ENGLISH
210: INTRODUCTION TO TEXTS
SECTION 003: MONDAYS AND WEDNESDAYS,
5–7:15 PM, HHH 230
SPRING 2009, UWEC
PROFESSOR BOB NOWLAN
Office: HHH 425 Office Phone: (715)
836-4369
ranowlan@uwec.edu
http://www.uwec.edu/ranowlan
Office Hours: T 2:40-4:30, W 2:40-3:30
pm, and By Appointment (MW, 7:15-8 pm I will often make available or
use for group conferences)
COURSE
EXPLANATION
English 210: Introduction to Texts, the principal
foundational core course for all English major and minor emphasis areas
(Literature, Creative Writing, Teaching, Scientific and Technical
Communication, Linguistics, and, in process, hopefully soon to be
added, Film, Theory, and Culture), focuses on basic concepts and
practices useful for interpreting a wide variety of texts, and for
doing so by situating these in relevant and useful cultural contexts.
Introduction to Texts is a course in Cultural Studies.
Cultural Studies is a cross-disciplinary field of intellectual work
that emerged in the 1980s, with particular emphasis in the arts and
humanities. Cultural
studies engages the "writing" and "reading" of all "texts" of culture
(and not just conventional "literary"–or print or verbal–varieties of
texts). According to cultural studies, we "read" whenever
we interpret what something "means," and we "write" whenever
we create something which others must interpret so as to determine what
it means. This
leads us to approach all products of culture as "texts" insofar as they
are written and read, insofar as they are understood as possessing or
bearing meaning. "Texts" include everything from the
seemingly most "profoundly meaningful" to the seemingly most "mundanely
meaningless" (as, after all, to be considered insignificant, or of
little or no meaning, is to be judged to mean in a particular way as
well). Cultural studies thus focuses on making sense of "texts"
such as films, television shows, music and video productions and
performances, paintings and drawings, sculpture and architecture,
sports teams and games, trends in clothing and fashion, commercial
advertisements, individual dreams and plans, shopping lists and
checkout receipts, buildings and rooms, kinds of food and drink, roads
and vehicles, manners and gestures, ceremonies and rituals,
personalities and personal relationships, and individual actions and
specific incidents. Cultural studies focuses on making sense of
the meaning, value, and significance of specific cultural products and
practices as well as of the social relationships humans form to
facilitate and regulate specific processes of making and
practicing. And cultural studies focuses on the social
relationships humans form, furthermore, to distribute, exchange,
consume, and otherwise respond to specific processes of making and
practicing.
From the vantage point of Cultural Studies, literary
texts are not the only kinds of texts that English engages, not by far,
yet “literature,”
taking a cue from literary and cultural studies theorist Terry
Eagleton, here tends to refer to whatever a particular
culture (or subculture) happens to regard as especially "highly valued
writing." This flexible definition recognizes that what is
defined as “literature” and what is not–and especially “good” or
“great” literature–varies considerably across time and space, and
remains a continual focus of popular debate and critical
contestation. But it also recognizes that literary studies
maintains a crucial place within a larger field of cultural
studies: inquiry into what makes for different conceptions of
highly valued writing within and across different historical
cultures–and subcultures, as well as interpretation and appreciation of
those texts that do acquire and maintain the status of “literature.”
Within Cultural Studies, however, and also
throughout the history of the existence of this particular
course, English 210: Introduction to Texts, practitioners tend to
emphasize texts that are not conventionally conceived as great works of
art–or the mainstays of ‘high’ or ‘fine’ culture–instead focusing on
the vast array of cultural processes and productions we find in the
broad, diverse arena commonly referred to as “popular culture.”
In doing so, work in Cultural Studies shows how it is possible–and
useful–to bring to bear concepts and practices for interpretation of
cultural texts of all levels and kinds. At the same time,
cultural studies takes ‘great works of art’–and, more broadly, texts of
‘high’ or ‘fine’ culture–seriously too, focusing on showing how these are related
to texts of popular culture, including, often, as deliberate
critiques of, rejections of, departures from, escapes from, and ways
of, even if only temporarily, transcending the qualitative problems and
limitations of what we tend to find predominant within “popular
culture.”
