English 180 Spring 2005 Information

Stephen C. Behrendt
319 Andrews Hall
phone: 472-1806
office: 1-3 TR,
and by appointment

James Gillray, Humphrey's Shop

Information about this Course

Course Texts: Portable Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. Fifth Edition. Ed. Kirszner & Mandell
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

This course is intended to help you gain greater confidence and self-awareness with reading in general — and with reading "literature" in particular — so that you will become a more effective reader, no matter what sort of writing you are reading. As part of this process, during this semester we will be reading a variety of texts representing various traditional types of literature, as well as other documents (like this one!) which we may not always think of as "literature."

In fact, one of our aims will be for you to get a better sense of just what it is that we mean when we use the term "literature." "Literature" has probably never meant exactly the same thing to everyone at any given point in history, even within a relatively small social group of readers. Like any form of art, literature is always the subject of controversy and disagreement, precisely because it is made up of a dynamic and continually evolving body of materials.

Indeed, about two hundred years ago, during what literary historians usually call the "Romantic" period in art and culture (including literary culture), many writers and thinkers argued that "literature" was not a body of writings at all but, rather, an interactive process that involved not just individuals but instead whole communities of readers, all of whom were expected to be familiar with many "texts" and also to be actively involved in interpreting them within the broad parameters of social and cultural activity generally. In that sort of model of a cultural community, it is easy to see, art and literature occupied a very central place within the society, rather than being relegated to the periphery, as is so often the case today. The biggest and "hottest" ideas of the time were debated energetically not just in the streets but also in all the various forms of writing (and other artistic media) — and both the artists and their audiences were almost always able to assume that all the many participants in this group activity were familiar with the issues and with the ways in which the various literary and non-literary artistic forms "worked."

Much of this sensitivity to how "literature" "works" has eroded in the years that have followed that exciting time. But within the last twenty years or so there has been a great deal of new interest in the ways in which the various forms of writing function within cultural communities. These "forms of writing" range widely, and they can include everything from familiar conventional literary works like formal poems or deliberately intellectual novels to song lyrics, graffiti, and even forms that are not written down at all (like "poetry slams"). They also include other types of formal writing like religious texts, history writing, journalism, editorials, and the drama, to name only a few.

So one more aim of this course is to help you better to appreciate that while reading is necessarily a very private activity (most of us read alone, silently, just as you are doing as you read this sentence), that reading activity is never entirely separated from the community to which you belong and to another community to which the author belongs (or belonged). Moreover, if you think about it, you will realize that a very great deal of this private reading that we do is actually closely involved with group activities and group identities: when you read your Bible or Koran, your family history, your fraternity or sorority information, your horoscope, you are participating in various types of communities in which all the other members understand the "language." Those communities to which we belong, and whose values and cultural practices have shaped each of us, are also the communities to which we take back the results of our private reading, where we may choose to "try them out" on others. In other words, all texts are surrounded both by other "texts" and by a variety of contexts that result from who each of us is and from the experiences that have made each of us what we are.

Throughout this course we will be concerned with different approaches that we can take to texts. We will begin with the idea that we are all what might be called "general readers" — that is, members of an academic community but not a highly specialized group of "literature connoisseurs." The questions we will explore are those that readers have often explored, and it is no exaggeration to say that most of those questions do not have what we might think of as "answers." I like to tell my students that the study of art is not rocket science —— it is harder! We will try to build into the course a constant awareness of the fact that what we do as readers is often affected by factors that lie outside each of us — and indeed outside of any individual text. Imagine trying to discuss Shakespeare's sonnets (or Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, or Mary Shelley's Frankenstein) on September 11, 2001, for example, and you may begin to appreciate the point. We have all learned to read in different ways and at different times and in different places. Each of us therefore brings to our reading a whole lifetime of intellectual, cultural, moral, political, economic, and gender conditioning, so it is little wonder that we may disagree on what any text (ANY text) "means." Discovering the "meaning" of any text — or of any cultural phenomenon — is often a matter of narrowing down the possibilities by deciding among ourselves what it is NOT and then settling for the fact that what we are left with is a constellation of various, possible "meanings" that incorporate and represent our differing approaches and experiences as readers.

This course combines a large lecture format with individual discussion sections (which we call "Breakout Groups"). We will meet in our main lecture hall for our first three class sessions. After that, we will meet at the lecture hall only on Tuesdays and for examinations. For the remaining classes, on Thursdays, we will divide roughly into thirds and will meet in other, smaller rooms that will make it easier for us to have general discussions about the reading we will be doing. We will work out the arrangements for these meetings in the first two weeks so that we can have the first Breakout Group meeting on Thursday, 20 January. These Breakout Group meetings will take place at the same time period when our class normally meets, but they will be in a different location. Once you are assigned to a Breakout Group, you will stay with that group for the rest of the semester.

On your course handouts — and on the course website at the "Course Writing Assignments" page — you will find information about the writing assignments for the course.

There will be two examinations, one at about the middle of the semester (and covering Fiction; 15% of your course grade) and another at the end (covering the entire course; 20% of your course grade). The examinations will be heavily grounded in material covered in the lectures and in the assigned readings, so if you fail to attend classes you will likely fail the examinations – and probably the course.

You will write two brief papers, one each on the Short Story and on Poetry. Each paper will be worth 20% of your course grade. We will provide you with a written copy of the grading standards for the papers as well as detailed instructions for the individual papers.

Finally, you will be graded for your participation in your Breakout Group. Your work in your Breakout Section will constitute 25% of your course grade. We expect you to attend all meetings, and to have prepared in advance all the assigned readings for that week. We will also require you to take an active role in all classroom activities, including discussions. The whole point of having the breakout sections is to provide a forum for open discussion of the readings and all other issues and concerns relating to the course. If you attend all the sessions but never participate in discussion, you cannot earn more than a C- for the Breakout Section. To earn an A for the Breakout Section, you will need to contribute in a meaningful fashion to discussions on a regular basis.