English 500 Graduate Studies
Syllabus
Fall 2001
Dr. Joanne Gass
Office Hours: T-Th 12:00-1:00, T 6:00-7:00 p.m. or by appointment
Office: UH440
Telephone: (714) 278-2713
e-mail: jgass@fullerton.edu
fax: (714) 895-5751
Welcome to English 500, Graduate Studies, a foundation course for graduate studies in English and Comparative Literature. English 500 provides an introduction to the tools and methods of advanced research and to the modern and contemporary approaches to literary criticism and literary theory.
This semester, portions of this course will be taught in cyberspace. In addition to class meetings, you will be completing your assignments, conducting your research, communicating with me and your colleagues, and interacting with me and your colleagues via the Internet and this web site. Because of this, the course requirements are somewhat different from what you would normally expect.
Required Texts: **** All books are available at the Little Professor Book Center on Placentia Ave.
Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, fifth ed. (This edition only.)Modern Language Association.
Groden, Michael and Martin Kreiswirth eds. The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism. Johns Hopkins Press.
Harmon, William and C. Hugh Holman. A Handbook to Literature, seventh ed. MacMillan.
Lentricchia, Frank and Thomas McLaughlin, eds. Critical Terms for Literary Study , 2nd ed. University of Chicago Press.
Turabian, Kate. A Manual of Style, 6th ed. University of Chicago Press.
Equipment Requirements:
You must have or have access to:
a computer with a modem
floppy disks
an on-line service or Internet provider
a hard drive with sufficient memory to support the creation of your own web page
If you have a computer and modem, but do not have an on-line service, you can get an account from the Computer Center in the basement of the Library which will give you access to the Library (we will be having a library tour which will provide you with more information on this topic). The service will cost you $15.00 per month, but it is well worth the cost. The University Learning Center in the basement of McCarthy Hall has wonderful new computers equipped with Netscape and friendly helpers who will help you; in addition, the computer center in the basement of the Library has both IBM and MacIntosh computers. They are equipped with Word, Power Point, and Excel, and they also have Netscape Navigator, so you can do some of your Internet research there. When you enrolled, you were assigned an e-mail address. You should now find out how you can access that address and use it.
If we use our time wisely, however, you will be able to do much of the composing of your web page in the computer lab and during class time.
Attendance, Preparation, and Participation:
All of our class meetings will be held in Humanities 526. During our meetings, we will discuss any problems we are encountering, go over assignments, and make theory presentations in addition to working online. Other class times will be devoted to research on the project that you have identified, discussion of assigned work, and presentations. You will work in the Library or on the Web. During that time, you will also be posting your assignments and exercises to me via e-mail or fax.
Written assignments must be submitted on time and conform to the prescriptions and conventions of the MLA Handbook, unless otherwise indicated (for example, some assignments will ask you to create documentation both in MLA and in Turabian--Chicago Style Manual--formats).
Scrupulous attention must be paid to grammar, punctuation, spelling, and diction. When you post something to me, make sure that it is properly formatted--this will require that you learn to use the 'enclosure' feature of e-mail. I reserve the right to return (or re-post) unsatisfactory assignments to you for revision and correction.
***The number and cost of the required texts for this course is heavy; however, you are presumably beginning your tenure as a graduate student at CSUF, and you will use these texts many times in the next two years. Therefore, I recommend that you consider these works as the foundation for a reference library worthy of a graduate student in English and Comparative Literature (and a potential or current teacher of literature and writing).
Course work:
A seminar paper is the culminating experience for the course; therefore, you will have to choose a topic for your paper very soon. If you are taking another seminar, I suggest that you undertake a research project on a topic of your choosing and related to the seminar that you are taking this semester.
You will spend the next several weeks creating a web page which will contain all of the research that you do both in the Library and in cyberspace. Your web page will, in essence, be a summary of your research activities and will be focused upon the topic of your seminar paper; you will also evaluate the materials obtained via the Internet.
In addition, you will create a twenty-item (minimum) annotated bibliography to complement your web page and to indicate your knowledge of the scholarship in your field of research.
You will also be doing a series of related assignments and exercises which entail both traditional forms of research and the new ones you'll be exploring. Those assignments can be found on my web page: hss.fullerton.edu/english/jgass. When you access my home page, scroll down to the buttons and click on English 500, from there, go to "assignments."
Three times during the semester, I will assign you short, analytical essays, to be written in class in which you will analyze a poem or a short story as a means of sharpening your analytical skills and as a practice for timed writing as it is expected of you in the m.a. examination. The assignments can also be found under English 500 on my web page.