English 210 aims to help you to engage in a
more conscious, critical, and independent-minded way with all of these
different texts of culture, and to think about and relate to them, and
to the ends they advance and the interests they represent, on your own
terms, thereby far less easily subject to manipulation, indoctrination,
dogmatism, demagoguery, or any other tendency to end up as mere
mindless consumers, shallow conformists, or passive victims versus the
power exercised by socially and politically dominant groups.
Pursuing this pathway enables you to engage as producers of your
culture, and of your cultural experience–i.e., as people who do
maintain potentially substantial power of your own to exercise versus
the social conditions that ground and the social structures that shape
your everyday existence.
In the first half of this course we will focus
on learning and initially applying key concepts and practices for
interpretation of cultural texts, particularly from the field of
semiotics
(or semiology, as it is also known). Semiotics inquires
into the nature and operations of all forms of meaningful expression,
representation, and communication in culture. We will concentrate
in this half of the course on working with ways of reading–and
writing about–cultural texts. And we will concentrate in
this part of the semester on working with texts from popular
culture. In the second half of class we will focus on
learning and initially practicing writing–that is
creating–cultural texts. Here we will begin by reading,
discussing, and interpreting a series of four English plays that
foreground complexities involved in interpretation, as well as the
significance of social and political struggles over meaning: two from
the late 19th century, Oscar Wilde’s Lady
Windermere’s Fan and The
Importance of Being Earnest, and two from the 1960s, Joe Orton’s
Entertaining Mr. Sloane and What the Butler Saw. These
plays have acquired the status of literary classics, and the
playwrights have acquired the status of canonical authors, even as both
were deliberately quite transgressive–even scandalously so–in their
time. These plays also engage critically with cultural
conventions, in sharp and striking ways, and each continues to be
highly challenging to–and provocative for–audiences to this day.
Working with these four plays will allow us to focus on two distinct
historical places and times both different enough yet still close
enough to where we are at to provide useful points of comparison and
contrast, as well as connection and reflection. What you will be
doing, after we take the time initially to read, discuss, and interpret
these plays, is to divide into three groups where each group will be
working together to compose, produce, and ultimately
perform–for the rest of the class–a short play of your own. These
plays you write will be directly related to and inspired by the plays
from Wilde and Orton, while set in the here and now as well as
otherwise significantly adapted and transformed. So, in sum, in
the second half of class you will gain the opportunity to bring to bear
the key concepts and practices you have learned in the first half of
class toward the critical and creative writing of a cultural text of
your own.
TEXTS
The following books are required:
1. Brummett, Barry. Rhetoric in Popular Culture.
2nd Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2006. ISBN#:
1-4129-1437-X. [This has been one of the principal books
used in this course from the very beginning in teaching and learning
fundamental concepts and practices; at the moment it also represents
the popular consensual favorite among English 210 instructors.
The book is laid out very logically and precisely, and includes the
beneficial feature of “summary and review” as well as “looking ahead”
sections at the end of each chapter. Please be sure to acquire the 2nd. not the
1st, edition.]
2 Berger, Arthur Asa. Signs in Contemporary Culture: an
Introduction to Semiotics. 2nd Edition. Salem,
Wisconsin: Sheffield Publishing Company, 1999.
ISBN#:1-879215-37-3. [This is also a long-time popular
standby of courses very much the same or similar to this one, and, like
Brummett’s book, offers a lucid, readily accessible introduction to a
field which is most often represented by books that are written in
ways, and at levels, that are more difficult to come to grips with and
initially understand. Although some of the illustrations and
topical references are dated at this point, and Berger’s own
opinionated takes can come across as quirky from time to time, these
features, as well as his continual interest in humor and in cartooning,
helps him in making his points more memorably, and, after all, a key
point that semiotics emphasizes, over and over again, is that the
interpretation of the meaning of cultural signs and texts is a site of
extensive and persistent difference, conflict, and struggle. Please be sure to acquire the 2nd. not the
1st, edition.]
