Week 1

Oct. 28

Reading and Seeing

1: Learning Art and Life

Reading

• *Neena Beber, Misreadings (1997; study guide)
• Interview with the Playwright: Neena Beber, Centenary Stage Company (2006)
  
• Vladimir Nabokov, "Good Readers and Good Writers," Lectures on Literature (1948, 1980)
  

2: Living Art and Life

Reading

• *Neena Beber, Misreadings (1997; study guide)
• Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1873–77, 1878)
• Edgar Allan Poe
• "Sonnet—To Science" (1829)
• "Sonnet—To Science" in The Casket, The Museum of Edgar Allan Poe (description and images)
• Kyle Miller, "Close Reading of 'Sonnet—To Science'" (2010 student paper)
  
• Letter to B— (1836)
• Somsri Sukumalananda, "My Father" (1973)
  

3: Studying History and Life

Reading

• *Ethan Canin, "The Palace Thief" (1994) pp. 169–79 (study guide)
  
• Ken James, "The Emperor's Club Interviews with Author Ethan Canin and Screenwriter Neil Tolkin" (2002)
  
• *Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Ozymandias" (1818; study guide)
• Percy Bysshe Shelley: Ozymandias, BBC (context, subject matter, commentary, structure and language; attitudes, themes and ideas)
• Ozymandias, British Library (includes link to audio and Aviva Dautch's interpretation)
• Shelley, draft of Ozymandias, Shelley's Ghost: Reshaping the Image of a Literary Family, Bodleian Libraries
  
• Sharan Shetty, "Walter White Reads Percy Shelley," Slate (2013)
• Ramses II
• John Ray, "Ramesses the Great," BBC (2011)
• Ramesses II, Egypt's Golden Empire, PBS
• Ramses II, Britannica
• Statue of Ramesses II, the 'Younger Memnon,' British Museum
  

4: Viewing Family and School

Reading

• *Ethan Canin, "The Palace Thief" (1994) pp. 180–98 (study guide)

5: Second Chances

Reading

• *Ethan Canin, "The Palace Thief" (1994) pp. 199–209 (study guide)

6: Discoveries and Decisions

Reading

• *Ethan Canin, "The Palace Thief" (1994) pp. 210–27 (study guide)

Reading and Critiquing

7: Shakespeare: The Drama of Sonnets

Reading

• William Shakespeare
• Sonnet 15 ("When I consider every thing that grows")
  
• *Sonnet 116 ("Let me not to the marriage of true minds"; study guide)
• Linda Gregerson, "Introduction," The Atlantic (1999; with audio of readings by four poets)
• William Shakespeare: Sonnet 116, BBC (context, subject matter, structure and language; attitudes, themes and ideas)
• Sonnet 116 in Modern English and in Original Pronunciation, British Library (video clip, 1:37 min.; OP starts around 0:46)
  
• Sonnet 138 ("When my love swears that she is made of truth")
• Trevor Nunn and David Suchet, Master class on Sonnet 138, Royal Shakespeare Company (c. 1979; video clip, 10:59 min.)
• Seamus Cooney, Sonnet 138 (line by line commentary)
• Edward A. Snow, "Loves of Comfort and Despair: A Reading of Shakespeare's Sonnet 138," ELH 47.3 (1980; Chula access)
  
• Sonnet 145 ("Those lips that Love's own hand did make")
  
• "Venus and Adonis" (1592–1593) ll. 229–40
  
• Michael Delahoyde, "Shakespeare's Sonnets" (groupings of the sonnets)
  
• Don Paterson, Reading Shakespeare's Sonnets: A New Commentary (2010)
• "Introduction"
  
• "A Note on the Sonnet Form"
• Commentaries
• Thomas Wilson, "Of Composition," The Art of Rhetoric (1553)
  
• George Puttenham, The Art of English Poesy (1589)
• Billy Collins, "Introduction to Poetry," The Apple That Astonished Paris (1988)

8: The Legacy of Shakespeare's Drama and Poetry

Reading

• John Milton
• "On Shakespeare" (1630)
• *Sonnet 19 (study guide)
  
• King James Bible (1611)
  
• Matthew 25:14–30 (The Parable of the Talents)
• Matthew 20:1–14 (The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard)
• "Ad Patrem" (a poem in Latin to his father with notes and links to the original Latin and an English translation)
• John Rogers, "Lecture 3: Credible Employment," Yale University (transcript, audio, video, 50 min.)
  