At the end of the seminar, you will present a 20-minute summary of your research activity to the assembled seminar, you will display your newly-created web site, and you will present a hard copy of your paper to the class. The hard copy will be due the week before your presentation. You must provide copies for each member of the seminar. Your colleagues will read the paper before your presentation. You will talk about—not read—your paper and entertain questions from the seminar.
Finally, we will also be surveying current trends in literary criticism; in conjunction with our study of theory, each of you will present a lesson to the class on one of the schools of twentieth century criticism. That lesson must be no longer than 20 minutes in length. It must be well-organized and clear, since some of the concepts will be new to your colleagues. To assist your colleagues, you will want to provide a handout which outlines your presentation and defines key terms. I will critique each of your presentations in terms of how well you covered the topic, how you presented yourself as a teacher, how interesting you made the topic, and how effective your handouts and visual aids were. (If you want to use Power Point, you may.)
Class Schedule:
Week #1:
Introduction to the course.
Brief explanation of Assignment #1 Comparison of Two Journals
Creating a folder and files for research project.
Creating a document in Word and copying it to your web page.
Using Word, searching the Internet.
Joining Acacia and MLA.
Presenting papers at conferences--why do it?
Assignment #2--Scavenger Hunt
Week #2: Library Tour
Pollak Library inside entryway (near Information Desk)
Library Tour with Deb Richey
Have a research topic chosen and begin doing research while under Deb Richey's tutelage in the Library.
Week #3:
Beginning the web page.
Read sections in MLA and Turabian (Chicago Style) on ellipses, parentheses, and brackets.
Assignment #1 Comparison of two journals due.
Topic chosen and research in Library under way.
Week #4:
First analysis paper. Analyze a poem. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 23.
Discuss use and proper punctuation of ellipses, parentheses, and brackets--MLA and Chicago Style
In-class writing: practice analysis (using m.a. exam format)
Work on web page.
Theory presentations: New Criticism and Structuralism.
Assignment #3: Using ellipses, parentheses, and brackets (MLA and Chicago Style).
Week #5:
Work on web pages.
Proposal for paper due.
Theory presentations: Psychoanalytic--Freud, Jung, Lacan
Week #6:
Read sections in MLA and Turabian on works cited and end note pages.
Theory presentations: Russian Formalism and Reader Response.
Discuss works cited lists and end note pages--MLA and Chicago Style.
Work on completion of web page.
Assignment #4: Comparing works cited lists and end note pages in MLA and Chicago Style.
Week #7:
Theory presentations: Feminist Theory: Anglo-American and French.
Finish web page.
Read sections in MLA and Turabian on using quotations and citing sources.
First draft of seminar paper. Thesis, outline, etc.
Week #8:
Second analysis paper. Analyze a short story, Kate Chopin’s "The Story of an Hour."
Theory presentations: Marxism and Deconstruction.
Discuss using quotations and citing sources--MLA and Chicago Style.
Assignment #5: Using quotations and citing sources properly--MLA and Chicago Style.
Practice M.A. exam--in-class writing. Analyze a short story.
Week #9:
Theory presentations: Postmodernism and New Historicism
Theory presentations: Post-Colonialism, Eco Criticism and Queer Theory.
Discuss practice exam. Class discussion of expectations of m.a. program and of m.a. students. "The EXAM"
Week #10:
Third in-class analysis essay using m.a. exam format--"Letter from Birmingham Jail."
Work on annotated bibliographies, web pages, and/or papers.
Read section in MLA and Turabian on annotated bibliographies.
Week #11:
Show off web pages.
Discuss annotated bibliography--MLA and Chicago Style.
Assignment #6: Annotated Bibliography due.
First set of seminar papers due (Group 1)
Week #12:
Group 1 presents research to group.
Second set of seminar papers due (Group 2)
Week #13:
Group 2 presents research to group.
Third set of seminar papers due (Group 3).
Week #14:
Group 3 presents research to group.
Week #15:
Final draft of papers, including Works Cited list.
Grading: The seminar grade will be determined in the following way:
Presentation Topics: Information for the presentations should come from, among other sources, The Johns Hopkins Guide and the Lentricchia and McLaughlin.
Presentations will be in the form of a formal lecture, as though you were teaching the seminar, and should approximately 30 minutes long--no longer. You should include the major figures identified with each of the 'schools' of criticism and the major tenets of each. You will be evaluated on your clarity, organization, thoroughness, and quality of materials. To help your students, prepare a handout which includes a list of sources and an outline of the points you'll be covering in your presentation.