ENGLISH 715: CRITICAL THEORY AND ENGLISH
STUDIES
Tuesdays, 6-8:45
pm, Spring 2012, UWEC, HHH 222
PROFESSOR BOB NOWLAN
Office: HHH 425,
Office Phone: (715) 836-4369
Office Hours: MWF
11:55 am to 12:25 pm, M 5:50 pm to 6:20 pm,
T 8:50 pm to 9:20
pm, W 4:20 to 4:50 pm, as well as By Appointment
ranowlan@uwec.edu
http://uwec.edu/ranowlan
BRIEF COURSE DESCRIPTION
English 715: Critical Theory and English Studies
inquires into how significant and influential theorists and critics
have engaged with literature, culture, and everyday life. We will
focus in particular on theorists and critics who have exerted
considerable direct and indirect impact upon work in English
Studies. In 715, our discussions of how this impact has happened
will help students enter a diverse array of ongoing conversations and
contestations in English Studies. We will engage with major
figures, positions, concepts, and arguments in critical theory from
modernism through postmodernism. We will relate these readings
and discussions of work in critical theory to a variety of cultural
texts and to a variety of everyday as well as topical concerns, with a
particular emphasis on literature, including literature itself as locus
of theory and criticism. Although we will, in part, study theory
and criticism by situating this work in historical context, we will, of
necessity, be highly selective, focusing on working with concepts that
maintain prospectively broad applicability, across large expanses of
time (and space), as well as on major lines of thought. What
follows below, in the “Course Explanation” section of this syllabus, is
a more extensive explanation of what we will be doing, how, and why,
which also serves as the equivalent of an introductory ‘print lecture’.
COURSE
EXPLANATION
"Critical theory" refers to a series of pathways for
intellectual inquiry that first emerged with the end of the 18th
century European Enlightenment and in particular with the initial
widespread waning of intellectual confidence that the newly hegemonic
bourgeois society would succeed in realizing Enlightenment
ideals. In short, critical theory represents the intellectual
articulation of the conviction that modern capitalist society cannot–at
least not without significant reformation or substantial
transformation–realize the Enlightenment ideal of an enlightened–that
is, a rational, just, and humane–society. According to Enlightenment
consensus, this ideal society is to be one which will genuinely embody
the highest values of human civilization, and which will thereby insure
steady progress in the attainment of liberty, justice, prosperity, and
contentment for all of its citizens.
Critical theory begins by inquiring into what
prevents the realization of this Enlightenment ideal. In doing
so, critical theory questions and challenges the seeming obviousness,
naturalness, immediacy, and simplicity of the world around us, and, in
particular, of what we are able to perceive through our senses and
understand through the application of our powers of reason.
Critical theory is therefore concerned with discovering and uncovering,
and with describing and explaining "mediations"–environmental,
ecological, physical, physiological, psychological, intellectual,
emotional, historical, social, cultural, economic, political,
ideological, linguistic, semiotic, aesthetic, religious, ethical, etc.
–between "object" and "subject," "event" and "impression," "impression"
and "perception," "perception" and "cognition," "cognition" and
"reflection," "reflection" and "response," "response" and "reaction,"
"reaction" and "action," and "action" and "practice." At the same
time, "critical theory" also always involves questioning and
challenging the passive acceptance that "the way things are"–or "the
way things seem"–simply "is" the "natural" way they necessarily
"should" or "must" be. In other words, critical theory
questions and challenges the conviction that what is, or what is in the
process of becoming, or what appears to be, or what is most commonly
understood to be, or what is dominantly conveyed to be, is also at the
same time right and true, good and just, and necessary and inevitable:
critical theory does not, at least not automatically, accept any of
this. Critical theory is always particularly concerned with
inquiring into the problems and limitations, the blindnesses and
mistakes, the contradictions and incoherences, the injustices and
inequities in how we as human beings, operating within particular kinds
of structures and hierarchies of relations with each other, facilitated
and regulated by particular kinds of institutions, engaged in
particular kinds of processes and practices, have formed, reformed, and
transformed ourselves, each other, and the communities, cultures,
societies, and worlds in which we live.