3. Wilde, Oscar. Lady Windermere’s Fan and The Importance of Being Earnest.
Any edition is acceptable.
4 Orton, Joe. Entertaining
Mr. Sloane and What the
Butler Saw. Any edition is acceptable.
***** All of these books are available for you to
purchase at the UWEC Bookstore. You may purchase them elsewhere,
as you wish, as long as you do acquire them in time to use for
class. In the case of the Wilde and Orton plays, because of
the vagaries of publishing as well as restrictions on which publishers
and distributors they can work with, the UWEC Bookstore has ordered (or
will have ordered) editions where the plays will be bundled together
with many other plays by the same playwright than those we will use in
class. However, these are still relatively inexpensive (and,
strangely enough, cost less than many smaller, single-play editions),
while also providing you more reference and contextual material
(including for prospective extra credit papers–see below).
However, as I myself have done, if you are able to order on-line, you
likely will be able to find editions containing only the specific plays
we will be using in class–or further editions of select or complete
plays besides the ones selling in the UWEC Bookstore). *****
I will supply additional written texts, as need be,
in the form of photocopied handouts, or on Desire2Learn and the W (the
Student-Faculty Shared) Drive. I will also supply copies of the
visual, audio, and audio-visual texts that we may make use of from time
to time as well.
SCHEDULE
M 1/26: Introduction and Orientation.
W 1/28: The Rhetoric of Everyday Life, The Building Blocks of Culture:
Signs, Definition–Signs and Semiotics, and How Signs Work.
Read
for Class, W 1/28: Rhetoric
and Popular Culture, Selections From Chapter 1, pp. 3-14 (“The
Rhetoric of Everyday Life” and “The Building Blocks of Culture:
Signs”–Including “Indexical Meaning,” “Iconic Meaning,” “Symbolic
Meaning,” and “Complexity of the Three Kinds of Meaning”); Signs in Contemporary Culture,
Chapter 1 (“Definition” and “Honor in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I”) and Chapter 2
(“How Signs Work” and “Sherlock Holmes”), pp. 1-21.
M 2/2: The Building Block of Culture: Artifacts; Language and Speaking;
Forms of Signs; and Who Uses Signs?
Read
for Class, M 2/2: Rhetoric
and Popular Culture, Selection From Chapter 1, pp. 14-22 (“The
Building Blocks of Culture: Artifacts”–Including “An Action, Event or
Object Perceived as a Unified Whole”); Signs in Contemporary Culture,
Chapter 6, pp. 39-45 (“Language and Speaking” and “Fashion”), Chapter
8, pp. 53-61 (“Forms of Signs” and “Eight Hypotheses on Digital
Watches”), and Chapter 16, pp. 121-126 (“Who Uses Signs?” and “Poetry
as Signs”).
W 2/4: Definitions of Culture; Characteristics of Cultures; and Signs
and Identity.
Read
for Class, M 9/15: Rhetoric
and Popular Culture, Selections From Chapter 1, pp. 22-38
(“Definitions of Culture”–Including “Elitist Meanings of Culture” and
“Popular Meanings of Culture”–and “Characteristics of
Cultures”–Including “Cultures Are Highly Complex and Overlapping,”
“Cultures Entail Consciousness, or Ideologies,” and “Cultures Are
Experienced Through Texts”); Signs
in Contemporary Culture, Chapter 17, pp. 127-139 (“Signs and
Identity,” “Teeth as Signs,” “Logos and Corporate Identity,” “The
Un-Cola Country,” and “The Onion of Culture Metaphor”).
M 2/9: Codes.
Read
for Class, M 2/9: Signs in
Contemporary Culture, Chapters 25-26, pp. 195-216 (“Codes,”
“Baseball,” “Characteristics of Codes,” and “Foods as Signs”).
W 2/11: Texts as Sites of Struggle, Characteristics of Critical
Studies, and Finding a Text.
