Old Syllabi

Syllabus: Spring 2015

First day: introductions and course outline, reading Wordsworth's "Solitary Reaper"

• T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1917, anthology 2287) and companion readings

• Michael H. Whitworth, Introduction to Modernism (PWeb)
• In Our Time podcast on Literary Modernism
• Robert Harrison of Stanford (and the podcast Entitled Opinions) on Prufrock and Dante
• Contemporary Literary Criticism Select (campus network only): Eliot
• Dictionary of Literary Biography (campus network only): Eliot as poet

Everyone should post on the discussion board a paragraph of self-introduction. Say whatever you like, from the standard hometown/year/major info to quirkier things about yourself. This will help us get to know each other and also establish that everyone is able to use the discussion board.

Note: here and throughout this syllabus, the first (less indented) list of readings is required, while the second (more indented) list of readings is supplemental and optional. Here, for example, Eliot's poem, the companion readings, and the introduction to the twentieth century are required, whereas the other links are optional.

• James Joyce, "Araby," "Eveline," and "Clay," from Dubliners (1914, anthology 2218, 2222, and 2225)
  • Dictionary of Literary Biography (campus network only): Joyce as novelist and short-fiction writer

  • IQ infinity: the unknown James Joyce is a huge complex of useful pages by Jorn Barger.

  • Edward J. Maloney and David F. Fanning of Ohio State maintain the James Joyce Resource Center, with a bibliography of books, a timeline, and "casebooks" of references to Joyce scholarship grouped by critical approach.

  • Yet another very good site: The James Joyce Portal

Linking passages: group 1

• Joyce, "The Dead" (anthology 2229), from Dubliners

Linking passages: group 2

• Margot Norris, "Not the Girl She Was at All: Women in 'The Dead'"
• Derek Attridge, "Touching 'Clay': Reference and Reality in Dubliners

Seminar A meets in the regular classroom, with group 1 doing responses. Seminar B (groups 4, 5, and 6) does responses and meets in small groups, led by group member #1.

Remember that your responses can be about the week's reading as a whole, not only the shorter readings I provide for Friday.

• Virginia Woolf, first part of Mrs. Dalloway (1925, anthology 2338-2379)

  • Dictionary of Literary Biography (campus network only): Woolf as novelist and essayist

  • In Our Time podcast on Mrs. Dalloway

Linking passages: group 3

• Woolf, second part of Mrs. Dalloway (1925, anthology 2380-2437)

Linking passages: group 4

• Selections from the MLA's Approaches to Teaching Mrs. Dalloway

Seminar B meets in the regular classroom, with group 4 doing responses. Seminar A (groups 1, 2, and 3) does responses and meets in small groups, led by group member #1.

Remember that your responses can be about the week's reading as a whole, not only the shorter readings I provide for Friday.

• Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own (1929), the book (not the anthology excerpts)

Linking passages: group 5

• John Millington Synge, The Playboy of the Western World (1907)
  • Dictionary of Literary Biography (campus network only): Synge as dramatist

Linking passages: group 6

• Woolf, "The Lady in the Looking-Glass: A Reflection" (anthology 2334)

Seminar A meets in the regular classroom, with group 2 doing responses. Seminar B (groups 4, 5, and 6) does responses and meets in small groups, led by group member #2.

PAPER PROSPECTUS DUE IN CLASS
FOR STUDENTS WRITING PAPERS

• Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons (PWeb)
  • Stein's Life and Career

  • Stein on PennSound

  • Stein at SUNY-Buffalo's Electronic Poetry Center
  • The BBC's Great Lives Podcast on Stein (also downloadable through iTunes)

Linking passages: group 1

• Eliot, The Waste Land (1922, anthology 2297)
  • Eliot reading the poem

  • "The Wasteland and Modernity," an episode of the excellent BBC podcast In Our Time

  • LOLcat Waste Land

Linking passages: group 2

• Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1919, anthology 2326)

FIRST EXAM/PAPER DATE:

Take the exam in the classroom at the usual class time

or

submit your paper under my office door by 3:00 p.m.

• Joyce, Ulysses (1922), episodes 1 ("Telemachus") and 4 ("Calypso")
  • Ashplant resources from the Grinnell Ulysses Collective: Episode 1
  • Ashplant resources from the Grinnell Ulysses Collective: Episode 2

Linking passages: group 4

• Vincent Sherry, Ulysses, 1-47

By 11:00 Thursday night, use the SharePoint link I've sent you by email to post one question you would like us to ask Vincent Sherry next week based on the readings. Then, before class starts, look at everyone's questions and come to class ready to vote for three of them that you most want us to ask him next week.