*
Critical theory has always occupied tenuous
positions within traditional academic disciplines, and has always moved
restlessly across disciplinary borders; after all, when we think of
what critical theory has influenced, we must include such diverse
disciplines as sociology, political science, philosophy, economics,
history, anthropology, psychology, and even biology and physics, as
well as studies in English and other national, regional, and ethnic
languages and literatures. Critical theory, in sum, is by no
means merely a province of English Studies, and neither need it be,
should it be, nor can it be confined to English Studies alone, or to
language and literature studies more generally.
Explicit focus on education in critical theory as
part of English Studies reflects how much the disciplines of English
and their constituent fields of intellectual inquiry have changed over
the past approximately forty-five to fifty years. Even as many
English Departments continue to prioritize courses in what at first
glance might seem like traditional areas–e.g., literature, rhetoric and
composition, linguistics, creative writing, and English education–much
has nevertheless changed both in the ways that many of these courses
are taught and the aims that are often pursued in teaching these
courses. Even more important than these changes, however, is the
fact that English has been at the cutting edge of the transformation of
the humanities into the principal broad arena of intellectual concern
with relations between texts and cultures such that even those
departments and programs that do not explicitly declare themselves as
doing “cultural
studies” often in fact are extensively engaged in doing so.
Cultural
studies has challenged the predominance of the governing categories of
traditional literary studies (the virtually exclusive central
focus of early to mid 20th century work in English) such as the
"canon," the discrete and homogenous "period," the formal properties of
"genre," the literary object as autonomous and self-contained, the
"author" of the "work" as a figure of transcendent "genius," the act of
reading as a private mode of reverential contemplation and ecstatic
escape from the mundane pressures of the everyday, and the "greatness"
of literature as measurable in terms of universal standards of
aesthetic beauty and eternal principles of ethical right and good.
Ultimately even more important, however, in
distinguishing cultural studies from traditional literary studies, is
the fact that cultural
studies is directly concerned with the "writing" and "reading" of all
"texts" of culture, and not just conventional "literary"
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 may well, according to this
conception, include literary studies as a constituent component.
It has by now been nearly thirty years since Terry Eagleton proposed,
in the first edition of his Literary
Theory: an Introduction, that because "literature" is so
difficult precisely to define, and, as such, is an extremely incoherent
and unstable category, the field of "literary studies" should be
replaced by a field of "cultural studies" that focused on making sense
of the rhetoric and politics of texts of all different kinds.
However, it really should be no surprise that we have not witnessed the
"death of literature" implicit in this and many similar kinds of
recommendation made around the same time. After all, Eagleton
does admit that literature can be defined as whatever a particular
culture (or subculture) happens to regard as especially "highly valued
writing." Whereas Eagleton suggests that this means "literature"
may no longer serve as a particularly useful category, I suggest that
this reconception of what “literature” entails in fact opens up many
new possibilities for work in literary studies conducted as part of
work within a larger field of cultural studies: i.e., inquiring into what
makes for different conceptions of highly valued writing within and
across different historical cultures–and subcultures.
*
Critical theory crucially informs and enables all
these developments and transformations in English Studies I have just
described, yet the value of education in critical theory extends beyond
its contribution to the core disciplines of any particular academic
department, including English.
Throughout
the everyday lives of each and every one of us, our ability to
make sense of the world around us–and to orient ourselves to engage in
relation to it on the basis of how we make sense–means that we are continually
working with "theories" of one kind or another. At the
same time, because our everyday lives also demand that we make numerous
judgements according to various standards and criteria and that we then
proceed according to the judgements we have made, we are also continually
thinking and acting in ways which are at least rudimentarily "critical"
as well. Nevertheless, in our everyday lives most of us do not all
that often reflect upon precisely what theories are guiding and
sustaining us, how so, and why so, nor do we frequently
examine how and why we think and act critically in the ways that we
do. Moreover, if asked to produce a rigorous intellectual
explanation, precisely accounting for and meticulously justifying the
theoretical and critical influences upon and determinants of our
everyday ways of thinking, understanding, feeling, believing,
interacting, communicating, acting, and behaving, most of us would have
a very difficult time. A principal aim of studying and learning
to think, read, write, and act theoretically is to develop the ability
to recognize, understand, explain, and account for the theories that
guide and sustain us throughout our everyday lives. Likewise, a
principal aim of studying and learning to think, read, write, and act
critically is to develop the ability to recognize, understand, explain,
and account for the kinds of judgements, the ways in which we make
judgements, and the standards and criteria we use in making judgements
throughout everyday life.
