EN 426-01: News

M A I N * N E W S * L I N K S * R E S E R V E S

News

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the course. From now on, I'll be putting announcements on this page having to do with course requirements, changes in these web pages, and other matters. I recommend looking here every time you visit the course web site--at least once a week.

12/18/00 (updated 12/20)

Some end-of-semester announcements and logistics:

(0) Web Projects: Click here for a link to the final group's comparative project.
(1) Office hours: I'll be available for conferences on your final papers or projects, projections on final grades, further evaluations of the course, or whatever during finals week. My hours will be M 12-4; T 10-2, 4:30-6; W 10-6; Th 2-6; F 10-5; and by appointment.
(2) Listserv: Don't sign off until just before you head out of town--I may need to send final announcements over it. The instructions to sign off can be found on the course listserv page (actually, on a link off of it), but there's no need to do anything to sign off--the list will be automatically shut down by the end of December.
(3) Final Papers: They'll be in a box in the mailroom of the English department office (Fenton 277) by the beginning of January (no sooner than 1/4/01). If you're curious about your grade on the project and in the course and the reasons for them, you'll need to either email me between semesters or make an appointment to see me during the first week of spring semester.

12/11/00
I'm happy to announce that Claudia Sadowski-Smith, assistant professor of English at SUNY Fredonia, has agreed to speak with us about Almanac of the Dead on December 13 (our last class). She will be discussing Silko's novel in relation to her own work on borders and border studies. I will also ask her to share her experiences teaching the other section of ENGL 426 this semester; her version of the Major American Writers course features William Faulkner and Louise Erdrich, and I'm curious to see if her class divided on authorial preference, as ours seemed to into pro-Silko/anti-Melville and pro-Melville/anti-Silko camps (except for a few who liked both). This should help us lead into a look back over the semester, which will lead in to your course evaluations. It all fits together!
I've added a few more suggested options on the final essay over the past few days. Of course, you remain free to select or invent your own topic, but whatever option you choose or create, YOU MUST RUN YOUR PLANS FOR THE FINAL ESSAY OR PROJECT BY ME before the end of the week.

11/16/00
Please see the updates to the essays page for a listing of new options for the Melville essay. And click here for a preliminary explanation of the final paper or project.

10/24/00
Please note the small change in the syllabus--you must have read up through Chapter 89 ("Fast Fish and Loose Fish") in time for Professor Spanos's visit to our class next Monday. If you want a preview of his ideas on Melville and Moby-Dick, check out his book The Errant Art of Moby-Dick, on reserve for our course.
Due to committee obligations, I will have to curtail my office hours this week. Today (Tuesday), I can only be in the office from 2-3 pm (although I will be available between 12:30 and 2 to meet with you, as well). On Thursday, my office hours will be from 2-3:30. Wednesday hours are the same as usual, 2-3. If you have any questions about your mid-term grade or want advice on how to improve your standing in the course, please stop by during these hours or make an appointment to meet with me outside them.
I've put a very rough draft of the group projects page up at this link; you can also get to it right off the main page.

10/10/00
OK, a rough draft of the assignment sheet for the two short essays is now up on the course web site at this link. You can also get to it off the main page. I'll do my best to elaborate on the options on the Silko essay before I leave town for break tomorrow afternoon. I will be checking my email over break, so if you have questions or want to run essay topics by me, send me a quick note when you have time--but no later than 10/16, so you have time to get feedback from me and develop your ideas before the due date on 10/23.

10/9/00
I'm happy to announce that William Spanos, professor of English at SUNY Binghamton, has agreed to speak with us about Moby-Dick on October 30. I encourage everyone to get ahead on Melville's novel over the break, and to look at Professor Spanos's book, The Errant Art of Moby-Dick, which is on reserve for our course (see the list of criticism on Melville that you might also consult to on our reserves page and also on the pages devoted to Melville in my EN 399: American Landmarks course web site).
Also, I've added ten short pages from Storyteller you all should read for Wednesday's class (pp. 111-121) to the list of short excerpts from that work that relate closely to Ceremony. They're basically the traditional tale that's interwoven throughout Ceremony. The photograph on page 80 of Storyteller is of the uranium mine which is the site of the climax of Ceremony; the other readings from Storyteller expand on the notion of the "destroyers" that Silko introduces in her 1977 novel.

9/28/00
Announcement about office hours: for the next two Thursdays, I will have to cut short my office hours at 3:30 pm (instead of ending at the usual 4 pm time). I'm chairing the English department's Curriculum Committee this semester, and 3:30 Thursday is the only time we can meet as a group. Sorry! I'll give more advance notice the next time we have committee meetings scheduled at 3:30 on Thursday.

