EN 514: Comparative Approaches to Literature
Spring 2000
Section 1: Thompson E-120, T 4:30-7:00 pm
Office: Fenton 240; MW 3-4, Th 1-5, and by appointment; 673-3859
E-mail: simon@fredonia.edu
Web Page: www.fredonia.edu/department/english/simon
NEW WORLD SLAVERY AND THE TRANSATLANTIC IMAGINATION
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, research, oral and written assignments are due and when, how to subscribe to the course listserv, what books are on reserve for your use in Reed Library, and how to use the world-wide web for research. Please get in the habit of checking back to these pages to keep track of changes to the syllabus, advice on papers and research projects, and 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.
Course Description/Goals
This course will put the literature of slavery in a global context. Specifically, we will read poems, essays, autobiographies, and novels from the seventeenth through the twentieth century by a selection of fiction writers, literary and cultural critics, literary and political theorists, and historians from the U.S., Caribbean, and England. We will analyze various assessments of the impact of the slave trade and slavery on individuals, populations, cultures, economies, and political relations and structures in the Americas and beyond. Our goal will be to identify the distinctive features of a particular fiction writer's approach to slavery's ramifications, the cultural, historical, political, and economic contexts that are most relevant to a particular work, and the ways in which different works relate and respond to each other.
Texts. There are eight books in the bookstore for you to purchase:
Required
Optional
Finally, there is an extensive array of books and essays on reserve in Reed Library for your use; click on the link at the top (and bottom) of this (and every) page for details.
Course Requirements/Expectations
There are several components to your grade in this course: preparation/participation (10%); weekly interpretive/discussion questions (15%); a brief critical response paper (15%); an in-class presentation (15%); a prospectus and annotated bibliography for the final paper (20%); and a final paper (25%).
Attendance/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 seminar, after all; although I will provide some context and background for our reading, the bulk of class time will be spent in discussions, activities, and in-class writing. 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 your preparation/participation in class and on the class listserv (described below). As there is no final examination in this course, think of my evaluation of your preparation/participation as a different but equally important method of assessing your performance in the course. As a rule, each absence after the second will lower your final course grade by one-third of a grade (e.g., with three absences, an A would become an A-; with five, a B+ would become a C+).
Course Listserv/Discussion Questions (15%): By each Sunday evening before class, each of you must post to the course listserv at least four questions that you believe would spark discussion for that Tuesday's class meeting. 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 five missed weeks without penalty, 9 or more sets of questions=A; 8=B+; 7=B; 6=C+; 5=C, 4=D; 3 or less=E. The quality of your discussion questions will be factored into your preparation/participation grade (see above); the better your questions are, the more likely they can provide the seed for a critical response paper, in-class presentation, or final paper.
Critical Response Paper (15%). You must turn in a 4-to-6-page critical response paper (a thesis-driven analytical or persuasive essay) in early March, in which you either (a) analyze a passage from a literary work that we've read thus far in the semester and relate it to a larger pattern or issue in that text or in other assigned readings to date, (b) analyze a passage from a critical, historical, or theoretical work that we've read thus far in the semester and relate it to one or more of the assigned literary texts to date, (c) make an argument for the most appropriate literary, historical, or political-economic context in which to understand a given literary text that we've read thus far in the semester; or (d) develop a topic of your own choice (with my approval).
In-Class Presentation (15%): After spring break, you must give an in-class presentation in which you either (a) compare and contrast two of the assigned readings thus far in the semester (this can be an update or rethinking of your critical response paper), (b) put one of the assigned readings we've read thus far in the semester in historical context (this can be an update or rethinking of your critical response paper), (c) relate one of the works on reserve at Reed Library to one or more of the texts we have read thus far in the semester, (d) give a preview or update of your prospectus/annotated bibliography (see below), (e) describe a lesson plan you would generate in order to teach a given text, an excerpt from it, or an issue stemming from it, or (f) develop a topic of your choice (with my approval). Please consult with me well in advance of your presentation.
Prospectus/Annotated Bibliography (20%). Roughly a month before your final essay is due, you must turn in a prospectus in which you lay out a question or topic you want to consider in your final essay, describe what texts you will analyze, and consider what's at stake in the question or topic (no more than two single-spaced pages); you will also append an annotated bibliography in which you list at least three critical or theoretical works in MLA format that will inform your treatment of the question or topic and, for each, briefly summarize relevant arguments and how you expect they will help you develop your own arguments (no more than five single-spaced pages).
Seminar Paper (25%): The topic for and argument of your twelve-to-eighteen-page final paper, a thesis-driven analytical or persuasive essay, is open. We will arrange for a mandatory individual conference on your final paper topic after you have turned in your prospectus/annotated bibliography (see above).
Schedule of Assignments
Please recall that discussion questions are due by 10 pm Sunday evening every week we have classes.