Because the theories that guide and sustain us and
the ways in which we think and act critically in our everyday lives are
rarely simply the result of our own uniquely individual creation and
rarely a matter simply of our own autonomously free choice–especially
when we either are not conscious of their effects upon us or are unable
to explain, account for, and justify these in a sustained and rigorous
fashion–we are
always working according to the influence and the determination of
theoretical and critical approaches which are much larger than the
space "inside" of our own "heads" or "minds": we are always
working according to theoretical and critical approaches which occupy
particular places within particular societies and cultures and which
are formed as particular products of particular histories and
politics. A course in "critical theory" presents an opportunity
not only, therefore, to learn about the theoretical and critical
approaches of what might often at least initially seem like an elite
caste of distant and specialized others–specific, and frequently
famous, named "theorists" and "critics"–but also, and more importantly,
to reflect upon
how and why all of us work with the kinds of theoretical and critical
approaches we do; where these come from and what gives rise to them;
where they lead and what follows from them; which such
approaches predominate in what areas of everyday life today, in what
places within what societies and cultures, with what uses and effects,
toward the advancement of what ends and toward the service of what
interests; and what alternative approaches are possible, what
alternatives are desirable, what alternatives are necessary, and how do
we get from here to there.
In this specific course we will focus broadly
on movements in critical theory–as well as in cultural studies,
including English Studies–from “modernism” to “postmodernism.”
This focus enables us to engage with a wide extent of major
conversations–and major contestations–in critical theory, in areas
where these conversations, and contestations, particularly strongly
coincide, in turn, with major areas of long-standing interest and
concern among those working in cultural studies, and, especially,
English Studies. Among some of these major areas are the
following: (1.) problematics of identity–especially concerning
divisions within identity, (2.) relations between language and
subjectivity, (3.) relations between the individual and society, (4.)
what counts as knowledge and especially what counts as useful and
valuable knowledge, (5.) how do we know what we know and what are the
inevitable and necessary limits to our ability to know, (6.) relations
between the aesthetic and the ethical, (7.) relations between the
artistic and the political, and (8.) the impact of class, gender, race,
and other, similar social categories on experience, perspective,
agency, and ideology. Because ‘modernism’ and ‘postmodernism’
encompass a vast amount of work in artistic forms of cultural
production (as well as critical theory), and because both modernist and
postmodernist forms of critical theory challenge neat divisions among
supposedly clearly distinct kinds of discourse, we will engage
extensively with a series of literary texts that deal centrally with
many of the same issues as do the critical theory texts we will
read. We won’t, moreover, merely ‘apply’ the theory texts we read
to these literary texts, as we will also ‘apply’ these literary
texts as ways of making sense of theory texts–using literature as
itself site and source of ‘theory’.
*
Finally, I want to offer some helpful points to keep
in mind, and to make use of, as you approach our work with critical
theory this semester.
First,
we can only engage with a small number of significant contributions to
the immense amount of work that has been generated in critical theory
over the course now of many hundreds of years. Even at the graduate
level, this is merely an introduction to a potential lifetime’s
pursuit; don’t expect that what we read and study this semester
represents the ‘ultimate truth’ or the final answer to what constitutes
the most important work in ‘critical theory” (or ‘Critical Theory and
English Studies’). Feel free to explore writers and
writings beyond those assigned, as you find this of interest and use.
Second,
the reading you will do for this course should, from time to time,
challenge you; you should at times find it difficult, at least
initially so; and you should not expect that what you read will always
make intuitive sense or provide immediate satisfaction. Of
course, I hope that eventually you will experience a sense of
confidence, even excitement, in working with critical theory, but I do
not want you to imagine you necessarily should be able to do this right
away, with ease. Not at all. For many of you, this is
likely one of your first courses in theory and criticism, whereas, in
most cases, you have already taken many courses, and read many texts,
in “literature” even well before you began undergraduate studies.
