EN 426-01: MAJOR AMERICAN WRITERS
Fall 2000
MW 3:30-4:50; Fenton 174
Office: Fenton 240; MW 2-3, TTh 2-4, and by appointment; 673-3859
E-mail: bruce.simon@fredonia.edu
Web Page: www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon/
MELVILLE AND SILKO
About the Course Web Pages
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 some time early in the semester 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 syllabus and 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!
Course Description/Goals
In this course, we will consider a selection of writings by the antebellum New England author Herman Melville and the contemporary Native American author Leslie Marmon Silko in historical context, as aesthetic and political interventions in their own times, and in terms of their intertextual relations. How do these two very different writers speak to each other, to their own times, to our times, and to us? What connections and contrasts can we find between their characters, characteristic themes and figures, central beliefs and values, and literary and political projects? This course fulfills the "major author in context" requirement of the English and Secondary English majors. You may choose to take this course for honors credit as part of the new Honors Program in the English Department. If you are interested in doing this, please come to my office hours during the first two weeks of classes for more information.
Texts. There are seven books in the bookstore for you to purchase:
There are various works on reserve at the circulation desk at Reed Library. See the reserves page for details.
Course Requirements/Expectations
There are several components to your grade in this course.
Attendance/Preparation/Participation (10%). 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, please contact me ahead of time or soon after your absence, preferably by email. 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. Since it's difficult to make good contributions to discussions about a literary 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 class 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 and the quality of your preparation/participation in class and on the class listserv (described below). 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 fourth will lower your final course grade by one-third of a grade (e.g., with five absences a B+ will become a B; with seven, it will become a C+).
Course Listserv/Observations/Discussion Questions (10%). There will be a course listserv for this section of EN 426 (en42601@listserv.fredonia.edu). This listserv will be your space; I will keep my own input to a bare minimum (hence, announcements and handouts will be available on this web site rather than being posted to the listserv). Although you may use the listserv in any number of ways, you must use it in the following way: once a week, you must post to the course listserv at least one observation and three questions that you believe would spark class discussion; your post must be submitted to the listserv by 11 pm the day before class meets. So, if your comments and questions address the readings for a given Monday, the email must be sent to the listserv by 11 pm Sunday, while if they are directed toward the readings for a given Wednesday, they must be sent by 11 pm Tuesday.
In general, your questions should "look ahead" to the next class's discussion, not recycle the previous class's discussion. However, you may ask questions that "look backward" in the sense that they make connections between past and upcoming texts, issues, or discussions. I expect everyone to be checking their email regularly the night before or day of each class meeting and reading their peers' emails carefully. Click here for further advice on generating observations and discussion questions.
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. Since there are fourteen weeks when discussion questions are due in the semester, and since you are allowed four missed weeks without penalty, 10 or more sets of questions=A; 9=B+; 8=B; 7=C+; 6=C, 5=D; 4 or less=E. The quality of your discussion questions will be factored into your preparation/participation grade (see above).
Discussion Leader (15%). Once during the semester you must lead a class discussion, which entails choosing a week to lead discussion, examining the observations and interpretive/discussion questions for that week for patterns/gaps, and then leading a discussion or set of activities around a question or two that you find most compelling for the first half hour of the class period. You will be graded on the questions you raise and the way you manage the discussion.
Short Essays (30%). You must write a short analytical essay on one of Melville's works and another on one of Silko's; both must be done before Thanksgiving break (see below for specific due dates). For more information on these 5-to-8-page papers (each worth 15% of your final grade), please click here.
Group Project (15%). The purpose of this assignment is for you to think about connections/interesting juxtapositions between Melville's and Silko's works, choose one to focus on in detail, and present your arguments to the class in the form of an oral presentation or web site. For more information on the group project, please click here.
Final Paper (20%). We will arrange for a mandatory individual conference on your final paper topic after Thanksgiving break. For more information on the final project, please click here.
Schedule of Assignments
It's a very good idea to check back here regularly to see if reading assignments have changed; usually, any changes are announced in class and on the news page, but it's "a good thing" to err on the side of caution and check what follows regularly. Also, don't forget that your weekly OBSERVATIONS/DISCUSSION QUESTIONS are due to the class listserv by 6 pm of the day before the class meeting in which the readings you are commenting on/questioning are to be discussed (see above for less condensed explanation).
Major (?) American (?) Writers (?)
