ENGL 2120-A01



ENGL 2120-A01 (American Lit II) Daily Syllabus Spring 2008

Brigitte McCray

TH 12-1:20 pm H146 Office: H106

Direct: 354-2594

Ext. 3394

bnmccray@northeaststae.edu

Office Hours—MWF: 9:10-12:10; T: 3-4; and by appointment.

Weight of Grades:

Research Essay: 30 %

Proposals for response essays, response Essay I & II, research note cards, and required conference: 20 %

Written Mid-Term Essay: 15 %

Written Final Exam Essay: 15 %

Study Guide Responses: 10 %

Class Participation and attendance: 10 %

Plagiarism equals F in the course. This is not negotiable for anyone.

Research Project: At the end of the semester you will submit a 5-7 page research essay you will have worked on throughout the fifteen weeks of the course. Do not let this scare you. (Unless, of course, you fail to meet the deadlines I set for the materials.) Each assignment you do throughout the course will build on to each other so that essentially all you will have to do at the end is organize your material and type it up.

Part I: The Response Essays

The Research Project itself will compare and contrast one earlier American writer with a later American writer focusing on a theme/topic within the historical context we’ve discussed in class. I’d like you to each select your own writer and topic to me as a proposal (see deadlines on the daily); however, if you need help picking a writer or topic see the attached list of possibilities or you may stop by my office and discuss some ideas. Before your second response essay, you will write-up a brief proposal that explains which writer you will write on for your second response essay and how that writer fits/connects with the writer you wrote on for your first response essay.

Early in the semester, when we study Emily Dickinson, we will go over a sample response essay to prepare you for the writing of the response essay. Before you write your first analytical response essay, we will have discussed all the early writers as a class. I will provide you with an assignment sheet the week before the actual writing so you may begin thinking and planning. However, it is very important that in this stage you do not consult any outside sources.

Part II: The note cards

About a week after you write your response essays, you will submit to me note cards developed from two outside sources you will have found during the week on the author and work you wrote about for your response essay along with photocopies of those sources. These must be scholarly critics in the field of literary studies. Spark Notes, Cliff Notes, and information gleaned from Wikipedia are not acceptable and will result in a F. When we study The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, I will present to you information from a literary critic on Huck Finn. This will, I hope, help you to understand the idea of a literary critic, and I will explain how to go about searching for them in the library.

A sample note card will be provided to you. What should, however, be written on the note card is the following: A key word that will help you organize the cards at the end of the semester; the correct MLA format of the biographical information from the source as it would appear on your MLA formatted Works Cited page; an argumentative, opinionated direct quote from your source you’d like to use in your final essay, either a paraphrase or summary of the quote as it would possibly appear later in your final essay as well as the correctly formatted MLA in-text citation; and finally, since from the writing of your response essay you will have become an authority on your writer, a comment from you about what you think about what the source is saying. Do you agree or disagree with the source? Why or why not? What connection are you making between what the source is saying and your own ideas about the work?

You will have a set of note cards for author 1 and author 2. For each author, you should pick at least three quotes per source. That means, for example, you should have six note cards per author. You also must have one physical book per author. Your other source may be a critical essay found on the Literature Resource Center, located on the library’s home page.

Part III: Required Conference

You will be required to have one 10-15 minute conference with me toward the end of the semester. I will schedule these conferences during class. You may come during my office hours or schedule a different time. Bring with you to the conference: the two response essays, your note cards, and ideas for the final essay so that I may give you feedback on the direction your essay is taking.

Part IV: The Research Essay

From all of the above, you will construct/write a 5-7 page persuasive essay comparing and contrasting two American writers, an earlier writer and a later writer.

You must write the essay in third person objective point of view, have correct MLA formatting, be double spaced and typed with 1 inch margins, and have 12 point Times New Roman font with a Works Cited page. Your Works Cited page does not count as a page for the research essay itself. I will grade these essays on writing mechanics as well as content, so allow yourself plenty of time to proofread your essay.

Your essay should include information from four outside scholarly sources: two books and two essays. Your essay should be composed of detail/example filled paragraphs. State a clear, arguable thesis, and support that thesis with evidence from the works themselves and opinions/analysis from your secondary sources.

Place all your materials in a folder.

Mid-Term and Final Exam: Both of these will be open book and open notes. You will write about a 500 word response to a question that helps me to see your learning and thinking about the writers and historical context/literary movements in American literature.