Read
for Class, W 2/11: Rhetoric
in Popular Culture, Selections From Chapter 3, pp. 90-110
(“Texts as Sites of Struggle”–Including “Texts Influence Through
Meanings” and “Texts Are Sites of Struggle over Meaning”–“Three
Characteristics of Critical Studies”–Including “The Critical
Character,” “Concern Over Power,” and “Critical Interventionism”–and
“Finding a Text”–Including “The First Continuum: Type of Text” and “The
Second Continuum: Sources of Meaning”).
M 2/16: Defining a Context, “Inside” the Text, and The Text in Context:
Metonymy, Judgment, and Power.
Read
for Class, M 2/16: Rhetoric
in Popular Culture, Selections From Chapter 3, pp. 110-134
(“Defining a Context”–Including “The Third Continuum: Choice of
Context” and “The Fourth Continuum: Text-Context
Relationship”–“‘Inside’ The Text”–Including “The Fifth Continuum: From
Surface to Deep Reading”–and “The Text in Context: Metonymy, Power,
Judgment”–Including “Metonymies,” “Empowerment/Disempowerment,” and
“Judgment”).
W 2/18: Metaphor and Metonymy, Denotation and Connotation, Imaginary
Signs and Signs that Lie, and Manifest and Latent Meaning in Signs.
Read for Class, W 2/18: Signs
in Contemporary Culture, Chapters 4-5, pp. 29-38 (“Metaphor:
Communicating by Analogy,” “Love Is a Game,” “Metonymy: Communicating
by Using Associations,” and “Political Cartoons”), Chapters 11-13, pp.
77-105 (“Denotation and Connotation,” “Comics and Ideology,” “Imaginary
Signs,” “Freud on Dreams,” “Signs that Lie,” and “On Parody”), and
Chapter 23, pp. 177-185 (“Manifest and Latent Meanings in Signs” and “Robinson Crusoe”).
* W 2/18: Short
Paper #1 (Beginning to Work with Key Concepts and Practices in Reading
and Writing About Cultural Texts) Assigned. *
M 2/23: Visual Aspects of Signs, Signifiers and Life-Style, Coherence
in Signs, Signs and Images, Sign Modifiers, and Analyzing Signs and
Sign Systems.
Read
for Class, M 2/23: Signs in
Contemporary Culture, Chapter 9, pp. 63-70 (“Visual Aspects of
Signs” and “Postmodern Design”), Chapters 14-15, pp. 107-120 (“Men’s
Looks: Signifiers and Life-Style,” “Denimization,” “Coherence in
Signs,” and “Formulas in the Public Arts”); Chapter 19, pp. 149-158
(“Signs and Images” and “Photography”), Chapter 22, pp. 171-176 (“Sign
Modifiers” and “Cartooning”), and Chapter 24, pp. 187-193 (“Analyzing
Signs and Sign Systems” and “‘Reach Out and Touch Someone’”).
W 2/25: Writing About Cultural Texts.
Read
for Class: To Be Announced.
M 3/2: Screening, Groundhog Day.
*
M 3/2: Learning and Contribution Reflection Paper #1 Assigned. *
W 3/4: Discussion of Groundhog Day,
including of Simulational Selves and Simulational Culture in Groundhog Day.
Read
for Class, W 3/4: Rhetoric and
Popular Culture, Chapter 7, “Simulational Selves, Simulational
Culture in Groundhog Day,” 257-271.
** F 3/6: Short Paper #1 Due by 12 noon in my English Department
Mailbox, HHH 405 **
M 3/9: Screening, Eternal Sunshine of
the Spotless Mind.
W 3/11: Discussion of Eternal
Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in
Comparison and Contrast with Groundhog
Day, as well as Eternal
Sunshine of the Spotless Mind vis-a-vis the idea of
Simulational Selves and Simulational Cultures.
*
W 3/11: Short Paper #2 (Beginning to Work with Key Concepts and
Practices in Reading and Writing About Cultural Texts) Assigned. *
**
F 3/13: Learning and Contribution Reflection Paper #1 Due, by 12 noon,
in my English Department Mailbox, HHH 405. **
M 3/23: Discussion, Introduction to Oscar Wilde and Lady Windermere’s Fan.
Read for Class, M 3/23: Lady
Windermere’s Fan.
W 3/25: Discussion, Lady
Windermere’s Fan and The
Importance of Being Earnest.