• Carol Ann Duffy, "Anne Hathaway," The World's Wife (2000; study guide)
  

9: Hearing Caliban

Reading

• *William Shakespeare, The Tempest act 1 scene 2 (c. 1611; Caliban's first appearance; study guide)
  
• John Dover Wilson, "The Tempest"

10: More Calibans

Reading

• Aimé Césaire, A Tempest act 1 scene 2 (study guide)
  
• Emma-Lindsay Squier, "The Soul of Caliban"
• Louis Untermeyer, "Caliban in the Coal Mines" (1914)
  

11: Symbolic Shakespeare

Reading

• Isaac Asimov, "The Immortal Bard," Earth Is Room Enough (1954, 1957)
  
• Anthony Burgess, "The Muse," The Hudson Review 21.1 (1968; Chula access)

No class (Father's Day)

Seeing and Critiquing

12: Reportage and Opinion

Reading

• *David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly (1986) act 1 scenes 1–7 (study guide)
  
• Giacomo Puccini, Madama Butterfly (1904)
  
• New York City Opera Project: Madama Butterfly (Puccini, background, performances)
  

Weekly 7

13: Reality and Myth
Reading

• *David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly (1986) act 1 scene 8–act 2 scene 5 (study guide)
• Edward W. Said, "Introduction," Orientalism (1978)
• Edward Said, "On Orientalism," Media Education Foundation (video clip, 10:36 min.)
  
• Shi Pei Pu
• "Shi Pei Pu," The Telegraph (2009 obituary)
• T. Rees Shapiro, "Shi Pei Pu dies at 70; Chinese opera singer inspired M. Butterfly," Los Angeles Times (2009)
• Bernard Bouriscot
• Joyce Wadler, "Prologue," Liaison, (1993; excerpt from The New York Times)
• Nancy Churnin, "Behind the Truth and Fiction of M. Butterfly," Los Angeles Times (1992)
  

14: Butterfly in Time

Reading

• *David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly (1986) act 2 scenes 6–8 (study guide)

15: Cultural History of Race and Gender

Reading

• *David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly (1986) act 2 scene 9–act 3 scene 3 (end; study guide)
• David Henry Hwang, "Afterword," M. Butterfly (1989)
  

No Class (midterm Week: December 23–27, 2013)

Midterm Exam (8–10 a.m. in class)  You will be writing two essays in the midterm covering six core texts excluding M. Butterfly which will have its own essay test on Monday, January 13, 2014. Read instructions carefully and follow them. The essay prompt may consist of several questions but what the entire prompt does is give you a topic with a scope. You should formulate a thesis in response to the prompt that enables you to discuss and elaborate on the topic within that scope for the works involved effectively. Structure your essay around that thesis or argument, citing specific acts, scenes, lines, words or information to illustrate and support the points you are making. Again, you do not need to answer every single question in the prompt cluster in order and separately because then the structure will not necessarily be appropriate to your discussion. Rather, your writing should be designed as a coherent unified piece, not unconnected answers to different questions strung together or a bulleted list. The multiple questions are there to help you brainstorm on the topic and to spark critical engagement with it. You should draw on your own close reading of the material, your notes, your discussion about it in and outside of class, and relevant reading and research you have done. Think critically about the material we have encountered and be prepared to think critically on the topic prompted by the test questions as well. Though you should focus on core readings, you do not have to limit yourself to them. Where relevant and useful, you may refer to supplementary texts in the course packet or online. When writing, follow academic conventions and try to be as legible, clear, effective, and compelling as you can. Rest well, eat clean good food, arrive at least fifteen minutes before exam time, and make sure your watch and writing implements are in order. Good luck!

• Reading Strategies
• Reading Strategies and LIE
• S.O.A.P.S. Document Analysis
• PDIDLS
• Tone and Detailed Explanation of DIDLS
• Essay Exam Tips
• Writing Exam Essays
• Pointers for Taking Essay Tests
• Writing Essay Exams (pdf file)
• Essay Exam Preparation (pdf file)
• Review literary terms
• Sample Midterm Questions and Responses
• Past Midterm Exam Questions
• Discuss two literary works in which the use of point or view creates irony. What purpose does this point of view serve in the pieces you have chosen? How does the point of view affect your reading of the works?
• Choose two works and discuss how the authors’ engagement with prior texts and/or readers’ knowledge of relevant contexts (such as history, culture, biography, form, convention) enrich their understanding of the works.
• Though readers tend to focus on humans or animate things in a literary work, nonliving components are often also very important. Discuss the function of inanimate elements in two works. Give specific examples of lifeless objects and show how they play a significant role in the texts.
• Choose one work in which time is especially worth noticing. Examine the treatment of time or kinds of time, and show how it shapes the work (ex. how time affects our understanding of the protagonist(s), the main conflict, the pace, tone, or direction of the work). What, if any, is the relationship between different time frames, the past, present, and future?
• Choose one work in which interior life is especially worth noticing. Examine the treatment of dreams, illusions, fantasies, or imagination, and show how it shapes the work (ex. how a character’s internal dimensions affect our understanding of him or her, how inner life influences the conflict, pace, tone, direction, structure or form of the work). What, if any, is the relationship between such mental life/perception and reality?
  
