SUNY Fredonia
Division of Arts and Humanities
HON 203/208/228: American Migration Narratives
Spring 2002
Section 1: Thompson E-316, TTh 2-3:20
Office: Fenton 240; TTh 3:30-4:30, WF 2-4:30, and by appointment; 673-3859
E-mail: bruce.simon@fredonia.edu
Web Page: www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon/
About the Course Web Site
This web site is designed to help you get as much out of this course as possible--you can use it to find out how you will be graded, what reading and writing assignments are due and when, how to subscribe to the course listserv for your section, what books are on reserve for your use in Reed Library, and how to use the world-wide web for research. Please take the time during the second week of classes to read this page carefully and to familiarize yourself with the other pages for this course. Please get in the habit of checking back to this web site to keep track of changes to the tentative schedule listed in your syllabus and to find advice on papers, as well as to surf the ever-expanding list of links to interesting web pages related to the course. And please contact me anytime (see above for my coordinates) if you have ideas about how to improve these pages or the course as a whole. I hope you enjoy taking this course as much as I enjoy teaching it!
I. Course Description
This course examines selected works from a range of time periods, cultures, and literary traditions that center on the experiences, consequences, and legacies of migrations to and within America. Our goal is to recognize--and to analyze the stakes of--commonalities and differences in the American migration narratives we're reading, so as to better understand and reconsider defining narratives in the self-conception of United States such as "the chosen people," "manifest destiny," "the melting pot," "a nation of immigrants," "cultural pluralism," and "multiculturalism."
II. Rationale
In American Migration Narratives, students from a range of majors, minors, and concentrations interact, and the goals of the professional programs are integrated with specific course goals. Achieving these goals (described in Section IV, below) will require us to foster academic skills and intellectual habits of reading closely and attentively, thinking critically and creatively, listening actively and carefully, speaking thoughtfully and concisely, and writing clearly and analytically--skills and habits of importance to everyone, including Secondary Education majors.
III. Textbooks. The textbooks adopted for this course are:
IV. Course Objectives and Outcomes
American Migration Narratives is designed to give students the tools and the practice to recognize--and to analyze the stakes of--commonalities and differences in the American migration narratives they're reading, so as to better understand and evaluate defining narratives in the nation's self-conception. To achieve these goals, students will
See Part VI, below, for more details on assignments in the course.
V. Instructional Methods and Activities
The methods used in the classroom will include lecture, instructor-led discussion and activities, cooperative group work, and student-led presentations and activities.
VI. Evaluation and Grade Assignment
A. Methods. Your grade will be based on your performance on the following assignments:
Attendance/Participation (15%): Regular attendance and thoughtful participation are crucial to your enjoyment of and success in this course. If there is absolutely no way for you to avoid missing a class, you must contact me ahead of time or soon after your absence, preferably by email (see section VIII for more on attendance policies in this course). Even more important than showing up on time, of course, is coming to class prepared and focused. I expect you to read what has been assigned for a given date at least once (and preferably more than that!) by the time we begin to discuss it in class. This is a discussion rather than a lecture course, after all; although I will provide some context and background for our reading, the bulk of class time will be spent in small- or large-group discussions and activities. Since it's difficult to make good contributions to discussions about a literary, historical, or critical work if you haven't read it carefully or thought about it extensively, how well you budget your time outside of class will to a large degree determine how well you do in this course in general and how well you do on this portion of your course grade in particular.
Your grade for this segment of the course will be based on a combination of your attendance, the quality of your participation in class and on the class listserv (described below), and your level of preparation over the course of the semester. As there are no tests in this course, think of my evaluation of your preparation/participation as a different but equally important method of assessing your overall performance in the course. Due to the importance of attendance and participation, barring emergencies more than two unexcused absences will hurt your preparation/participation grade and each absence after the third will lower your final course grade by one-third of a grade (e.g., with four absences an A- will become a B+; with six, it will become a B-).
Reading Responses (15%): Detailed instructions for subscribing to and using the course listserv (hon2xx01@listserv.fredonia.edu), as well as a troubleshooting guide, will be discussed in class and are available by clicking here. This listserv will be your space; I will keep my own input to a bare minimum. Although you may use the listserv in any number of ways, you must use it in the following way: no later than 9 pm roughly every other week (on either Monday or Wednesday, depending on which day's readings you want to respond to), you must post to the course listserv at least one sustained observation and three well-developed and carefully-chosen questions that you believe would spark discussion for that Tuesday's or Thursday's class meeting. Advice on generating observations and discussion questions can be found by clicking here.
Your grade for this segment of the course will be determined by the number of on-time sets of questions you post to the course listserv: 8 or more sets of questions=A; 7=B+; 6=B; 5=C+; 4=C; 3=D; 2 or less=E. The quality of your observations and discussion questions will be factored into your preparation/participation grade (see above); the more carefully-considered your questions are, the more likely they are to provide a seed for a writing projects, as well.
Analytical Essay (15%). Your two-to-three-page analytical essay must perform a close reading of a particular story in either Maxine Hong Kingston's China Men or N. Scott Momaday's The Way to Rainy Mountain, considering both its internal structure and its contributions to the meaning of the work as a whole. Click here for further information and suggestions.