Read
for Class, W 3/25: The
Importance of Being Earnest.
* F 3/27: Short Paper #2 Due by 12 noon in my English
Department Mailbox, HHH 405 *
M 3/30: Discussion, The Importance
of Being Earnest, and Oscar Wilde: Conclusion.
W 4/1: Discussion, Introduction to Joe Orton, and Entertaining Mr. Sloane.
Read for Class: W 4/1:
Entertaining Mr. Sloane.
M 4/6: Discussion, Entertaining Mr.
Sloane and What the Butler Saw.
Read
for Class: M 4/6: What the Butler Saw.
W 4/8: Discussion, What the Butler
Saw and Joe Orton: Conclusion.
M 4/13, W 4/15, M 4/20, W 4/22, M 4/27, W 4/29, and M 5/4: Work in
Groups on Writing, Producing, and Practicing Performing Short Plays.
*
M 4/13: Learning and Contribution Reflection Paper #2 Assigned. *
W 5/6: Performances of Short Plays.
*
M 5/11: By 12 noon in my English Department Mailbox, HHH 405: Learning
and Contribution Reflection Paper #2 Due. *
**THIS SCHEDULE IS
SUBJECT TO CHANGE. **
ORGANIZATION AND CONDUCT OF CLASS
SESSIONS
We will work continuously throughout the 135 minutes
we have each period. (If you need to take a short restroom break,
you should feel free to go ahead and take it–but try to keep it
short.) Class will follow a variety of formats, but throughout
you will be consistently actively involved. In other words, while
I will devise the structures for what we do, and direct all of our work
together, this will be a discussion-emphasis as opposed to a
lecture-emphasis class. From time to time I will make short
presentations, but that’s it, as it will be up to you to help us work
our way toward a consensual understanding of key concepts and
practices–what they mean, how and for what they are useful, and what
their significance happens to be. You will need to work with me
in order to enable your learning and that of your peers; students
always learn much better, in this kind of class, through active
participation and extensive collaboration (including often as part of
smaller groups and teams) rather than by remaining largely quiet and
merely taking notes during the course of long lectures. Plus, we
will be making use of your prior, and other, knowledge, skill, talent,
and experience as a crucial point of connection with everything “new”
you encounter in this class. And since we will be focusing a
great deal on contemporary American popular culture, each of you has a
lot to offer. We collectively maintain “expertise” in many of the
vast array of different areas in which people in the US today
interact–in all of the diverse rituals, conventions, routines, customs,
traditions, habits, and myriad other forms of meaningful activity that
give shape and substance to our everyday lives. “Popular culture”
includes all of that, as well as all of the ways we commonly make sense
of all of this participation (i.e., what we think, feel, and believe
about it).
GENERAL EXPECTATIONS OF STUDENTS
I expect students in this course to strive to become
sincerely interested in learning about the subject matter of this
course, and to be consistently intellectually serious as well as
academically diligent in their pursuit of this learning. I
expect students to strive to bring actively and extensively to bear–in
your essays and contributions to class discussion–insights you gain
through your engagement with the texts and topics addressed as part of
this course, and I expect you to strive at the same time to relate
these texts and topics as closely and as fully as possible to subjects
of genuine interest and concern in your own lives. And I expect
you to let me know right away when and if you have any questions or
problems about any aspect of how you are doing in and with the course,
so that I can do whatever I possibly can to help answer these questions
and solve these problems.
In addition, students should keep in mind that
the higher educational academy is not a "safe space" separate from the
rest of the "real world" where you can expect to be sheltered from
encountering anything you might find disagreeable or
objectionable. After all, disturbing positions and practices
exist extensively outside of the classroom as well as in what we read,
see, hear, and otherwise confront in and for class; what we confront in
class exists in this institutional space as symptomatic of positions
and practices that operate beyond the confines of the classroom, the
course, and the university. If and when you find any text or
topic genuinely upsetting, you maintain the ethical responsibility not
simply to try to hide from but rather to engage with it in an
intellectually serious, responsible, mature adult way. Students
should expect therefore that you will on occasion encounter
representations that you will find troubling, in this UWEC course and
in many others as well; within this Department you will receive no
right of exemption from engaging with these and absolutely no welcome
for simply complaining (especially to a higher administrative
authority) about their inclusion. After all, great works of
art–including of literature–are often created with the deliberate aim
of disturbing, even shocking many people who will encounter these;
often the intent here is to provoke strong response, as well as
thought–and action–that goes beyond what has become familiar,
conventional, commonsensical, and, especially, merely “safe.”
