EN 209: NOVELS AND TALES
Fall 2000
Section 3: Fenton 158, TTh 11-12:20
Section 7: Thompson E-316, MWF 9-9:50
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/
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 the time over the weekend after the first 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 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 read stories from different times and places that examine the processes and legacies of mass migrations. The course will be comparative on many levels: we will compare and contrast how different authors structure their narratives to convey their sense of the meaning and significance of migration; we will compare and contrast the kinds of migration narratives in the world literature we're reading in the course with American migration narratives with which we may be more familiar; we'll compare and contrast migration narratives from our own families or communities with the ones we're reading; and we'll compare and contrast our own reactions to and interpretations of what we're reading. Doing these things well will require us to foster skills and habits of reading closely and attentively, thinking critically and analytically, listening actively and carefully, speaking thoughtfully and concisely, and writing clearly and engagingly. This is a core course for students in the English major. You may choose to take this course for honors credit as part of the 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:
As well, you should have access to a copy of the Bible. See the links page for on-line editions that you can download and/or print.
Course Requirements/Expectations
There are several components to your grade in this course: preparation/participation (10%); weekly observations/discussion questions (15%); two short essays (15% each); and two long-term projects (20% and 25%).
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 (15%). There will be a course listserv for each section (en20903@listserv.fredonia.edu for Section 3 and en20907@listserv.fredonia.edu for Section 7). 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 6 pm the day before the class in which the readings you are commenting on meets. So, if your comments and questions address the readings for a given Monday, the email must be sent to the listserv by 6 pm Sunday; if they are directed toward the readings for a given Tuesday, they must be sent by 6 pm Monday; if they are aimed at the readings for a given Wednesday, they must be sent by 6 pm Tuesday; and so on.
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. 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).
Analytical Essay (15%). Please click here for detailed information on this three-to-six-page paper.
Comparative Essay (15%). Please click here for detailed information on this four-to-seven-page paper.
Family/Community Migration Narrative Project (20%). Your task for this project is to find a migration narrative from your family or community, and, in an experimental essay or web site, relate a version of it, relate it to some aspect of the readings in the course, and reflect on the significance of this relation. Your goal should be to find interesting connections between actual migrations in your family or community history and relevant issues, themes, situations, or characters in the works we've been reading, on the one hand, and to reflect on the significance of those connections, on the other. Your project should be making a point about how the connections (whether direct or subtle) between what you've been reading in the course and what you've been finding out about migrations in your family or community have made you see your family/community history differently. For further information on this project, click here. For links to student web projects, click here.
Photograph Research/Creative Writing Project (25%). This is the culminating project of the course. Your task is to show what you've learned in the course about migrations and migration narratives through the way in which you choose to write a migration narrative of your own that is based on/inspired by a photograph from Sebastiao Salgado's book Migrations (on reserve), your research about the place, people, and situation represented in the photograph, and selected literary techniques from our readings that you feel are most appropriate to the story you want to tell. Your goal should be to convey in the form and content of your migration narrative something of the social/historical context of the situation depicted in the photograph on which you've chosen to base your research and story. For further information on this project, click here.
Schedule of Assignments
Click here if you are in section 3.
Click here if you are in section 7.
It's a very good idea to check back to your section's schedule of assignments page 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 your section's page regularly.
EN 209: Novels and Tales, Fall 2000
Created: 8/29/00, 4:38 pm
Last modified: 12/18/00, 2:57 pm