Imagine what it might be like to take a course of introduction to
literature having never previously taken such a course, studied or read
any of the material, or maintained much, if any, familiarity with what
literature involves and what it might mean to make sense of and respond
to it. Expect,
therefore, in this class, that you will grow in understanding,
facility, and confidence; don’t be needlessly hard on
yourself–accept that you will learn through trial and error, through
taking risks and trying out ideas, and by making mistakes. You
don’t need “THE right answer” or “THE right way to say it” to talk
(both of which, for that matter, critical theory by and large rejects
as impossibly quixotic goals); learn through talking,
and through becoming comfortable recognizing and accepting what you
don’t already clearly understand and what you can’t already clearly
articulate.
Third, you will
need, consistently and conscientiously, not only to work hard to remain
patient, and to keep an open mind,
but also not to
rest content with the superficially apparent, the merely
commonsensical, the seemingly self-evident, and the already familiar; critical
theory deliberately challenges all of this, and in order to appreciate
what it means to think, speak, listen, read, write, act, and interact
in a critical theoretical manner, you will need to follow this path as
well.
Fourth,
even as I will provide specific sites for testing and applying
what we can extract from our readings in critical theory, I will count
on you to take the initiative to do this yourself as well. You have to be an
active participant in this course; you will gain little if you
don’t bring to bear your own knowledge, experience, interests, and
concerns. You
have to work to find ways to make what we read and study relevant to
you.
Fifth,
and following closely upon the last point, since all of you enrolled in
this course are advanced students, I expect you to demonstrate the
intellectual maturity you have acquired as a result of this previous
work. I know
people enrolled in English 715 have, in most cases, taken many English
as well as other courses for a considerable number of years now; you
should feel free to draw upon this knowledge and experience (even when
or where it doesn’t immediately seem obviously relevant). It will
help you–and us.
Sixth,
ask questions, offer comments, try not to be afraid to speak, and try
to write what you think, no matter how tentative, uncertain, or
confused you might find yourself (i.e., be prepared to take the risk
that what you say, or write, might turn out to be–or, more likely, to
appear or to seem–‘wrong’). In fact, don’t look for hard and
fast, simple right and wrong answers; critical theory is as much, if
not much more, focused upon asking questions as it is about securing
answers, and the process of theorization, and critique, is
continuously ongoing. All positions are
limited, and those long engaged with critical theory accept this as a
matter of course.
Seventh, while I
welcome you always to disagree with anything we read whenever you find
yourself so inclined, and even encourage you to do so, I expect, at the
same time, that you will first strive to
understand what you read ‘on its own terms’, especially when you find
yourself troubled or disturbed by it, so that you will not
simply dismiss or reject what you oppose but instead carefully argue
against and precisely critique it. I expect you first to aim to do justice to
the positions you
engage, and to try to represent them as their adherents would recognize
them, even when you aim to move from this first stage to a second stage
in which you argue strongly to the contrary. I expect you will do
the same with positions I as your teacher advance as well as those your
classmates advance. And I encourage you eventually to work to
find critical theoretical positions that you can stake out, and argue
for, as your own, even as you strive to understand where others might
be coming from, how so, and why so (especially when they seem to be
coming from very different places than you).
Eighth,
don’t look to me as one ‘who has all the answers’; I am an
experienced guide, but I am continually learning as well. We will
engage with many complex issues in this class that I would absolutely
never claim to have ‘mastered’–these are issues great minds have long
struggled with and continue to struggle with. I don’t consider
myself ‘a great mind’; I consider myself one who is knowledgeable and
experienced enough to be able to help you find your way as you begin
working at a graduate level in ‘Critical Theory and English Studies’.
TEXTS
The following required books are available for
purchase at the UWEC Bookstore in Davies Center; all nine are required:
1. Cahoone, Lawrence E., eds. From Modernism to Postmodernism: An
Anthology Expanded. 2nd Edition. Blackwell
Philosophy Anthologies. Wiley-Blackwell, 2003. ISBN#:
978-0631232131. This Edition Only.
2. Kolocotroni, Vassiliki, Jane Goldman, and Olga
Taxidou, eds. Modernism: An
Anthology of Sources and Documents. University of Chicago
Press, 1999. ISBN#: 978-0226450742.
3. Drolet, Michael, ed. The Postmodernism Reader: Foundational
Texts. Routledge, 2004. ISBN#: 0-415-16084-7.
4. Stevenson, Robert Louis. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
A Norton Critical Edition. W.W. Norton, 2003. ISBN#:
0-393-97465-0. This Edition Preferred.