• Joyce, Ulysses, episode 12 ("Cyclops")
  • Ashplant resources from the Grinnell Ulysses Collective: Episode 12

Linking passages: group 5

• Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1899)

• Encyclopedia Britannica on Tristan Tzara

• Tzara, "Dadaism"

• Tzara, "To Make a Dadaist Poem"
  • Wilde's famous trials have inspired two excellent sites. The Bobst Library at NYU has built a spectacular web version of their exhibition commemorating the centennial of the trials: Reading Wilde, Querying Spaces. Though less polished and flashy, the University of Missouri-Kansas City Law School's Dada

  • Tzara, "L'amiral Cherche Une Maison à Louer" (sound recording, item #2 on the linked page)

Linking passages: group 6

Come to class ready to have a good, engaged conversation with Vincent Sherry about Modernism, war, and Ulysses.

• Tom Stoppard, Travesties (1974)
  • Dictionary of Literary Biography (campus network only): Stoppard

  • British Writers (campus network only): Stoppard

Linking passages: group 1

• Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (1952)
  • Dictionary of Literary Biography: Beckett as playwright and Contemporary Literary Criticism Select: Beckett (campus network only)
  • The University of Antwerp hosts The Samuel Beckett Endpage

  • J. M. Coetzee in The New York Review of Books on "The Making of Samuel Beckett"
  • A Beckett discovery
  • Fantastic fact of cultural history

Linking passages: group 2

No class today: we will have midsemester conferences.

• Beckett, Endgame (1958), anthology 2579

• William Shakespeare, Caliban-related sections from The Tempest (1611)
• RadioLab segment on acting Endgame
• Lego Endgame

Linking passages: group 3

• Martin McDonagh, The Beauty Queen of Leenane (1996)
  • Contemporary Authors Online: McDonagh (campus network only)

Linking passages: group 4

• Beckett, Krapp's Last Tape (1958) (Pweb)
• Samuel Beckett grading scale

Seminar A meets in the regular classroom, with group 1 doing responses. Seminar B (groups 4, 5, and 6) does responses and meets in small groups, led by group member #3.

• George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion (1913), anthology 2029
  • Dictionary of Literary Biography (campus network only): Shaw as playwright

Linking passages: group 5

SECOND EXAM/PAPER DATE:

Take the exam in the classroom at the usual class time

or

submit your paper under my office door by 3:00 p.m.

• Zadie Smith, White Teeth (2000), 1-102
• Dictionary of Literary Biography: Smith and Contemporary Literary Criticism Select: Smith (campus network only)
• In Our Time on The British Empire's Legacy

Linking passages: group 6

• Smith, White Teeth, 103-217
• Salman Rushdie on the BBC podcast Start the Week discussing being forced to live under police protection after being 'sentenced to death' by the Ayatollah Khomeini

Linking passages: group 1

• Raymond Williams, from Keywords
• Stuart Hall, "Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular'" and this summary
• The BBC podcast Thinking Allowed with Hall (also available for free through iTunes)

Linking passages: group 2

• Smith, "Speaking in Tongues," an audio lecture

Seminar B meets in the regular classroom, with group 6 doing responses. Seminar A (groups 1, 2, and 3) does responses and meets in small groups, led by group member #3.

• Smith, White Teeth, 218-340
• From The New York Times, September 2012: Seeking Cures, Patients Enlist Mice Stand-Ins

• This blog post from The Economist includes Alex Tabarrok's summary of the OncoMouse patent debate

Linking passages: group 3

• Smith, White Teeth, 341-448
• Paul Root Wolpe, It's time to question bio-engineering (TED Talk video)
• Anna Laetitia Aikin (Barbauld), " The Mouse's Petition, To Dr. Priestley" (1773)

• John Clement Ball, from Imagining London
• James Procter, "New Ethnicities, the Novel, and the Burdens of Representation"

PAPER PROSPECTUS DUE IN CLASS
FOR STUDENTS WRITING PAPERS

• Film: Rebecca (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1940)

Linking passages: group 5

• Film: My Beautiful Laundrette (written by Hanif Kureishi, dir. Stephen Frears, 1985)
• Hay Festival Lecture (the Raymond Williams Lecture) by Kureishi: Loose Tongues

• Contemporary Literary Criticism (campus network only): Kureishi

Linking passages: group 6

• Tania Modleski, "Never To Be Thirty-Six Years Old: Rebecca as Female Oedipal Drama"

For today's class, I have put readings from two anthologies of contemporary British poetry in the Documents section of our PioneerWeb site. Spend about 90-120 minutes looking through these readings--checking out how they are organized, browsing them, selecting a handful to read more carefully. When you come to class on Monday, bring five copies of each of two poems to share with a small group of your classmates. Think about how your two selected poems relate to works or issues that we have discussed so far this semester.

By midnight on Tuesday, post to our shared document the text of one of your two poems from Monday's class, the information about the author provided by the anthology, and your own paragraph introducing the work's connection to readings we have done earlier in the semester. In class, your task (in small groups) will be to write some notes about how you might organize the class's selected poems into sections and introduce them for a micro-anthology of contemporary British poetry.

Last day: We will wrap up and weep for the lack of further class sessions.

FINAL EXAM/PAPER DATE:

Take the exam in the classroom at 9:00 a.m.

or

submit your paper under my office door by noon