Finally, students should also be prepared to deal
with that fact that a professor differs from a high school teacher in
many respects, but one key difference is that we maintain a principal
professional, ethical responsibility forthrightly to represent the most
advanced knowledges in our fields of expertise and to proceed from
there to work toward their further development and
dissemination. In short, we must create, advocate for, and profess these knowledges; you
should expect that your professors may from time to time take
controversial positions on difficult and challenging issues, eschewing
the pretense of disinterested neutrality. To do anything less
than assume this responsibility would be to shirk our professorial
responsibility and to render ourselves unworthy of maintaining our
professorial positions.
GOALS OF THE BACCALAUREATE
These are the five most important,
official goals all UWEC undergraduate courses are designed to help you meet:
1. Knowledge of Human Culture and the Natural World
2. Creative and Critical Thinking
3. Effective Communication
4. Individual and Social Responsibility
5. Respect for Diversity Among People
These goals require your striving to
meet them. Striving means learning actively and deliberately,
completing assignments in a thorough and timely fashion, participating
in class discussion, and making connections between what we do while
meeting in class and what you do when engaged outside of the classroom.
SPECIFIC REQUIREMENTS FOR COURSE GRADE
Introduction
In evaluating all work done for this course, I will
take account of how carefully, seriously, intelligently,
enthusiastically, and imaginatively students engage with the concepts,
issues, positions, and arguments addressed in the course and
represented by the texts we read, by me, and by each other.
Attendance
Since this is your class as much as it is mine, if
not more so, and its success depends upon your contribution, it is
important that you be in class as often as possible. And
attendance means being in class on time, for the full 135 minutes,
alert, engaged, and prepared to work. Otherwise, it’s not really
attendance at all. I recognize that on occasion students
will have to miss class, however, so each of you are allowed two
unexcused absences. Beyond that, you should only miss class
because of a genuinely serious personal or family emergency, and you
will need to justify to me that this is the case so as not to suffer a
grade penalty. And, if you end up needing to miss six or more
classes, you should withdraw and sign up for English 210 in a
subsequent semester, as it will be difficult to pass the course missing
that amount of class time (unless yours is a university-authorized
extended absence). Finally, if you arrive late or leave early,
engage in private conversations or in text messaging, do other work for
other courses while in class, sleep in class, or behave in any other
way that shows you are not really present in class, especially where
this distracts from the work the rest of us are trying to do, you may
be counted as absent for class. If any of this kind of behavior
is persistent or egregious that will definitely be the
case. I do pay attention, and I keep track of attendance,
even though I don’t do a roll call, or have you sign in. So, if
you ever think I’ve mistakenly counted you as absent–especially for any
of the reasons listed above–please make sure to come talk with me after
class to explain yourself.
Short Papers–Beginning to Work with
Key Concepts and Practices for Reading and Writing About Cultural Texts
These papers will provide you an opportunity to test
out your developing grasp of exactly that: key concepts and practices
for reading and writing about cultural texts. They will involve
the opportunity to apply what you have learned to specific texts of
your own choosing. I will provide a thorough explanation at the
time that I distribute each of these paper assignments to you,
including specifications for style, format, and length (although I will
mention here that I tend to be quite flexible in working with different
lengths depending upon what works for different students).
Please seek out my help as you are working on these papers; I will be
glad to give it. Each of these papers will be worth 15% of the
overall course grade, for a combined total worth 30% of the
course grade.
Learning and Contribution/Learning and
Contribution Reflection Papers
My foremost aim in teaching this course is to help
you to learn something of significance and value. I will judge
you to a significant degree on what you learn, how–and how hard–you
strive to learn, and on how–along with how well–you contribute to the
learning for the rest of the class.
