Week Design | British Fiction from the Twentieth Century to the Present

Department of English

Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University

2202441 British Fiction from the Twentieth Century to the Present

Puckpan Tipayamontri

Office: BRK 1106

Office Hours: M 1–3 and by appointment

Phone: 0 2218 4703

puckpan.t@chula.ac.th

Week Design

For the final paper, you will be designing a week of the course 2202441 British Fiction from the Twentieth Century to the Present. There will be two components to the final paper: 1) the week's lesson (provide link to its online presence), and 2) the paper (e-mailed to me). Here is an opportunity to look at the overall picture of British fiction from the last century to the present, and to focus specifically on a work, a period, an issue within that literary history to tell the story of this remarkable creative production that has influenced the world, continues to do so, and is also influenced by the outrageously diverse and dynamic world in turn.

This final project is also an opportunity to assess the course. What has been skipped and skimmed over that needs more careful attention? What real world events could have been taken advantage of in the learning experience that was missed? What resources (audio, film, live theater, author invitations, guest speakers, virtual museums, online library collections, literary festivals, debate, role play, field work) could be used that hasn't? How might students be encouraged to participate, to think creatively and critically, or to make their knowledge useful to the public? What kinds of learning experiences do you want your students to have? How will you pace out the reading and learning over the Tuesday and Thursday lessons? When can students be assessed, how and how often?

The Syllabus/Lesson

Some questions to ask yourself as you design your week of British Fiction.

Where will I place or insert my week on the course calendar?
What will be on my week's syllabus?
What material will I provide and where?
What ideas and aspects of the text(s) will I discuss?
How will students engage with each other and with me?
How will I evaluate my students?

The Paper
Your 5–7-page paper is an argument for your week's course design. The two-day lesson needs to be fully remote-learning enabled.

Explain your rationale for the week that you are proposing.

Indicate which week of the course you have designed.
Explain why this particular week needs your proposed treatment.

What do you hope to achieve with your week's plan? What is not covered in the existing course that you aim to fix with your design?
Why is your week a period/point of interest for you in the course as a whole?

Justify the texts that you choose to fulfill your lesson objectives.

Identify the required texts and supplementary material for your week of the course.
Illustrate why they are effective choices to teach the issues you have in mind.
Demonstrate how you will teach the text(s). What aspects of British fiction will you cover? What passages will you scrutinize with your students? What questions will you discuss and why?

Discuss your class conduct design, activities and assessment methods to show how they reflect your ideas for the week's themes/topics and your concept of what learning should be.
Consider your experience of planning a week of the course and making it student-ready.

How has having a space to create your own week's lesson been for you?
What task or mission have you set yourself in designing your week of British fiction? What questions did you ask yourself about what you want to fulfill and teach?
What new things have you encountered? What problems have you run into and how have you solved them?
What limitations and advantages have you found in creating an online course presence?

Quick View

5–7 pp.
MLA style format and citation
Due Thursday, May 14 before midnight (Paper Word file and week design link received in my e-mail inbox.)

Below are some week's designs under construction. Share your ongoing project, if you like, and give feedback to other projects being developed. E-mail me your link, notes and comments so I can post them here.