Study Guide Questions: The purpose for these is two fold. First, they will be incentive for you to read. For each work, I will provide you with about two-three questions. Answering them will show me that you’ve done the reading for the week. “I don’t know” or “I have no idea”, etc. are not answers. Also, I’d like you to come up with one question per study guide on your own. Frame your question in “why” or “how” and allow it to be a question about the work that puzzles you or interests you about the reading in some way. I will use these to help guide our discussion during class. Second, your own questioning will serve, I hope, as a prompt for your response essays. Each study guide is due when you come to class.

Study guide answer grades:

A: At least five to six sentences per question. The writer offers thoughtful and insightful responses to the reading.

B: At least four to five sentences. The writer provides thoughtful responses to the reading.

C: At least three to four sentences. It is clear and evident that the writer has done the reading.

No answers equals a 0 in the grade book.

Class Participation and Attendance: I will not extend the deadline for the final essay/research project. Because we are doing the project in stages, you have amble time to complete the project. I will not take essay or study guide responses if they’re more than one class period late. One class period late equals one dropped letter grade. Exams may be made up due to illness with a doctor’s note and extreme emergencies.

Attendance counts fifty percent of your participation grade. Each absence counts six points to be subtracted from 100. These do add up and will affect your grade. Use your absences wisely. And, in my teaching experience, I have found direct correlations between what students learn (and the grades they get) in their coming to class and participating. However, attending class does not count as participation. Participation means answering questions and becoming part of class discussions. I note who speaks up and who does not. If you say nothing throughout the semester, you will receive an F for this part of the course. An average grade for participation is not given for silence. I know that some folks are shier than others, but I do encourage you to toss in your two cents’ worth on a regular basis.

Students with Disabilities: If a student has a note from the Center for Students with Disabilities, the student needs to bring it by during my office hours or see me after class. I will make reasonable accommodations for those students as long as I have a letter from the Center.

Grading Policy for Essays:

The essay may earn an A if it:

• Deals with the assigned topic.

• Is written completely in standard English. It must contain no significant errors in spelling, punctuation, grammar, or usage that obscure the writer's meaning or distract the reader.

• Adheres completely to the conventions of academic prose as stated by the instructor.

• Includes an introduction that moves readers smoothly from an engaging opener through a presentation of the general subject of the essay and into a clear, specific thesis statement. The thesis must offer some original and thoughtful insight about the work under discussion.

• Thoroughly develops the thesis with clear, well-reasoned arguments supported by specific, concrete, and appropriate details. In all cases, the relevance of supporting details to the thesis must be explicit.

• Is organized in a pattern appropriate to the thesis. The organization must, in all cases, be clear, logical, and apparent to the reader.

• Brings readers "full circle" in the conclusion; that is, it reminds readers of some pertinent and striking motif established in the introduction.

• Is produced in the manuscript form specified by the instructor.

The essay may earn a B if it:

• Deals with the assigned topic.

• Is written primarily in standard English. It must contain very few errors in spelling, punctuation, grammar, or usage that obscure the writer's meaning or distract the reader.

• Exhibits an attempt to adhere to the conventions of academic prose as stated by the instructor.

• Includes an introduction that gets readers' attention and clearly states the thesis. The thesis must offer some original insight about the work under discussion.

• Supports the thesis with well-reasoned arguments supported by specific, concrete, and appropriate details.

• Is effectively organized in a pattern appropriate to the thesis.

• Offers a conclusion that leaves readers with a feeling of completeness.

• Is produced in the manuscript form specified by the instructor.

The essay may earn a C if it:

• Is written primarily in standard English. It may contain some errors in spelling, punctuation, grammar, or usage; but these errors should never totally obscure the writer's meaning or dominate the reader’s perception of the essay.

• Includes an introduction that clearly states the thesis.

• Develops the thesis with at least some relevant details.

• Is organized in a pattern that is, for the most part, clear to the reader and appropriate to the thesis.

• Ends with a conclusion that reminds readers of the thesis and the details used to develop it.

• Is produced in the manuscript form specified by the instructor.

The essay may earn a D if it:

• Is written in standard English to a degree that the writer’s meaning is normally discernible. Errors in spelling, punctuation, grammar, or usage must not dominate the essay.

• Includes an introduction, thesis, body paragraphs, and conclusion.

• Supports the thesis with at least some details

• Exhibits some attempt at organization.

• Is produced primarily in the manuscript form specified by the instructor.

The essay will earn an F if it does not meet the minimum criteria for a D. The following errors are the most common.

