Syllabus for English 327:
The Romantics
Electric Romanticism:
The Technologies of the Romantic Period and of Romantic Studies
Spring 2020

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Kubla Khan; Or, A Vision in a Dream"
  • Dictionary of Literary Biography (Grinnell only): Coleridge as poet

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, the novel is a required reading, while the three readings in the following, more indented bullet points are recommended for exploration but are not required.

• Penny Fielding, "Introduction: Rites of Speech" from Writing and Orality: Nationality, Culture, and Nineteenth-Century Scottish Fiction"

• William Blake, "Introduction" from Songs of Innocence
  • Dictionary of Literary Biography (Grinnell only): Blake as poet

Assignment for everyone: if you haven't done so during the first class session, by the end of Friday, go to the course blog and post a brief self-introduction. This will help us get to know each other and also confirm that everyone can post on the blog.

Group 1 special interest (or wild card) blog post: Point us to a specific place in any of today's texts (from 1-10 lines) that you want to discuss further in class. Use your blog post to explain your choice.

• William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience

Group 2 special interest (or wild card) blog post: Point us to a specific place in the one of Blake's poems (from 1-10 lines) that you want us to discuss further in class because it raises an issue or problem in the readings as a whole.

• Erasmus Darwin, Darwin's Preface (not the preface to the American edition or the poetic tribute) and first sections (through page 83) of Zoonomia; Or, The Laws of Organic Life
  • Dictionary of Literary Biography (Grinnell only): Darwin as poet

Group 3 blog post: You may use this blog post to develop your special interest or as a wild card blog post. Write your blog post as a discussion of some specific issue that arises from the readings. This assignment is what I mean by "open prompt" assignments in the rest of the syllabus.

• Darwin, The Loves of the Plants from The Botanic Garden (PWeb, including the indexes and notes at the end)

Group 1 special interest (or wild card) blog post: open prompt.

• Humphry Davy, from "Heat, Light, and the Combinations of Heat and Light"
• Humphry Davy, Letters regarding his nitrous oxide experiments
• Mike Jay, "'O, Excellent Air Bag': Humphry Davy and Nitrous Oxide"

Group 2 special interest (or wild card) blog post: as the starting point for your post, search the ECCO database through the library's website. You can either search for Humphry Davy himself to find other writers discussing him or look for a term that is central to today's readings.

• Charlotte Smith, Beachy Head
• Dictionary of Literary Biography (Grinnell only): Smith as poet

Group 3 blog post: special interest (or wild card) blog post: as the starting point for your post, search the ECCO database through the library's website. You can either search for mentions of fossils to find other writers discussing them or look for another term that is central to today's reading.

• Kevis Goodman, "Conjectures on Beachy Head: Charlotte Smith’s Geological Poetics and the Ground of the Present"

• Anne Wallace, "Picturesque Fossils, Sublime Geology? The Crisis of Authority in Charlotte Smith's Beachy Head"

Everyone: bring to class, in writing, 1) your nomination of one specific sentence that you think best captures the thesis of each article, and 2) one moment from each article that strikes you as an especially interesting use of a quoted source.

• Charles Brockden Brown, Wieland; Or, The Transformation: An American Tale, chapters I to VIII
  • Dictionary of Literary Biography (Grinnell only): Brockden Brown

Group 1 blog post: special interest (or wild card) blog post: as the starting point for your post, search the ECCO database through the library's website. You can either search for mentions of ventriloquism to find other writers discussing it or look for another term that is central to today's reading.

• Brockden Brown, Wieland, chapters IX to XV

• An Approach to Finding Secondary Sources for a Research Paper in English

Group 2 blog post: special interest (or wild card) blog post, open prompt.

• Brockden Brown, Wieland, chapter XVI to end

Group 3 blog post: special interest (or wild card) blog post, open prompt.

• Anthony Galluzzo, "Charles Brockden Brown's Wieland and the Aesthetics of Terror: Revolution, Reaction, and the Radical Enlightenment in Early American Letters"

• Christopher Looby, "The Very Act of Utterance': Law, Language, and Legitimation in Brown's Wieland," from Voicing America: Language, Literary Form, and the Origins of the United States

Everyone: bring to class, in writing, 1) your nomination of one specific sentence that you think best captures the thesis of each piece, and 2) one moment from each article that strikes you as an especially interesting use of a quoted source.

• Laura Schmidt, "Using Archives: A Guide to Effective Research"

Library day! We will meet in the Special Collections area in the basement of Burling Library.

PAPER PROSPECTUS DUE
VIA EMAIL TODAY (ANY TIME)

For today's class, you will complete the document contextualization assignment you received Wednesday, and we will work with the results in class.

NO CLASS TODAY:
INDIVIDUAL MIDSEM CONFERENCES

Monday, March 30

Wednesday, April 1

Wednesday reading: use hypothes.is to enter two annotations (2-3 sentences each) by Wednesday at noon. We will have an optional WebEx discussion at 2:00 Iowa time on Wednesday.

• Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), Volume I; use the Romantic Circles Edition (which has lots of interesting annotations built in, too!) to make your hypothes.is annotations
  • Robert Harrison's Entitled Opinions podcast episode with Denise Gigante on Romanticism and organic form (with commentary on Frankenstein)

  • For an excellent talk about the current analogs to Frankenstein's science (with an explicit Frankenstein reference near the end), see this TED Talk by Paul Root Wolpe

Monday, April 6

Monday reading: use hypothes.is to enter two annotations (2-3 sentences each) by Monday at noon. We will have an optional WebEx discussion at 2:00 Iowa time on Monday.

• Shelley, Frankenstein, Volume II; use the Romantic Circles Edition to make your hypothes.is annotations

Wednesday, April 8

Wednesday reading: use hypothes.is to enter two annotations (2-3 sentences each) by Wednesday at noon. We will have an optional WebEx discussion at 2:00 Iowa time on Wednesday.

• Shelley, Frankenstein, Volume III; use the Romantic Circles Edition to make your hypothes.is annotations

Monday, April 13

Monday reading: use hypothes.is to enter two annotations (2-3 sentences each) by Monday at noon. We will have an optional WebEx discussion at 2:00 Iowa time on Monday.

• Laura E. Crouch, "Davy's A Discourse, Introductory to A Course of Lectures on Chemistry: A Possible Scientific Source of Frankenstein" (PWeb Documents--you can annotate PDFs with hypothes.is if you use the Chrome browser)
• Stuart Curran, "The Scientific Grounding of Frankenstein" (PWeb Documents--you can annotate PDFs with hypothes.is if you use the Chrome browser)
• Selected annotations from new scientific edition of Frankenstein (PWeb Documents--you can annotate PDFs with hypothes.is if you use the Chrome browser)

Friday, April 17

Weekly Writing, Due at Noon Iowa Time on Friday

For today, post to the blog at least 300 words about your thinking regarding the final paper, with at least some preliminary indications of your topic and at least a piece or two of research you might draw on. As you know, the final paper can be--but does not need to be--an extension of the work you did for the shorter paper.

Monday, April 20

Monday reading: use hypothes.is to enter two annotations (2-3 sentences each) by Monday at noon. We will have an optional WebEx discussion at 2:00 Iowa time on Monday.

• E. T. A. Hoffmann, "The Sandman" (PWeb Documents--you can annotate PDFs with hypothes.is if you use the Chrome browser)

Friday, April 24

Weekly Writing, Due at Noon Iowa Time on Friday

This week's assignment has two parts.

1. Expand your writing about your final paper, adding to your own thinking and your ideas for sources, for a total of at least 600 words. This part is due Friday at noon, as usual.
2. Use the comment function on the blog to post a brief, constructive comment or question for each person in your small group (from the response groups we used earlier in the semester). This part is due Saturday at noon.

Monday, April 27

Monday reading: use hypothes.is to enter two annotations (2-3 sentences each) by Monday at noon. We will have an optional WebEx discussion at 2:00 Iowa time on Monday.

Post your annotations on this quirky plot summary!

• James Whale, Frankenstein (1931)
• Wikipedia on The Motion Picture Production Code, also known as the Hays Code
• [Optional:] The first scene (or more if you wish) of The National Theatre's production of Frankenstein with Benedict Cumberbatch as the creature

Friday, May 1

Weekly Writing, Due at Noon Iowa Time on Friday

Expand your paper to a form that represents about half of what you need to do for the final assignment. You can take control of what "half" means; for example, it might be an outline and some prose, or simply the first half of the paper, or an outline, some paragraphs, and a bibliography. Post the results to the blog.

The halfway point will be a good time for a check-in with me about your paper. We can schedule a video conversation or a phone conversation, or we can talk by email if those technologies are tricky for you.

Monday, May 4

Monday reading: use hypothes.is to enter two annotations (2-3 sentences each) by Monday at noon. We will have an optional WebEx discussion at 2:00 Iowa time on Monday.

Post your annotations on this quirky plot summary!

• James Whale, Bride of Frankenstein (1931)
• Susan Sontag, "Notes on 'Camp,'" (1964, Pioneer Web)

Friday, May 8

Weekly Writing, Due at Noon Iowa Time on Friday

This week's assignment has two parts.

1. Post to the blog a mostly drafted version of your final paper. This part is due Friday at noon, as usual. Then, make the first comment on your blog post, indicating something specific that you'd like your groupmates to look at and comment on--something such as the introduction or conclusion, or the transitions in a certain section, or a paragraph that you're struggling with.
2. Use the comment function on the blog to post a brief, constructive comment or question for each person in your small group, responding to the question that they raise in their first comment. This part is due Saturday at noon.

Progress reports! Send me an email by noon letting me know how you're doing with the paper. I will reply by email, and we will follow up by video or phone if that's helpful.