T, 1/25 Introductions; IN-CLASS READING/DISCUSSION: Robert Hayden, "Middle Passage" and Merle Collins, "Chant Me a Tune" (to be handed out); RESEARCH/DISCUSSION ASSIGNMENT (for next class): find 3-5 sources (print or electronic) that discuss how many Africans were transported to the Americas during the slave trade and how many died during the middle passage (many works on reserve in Reed Library treat this question), and come to next class prepared to discuss any differences you note, their significance, and the relation between sources and numbers (feel free to devote one or two questions on this assignment in your discussion questions for next week).
The Black Atlantic
T, 2/1 READ: Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Gustavus Vassa, the African; at least one essay from Slavery and the Literary Imagination, eds. Arnold Rampersad and Deborah McDowell (on reserve); at least one essay from The Black Columbiad, eds. Werner Sollers and Carl Pedersen (on reserve)
T, 2/8 READ: Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Gustavus Vassa, the African (including the introduction and appendices); Robert Allison's introduction to the Bedford edition of Equiano's narrative (handed out); Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Williams Andrews's foreword and introduction to Pioneers of the Black Atlantic (on reserve); VIEW: Sankofa, 7 pm, Room S-125, Williams Center [CANCELED: to be rescheduled]
T, 2/15 READ: Caryl Phillips, Crossing the River; at least one essay from Black Imagination and the Middle Passage, eds. Maria Diedrich, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Carl Pedersen (on reserve); Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic, 41-71 or 187-223 (on reserve)
T, 2/22 READ: Caryl Phillips, Crossing the River; Stuart Hall, essay from The House That Race Built, ed. Wahneema Lubiano (on reserve); Aphra Behn, Oroonoko
The Extended Caribbean
M, 2/28 7:30 pm: Samuel Delany, G-24 McEwen
T, 2/29 READ: Aphra Behn, Oroonoko; at least three supplemental texts from the Behn volume; essay on Behn in Subjects and Citizens, eds. Michael Moon and Cathy Davidson (on reserve); Juan Francisco Manzano, Autobiography of a Slave
F, 3/3 5:00 pm: Wahneema Lubiano, "Toni Morrison and Globality: Remakming American Race and Gender Identity in the World," S-104 Williams Center
T, 3/7 READ: Juan Francisco Manzano, Autobiography of a Slave; Maryse Condé, I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem; at least one essay from The Slave's Narrative, eds. Charles Davis and Henry Louis Gates Jr. and at least one essay from The Discourse of Slavery, ed. Betty Ring (both on reserve); if neither are available, read Toni Morrison's "The Site of Memory" (copies available in my box in Fenton as of 4 pm Wednesday) and the introduction to Orlando Patterson's Slavery and Social Death (on reserve); CRITICAL RESPONSE PAPER due in class; 7:30 pm: VIEW A Place of Rage, Pratibha Parmar, Fenton 105
T, 3/14 READ: Maryse Condé, I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem; Moira Ferguson's introduction to Nine Black Women (on reserve); at least one chapter from among Ashraf Rushdy, Neo-Slave Narratives, Elizabeth Ann Beaulieu, Black Women Writers and the Neo-Slave Narrative, or Venetria Patton, Women in Chains (all on reserve)
T, 3/21 NO CLASS--Spring Break [recommended: rent and view Julie Dash's Daughters of the Dust; get a head start on Delany's long novel!]
T, 3/26 READ: Martin Delany, Blake, or the Huts of America; Eric Sundquist, To Wake the Nations, 182-221 or Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic, 1-40 (both on reserve)
T, 4/4 READ: Martin Delany, Blake, or the Huts of America; excerpts from C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins (on reserve)
Remapping the Americas
T, 4/11 READ: George Lamming, Natives of My Person; optional: excerpts from J. Michael Dash, The Other America (on reserve); PROSPECTUS/ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY due in class
T, 4/18 READ: George Lamming, Natives of My Person; at least one essay from Poetics of the Americas, eds. Bainard Cowan and Jefferson Humphries (on reserve); PRESENTATIONS: Kelly Doherty-Maggs and Pam Westman
T, 4/25 READ: Paule Marshall, The Chosen Place, The Timeless People; excerpts from Stelamaris Coser, Bridging the Americas (on reserve); excerpts from Simon Gikandi, Writing in Limbo: Modernism and Caribbean Literature; PRESENTATIONS: Terrie Pakkala and Samia Ouederni
T, 5/2 READ: Paule Marshall, The Chosen Place, The Timeless People; excerpts from Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (on reserve)
T, 5/9 READ: Paule Marshall, The Chosen Place, The Timeless People; at least one essay from Comparative American Identities, ed. Hortense Spillers (on reserve); wrap up course
F 5/12 FINAL PAPER due by 3 pm
EN 514: Comparative Approaches to Literature, Spring 2000
Created: 1/25/00, 8:49 pm
Last modified: 4/13/00, 4:09 pm