9/21/00
Some new books have arrived on reserve--see the reserves page for notification of which ones. I've only listed those books that weren't originally put on reserve--to find out about those, follow the directions on the top of the reserves page.

9/19/00
The problem that came up last Friday and that continued through Monday has now been fixed. Unfortunately, whatever messages were sent to the list during that period are locked up and won't be distributed until the listserv manager returns to campus next week, if then. So you will have to resend your messages (look in your "sent-mail" folder if you have one--many email programs automatically save all messages you send) or reconstructed. Sorry! Those who sent their messages straight to me when they saw the listserv wasn't working don't have to resend--I'll forward them myself.

9/18/00
There appears to be some sort of serious problem with the class listserv. I've contacted the help desk and others to notify them of the problem, and they are looking into it. I'll put a notice up here when I hear back from them. If you have been receiving messages from the listserv, please notify me. Thanks! If worse comes to worse, I'll allow late postings (even after Wednesday's class--if the problem persists for that long!)....

9/12/00
Please note the small but significant changes to the syllabus for tomorrow's readings. Found a few more "Yellow Woman"-related stories in Silko's Storyteller.... I've also begun putting discussion leaders' names on the main page. Sign up early for your day! Don't wait or you'll run out of options pretty quickly....

9/11/00
It's official--Elizabeth Nelson, who teaches here in the English Department at Fredonia, can lead class discussion and give a mini-lecture on Silko's "Yellow Woman" and its cultural contexts for this Wednesday's class. The book in which her essay, "Shifting Patterns, Changing Stories: Leslie Marmon Silko's Yellow Women," appears (Leslie Marmon Silko: A Collection of Critical Essays) is not yet on reserve--although it will be later in the semester. If you decide to write on this part of Silko's corpus for your Silko essay, I encourage you to check out Nelson's essay and the collection on "Yellow Woman" edited by Melody Graulich (also still "on order" rather than available for your use as of yet).

9/6/00
Due to popular demand, I'm changing the requirements for the observations and discussion questions that you must post to the class listserv once a week. See the "main page" for details. The change should make this assignment a bit more flexible and allow you more choices about when to submit your posts to the listserv. I've added as few Silko links to the "links page," as well. More to come soon....

9/4/00
Well, the instructions for joining the listserv, links, and reserves pages are now up and running. I think you'll find them all very useful. I encourage you to explore the links on the links page before, during, and after your reading of a particular work. Also, very general advice on generating observations and discussion questions is now up and running; you can get to it off the main page, or by clicking here. I hope it answers many of your questions. Please don't hesitate to contact me directly if you have further questions after reading the advice. Your questions help give me a sense of what I need to explain better. Finally, please take the time to tell me a little bit more about yourself by responding in an email (addressed to me at bruce.simon@fredonia.edu) to the following....
....On-Line Questionnaire I

Tell me a bit about the kinds and range of works of American literature you have read.
Tell me a bit about the kinds and range of works of Native American literature you have read.
Tell me a bit about your level of familiarity with Melville, Silko, and the works we'll be reading in this course.
Tell me a bit about your relation to writing. Do you enjoy it? See it as a chore? How "successful" do you feel your writing has been thus far (how have teachers responded to it)? How satisfied are you with your writing (what do you think of it)? What do you see as your strengths as a writer? What do you most want to improve?
Tell me a bit about your writing process. How do you come up with ideas, get them down on paper, revise them, and so on? What is your typical approach to writing a paper in a course and how well do you feel it's been working for you in college?
Tell me a bit about your relation to reading. Do you enjoy it? See it as a chore? What do you like to read? If you had to rank reading on a list of activities you enjoy, where would it be?
Tell me a bit about your reading process. Do you take notes as you read, underline passages, jot ideas down in margins? Do you find yourself getting "caught up in the story"? What do you find most difficult about the reading process?
What really matters to you? What do you care about deeply, take very seriously, see as vitally important to who you are?
Tell me something about yourself you think I should be aware of or know about.
Finally, ask me a question.

Probably the simplest way to respond is to copy the above questions off the web browser you're using, paste them into an email addressed to me, fill in your answers after the questions, and send it off. Thanks for taking the time to do this!

M A I N * N E W S * L I N K S * R E S E R V E S

EN 426-01: Major American Writers, Fall 2000
Created: 9/4/00, 4:05 pm
Last modified: 12/20/00, 5:48 pm