5. Fallada, Hans. Alone in Berlin. Penguin
Books, 2010. ISBN#: 978-0141189383. Other Editions
Also Acceptable.
6. Petry, Ann. The
Street. Mariner Books, 1998. ISBN#:
0395901499. Other Editions Also Acceptable.
7. Ginsberg, Allen. Howl. 50th Anniversary
Edition. Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006. ISBN#:
978-0-06-113745-7. This Edition Preferred.
8. Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot.
Grove/Atlantic. ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-3034-1. Other Editions
Also Acceptable.
9. Auster, Paul. The New York Trilogy: City of Glass;
Ghosts; The Locked Room. Contemporary American Fiction
Series. Penguin, 1990. ISBN#: 978-0140131550. This
Edition Preferred.
You need to obtain these books in time to use for
class, as assigned in the Schedule section of this syllabus. You
may feel free, however, as you wish–and as you find convenient–to
obtain these from another outlet, including by ordering them online
(such as by way of www.amazon.com,
for example).
We will only be reading selections–between 1/4 and
1/3 of the whole–from the three theory anthologies (#1 through #3
above), but these books will also prove useful for you in work on
papers, presentations, and for further study beyond the scope of this
course. I strongly recommend the versions of Strange Case of Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as well as of Howl I list above, as both those
editions include extensive supplementary materials that should prove
most helpful, and indeed stimulating, to our discussion of those two
books.
I will supply copies of guides, outlines, lecture
notes, and more, as well as supplementary, illustrative texts–video,
audio, audio-video, etc.–that we will make use of throughout the
semester.
SCHEDULE
T 1/24: Introduction and Orientation.
T 1/31: Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde.
Read
for Class, T 1/31: The entire book,
including “Background and Contexts” and “Criticism.”
T 2/7: Descartes, Kant, Condorcet, and Horkheimer and Adorno
(From Modernism to Postmodernism);
Foucault (The Postmodernism Reader).
Read
for Class, T 2/7: From
Modernism to
Postmodernism: 19-26 (From Meditations
on First Philosophy), 45-49 (“An
Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?”), 63-69 (From Sketch
for an Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind),
and
159-168 (From Dialectic of
Enlightenment); The
Postmodern Reader: 41-52
(“What is Enlightenment?”).
T 2/14: Freud (From Modernism to Postmodernism); Freud [2], Le Bon,
Simmel, Shlovsky, and Artaud (Modernism).
Read
for Class, T 2/14: From
Modernism to
Postmodernism: 144-148 (From Civilization
and Its Discontents);
Modernism: 36-38 (From The Crowd: a Study of the Popular Mind),
47-51
(From The Interpretation of Dreams),
51-60 (From “The Metropolis and
Mental Life”), 217-221 (From “Art as Technique”), 470-472 (From
“Theatre and Cruelty”), and 472-477 (From “The Dissection of the
Psychical Personality”).
T 2/21: The Street.
Student Presentation Paper(s).
Read
for Class, T 2/21: The entire novel. * Learning
and Contribution Paper #1 Assigned. *
T 2/28: Marx and Engels (From
Modernism to Postmodernism); Marx, Marx
and Engels, Trotsky, Kollontai, Brecht, Read, Gil, Stead, and
Eisenstein (Modernism).
Read for Class, T 2/28: From
Modernism to
Postmodernism: 75-81 (“Bourgeois and Proletarians”); Modernism: 5-8
(From “Letter to Ruge" and From The
Communist Manifesto), 229-237 (From
Literature and Revolution
and From “Make Way for the Winged Eros”),
465-469 (From “The Modern Theatre is the Epic Theatre”), 526-536 (From
“What is Revolutionary Art?,” “All Art is Propaganda,” and From “The
Writers Take Sides”), and 551-556 (From “A Dialectic Approach to Film
Form”).
T 3/6: West (From Modernism to
Postmodernism); Hughes, Du Bois, Hitler,
Benjamin [2], and Breton/Trotsky/Rivera (Modernism).