• The essay does not deal with the assigned topic.

• The essay is dominated by errors in spelling, punctuation, grammar, or usage that obscure the writer's meaning or which would distract an average reader.

• The essay has no controlling thesis.

• The essay does not develop one central idea or thesis throughout the work.

• The supporting detail is weak or non-existent.

• There is little or no attempt at organization.

• The essay lacks basic parts (introduction, body paragraphs, or conclusion)

Guidelines for Courtesy and Respect

I would like to welcome all students into an environment that creates a sense of community, pride, courtesy and respect; we are all here to work cooperatively and to learn together.

In order to create a smooth and harmonious learning community, please make every attempt to come to all class sessions, to come to class on time, and to stay until the end of the meeting unless you have informed me that you must leave early for an emergency. If no reason for leaving, you will be counted absent. There may be a time when you are unavoidably late for class. In that case, please come into the room quietly and choose a seat closest to the entrance. Please see me after class to record your lateness; otherwise you will be marked absent. (Please note that two tardies to class will be considered the equivalent of one absence—see above for details on the attendance policy.)

Please turn off all cell phones unless you have informed me that you are, for example, an EMT or firefighter, or that you are waiting for a personal emergency call. This includes text messaging. Also, please take out I-Pod, etc. earphones and other class homework and papers except for what you need for our class. Please do not type or play with mouses if there are computers in the classroom.

Once the class session has begun, please do not leave the room and then re-enter unless it is an emergency.

If you miss a class meeting for any reason, you are responsible for all material covered, for announcements made in your absence, and for acquiring any materials that may have been distributed in class.

In the study of literature, because of the wide array of subject material and writers, we will come into contact with controversial subjects such as racism, sexism, and gay/lesbian/bisexual issues. It’s understandable you may not agree with some of the thoughts or ideas presented from the study of certain writers. However, I have had African American students, ethnic students, and gay/lesbian students in my classes. So please, when we discuss this type of controversial material, be sensitive in your comments to other students and myself.

It is important that we are all able to stay focused on the class lecture/discussion. For this reason, only one person at a time in the class should be speaking. Side conversations are distracting for surrounding students and for me. As you can see, simple norms of courtesy should be sufficient to have our class run in the best interests of all of us. Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

Authors and possible topic pairings

Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”: the body erotic/censorship

Walt Whitman: the notion of self

Emily Dickinson’s poems #199, 341, 280”: feminine “captivity” in a male dominated society

Emily Dickinson: nature

Emily Dickinson: death

Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: race (black vs. white controversy)

Mark Twain’s Huck Finn: adolescent narrators/growing up

Kate Chopin’s The Awakening: sexuality

Kate Chopin: search for individuality and freedom

Edith Wharton: female friendship

Edith Wharton: class/economics

Edith Wharton: confinements of marriage

Henry James: beauty and decay

Henry James: upper class society

Jack London: naturalism

Jack London: survival

London: masculinity

Ernest Hemingway: the expatriate life

Hemingway: marriage

Hemingway: modernism

Hemingway: regret

“Art provides mankind with definitions of itself, its circumstance, its situation, its condition, and also its possibilities. This is what I think stories and poems are about. It is what paintings and sculpture forms are about. It is what music is about—which after all is nothing if not a soundtrack to which we choreograph our daily activities. So let’s be sure it’s good music.” –Albert Murray, African American novelist

American Literature 1865-1914 Vol. C

T: 1/15 Welcome & Introduction!

Assignments: Introduction (1-13); Walt Whitman (17-21); “Song

of Myself” begins on page 30; however, only read sections 1, 2, 5, 6,

8-10, 15, 17, 19; study guide responses

H: 1/17 Realism and Whitman

Assignments: “Song of Myself” continued: sections 27-29, 31, 34-38,

46, 47, 51, and 52; study guide responses

T: 1/22 Whitman continued

Assignments: Emily Dickinson (74-78); Poems begin on page 78;

