Booked: Crime and Punishment in Literature

Sunday, August 23

First pre-semester meeting, 1:00

We will introduce ourselves, go over some information for registration, and discuss course planning in terms of majors, concentrations, spikes, and bumps. We will also discuss content- and process-related goals for our class time.

• Academics section of Advice for Incoming College Students: A Grinnell Planpoll
• The Grinnell College catalog, Education in the Liberal Arts
• Scott Adams, Career Advice

First blog assignment! Due by 10:00 Monday morning.

I know your schedules are tight between our first meeting on Sunday and our advising meetings on Monday . Make some time for these readings; use them (with direct quotations or specific references as appropriate) to write a post for our group blog about your course selections. Like the other blog posts for this course, this is a loose assignment; I mean it to be serious but flexible. Tell the rest of us how you relate these readings to your approach to choosing courses, now or in the future.

AFTER you write a page or so about the readings and your general approach, list seven to ten courses for which you might register on Wednesday. You can use this list as a starting point for creating your draft of a preregistration card for our advising meeting.

Compose your post in a word processor first. Then post on the blog: sign in to WordPress, and I believe you'll be on the dashboard for Booked. (If not, select it.) Click the "New Post" button in the top right. Then add a subject line and paste your post into the main box. Finally, hit the blue "Publish" button on the right. Bingo!

If you have any trouble with the blog posting, just email your post to me, and we'll get the blog working at our meeting.

Advising meetings! Your time is on the schedule I handed out Sunday. My office is Mears 313.

PREREGISTRATION CARDS DUE TO THE REGISTRAR BY 3:45 ON TUESDAY

This is the first regular meeting of the course. We will go over course assignments and policies, have a structured discussion of discussions, and acquaint you with the Baggie of Destiny. Aside from finalizing your course registration on Wednesday, you have no assignment to prepare for today.

• "Distributive Justice," from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• William Godwin, from Political Justice
• The "More or Less" Podcast from the BBC: Brain Culture, Part 1 (29-minute audio file)

Assignment for group 1: do a blog post connecting at least two of the readings in some specific way, being sure to quote from every source you refer to (with a page citation, if the source has pages). You don't have to worry about the format of page citations until later this week; for now, just make sure your sourcing is clear. Assignment for everyone: read the assigned readings and the blog posts. Be prepared to offer comments or questions; at the start of our session, I will ask each of you for a topic or question to be included in our conversation.

• MLA Handbook, Chapter 2: Plagiarism and Academic Integrity
• Connections on Quotation and Citation
• Grinnell College booklet, "Academic Honesty"
• An article on recent plagiarism scandals

Note: here and throughout this syllabus, when there are two kinds of readings for a given day, 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 first three items are required readings, but the article on recent events is optional.

Today's class session will be devoted first to a discussion of quotation practices and second to a group writing contest in which every student needs to have done the readings carefully in order to explain the group's answers. Be ready. And bring the MLA Handbook to class.

• The Parking Lot Movie (dir. Meghan Eckman, 2010)
• Radiolab podcast segment: Who's Bad?

Assignment for group 2: using quoted evidence from the film and/or the podcast, connect one or both of these texts back to the readings we did last week. How do you want to use these new texts to continue our conversation about the nature of power and punishment?

Assignment for everyone: read the assigned readings and the blog posts. Be prepared to offer comments or questions.

• William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1

If you are new to reading Shakespeare, you may want to read a plot summary to help you follow the original language. Wikipedia provides brief one, and you can easily find others online if you want them. Do not substitute such tools for reading Shakespeare's text.

Assignment for group 3: Write a blog post that begins with a quotation of up to ten lines of text from the play, then describes a connection between that quotation and some earlier reading from the course (which you should also quote). Shakespeare note: when quoting a Shakespeare play, put the act, scene, and lines in parenthesis like this for Act 1, Scene 2, lines 33 to 44 (1.2.33-44).

Assignment for everyone: read the assigned readings and the blog posts. Be prepared to offer comments or questions.

• Shakespeare, Hamlet, Acts 2 and 3

Assignment for group 1: Write a blog post that begins with a quotation of up to ten lines of text from the play, then describes how that quotation reflects or changes some specific issue raised in our discussion of Act 1. Shakespeare note: when quoting a Shakespeare play, put the act, scene, and lines in parenthesis like this for Act 1, Scene 2, lines 33 to 44 (1.2.33-44).

Assignment for everyone: read the assigned readings and the blog posts. Be prepared to offer comments or questions.

• Shakespeare, Hamlet, Acts 4 and 5

Assignment for group 2: Write a blog post that begins with a quotation of up to ten lines of text from the play, then describes how that quotation reflects a culmination or transformation of some specific issue we have discussed in the two previous Hamlet sessions. Shakespeare note: when quoting a Shakespeare play, put the act, scene, and lines in parenthesis like this for Act 1, Scene 2, lines 33 to 44 (1.2.33-44).

Assignment for everyone: read the assigned readings and the blog posts. Be prepared to offer comments or questions.

• Connections, Developing a Thesis

Read the thesis materials carefully and allow yourself plenty of time to think through a thesis for your first full-length paper in the Tutorial. Write that thesis down in a sentence or two and bring it to class, where we will talk about thesis statements and do a peer review exercise based on the draft theses you have brought to class.

• The Film section of Connections
• Memento (dir. Christopher Nolan, 2000)

Assignment for group 3: using the Connections materials, write a blog post about some aspect of the film as a film. In other words, take up a subject that would not arise in reading a transcript of the film's dialogue.

Assignment for everyone: take good notes on the film, emphasizing the terms and concepts you have read about in Connections.