Read
for Class, T 3/6: From
Modernism to
Postmodernism: 298-309 (“A Genealogy of Modern Racism”); Modernism:
65-68 (From The Souls of Black Folk),
417-421 (From “The Negro Artist
and the Racial Mountain”), 560-576 (From “Speech Inaugurating the
‘Great Exhibition of German Art’,” From “Surrealism, the Last Snapshot
of the European Intelligentsia,” and From “The Work of Art in the Age
of Mechanical Reproduction”), and 597-601 (“Manifesto: Towards a Free
Revolutionary Art”).
T 3/13: Gilman, Loy, Marsden, and Jackson (Modernism); Young, Butler
(From Modernism to Postmodernism);
Irigiray (The Postmodernism Reader).
Read
for Class, T 3/13: Modernism:
185-189 (From The
Man-Made World or Our Androcentric Culture), 258-261 (“Feminist
Manifesto”), 331-332 (From “I Am”), and 485-488 (Foreword to
Pilgrimage); From Modernism to Postmodernism:
370-382 (From “The
Scaling of Bodies and the Politics of Identity”) and 390-401
(“Contingent Foundations: Feminism and the Question of
‘Postmodernism’”); The Postmodernism
Reader: 222-229 (From An
Ethics of
Sexual Difference). * Learning and
Contribution Reflection Paper
#1 Due *
T 3/27: Alone in Berlin.
Student Presentation Paper(s).
Read
for Class, T 3/27: The entire novel.
T 4/3: Nietzsche [4], Saussure, and Derrida (From Modernism to
Postmodernism); Nietzsche (Modernism).
Read
for Class, T 4/3: From
Modernism to
Postmodernism: 109-117 (“On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense,”
“The
Madman,” “How The ‘True World’ Finally Became Fable,” and “The
Dionysian World”), 122-126 (From Course
in General Linguistics), and
225-240 (“Differance”); Modernism:
17-22 (From Preface to Human, All
Too Human).
T 4/10: Howl.
Student Presentation Paper(s).
Read
for Class, T 4/10: The entire book, including
“Original Drafts,” “Carl Solomon Speaks,” “Author’s Annotations,” and
“Appendices.”
T 4/17: Berman; Lyotard, From The
Postmodern Condition: a Report on
Knowledge; Jameson; Lyotard, From “Answering the Question: What
is the
Postmodern?”; and Bauman (The
Postmodern Reader).
Read
for Class, T 4/17: The
Postmodern Reader: 53-66
(From “Introduction–Modernity: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” in All
that is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity),
123-146
(From The Postmodern Condition: a
Report on Knowledge), 189-202 (From
Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic
of Late Capitalism), and 230-249
(From “Answer to the Question: What is the Postmodern?” in The
Postmodern Explained to Children: Correspondence 1982-1985 and
“A
Sociological Theory of Postmodernity” from Intimations of
Postmodernity).
T 4/24: Waiting for Godot.
Student Presentation
Paper(s).
Read for Class, T 4/24: The entire play. * Learning
and Contribution Reflection Paper #2 Assigned. *
T 5/1: City of Glass.
Student Presentation Paper(s).
Read
for Class, T 5/1: The entire novel. *
Learning and Contribution Reflection Paper #2 Due. *
T 5/8: Ghosts and The Locked Room. Student
Presentation Paper(s).
Read
for Class, T 5/8: Both entire novels.
T 5/15: Term Paper Due by 6 pm, in my
English Department Mailbox, HHH
405.
***
THIS SCHEDULE IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE ***
ORGANIZATION
AND CONDUCT OF CLASS SESSIONS
This class will proceed as a seminar where we will
engage in extensive collective discussion of assigned readings and of
issues raised by these readings. We will aim to hear regularly
and extensively from everyone. I will direct the overall course
of our discussions, but I do not aim to take too much class time too
often making extended presentations (“lectures”) in class. At the
same time I will do so (briefly), from time to time, as useful, and
also, from time to time, bring ‘supplementary texts’ to
class–including, prospectively, audio, video, and audio-video texts– in
order to give us further sites for application of ideas from course
readings. And I may well from time to time prepare ‘written
lectures’ which I’ll post on our Desire2Learn electronic classroom
website, send to you by email, and/or give to you in print form, if and
when it seems useful for me to offer a more elaborate and extensive
sets of comments on something we are reading and discussing.