• Sample Midterm & Answers (the gothic experience)
• Example of Strong Responses (Romantic literature)
• Sample Midterm Questions (pdf file)
• Sample Midterm Essay Response

No class (holiday)

Preservation and Value

16: What Is a New Day?

Reading

• Alice Walker
• *"Everyday Use," In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women (1973; study guide)
• "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens" (1974)
  

Weekly 10

17: Dead and Living Museums

Reading

• Alice Walker
• *"Everyday Use," In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women (1973; study guide)
• "The Civil Rights Movement: What Good Was It?" (1967)
• Rita Felski, "The Invention of Everyday Life," New Formations 39 (1999)
  

18: Whose War and What's at Stake?

Reading

• *Tim O'Brien, "The Things They Carried" (1986; study guide)
• Daniel Bourne and Debra Shostak, "A Conversation with Tim O'Brien," Artful Dodge (1991)
• Glossary of Military Terms and Slang from the Vietnam War, The Sixties Project, University of Virginia at Charlottesville
  
• Howard Zinn, "The Impossible Victory: Vietnam," A People's History of the United States (2005)
  
• Arundhati Roy, "The Loneliness of Noam Chomsky," The Hindu (2003)
  

19: How to Tell Truth and Fiction

Reading

• Tim O'Brien
• *"The Things They Carried" (1986; study guide)
• "How to Tell a True War Story," The Things They Carried (1990)
• Catherine Calloway, "'How to Tell a True War Story': Metafiction in The Things They Carried," Critique 36 (1995)
  
• "Writing Vietnam" (President's Lecture, Brown University, 1999)

Weekly 12

No class (Intervarsity Games: January 16–22, 2013)

No class (Intervarsity Games: January 16–22, 2013)

Reading and Writing

20: Writing about the Past, Present, and Future

Reading

• *J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) pp. 1–33 (study guide)
• C. P. Cavafy, "Waiting for the Barbarians" (1904)
• C. P. Cavafy, "Waiting for the Barbarians," trans. Richmond Lattimore (1955; includes analysis of the poem and discussion questions)
• Maria Boletsi, "The Travels of a Literary Topos: C. P. Cavafy's 'Waiting for the Barbarians' and its Visual Restagings"
  
• Franz Kafka, "In the Penal Colony" (1914)
  

Weekly 13

21: Torture and Writing

Reading

• *J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) pp. 33–49 (study guide)
• Christopher van Wyk, "In Detention," It Is Time to Go Home (1979)
• In Detention – Chris van Wyk (poem text, historical notes)
• Chris van Wyk: In Detention (introduction to poem, a note on the poet, study questions)
• Remembering a Darker Time: John Vorster Square, South African History Archive
  
• "The death in police custody of Ahmed Timol, political activist and underground operative, is confirmed," South African History Online
  
• J. M. Coetzee, "Into the Dark Chamber: The Novelist and South Africa," The New York Times (1986)
  

*Reading response 3 due

Weekly 14

22: Internal External

Reading

• *J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) pp. 49–81 (study guide)

Final paper draft due (optional)

23: Reading and Writing Nature

Reading

• *J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) pp. 82–95 (study guide)

24: Freedom

Reading

• *J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) pp. 95–126 (study guide)
  

25: Writing the Unwritable

Reading

• *J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) pp. 126–46 (study guide)

26: Writing for the Future

Reading

• *J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) pp. 146–80 (study guide)
• J. M. Coetzee, "The Novel in Africa," The Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities (1998)
  

Forum

• If you are planning to use PowerPoint, make sure it is compatible with Microsoft PowerPoint 2007. Also embed or include files of any nonstandard fonts that are in your presentation.

• Let me know of any other audiovisual needs by 4 p.m. Friday, February 14, 2013.