• Connections, Polishing an Essay
• Materials for in-class workshop preparation

There is no writing assignment for today. In class, we will prepare to workshop papers.

Workshop #1: papers from AK and EM, with respondents MS and DC.

Workshop #2: papers from JC and CG, with respondents AK and JC.

FIRST PAPER DUE WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 10
UNDER MY OFFICE DOOR BY 2:00 P.M.

Writers of workshop papers should include a separate paragraph or two describing the advice they received from the workshop and how they responded to that advice. They should also highlight or otherwise mark the revisions they have made since submitting the workshopped version of the paper.

Writers of papers for Workshop 2 can have an automatic extension until 2:00 on Friday.

Library day! You will not have a regular syllabus assignment for today; instead, you will do an exercise exploring the library in preparation for our session.

• Jeremy Bentham, from The Panopticon

• Michel Foucault, from Discipline and Punish on the panopticon

• Philip G. Zimbardo, website on The Stanford Prison Experiment

• Greg McKeown, "Can We Reverse the Stanford Prison Experiment?
• Freakonomics podcast: "Fear Thy Nature"

Assignment for group 1: We have been away from our course readings for a while. Write a blog post connecting one or more these new readings in some specific way to a text from the first module of the course.

Assignment for everyone: read the assigned readings and the blog posts. Be prepared to offer comments or questions.

• Stephen Pinker, from The Better Angels of Our Nature

Assignment for everyone: Read the assigned texts and take good notes on them, however you interpret the phrase "take good notes." In class, we will discuss the texts through the notes and marks you have made.

FALL BREAK

• This American Life, "Act V"

Come to class prepared to discuss the This American Life episode. We will use much of our class time to work on writing.

• Stephen King, "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption"

Assignment for group 2: write a blog post that begins by directing our attention to a short passage in King's story and then explains why you found the passage especially important to the functioning of the whole piece.

Assignment for everyone: read the assigned readings and the blog posts. Be prepared to offer comments or questions.

FIRST PAPER REVISION DUE MONDAY, NOVEMBER 5
UNDER MY OFFICE DOOR BY 2:00 P.M.

• The Shawshank Redemption (dir. Frank Darabont, 1994)
• The BBC Podcast Thinking Allowed on White Collar Crime: "Culture of Crime" and "Punishment of Crime"

Assignment for group 3: today's readings present an unusual opportunity to connect an imaginative text to some research in the social sciences. Write a blog post that makes such a connection using a specific moment in the film and at least one quotation from Thinking Allowed.

Assignment for everyone: read the assigned readings and the blog posts. Be prepared to offer comments or questions.

• Henry David Thoreau, "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience"
• Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail

Assignment for group 1: Do a blog post, based on the readings, on the topic of your choice.

Assignment for everyone: read the assigned readings and the blog posts. Be prepared to offer comments or questions.

Workshop #3: papers from MH, VV, and AS, with respondents EM, CG, and LS.

SECOND PAPER DUE WEDNESDAY, November 14
UNDER MY OFFICE DOOR BY 2:00 P.M.

Writers of workshop papers should include a separate paragraph or two describing the advice they received from the workshop and how they responded to that advice. They should also highlight or otherwise mark the revisions they have made since submitting the workshopped version of the paper.

Writers of papers for Workshop 3 can have an automatic extension until 2:00 on Friday.

• Mary Wollstonecraft, from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
• Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria; or, the Wrongs of Woman, Preface and Volume 1
• Janet Todd's biographical essay on Wollstonecraft

Assignment for group 2: Do a blog post, based on the readings, on the topic of your choice.

Assignment for everyone: read the assigned readings and the blog posts. Be prepared to offer comments or questions.

• Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria; or, the Wrongs of Woman, Volume 2
• Angela Y. Davis, from Are Prisons Obsolete?
• Davis's faculty profile

Assignment for group 3: In place of a regular blog post, prepare a short presentation (less than five minutes) about today's readings on the topic of your choice. These presentations will function as a practice session for the portfolio presentations in the last week of class.

Assignment for everyone: do the readings and come to class prepared to discuss the content and style of the day's presentations.

THANKSGIVING BREAK

• Susan Glaspell, Trifles
• William Wordsworth, "The Thorn"
• About Susan Glaspell
• Brief biography of Wordsworth

Assignment for group 1: In place of a regular blog post, prepare a short presentation (less than five minutes) about today's readings on the topic of your choice. These presentations will function as a practice session for the portfolio presentations in the last week of class.

Assignment for everyone: do the readings and come to class prepared to discuss the content and style of the day's presentations.

• Jessica Grose, A Death in Yellowstone
• Peter Singer and Richard A. Posner, a dialogue on Animal Rights (all entries)

Assignment for group 2: In place of a regular blog post, prepare a short presentation (less than five minutes) about today's readings on the topic of your choice. These presentations will function as a practice session for the portfolio presentations in the last week of class.

Assignment for everyone: do the readings and come to class prepared to discuss the content and style of the day's presentations.

Workshop #4: papers from ZW, MS, and DC, with respondents AC, VV, and AS.

Workshop #5: papers from JC, LS, and AC, with respondents MH, ZW, and JC.

THIRD PAPER DUE FRIDAY, DECEMBER 7
UNDER MY OFFICE DOOR BY 2:00 P.M.

Writers of workshop papers should include a separate paragraph or two describing the advice they received from the workshop and how they responded to that advice. They should also highlight or otherwise mark the revisions they have made since submitting the workshopped version of the paper.

Writers of papers for Workshop 5 can have an automatic extension until 2:00 on Monday.

Day 1 of portfolio presentations

Day 2 of portfolio presentations

PORTFOLIOS DUE WEDNESDAY,
DECEMBER 19TH, 3:00 P.M.