Research Project (25%): Your six-to-ten-page research project should focus either on a contemporary US migration or on a migration in your family history. In it, you may (a) write a fiction of your own based on some aspect of migration in your family history or on a contemporary US migration that is in intertextual relationship (thematically, structurally, stylistically) with at least one of the assigned texts, (b) retell and analyze the meaning and significance of a story about migration often shared among your family members or told of a contemporary US migration, using the literature, history, and criticism we've read to help you make sense of it, (c) do research on a specific migrant in your family or community, the period in which he/she migrated, and the places he/she migrated from and to, and contextualize his/her migration in terms of the reasons for emigration, the experience of being an immigrant in America, or the legacy of that migration for your family or community; or (d) develop a topic of your own choice (with my approval). Students must turn in a 1-page progress report on their research project before spring break. Click here for further information and suggestions.
Comparative Essay (30%). The options for your eight-to-twelve-page comparative essay will be given on an assignment sheet in mid-April. Click here for further information and suggestions.
B. Grading. I will grade student work during the semester on a letter basis (A=outstanding, B=good, C=average, D=bad, E=yeesh) and convert letter grades into numbers when calculating final grades. I use the following conversion system (the number in parentheses is the "typical" or "normal" conversion, but any number in the range may be assigned to a given letter grade):
A+=97-100 (98); A=93-96.99 (95); A-=90-92.99 (91); B+=87-89.99 (88); B=83-86.99 (85); B-=80-82.99 (81); C+=77-79.99 (78); C=73-76.99 (75); C-=70-72.99 (71); D+=67-69.99 (68); D=63-66.99 (65); D-=60-62.99 (61); E=0-59.99 (55).
I determine your final grade by converting the weighted numerical average of the above assignments into a letter grade, according to the above scale.
VII. Bibliography. The reserves page (www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon/amnhon/reserves.htm) includes an up-to-date list of reserve readings, which are available at the circulation desk of Reed Library.
VIII. Course Schedule and Policies.
A. Tentative Course Schedule. The following course schedule is subject to revision and supersedes the print version of this syllabus you received on the first day of classes; updates to this schedule will be announced in class and on the news page. Don't forget that you need to submit 8 reading responses (roughly every other week) over the course of the semester to earn As for this segment of your final grade (see Section VI for details). (Key: AM=American Mosaic: Multicultural Readings in Context.)
Departures
Th 1/24/02 welcome, intros, set-up
Gold Mountain/Rainy Mountain
T 1/29 Maxine Hong Kingston, China Men 3-81; Barbara Roche Rico and Sandra Mano, "Early Chinese Americans: The Lure of Gold Mountain" (AM 248-255); from The Gold Mountain Poems (AM 259-262)
Th 1/31 Maxine Hong Kingston, China Men 82-122
T 2/5 Maxine Hong Kingston, China Men 123-162; from The Chinese Exclusion Act (AM 256-258); Sui Sin Far, "In the Land of the Free" (AM 262-269)
Th 2/7 Maxine Hong Kingston, China Men 163-233
T 2/12 Maxine Hong Kingston, China Men 234-260; Shawn Wong, from Homebase (AM 270-278)
Th 2/14 Maxine Hong Kingston, China Men 261-308
T 2/19 N. Scott Momaday, The Way to Rainy Mountain 3-42; Barbara Roche Rico and Sandra Mano, "American Indians: Reclaiming Cultural Heritage" (AM 74-83); from The Indian Removal Act (AM 84-86)
Th 2/21 N. Scott Momaday, The Way to Rainy Mountain 43-89; Vine Deloria Jr. and Clifford Lyttle, "A Status Higher than States" (AM 131-145)
Legacies of Occupations
M 2/25 ANALYTICAL ESSAY due by 5 pm
T 2/26 Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza 17-45; Barbara Roche Rico and Sandra Mano, "Chicanos: Negotiating Political and Cultural Boundaries" (AM 552-559); from The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (AM 560-565)
Th 2/28 Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza 46-73; Arturo Islas, from Migrant Souls (AM 587-596)
T 3/5 Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza 74-97; Sandra Cisneros, "Woman Hollering Creek" (AM 596-605)
Th 3/7 Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza 98-113; Hector Calderón, "Reinventing the Border" (AM 619-628)
T 3/12 Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart 3-93; Video: The Last Days of Kinzua (WBEN-Buffalo, 30 mins.)