Works in Progress

Link	Week Designer Notes	Peer Comments
Weeks 1 and 2 Reading William Hope Hodgson, "The Voice in the Night" (1907)	Panuwat: Here, I would like to insert William Hope Hodgson’s “The Voice in the Night” (1907). The short story explores themes of agnosticism, and the role of nature that challenge the rational field of science and medicine. It breaks with tradition of rational value and worth studying in this course.
Weeks 1 and 2 Reading Virginia Woolf, "The Mark on the Wall" (1917) "Women's History Milestones: A Timeline," History (2020) *Jennifer Rosenberg, "World History Events in the Decade 1910–1919," ThoughtCo (2019)	Pattanun: With her one short story, we can see a lot of perspectives of England during the 1910s such as the current situation, the impacts of war, the proficiency of politicians, the question of knowledge, the lack of self-reflective, the negative effects of the conformist followers and many more.
Week 3 Reading M. R. James, "Lost Hearts," Ghost Stories of an Antiquary* (1904) W. W. Jacobs, "The Monkey's Paw" (1902) William Fryer Harvey, "August Heat" (1910) Jonathan Hilbert, "The Importance of Horror Fiction," Massanutten Regional Library (2014)	Panas: Students would have a chance to investigate the historical events and changes in the time, and the reflection of history on the fiction works, which is selected to be horror short stories.
Week 4 Reading Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932)	Romrawin: Despite being written almost 90 years ago, the content seems to be more relevant than ever in the world with social media, constant advertising and many technological conveniences. I wish that students can explore some similarities and differences between Brave New World and modern society.
Week 6 Reading William Golding, Lord of the Flies (1954)	Onjira: Students can also discuss about the significance of the characters. Why the characters are all children when this story talks about brutality and savagery?
Week 6 Reading *Alan Sillitoe, "The Fishing-Boat Picture" (1959)	Phitchayawi:
Week 8 Reading Elizabeth Baines, The Birth Machine* (1983)	Intukorn: The Birth Machine was and probably is considered as controversial because of its contents about disturbing imagery, labour and sexual experience. It is interesting to see the representation of women from an “indie” publication, a non-mainstream view which caused such a shocking reaction to other publications.
Week 8 Reading Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea* (1966) Bidisha, "An Introduction to Wide Sargasso Sea," British Library* (2016)	Sukapinya: The reason I choose to place this book there is though Midnight's Children is undeniably a great text to explore the theme of post-colonial sensibility as we have already discussed in class, Wide Sargasso Sea, offers us a different perspective and represents the voice that might have been overlooked in the history of British Empire. Rhys who was shocked to to see Bronte’s portrayal of Bertha as a mad woman started to pen the story of Antoinette Cosway [...]
Week 8 Reading Roald Dahl, Matilda* (1988)	Puthita: The difference between children and adult books is what I want to discuss in the class.
Week 10 Reading J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace* (1999) Carine M. Mardorossian, “Rape and Violence of the Representation in J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace.” Research in African Literatures, vol. 42, no. 4, 2011, pp. 72–83. Jia Tolentino, “Reading J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace* During the Harvey Weinstein Trial”, The New Yorker, 2020, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/reading-j-m-coetzees-disgrace-during-the-harvey-weinstein-trial	Narumol: I will be constantly updating the schedule in my google drive so please feel free to check and comment.	Puckpan: This is, of course, a controversial choice. How it will work depends on several factors. My comments focus on three areas: Commonwealth vs. British: This has to do with both definitions and organization. In your planned discussion, you bring up a highly relevant question and also a messy one: What is British? The dictionary defines British as the UK. How will you justify extending it to the larger British empire? Also, more important than artificial boundaries, however, is relevance. How British or Commonwealth (whatever that means) is Coetzee? How South African, Dutch, or Afrikaans? What about the novel? It's characters? Context and themes? In terms of organization, aren't definitions already debated at the beginning of the semester? Why this redux? How will discussing these issues again much later in the term develop what has already been considered? Sources: Why does your extensive supplementary reading list not include any Coetzee interviews or articles? This is a writer whose graduate study is in literature and has written incisively about it. Counterbalancing critics' preoccupations with Coetzee's own focus and analyses might illuminate not only the novel but also academic fashion and biases? Approaches and close reading: How much do the sources you use inform your approach and close reading? Are you using it to speak about the text for you or are you using it to provide a range of perspectives with which to study the novel? Where is your own reading of the text? Most of the secondary reading dwell on issues of postcolonialism and rape. Is this all that Disgrace has to offer? How does it in fact handle issues that are the mainstays of postcolonial studies? What questions or ideas does it elaborate about rape? My suggestion is to unpack the categories and peel back critically the labels in teaching the novel. How to train your students to be independent and critical thinkers? How fitting is the postcolonial lens for viewing the post-apartheid relationship between professor Lurie and Melanie Isaacs? How does the postcolonial framework explain Lurie losing his job, or Melanie's behavior and racial ambiguity, or the academic committee deciding his case? What more about rape does the text ask when it introduces Lucy's being lesbian, the attackers' race and attitude, her pregnancy, and Lurie's experience of this as a father after his own disgrace?
Week 11 Reading Mark Haddon, The Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time* (2013) James Campbell, “How to Start a Story,” The Book of Hopes* (2020)	Niramit: The ever-changing meanings of both literature and life are intertwined, accelerated by technologies of the present age. There are infinite ways to define Britishness, Thainess, or anything-ness.
Week 13 Reading *Robert Shearman, "The Dark Space in the House in the House in the Garden at the Centre of the World" (2013)	Raiwin: I want people to experience something new, something that will blow their mind or maybe, in this case, creeps them out.
Week 13 Reading Mark Haddon, The Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time* (2013)	Chollada: The goal is to let the students see recurring social issues through the fiction, so that they are more aware and thoughtful towards the complicated situations.	Puckpan: I like your heading "Student Engagement." It's a clear but broad category that can encompass both the the overall course/lesson spirit and policy and the specific pedagogy of lesson planning ex. activities, discussion questions and style, and even assessment methods. Engagement is also such a friendly and active term. A couple of other comments: Materials access: It's nice of you to provide hard copies of Haddon's novel for students at khun On's shop. Making provisions for new and used copies of The Incident of the Dog to be available at the Sala Prakiaw CU Bookstore would also be great under a different circumstance, but let's be really proactive with this project and design ways for students to access material remotely as well. Discussion: While Asperger's syndrome (and autism) is an important topic to discuss in this novel, you are using it in British Fiction from the Twentieth Century to the Present class so in planning your week and two-day lessons, think about how the work fits into that trajectory. What does the novel show or do as an example of 2010s imaginative writing? What should students know or learn about contemporary British fiction, and how does their reading of Incident enable thinking and conversations about the range and variety of this output, and/or related changes and development, problems and implications of the text, readership, and industry?
Week 16 Reading Frances Hardinge, Deeplight (2019)	Pichayapa: This course design takes us back to the paperback of the book with an old-school fantasy setting that was released in 2019, because I want to show that even with the new narrative being invented on another platform, the ‘old’ style still exists.
Weeks 16 and 17 Reading Alain de Botton, Essays in Love* (2015)	Tanyamon: We will inspect on love in the twenty-first century British society presented through the mundane love story of the protagonist. Together with comparing it with our own perspective on the subject, we will be able to see how universal emotions and logic behind the concept of love is.
Week 19 Reading Jenny Downham, Before I Die* (2007) *Now Is Good, directed by Ol Parker, BBC Films (2012) Virginia Woolf, "The Cinema" (1926) The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, directed by Robert Wiene (1920) *Thomas De Quincey, "The Palimsest of the Human Brain" (1845)	Pasit: This additional week will cover the focus on the perception of modern British literature and its adaptation in different media.

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Last updated May 17, 2020