepacket:
201-213
(Boland, A Kind
Of Scar)
March 19
Week Ten: My Mother, The Monster
Euripides: Medea
Week Eleven: For The Birds
March 29
Coursepacket:
214-248
(Paula Meehan, Mrs.
Sweeney)
March 31
Handout: Heaney,
“Sweeney Astray”
April 2
STAGED SCENE #3.
Week Twelve: Carson’s Dance
April 5
McGuinness: Observe
the Sons of Ulster Marching Toward the Somme
Coursepacket:
249-257
(“Notes for Observe”; program from
Huntington Theatre Company production)
April 7
Coursepacket:
257-258
(Siegel, “To Die
For”)
April 9
Good Friday. No
Class.
Week Thirteen: The Dogs Of War
April 12
Easter Monday.
No Class.
April 14
Coursepacket:
269-end
(O’Kelly, The
Dogs)
April 16
O’Kelly, The Dogs (continued)
Week Fourteen: Ultraviolent
April 19
Martin McDonagh: The
Lieutenant of Inishmore
April 21
STAGED SCENE #4
April 23
Conferences.
No class.
Week Fifteen: Curtains
April 26
DRAFT OF PAPER #3
DUE.
April 28
Evaluations
WEDNESDAY, MAY
5: PAPER #3 DUE by 5:00 p.m. in Flanner 712