Th 3/14 Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart 94-189; Guest Speaker: DuWayne Bowen, author of One More Story and A Few More Stories, on Kinzua Dam and the forced relocation of Senecas in southern New York
T 3/19 Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart 190-261
Th 3/21 Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart 262-327; PROGRESS REPORT on Research Project due by 5 pm
F 3/22-M 4/1 Spring Break: No Classes
Promised Lands
T 4/2 Mary Antin, The Promised Land 1-89 (Ch. I-V); Barbara Roche Rico and Sandra Mano, "Early Immigrants: In Search of the Land of Milk and Honey" (AM 158-164)
Th 4/4 Mary Antin, The Promised Land 90-142 (Ch. VI-VIII); Optional Reading: Emma Lazarus, "The New Colossus" (AM 10-11); Joseph Bruchac, "Ellis Island" (AM 11-13)
T 4/9 Mary Antin, The Promised Land 143-223 (Ch. IX-XV); Optional Reading: Anzia Yezierska, "The Fat of the Land" (AM 187-204)
Th 4/11 Mary Antin, The Promised Land 224-298 (Ch. XVI-XX)
M 4/15 RESEARCH PROJECT due by 5 pm
T 4/16 Toni Morrison, Jazz 3-87; Barbara Roche Rico and Sandra Mano, "African Americans: The Migration North and the Journey toward Civil Rights" (AM 332-342); Guest Participants: Saundra Liggins, English Department and African American Studies Program; Jeannette Jones, History Department and African American Studies Program
Th 4/18 Toni Morrison, Jazz 88-135
T 4/23 Toni Morrison, Jazz 136-184; Optional Reading: from The Constitution of South Carolina (AM 343-345)
Th 4/25 Toni Morrison, Jazz 185-229; Optional Reading: Ralph Ellison, from Invisible Man (AM 358-371)
T 4/30 Bharati Mukherjee, The Holder of the World 1-91
Th 5/2 Bharati Mukherjee, The Holder of the World 92-208
T 5/7 Bharati Mukherjee, The Holder of the World 209-273
Th 5/9 Bharati Mukherjee, The Holder of the World 274-286
Arrivals
I will be available for conferences on your final comparative essays during extended office hours this week (TBA).
W 5/15 meet in regular classroom at 4 pm for course evaluations and peer review
F 5/17 COMPARATIVE ESSAY due no later than 5 pm
B. Class Policies
1. Attendance. As stated in Section VI above, barring emergencies each absence after the third will lower your final course grade by one-third of a grade. Be aware that absences due to emergencies are the only absences that will not be counted toward your total for the semester. Emergencies include but are not limited to death in the family, hospitalization or major illness, and natural disasters; scheduled and unavoidable school-sponsored events (games, meets, performances, etc.) are also counted as emergencies for the purpose of this attendance policy.
2. Course Listserv. You are required to subscribe to your section's listserv during the first week of classes and to read and think about your peers' discussion questions before each class meeting. To subscribe to your section's listserv, compose an email message to listserv@listserv.fredonia.edu, leave the subject line blank, and write "subscribe hon2xx01 [Your Name]" in the body of message. Please be sure to delete any signature or other text that may appear in the body of your message, as it will only confuse the very literal-minded machine that handles listserv subscriptions. Very soon after sending this message, you should receive an email from the machine that handles listserv subscriptions asking you to confirm your subscription; please follow the instructions in this email carefully, as you are not subscribed to the listserv until you have done so. Soon after doing this, you should receive another email message from the machine that handles listserv subscriptions informing you that you are now indeed subscribed to your section's listserv and laying out basic information about the listserv. Save this message--it's very useful. Once you get this message, you will begin receiving messages from others who are subscribed to the listserv; you also will be authorized to send messages to them by composing a message to the machine that distributes messages to those who are subscribed to the listserv. To do so, simply send an email message to hon2xx01@listserv.fredonia.edu. It is highly recommended that you either save a copy of every message you send to the course listserv (many email programs automatically save all messages sent in a "sent mail" folder) or "cc:" yourself whenever you send a message to the listserv, as your listserv participation will be graded both quantitatively and qualitatively (see Section VI, above) and it is possible that technical or human error could result in your messages being lost in transit, accidentally deleted, misfiled, or miscounted. Please familiarize yourself with the college's "Computer and Network Usage Policy" (College Catalog 2001-2003, pp. 227-229), and keep this simple rule of thumb in mind: check with me first before posting something to your section's listserv that is not directly related to the course.
3. Late Assignments. Late reading responses and final essays will not be accepted or graded. Only students who ask for an extension at least two days before the due date of any writing project will be granted an extension; asking for an extension on the final essay means that your final grade for the semester will be an incomplete (I), and that you must turn in your final essay before the end of the following semester so that the I becomes a grade other than an E.
4. Make-up Work/Extra Credit. There will be some opportunities for extra credit to make up for absences or missed reading responses that would jeopardize your passing the course; however, this is a privilege, not a right, and can only be undertaken after consultation with me.
5. Plagiarism and Academic Honesty. To plagiarize is "to steal and pass off as one's own the ideas or words of another" (Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary). SUNY Fredonia strongly condemns plagiarism and takes severe action against those who plagiarize. Disciplinary action may extend to suspension from privileges or expulsion from college. See pages 216 and 226 of the College Catalog 2001-2003 for further information, and see me if you have any questions about what constitutes plagiarism.
HON 203/208/228: American Migration Narratives, Spring 2002
Created: 1/29/02 11:53 am
Last modified: 4/24/02 12:56 pm
See my home page for previous courses on American migration narratives and migration narratives in world literature.