however, only read these poems: # 225, # 269, 320, 340,

359, 479, 591, 764; study guide responses

H: 1/24 Dickinson

Assignments: Mark Twain (100-104); first half of The Adventures of

Huckleberry Finn (108-235); study guide responses

T: 1/29 Twain

Assignments: continue Huck Finn (235-261); study guide responses

H: 1/31 Twain continued

Assignments: finish Huck Finn (261-294); study guide responses

T: 2/5 Finish Twain

Assignments: Henry James (388-391); “Daisy Miller” (391-429); sg

responses

H: 2/7 James

Assignments: Kate Chopin (529-531); The Awakening (535-580); sg

Responses

T: 2/12 Chopin

Assignments: finish The Awakening (580-625); sg responses

H: 2/14 Chopin

Assignments: “Realism & Naturalism” (911-912); Jack London

(1051-1052); “To Build a Fire” (1057-1067); Edith Wharton (829

830); “Roman Fever” (843-852); sg responses

T: 2/19 Naturalism, London, & Wharton

Assignments: Introduction to Vol. D (1177-1190); “WWI and Its

Aftermath” (1371-72); Hemingway’s Letter of Aug. 18, 1918, to his

parents (1377-79); Ernest Hemingway (1980-1982); “The Snows of

Kilimanjaro” (1983-1999); sg responses

American Literature 1914-1945 Vol. D

H: 2/21 Modernism & WWI video, Hemingway

Assignments: Eliot (1574-1576); “The Love Song of J. Alfred

Prufrock” (1577-1580); from Tradition & the Individual Talent

(1581-1584); sg responses

T: 2/26 Due: Proposal for Response Essay I

Eliot & High Modernism

Assignments: Handout on The Waste Land; The Waste Land (1587

1599); sg responses

H: 2/28 Eliot’s Waste Land(s)

T: 3/4 – H: 3/6 Spring Break/No Class

T: 3/11 Due: Response Essay I

Eliot and failed love

Assignments: Millay (1803-1804); “I Think I Should Have Loved

You Presently”; [I, being born a woman]; & “I Too Beneath Your

Moon, Almighty Sex” (1805-1806); H.D. (1514-1515); “Leda” (1516-17); from The Walls Do Not Fall (1519-1531); sg responses

H: 3/13 Millay, H.D., & Modernisms

Assignments: Fitzgerald (1822-1823); “Babylon Revisited” (1839-

1853); William Faulkner (1858-1860); “Barn Burning” (1955-1967); sg

responses

T: 3/18 Due: Note cards for Response Essay I

Fitzgerald & Faulkner

Assignments: Hughes (2026-27); “The Weary Blues,” “Mulatto”

(2029-30); “Theme for English B” (2036-37); Zora Neale Hurston

(1700-01); “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” (1710-13); sg responses

H: 3/20 The Harlem Renaissance: Hughes & Hurston

Assignments: O’Neill (1607-1610; Long Day’s Journey into Night

(1610-1647); sg responses

T: 3/25 Due: Mid-term

Eugene O’Neill

Assignments: finish LDJ (1647-1685); sg responses

H: 3/27 O’Neill

Assignments: Introduction to Vol. E (2083-2092); Welty (2146);

“Petrified Man” (2148-2157); O’Connor (2521); “Good Country

People” (2529-2543); sg responses

American Literature 1945-present Vol. E

T: 4/1 Due: Proposal for Response Essay II

Post-modernisms, Welty, & O’Connor

Assignments: Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (Part One: 3-68); sg responses

H: 4/3 America in the 1950s: Censorship, McCarthyism, & Bradbury

Assignments: Part Two of Fahrenheit 451 (71-110); sg responses

T: 4/8 Due: Response Essay II

Bradbury continued

Assignments: Part Three (113-165); sg responses

H: 4/10 Bradbury continued

Assignments: Postmodern Manifestos (2485-86); “Bishop’s Letter to

Robert Lowell” (2497-98); Bishop (2166-67); “One Art” (2183-84);

“In the Waiting Room” (2177-79); “The Armadillo” (2175-76);

Robert Lowell (2392-94); “Skunk Hour” (2405-06); “Memories of

West Street and Lepke” (2404-05); sg responses

T: 4/15 Due: Note cards for Response Essay II

Post-modern poetry: Bishop vs. Lowell

Assignments: Sylvia Plath (2698-99); “Lady Lazarus” (2701-2703);

“Ariel” (2703-2704); “Daddy” (2704-06); Anne Sexton (2641-42);

“Sylvia’s Death” (2643-45); “Little Girl, My String Bean, My Lovely

Woman” (2645-47); sg responses

H: 4/17 Plath & Sexton

Assignments: Sam Shepard (2959-60); True West (2960-99); sg

responses

T: 4/ 22 True West

H: 4/24 Due: Final Draft of Research Essay

Last Day of Class/Review for Final

T: 4/29 Final Exam: 11:30-1:20

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