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Gary Lee Stonum
Syllabus: Modern(ist) American
Literature,
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date |
readings |
activities
and assignments |
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Week One |
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Aug 28 |
introduction |
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Aug 30 |
Wharton, The Age of Innocence |
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Week Two |
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Sept 4 |
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Optional:
screening of Scorsese’s film version of Age of Innocence, TBA |
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Sept 6 |
Minter, Cultural History, xiii-xix, 1-38,
43-64 |
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Week Three |
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Sept 11 |
Faulkner, As I Lay Dying |
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Sept 13 |
Minter, Cultural History, 77-124 |
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Week Four |
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Sept 18 |
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Optional:
time to check out modern art at the CMA? |
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Sept 20 |
West, Miss Lonelyhearts |
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Week Five |
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Sept 25 |
Minter, Cultural History, 167-195 |
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Sept 27 |
Poems I (Eliot and Stevens) |
358: draft of 1st paper |
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Week Six |
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Oct 2 |
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in-class workshops |
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Oct 4 |
Poems II (Stevens and Frost) |
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Oct 5 |
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358: 1st paper |
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Week Seven |
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Oct 9 |
Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! |
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Oct 11 |
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Week Eight |
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Oct 16 |
Minter, Cultural History, 125-160,
202-229 |
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Oct 18 |
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Organize groups for oral reports |
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Week Nine |
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Oct 23 |
[fall break] |
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Oct 25 |
Ellison, Invisible Man |
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Week Ten |
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Oct 30 |
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Nov 1 |
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Week Eleven |
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Nov 6 |
Anderson, either "Paper Pills" or
"Hands" |
reports on Winesburg, Ohio |
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Nov 8 |
Hemingway, "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" |
reports on The Sun Also Rises |
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Week Twelve |
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Nov 13 |
Hurston, "The Gilded Six-Bits" |
reports on Their Eyes Were Watching God |
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Nov 15 |
O'Connor, "A Good Man is Hard to Find" |
reports on A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other
Stories |
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Week Thirteen |
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Nov 20 |
Barth, "Menelaiad" and "The
Literature of Exhaustion" |
reports on The End of the Road |
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Nov 22 |
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358: report scripts 458: memo |
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Week Fourteen |
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Nov 27 |
Nabokov, Pale Fire |
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Nov 29 |
[Thanksgiving
holiday] |
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Week Fifteen |
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Dec 4 |
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Dec 6 |
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358 and 458: drafts of final paper |
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Reading days and
finals week |
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Dec 10-11 |
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workshops on final paper |
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Dec 14 |
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358 and 458: final paper |
The
poems and short stories we will be reading I mostly leave to your ingenuity to
find. Most are standards, available in various anthologies and in some cases
on-line. For many of them, a source text will be on short-loan library reserve
(marked as UL below) and thus available for xeroxing.
The course centers on American novels of
the modernist period, 1910-1945, roughly.
We will also pay some attention to short stories and poems of that
period that can round out our understanding of modernism and to the fiction
from the Cold War period that is sometimes regarded as post-modernist. Our foremost aim is to understand these
works individually, in their own immediate terms and against their specific,
sometimes idiosyncratic cultural and historical contexts.
To some extent, the grouping of these
writers by historical period is merely a pedagogical convenience, but there is
also a case to be made for the period as having an importance and interest of
its own. A significant number of these writers (also the musicians, painters,
sculptors, and performers from this time) regarded themselves as establishing a
new, even revolutionary kind of art, and many thought of themselves as
belonging to an international cultural movement. That is, many identified
themselves as "modernists," sometimes even by that name. One of our
aims in the course will be to ask what this modernism is and how important it
is to the literature. That is, we will want to understand how important are the
broad cultural contexts out of which this literature emerged and how important
are the styles and values shared across this otherwise diverse body of writing.
(Our main text here will be Minter's Cultural History, supplemented by
lectures and (if there is interest) perhaps a field trip to the Art Museum.
Except for the two weeks during which
groups will be reporting on books from across our time span, we will read the
fiction in chronological of publication. This means that works from earlier in
the course will stand as contexts, often crucial ones, for works read later.
Reading assignments; classroom work: Please read the assignments before the dates listed on
the schedule; neither lecture nor discussion is likely to make much sense of
you have not yet done the reading.
Attendance is required. Parts of various classes over the
semester will be devoted to individual or small-group exercises, which by their
nature cannot easily be made up. If you must miss a class, please let the
instructor know by email as far in advance or as soon after as possible.
(458) Students
enrolled for graduate credit should read all five of the books on which reports
will be given.
Writing
assignments
(358)
All undergrads do the same first assignment, but after that you get to choose
depending upon whether you want (a) broad reading knowledge of the period or
(b) a more intensive, professional, and research-oriented task.
First
paper: A 5-page paper describing how the narrative structure of Age
of Innocence or As I Lay Dying
contributes to (some aspect of) the meaning of the novel.
Option
A
(recommended for most students):
Two tasks, the first of which is preparation of a group report to the
class on one of the five recommended texts.
Dividing individual responsibilities as they see fit, each group should
describe the book, discuss both its intrinsic value or interest and its
relation to modernism as the course has defined it thus far, and reflect on
whether the book should be a required text in some future version of the
course. Each student should also hand in
to the instructor the notes or script for his or her part of the report.
The
second task is another 5-page paper on one of the writers read in the second
half of the semester. The instructor
will offer some set topics later on, but students can also propose their own
topics for this paper.
Option
B (recommended chiefly for seniors
thinking of graduate school in English or another humanities subject): A 12-15 page paper, on a text by any of the
writers read in the second part of the course (including those on the
recommended list), which identifies one or two key issues or debates in the
criticism on the writer and develops a case or perspective on them. In other words, this is a research paper, in
which you are asked to survey the (recent) scholarly literature and contribute
to the debate.
(458)
Those enrolled for graduate credit will write three papers, a detailed
explication (in 4 to 6 pages) of a passage from Wharton or Faulkner, a memo of
four pages or so on which of the five recommended texts would contribute most
to the course as a required text, and a 12-15 page review of key critical
issues as in Option B above.
Workshops: You will have an opportunity to workshop both formal
papers, i.e. to give and receive feedback on an all-but-final draft and then if
useful to revise accordingly before handing in your paper to be graded.
Roundtable: The class will have a web-based roundtable (via the
discussion section of Blackboard.com, findable at blackboard.cwru.edu
) in order to explore themes and materials from the course outside the
classroom. The general rubric is that each student should post at least three
messages before spring break and one afterwards; if all goes well, many
students will contribute a good deal more by way of questions, observations,
and responses to other postings. Typically, roundtable messages include
personal responses to the work, questions about confusing passages or
references, observations about connections to other material read in the course
or elsewhere, and second thoughts about the class discussion. However, content,
length, and topic are up to you; you will be graded on whether you contribute
but not what. The roundtable is another place for class discussion, in other words,
one in which the instructor will participate but not one that he will lead or
supervise.
Grading: At the risk of seeming misleadingly mathematical, in 358
the first paper will count roughly 30% of the final grade, and class
participation (both in-class and on the roundtable) 10%. Under Option A, the
oral report and the final paper will also each count 30%; under option B the
research paper will count 60%. You must achieve a passing grade in each of
these areas in order to pass the course. In other words, no one can pass the
course without both turning in all the papers and contributing to the
discussions. Likewise, no one can pass the course without attending class
regularly.
Similar conditions apply in 458 (where it
should go without saying), but there the rough percentages are 15% for each of
the first two papers and 60% for the research paper.
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