Likewise, I may well from time to time offer you some specific
suggestions and recommendations of points to concentrate on, or
questions to consider, as you are doing the readings for the following
week (again making these available to you either in print form, via
email, or on Desire2Learn). The weeks in which students will have
prepared class presentation papers, and posted these ahead of class on
Desire2Learn (see description of this below, in the section on
“Specific Requirements for the Course Grade”), those students who have
done so will take the lead in initiating our class discussion.
Since this will be a discussion-intensive class,
come to class prepared to talk. Come to class prepared to help
the class as a whole work toward compelling understandings of
significant issues raised by the readings for that week, compelling
reflections on implications of these issues, and compelling connections
with other cultural texts as well as with other areas where you
maintain particular knowledge, experience, interest, and concern.
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 their
essays and contributions to class discussion–insights they gain through
their engagement with the texts and topics addressed as part of this
course, and I expect students 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 their own lives. I expect
students to let me know right away when and if they have any questions
or problems about any aspect of how they are.
In addition, although I expect this is something I
can readily assume you already understand and accept, you 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 ever encountering anything you might possibly find in
any way objectionable. If and when you find any text or topic
disturbing, you maintain the responsibility to deal with this in an
intellectually serious manner; after all, disturbing positions exist
extensively outside of the classroom as well as in what we confront in
and for class. ‘Disturbing positions’ we engage with here, in
this institutional space, are symptomatic of positions that operate
considerably beyond the confines of the classroom, the course, and the
university. Along these lines, it is also worth bearing in mind
that professors maintain the professional, ethical responsibility
forthrightly to represent the most advanced knowledges in our fields of
expertise (no matter how challenging–or even, occasionally,
disturbing–they might seem). In short, we must profess these
knowledges; to do otherwise would be to shirk our professorial
responsibility and render ourselves unworthy of maintaining our
professorial positions.
SPECIFIC
REQUIREMENTS FOR THE 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
Attendance is expected, every class of the
semester. This is a small class that meets only fifteen times
during the semester, which we will conduct as a seminar. We will
count on everyone. If you aren’t in class not only will you lose
out, but so will everyone else. Of course, emergencies come up
now and then which make it impossible to attend; I understand
that. But please restrict absences to emergencies, and please let
me know as soon as possible if you cannot make a class, and why not—I
appreciate this notice a great deal.
Contribution
My foremost aim in teaching this course is to help
you to learn something of significance and value. 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. And don’t wait until
you feel like you have ‘THE right comment’ or ‘the PERFECT way of
expressing what you have in mind’; those times never come, and striving
for that is not only self-defeating but contrary to what critical
theory is all about–which is a ceaselessly ongoing exploration of
issues where there never is only one right answer, and never simply one
best way to express anything.
At the same time, quality of participation is more
important than quantity, although a sufficient quantity is
indispensable to insure quality. Quality class participation does
not involve merely asking questions of me and merely responding to my
questions; quality class participation requires you to work to advance
a serious and substantial discussion with your peers about the texts
and topics subject to discussion. Come to class prepared to try
to help us all in interpreting and reflecting on implications of ideas
you encounter in the readings you do for class. Don’t wait for
me, the teacher, alone to do this. In a graduate seminar you
should come to each class with specific ideas you want to talk about,
specific questions you want to ask, specific comments you want to make,
specific interpretations you want to raise, specific arguments and
critiques you want to advance, specific connections and applications
you want to draw, etc.–not just follow my lead.
Learning and contribution will constitute a
significant proportion of your overall course grade. As part of
this grade, you will write two learning and contribution reflection
papers. For each of these papers I will ask you questions that
will require you to reflect upon both what you have been learning as a
student enrolled in this course, and how, along with how well, you have
been contributing to your own learning, and to that of others in the
class. As I see it, these 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. 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 to share in
class; these additional reflections will 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. Performance on
these papers will represents a principal component of your learning and
contribution grade for each half of the semester (although I will also
include my own reflections on what I otherwise observe concerning your
learning and contribution).
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 20% of the
overall course grade, for a
total of 40% of the overall course grade. I estimate you
should
aim, in writing these papers, for approximately 10 double-spaced pages
on average (or an approximate average of 2500 words), although, again,
quality is what I am concerned with, not quantity–and the page (and
word) targets are merely suggestions.
Class
Presentation Paper
Each student will be responsible for preparing one
paper one week during the semester to help spark discussion of the
readings for that week. The paper will help us interpret and
reflect on the implications of ideas raised by the readings for that
week. I will give specific assignments with each presentation
paper.