Class participation represents an important
opportunity to learn, not just a place in which to demonstrate what you
have learned. By raising questions, testing and trying out ideas,
taking risks and making mistakes, you learn a great deal–and help
others learn a great deal as well. You learn through talking, not
just talk to show what you have learned. Don't hesitate to speak
forth in class if you have anything at all to throw into the mix.
At the same time, just talking a great deal does not
necessarily mean that you are making a quality contribution to the
class by aiding the learning that we aim to accomplish. Quality
of participation is much more important than quantity, although a
sufficient quantity is indispensable to insure quality. Still, I
want to emphasize here that I perceive talking for talking’s
sake–especially talking which pulls us off on far-fetched tangents,
which remains disconnected from and disengaged with the reading and the
rest of the class, or which effectively silences others–to be negative
participation. Quality class participation does not, moreover,
involve merely asking questions of me and responding to my questions;
quality class participation requires you to work as assiduously as you
can to advance a serious and substantial discussion with your peers
about the texts and topics subject to discussion.
Contribution to the class certainly can extend far
beyond mere speaking in class: it may include a variety of ways in
which you can bring to bear your insights to help yourself as well as
the rest of us gain from the experience of this course.
Excellent writing for class is also a valuable way to contribute
to class. At the same time, listening carefully, respectfully,
and thoughtfully in class discussions is yet another important means of
contribution–as is taking time to meet and talk with me outside of
class. In fact, meeting and talking with me outside of class can
be an excellent way to contribute–as well as to show us me how
seriously interested in and engaged with the course material you are.
Learning and contribution will constitute a
significant proportion of your overall course grade. As part of
this grade, you will write two short learning and contribution
reflection papers. For these papers I will ask you, simply, to
assess how, along with how well, you have been learning and
contributing in the class over the course of the preceding
approximately one-half of the semester. As I see it, these short
papers provide you a useful opportunity to communicate with me how you
believe you are doing with the course, as well as why so, and to
demonstrate your critical self-reflexivity, the hallmark of a liberal
arts education. As you are assessing your own learning and
contribution, you may include thoughts in reaction to issues raised in
class discussion that you did not have the opportunity or did not feel
comfortable enough to share in class; these additional reflections can
help me get a better sense of what you have been thinking about and how
you have been responding to class discussions, as well as to the
readings. I will take into account what you write in determining
your learning and contribution grade for the preceding half-semester;
performance on these papers represents a vital component of your
learning and contribution grade.
I will provide you specific directions in the
assignments I give you for each of these papers. Each learning
and contribution grade (including each learning and contribution
reflection paper) will be worth 15% of the
overall course grade, making for a combined total worth 30% of the
overall course grade.
Small Group Project: Leadership
of Discussion of a Section of a Play
As part of a group of students you will be
responsible for leading our discussion for one-half period of a
significant section from one of the following four plays–Lady Windermere’s Fan, The Importance of Being Earnest, Entertaining Mr. Sloane, and What the Butler Saw. Your
aims here will be: to help your fellow students better understand and
appreciate (the meaning, value, and significance of) the section of the
play for which you are responsible, and to do the same for the play as
a whole, as well as to help stimulate an interesting discussion of the
play, including by drawing connections (comparisons and contrasts) with
the here and now. If you can come up with some good ideas to help
the students who will be working with this play as source material for
composing, producing, and performing their own short play subsequently
that will be great. Each group will meet with me in a conference
prior to the day in which you will be responsible for half of class; I
will help you prepare. Your performance on this assignment will
be worth 10% of
the overall course grade.