W 8/30 Introductions
M 9/4 NO CLASS: Labor Day
W 9/6 Melville, "Hawthorne and His Mosses" (to be handed out); Silko, "Fences Against Freedom" and "The Border Patrol State," Yellow Woman 100-123
Storytellers
M 9/11 Melville, "Benito Cereno," Billy Budd 159-258 (discussion leader: Jessica Brassard-Moore)
W 9/13 Silko, Storyteller 3-17, 54-76, 82-88, 94-98, 254-256; Silko, Yellow Woman 13-72, 192-200; guest lecture by Elizabeth Nelson, English Department, SUNY Fredonia
Destroyers and Confidence Men
M 9/18 Melville, The Confidence-Man 1-88
W 9/20 Melville, The Confidence-Man 89-171
M 9/25 Melville, The Confidence-Man 172-275
W 9/27 Melville, The Confidence-Man 276-336
M 10/2 Silko, Ceremony 1-63 (discussion leader: Jay Byrns)
W 10/4 Silko, Ceremony 64-116 (discussion leader: Suzie Giardini)
M 10/9 Silko, Ceremony 116-198 (discussion leader: Ann Distefano)
W 10/11 Silko, Ceremony 198-262; Silko, Storyteller 80, 111-121, 130-157 (discussion leader: Yartish Bullock)
American Epics
M 10/16 Melville, Moby-Dick xi-xxviii, xxxiii-li, 1-8 (Intro, Etymology, Extracts, Ch. 1) (discussion leader: Terrie Pakkala)
W 10/18 Melville, Moby-Dick 9-115 (Ch. 2 - 22) (discussion leader: Daniel Miskey)
M 10/23 Melville, Moby-Dick 116-212 (Ch. 23 - 42); SILKO ESSAY due no later than 5 pm
W 10/25 Melville, Moby-Dick 213-302 (Ch. 43 - 59) (discussion leader: Andy Nelson)
M 10/30 Melville, Moby-Dick 303-435 (Ch. 60 - 89); presentation by William Spanos, Department of English, SUNY Binghamton
W 11/1 Melville, Moby-Dick 436-504 (Ch. 90 - 105) (discussion leader: MaryEllen George)
M 11/6 Melville, Moby-Dick 505-593 (Ch. 106 - 132) (discussion leaders: Ryan Camping; Dan Marcoulis)
W 11/8 Melville, Moby-Dick 594-625 (Ch. 133 - Epilogue)
M 11/13 Silko, Yellow Woman 73-99, 124-165 (discussion leader: Heidi Maybee)
W 11/15 Silko, Almanac of the Dead 3-113 (discussion leader: Holly Lantz)
M 11/20-F 11/24 NO CLASSES: Thanksgiving Break [Note: it is in your best interest to either read ahead in Silko's Almanac of the Dead or to get some serious work done on your GROUP PROJECTS and FINAL PAPER--I'd recommend all three!]
M 11/27 Silko, Almanac of the Dead 114-253; Silko, Storyteller 212-225 (discussion leader: Jessica Scott); MELVILLE ESSAY due no later than 10 am
W 11/29 Silko, Almanac of the Dead 254-346 (discussion leader: Kim Benedetto)
M 12/4 Silko, Almanac of the Dead 347-463 (discussion leaders: Niki Lamonte; Natalie LaRusch); GROUP PRESENTATION: Jay Byrns, Ryan Camping, Dan Marcoulis, Dan Miskey, Andy Nelson
W 12/6 Silko, Almanac of the Dead 464-565 (discussion leader: Emily Titus); GROUP PRESENTATION (cont.)
M 12/11 Silko, Almanac of the Dead 566-705 (discussion leader: Nick Koziol); video and presentation by Ann Distefano; GROUP PRESENTATION: Jessica Brassard-Moore, Suzie Giardini, Heidi Maybee, Emily Titus
W 12/13 Silko, Almanac of the Dead 706-763; video and presentation by Claudia Sadowski-Smith, English Department, SUNY Fredonia; GROUP PRESENTATION: Kim Benedetto, MaryEllen George, Kristy Hucul; wrap up course
F 12/15 GROUP WEB AUTHORING PROJECT (Yartish Bullock, Nick Koziol, Holly Lantz, Natalie LaRusch, Jessica Scott) due no later than 5 pm (click here for a link to the page)
M 12/18 - Th 12/21 meet for writing conferences
F 12/22 FINAL PAPER due by 5 pm
EN 426-01: Major American Writers, Fall 2000
Created: 9/4/00, 3:58 pm
Last modified: 12/11/00, 3:19 pm