• 5-minute individual presentation (15 minutes per panel) followed by

• 10-minute question and answer session

• Tentative Schedule

  
  

  Session 1: Real Imagination
  11:00–11:25 a.m.
  Presiding: Sujaree Wattanarat
  Speakers: 
  1. "Barbarism and Imagination," Wanwanut Sirijindapun
  2. "Living in the Future," Sineenart Uparamaiyamas
  3. "Otherness in Waiting for the Barbarians," Tapanee Chalitapanukul
  Respondent 1: Thawanya Phuaknoi
  Respondent 2: Varisara Sitthisenee
  Respondent 3: Pradthana Wanmee
  
  Session 2: Symbolic Functions
  11:30–11:55 a.m.
  Presiding: Warunya Ridmad
  Speakers: 
  1. "Symbolism in 'The Things They Carried,'" Boonbaramee Radsamee
  2. "The Quilt in Honor of Love and Impartiality in 'Everyday Use,'" Passakorn Tongvijid
  3. "Title," Pimjai Choojun
  4. "Title," Akkarawin Mayuramas
  Respondent 1: Phanida Jirakandjanasith
  Respondent 2: Wanwanut Sirijindapun
  Respondent 3: Wichayaporn  Laithong
  Respondent 4: Sujaree Wattanarat

Forum

8:00–9:55 a.m.

Session 3: Wars: What Are They Good For?
8:00–8:25 a.m.
Presiding: Pimjai Choojun
Speakers: 
1. "The Relation between the Things Soldiers Carried and the War Against the Soldiers," Pradthana Wanmee
2. "War and the Soldier," Wichayaporn Laithong
3. "Justice as Excuse for Empire," Warunya Ridmad

Respondent 1: Passakorn Tongvijid
Respondent 2: Tapanee Chalitapanukul
Respondent 3: Varisara Sitthisenee


Session 4: Pieces in Perspective
8:30–8:55 a.m.
Presiding: Wichayaporn Laithong
Speakers: 
1. "What Makes Gallimard Gallimard," Varisara Sitthisenee
2. "The Quilt in Honor of Love and Impartiality in 'Everyday Use,'" Passakorn Tongvijid
3. "Living in Time," Sineenart Uparamaiyamas

Respondent 1: Boonbaramee Radsamee
Respondent 2: Akkarawin Mayuramas
Respondent 3: Pimjai Choojun
 

 
Session 5: Tortured Sights
11:30–11:55 a.m.
Presiding: Boonbaramee Radsamee
Speakers: 
1. "Victimhood in Waiting for the Barbarians," Phanida Jirakandjanasith 
2. "Identities of the Barbarian Girl," Sujaree Wattanarat
3. "Sight in Waiting for the Barbarians," Thawanya Phouknoi 

Respondent 1: Warunya Ridmad
Respondent 2: Pradthana Wanmee
Respondent 3: Sineenart Uparamaiyamas    

Final paper due February 27

• 3–5 pp.

• MLA format

  • MLA Formatting and Style

  • Citation Styles Handbook: MLA

  • MLA Citation Examples

  • MLA Citation Style

  • Everything You Could Possibly Want to Know about Citing MLA Style

  • MLA Documentation Guidelines

• Some writing guidelines:

  • "Some Matters of Form" by Yale University (writing guidelines; pdf file)

  • Writing Prose (handbook on college writing, Yale University; pdf file)

  • Sources and Citation at Dartmouth College (pdf file)

  • Writing about Literature

  • Writing Papers for English and Literature: A Word of Advice (also A Few Things to Remember)

  • The Craft of a Literature Paper

  • Writing a Literature Paper: Guidelines, Suggestions, Strategies

  • What Makes a Good Literature Paper?

  • Guide to Essay Writing (helpful reference, where to start, evidence, argument, what is a good essay)

  • Writing about Literature (elements of the essay, the writing process, the research essay, documentation)

  • Developing an Outline (pdf file)

  • How to Write an Outline

• Some sample papers:

  • "To Know Well" by Jane Smith (on Shakespeare's sonnet 129: "Th'expense of spirit in a waste of shame"; Word file)

  • "The Value of Restraint" by Amy Skerry (on Raymond Carver's short story "Cathedral"; Word file)

Final Exam (8:30–11:30 a.m.) Dictionaries (electronic or paper) are not allowed in the exam room.

BRK ?

• Preparation

  • Writing Exam Essays

  • Pointers for Taking Essay Tests

  • Writing Essay Exams (pdf file)

  • Essay Exam Preparation (pdf file)

• Sample Responses

  • Sample Poetry Question on Kvlividze's poem "In the Metro" (with sample responses)

  • Example of an 'A' Response to an Exam on Wordsworth's "The world is too much with us"

  • Sample Exam Answer

• Reading Strategies

  • TP-CASTT (brief), Poetry Analysis: TP-CASTT (more detailed)

  • Tone and Detailed Explanation of DIDLS

  • S.O.A.P.S. Document Analysis

  • Reading Strategies and LIE

  • PDIDLS

• Review literary terms