Old Syllabi

Syllabus: Spring 2017

This is the syllabus of English 226 for Spring 2017.

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

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

• Michael H. Whitworth, Introduction to Modernism (Pweb documents section)
• 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.

• The anthology's companion readings to "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
• P. G. Wodehouse, from The Inimitable Jeeves (Pweb documents section)

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.

• 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

  • 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.

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

I will be traveling today, so all groups will meet as small groups. Groups 1-3 will be led by group member #1, and groups 4-6 will be led by group member #2.

• 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 (Pweb documents section)

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 #2.

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 #3.

PAPER PROSPECTUS DUE IN CLASS
FOR STUDENTS WRITING PAPERS

• Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons (Pweb documents section version, not the ereserves link)
  • 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

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.

We will not hold class at the regular time today. Instead, we will transform this class into a small-group session. Your small group may meet any time before spring break, with the leader's write-up due by the first Monday of break. When you do meet, discuss the following readings:

• Vincent J. Cheng, "Authenticity and Identity: Catching the Irish Spirit" (ereserves)
• Speeches on Irish independence (anthology 2165-2173)

All groups meet as small groups. Seminar B (groups 4, 5, and 6) does responses and meets in small groups, led by group member #4 (or #1 for groups with three members). Seminar A (groups 1, 2, and 3) does responses and meets in small groups, led by group member #1.

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

Linking passages: group 4

• Joyce, Ulysses, episode 12 ("Cyclops") (ereserves)
  • 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 (Grinnell network only)

• Tzara, "Dadaism"

• Tzara, "To Make a Dadaist Poem"
  • The University of Missouri-Kansas City Law School's site on Wilde's trials contains a wealth of interesting information.

  • The National Gallery of Art's online exhibition of Dada

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

Linking passages: group 6

• Benedict Anderson, from Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (excerpt in Pweb documents section)
• Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, "Why I Choose to Write in Irish, The Corpse That Sits Up and Talks Back" (anthology 2797)

• 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, e-reserves)
• 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) (ereserves)
• 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 #1 (or #2 for groups with three members).

• 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 (Pweb documents section)
• Stuart Hall, "Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular'" (Pweb documents section) and this summary

Linking passages: group 2

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

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 #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 (ereserves)
• James Procter, "New Ethnicities, the Novel, and the Burdens of Representation" (ereserves)

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

• V.S. Naipaul, "Jack's Garden" (Pweb documents section)

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