You will be
responsible for posting your paper on
our Desire2Learn electronic classroom website no later than 12 midnight
the Sunday before the Tuesday we meet to discuss the readings you are
writing about. Everyone should read the class presentation
papers
posted for that week between Sunday night and our Tuesday class.
After the class when we discuss your paper as well
as the readings assigned for the week, you will have the opportunity to
revise the paper in light of class discussion–and subsequent
rethinking–before you submit it to me a week later for a grade.
The class presentation paper will also be worth 20%
of the overall course grade. Once again, I estimate you
should
aim, in writing this paper, for approximately 10 double-spaced pages on
average (or an approximate average of 2500 words), although, as with
the learning and contribution reflection papers, quality is what I am
concerned with, not quantity–and the page (and word) targets are merely
suggestions.
Term
Paper
Each student will write one term paper, due at the
end of the semester. Here you will engage with a significant
issue or nexus of issues in critical theory that you have been reading
about and we have been discussing together this semester. You
will stake out an argument for a position here in dialogue with writers
we will have read and discussed this semester (including, as you find
useful, writers of the literary texts we will take up), and connect
this argument with specific areas of particular interest and concern to
you (including, potentially, areas where you maintain substantial
knowledge and experience). By
the middle of the semester, you
should submit a prospectus to me outlining what you are thinking of
writing about in this paper, and why, as well as describe for me
some
of what you at least tentatively plan to cover in developing your
argument. I will respond to what you propose in your prospectus
with suggestions and recommendations for where to go from there.
The term paper will be worth 40% of the
overall
course grade. Here I estimate you should aim, in writing
this
paper, for approximately 20 double-spaced pages on average (or an
approximate average of 5000 words), although, as with the learning and
contribution reflection papers and the class presentation paper,
quality is what I am concerned with, not quantity–and the page (and
word) targets are merely suggestions.
Formatting–Papers
Papers should be typed, double-spaced, using
standard margins, on standard white letter-sized paper. You may use any
standard font you wish, but make sure the point size is at least
11. Number your pages, type your name at the top of your first
page, and staple the separate pages of your paper together (or
paperclip them together, if you prefer). Follow the rules and
conventions of Standard Written English, including MLA style for
citation and documentation of sources.
Late
Papers
If an emergency or an exceptional situation develops
that mean you need to turn your paper in late, let me know as soon as
possible; keep me informed, and we can deal with this. If you
turn in papers late without explanation or without seeking my
permission to do so, you will suffer a grade penalty.
Academic
Honesty
Plagiarism is of course a serious offense, and
unethical as well as contrary toward enabling you to learn through what
you do.
Final
Comment
Please consult with me as much as you wish as you
are working on your papers; I will be glad to help. I’m
happiest
when everyone does well, and everyone has found writing her or his
paper to be a satisfying experience. I am glad to work with you
to make that happen.
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 related to what we are doing in this
course. Learning that takes place in conferences can at times be
equally as important, and in fact occasionally even more important,
than what takes place in class. Please do not hesitate to meet
with me during office hours or to ask for an appointment at any time
you think this might be helpful; I regard making myself available for
conferences with you outside of class to be an indispensable part of my
responsibility as your teacher. Moreover, I always
sincerely do welcome getting to know and work with my students outside
as well as inside of class. I am ready to do whatever I can to
help you in your understanding of issues addressed in discussions and
readings, as well as to help you in your writing for and participation
in this course. I want to make sure that I do all that I can to
help you succeed in this course and I want to help you, as far as I
can, to gain as much out of it as possible through your participation
in and work for it. You may also feel free to write me via
e-mail, and to call me–or leave a message for me on the answering
machine—at my office. I enjoy meeting and working with students
outside as well as inside of class; I really do.
* 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 early in the semester. *
CONCLUSION
In the interest of accountability–me to you–I
am here providing you a weblink to: 1) my autobiographical profile:
http://www.uwec.edu/ranowlan/PROFILE_.htm.
You are also welcome
to look me up 2.) on facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1755562371
[If you are
interested in becoming facebook friends, feel free to contact me about
that]. 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 open, honest, and forthright with you about all
of that. I look forward to a great semester working together with
you!