Large Group Project: Composition,
Production, and Performance of a Short Play
Here you will be working together with a group of
your peers from class to compose, produce, and ultimately perform–in
class, for the rest of us–a short play directly inspired by one or two
of the four plays we will be reading and discussing in class: Lady Windermere’s Fan, The Importance of Being Earnest, Entertaining Mr. Sloane, and What the Butler Saw. You will be
updating and translating the play so that it is focused on the here and
now. At the same time, you will be maintaining significant
elements of plot, character, style, mood, tone, and even setting from
your original source-play(s). And you will be working to find
ways to make use of the key concepts for reading and writing about
texts that we discussed in the first half of the semester; you will be
bringing these to bear in how you compose, produce, and perform your
play, demonstrating how your “writing” here of a cultural text reflects
your critical “reading” of (and is in fact another way of “writing
about”) a series of other cultural texts. In other words, your
play will offer a creative as well as critical take on some significant
aspects of contemporary American culture, linked with and inspired by
Wilde’s and/or Orton’s creative and critical takes on some significant
aspects of 1890s or 1960s British culture. I will provide more
details when I give you the specific assignment for this project.
I will also give you instructions as well as suggestions and
recommendations throughout the time you will be working on this
assignment. And you should note well here that even as this is
the kind of assignment that students overwhelmingly tend to enjoy
working on, and that includes students initially skeptical or worried
about it, you will need to take it seriously, and make productive use
of your time. Plus you almost certainly will need to work on it
outside of as well as inside of class time, even though you will have
seven 135 minutes long class periods to work in your teams on
composing, producing, and rehearsing your short plays.
Please feel free to consult with me outside as well as inside of class
as you are working on this project; I will be glad to help in any and
every way I can. I will be doing everything I can to help you in
class throughout that period of time. Finally, I will be giving
each member of each team an evaluation sheet to fill out and turn in
after your play has been performed in class, where you will evaluate
your own and each other member of your team’s contribution to the
collective project you have worked on; I will take what teams write on
these evaluation forms, about yourselves and your teammates,
significantly into account in determining your individual grades for
this project. And the grade for your work as part of a team of
peers involved in composing, producing, and performing a short play
will be worth 30%
of the overall course grade.
Extra Credit Opportunity
You may, if you wish, write a sustained critical
analysis of the dramatic work of either Oscar Wilde or Joe Orton in
which you incorporate research into the life, times, and outlook of the
playwright as well as key shaping influences on him and his
playwriting; the history of his plays’ production, performance, and
reception; scholarly interpretation of his plays; and the relation
between the plays we read in class and at least one other play that he
also wrote. Let me know as early as possible if you are
interested in this extra credit opportunity, so that I can help you on
it. This extra credit paper will be worth 10% of the
overall course grade.
CONFERENCES/EXTRA
HELP
I encourage you to meet with me in conference during
office hours or at another mutually convenient time to discuss any
issue of interest or concern that you develop as a student in this
course and as a member of this class. I recognize the value of
learning that takes place in conferences; I know this can at times be
equally as important, and in fact occasionally even more important,
than what takes place in class. It also provides you an
opportunity to contribute beyond what you say in class and write for
class. So please do not hesitate to meet with me at any time you
think this might be helpful to you–or whenever you’d just like to talk
further with me. I want to help you in your understanding
of issues addressed in texts and discussions, as well as in your
writing and participation. And you may certainly also feel free
to contact me by e-mail or by (my campus office) phone as well.
I really do like to get to know my students;
students at this university continually demonstrate impressive ability,
talent, knowledge, experience, insight, vitality, and good
character. I am lucky to get to know you; it enriches me.
*
Any student who has a disability and is in need of classroom
accommodations, please contact the instructor and the Services for
Students with Disabilities Office. *
CONCLUSION
In the interest of accountability–me to you–I am
here providing you links: 1.) to my statement of philosophy as a
college teacher:
http://www.uwec.edu/ranowlan/philosophy.htm; 2.) to my
autobiographical profile:
http://www.uwec.edu/ranowlan/PROFILE_.htm and http://www.myspace.com/insurgentseanmurphy
(if you too are on myspace feel free to contact me to become myspace
friends); and 3.) to my professional vita (the academic equivalent of a
resume):
http://www.uwec.edu/ranowlan/VITA.htm. I encourage you to
check these sites out; it is useful for you to know who your teacher
is, what he’s about, and where he’s coming from–and I like to be very
open, honest, and forthright with you about all of that. I look
forward to a great semester working together with you!