Course Information
Texts:
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volumes D (The Romantic Period) and E (The Victorian Age)
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
The Aims of This Course:
To familiarize you with the broad outlines of the traditional nineteenth-century British literary scene in poetry, with brief forays into prose. Because the time is short and the literature vast, we will sample a limited number of authors rather than attempting a truly comprehensive survey. We will consider literature within the historical and cultural contexts of the century in general, and we will attempt to locate both individual works and larger “movements” within the broad history of ideas in culture as they were evolving in England and the rest of the world during the 19th century. As a result, we will necessarily consider also intellectual, philosophical, political, social and cultural developments in England during an age of determined imperialist expansion, revolutionary industrial and scientific progress, and increasingly diversifying intellectual and philosophical inquiry. Finally, because this is a relatively small class, I very much hope that we will be able to engage in informed conversation about literature, reading, and culture within a variety of historical, social, critical, and intellectual contexts.
What You Can Expect to Do in This Course:
The Department of English has articulated its expectations about what sort of skills, activities, and experiences students should expect to gain or sharpen in courses at various levels of the curriculum. For courses at the 300 level (like this one), you should expect to do the following:
1. engage in an intensive study of the subject matter of 19th-Century British literature, in both broadly inclusive terms and in more narrowly focused ones;
2..be aware that there are a variety of theoretical and critical approaches to the materials we will study and be able to apply at least one of these approaches to our work;
3. understand the purposes of primary and secondary research and be able to carry out research appropriate to the subject of this course;
4. engage in critical academic discourse, both in the classroom and on paper, employing language and forms of discourse suitable to the assigned task and to an audience of educated adults.
About What I Expect from You:
While I do not expect you to be familiar with any of our material in advance, I do expect you to know how to read literary works with some insight and sophistication about both subject matter and the formal features of the genres. I expect you to come to class, to talk about what you read, and to share with one another as we try to make greater sense of the material we will study over the course of the semester. This will require some effort from everyone. It is generally assumed that preparing for one’s university courses requires at minimum about three hours for every hour of class meeting time. That is probably about accurate for this course; if you cannot or will not make that sort of time commitment for preparing for classes, you may want to think about whether you should remain in the group.
Course Requirements and Grade Standards:
1. An ongoing Reading Notebook in which you record your responses to and commentary on assigned readings and their contexts. This notebook, which you will submit to me periodically, will count for 20% of your course grade
2. A Midterm Examination, in the form of an essay you will write outside class time. You will have about a week to prepare your essay, on a topic I will provide. This examination counts for 25% of your course grade.
3. A Comprehensive Final Examination (i. e., covering all the course materials) written during Final Examination week. This exam will include both “objective” questions (involving names, dates, details of texts and contexts, passages from required reading, and classroom discussions) and two essay questions (you will be able to choose from multiple topics that I may circulate in advance). This examination counts for 25% of your course grade.
4. A substantial Course Portfolio, which will include both research and study materials and a set of commentaries on them; the portfolio is described in detail in a separate part of the information packet. This portfolio will count for 30% of your course grade.
A Note on Class Participation:
In keeping with the letter and the spirit of the Integrative Studies requirement, I consider your participation in our group work to be a vital part of this course, especially since the small size of this course is specifically intended to facilitate discussion. You can expect your final course grade to reflect the extent to which you have made consistent, helpful, and thoughtful contributions to our work.
Electronics-free environment:
Unless you have a documented disability, you may not use laptops, tablets, or other electronic devices during our class meetings. This rule will ensure your courtesy to one another and to me. Our sessions are short; you will probably discover that you can survive being off line for fifty minutes.
Achievement Centered Education
By passing this course, you will fulfill ACE Learning Outcome 5: “Use knowledge, historical perspectives, analysis, interpretation, critical evaluation, and the standards of evidence appropriate to the humanities to address problems and issues.” Your work will be evaluated by the instructor according to the specifications described in this syllabus. At the end of the term, you may be asked to provide samples of your work for ACE assessment as well.
Opportunities to achieve this outcome:
You will read, learn about, and discuss a wide range of texts (mostly poetry and non-fiction prose) by representative major authors in British literature of the nineteenth century. We will put each reading into historical and cultural context, through mini-lectures and classroom discussion. You will get practice in interpreting literature from the perspective of history as well as from the perspective of literary form and technique. You will explore and challenge various interpretations of literary and historical meaning through close reading and other forms of literary analysis and through the application of historical evidence, and you will learn how to understand individual texts within the context of literary and historical movements, such as Romanticism, Utilitarianism, and Decadence.
Opportunities to demonstrate achievement of this outcome:
Assignments will offer you a range of opportunities to apply historical knowledge and literary analysis to problems and issues relevant to the literary texts we study. Your reading notebook will become a record of your private interaction with our course materials; you will apply literary and historical interpretation to make critical evaluations of various text. I will design essay assignments to require both close reading practices and larger cultural/historical analyses of literary texts. Essay examinations (like the midterm) will require you to apply the historical knowledge and practices of literary interpretation you have learned by analyzing the significance of texts you have read, comparing them across authors and periods, and assessing their cultural and humanistic importance by applying textual and other evidence and crafting rhetorically effective arguments.
Department of English Policy on Class Attendance
“The Department of English expects students registered for English classes to attend all scheduled class meetings and to have a reasonable excuse for any absence. Instructors are expected to lower the grades of students who miss classes without reasonable excuses and to penalize any work turned in late because of such absences. Students who miss more than twenty percent of the scheduled class meetings of any course will ordinarily fail the course for that reason alone, except that (1) if absences occur before the Withdrawal Passing period ends, the student may receive a “W” grade, and (2) if the absences are excused by the instructor or approved UNL policy and a large majority of them occur after the work of the course has been substantially completed, the student may receive an Incomplete (“I”) grade. In both of these cases, it is assumed that the student meets the eligibility requirement stated in the Schedule of Classes. Members of the teaching staff may have more restrictive attendance policies than are here stated.”
You should know that I support this policy. I believe that, especially in a class like this one, the in-class work is a vital part of the overall course. Because of its interactive and unscripted nature, the in-class work cannot be “made up,” and if you choose to “blow off” the class attendance requirement, you will fail the course.
Plagiarism and Academic Misconduct
In any writing that you do for this course (and for every other course you are taking), you must cite the source for any and all writing that you have taken from “outside” sources like books, published essays, articles, and book chapters; newspapers and other periodicals; and any online or other digital sources, including video and audio files. This requirement applies both to direct quotations (which you should indicate by using quotation marks) and indirect references, paraphrases, or summaries. Any time you use material that is not your own, whether quoted directly or paraphrased or summarized, and you fail to cite the source from which you’ve taken it, you are plagiarizing. You should also cite primary sources (like the texts of poems you write about) such as textbooks, handouts, and online sources.
Understanding plagiarism
Properly acknowledging the work of others is part of the process of generating new knowledge through honest effort, and doing so will earn you the respect and esteem of your professors, colleagues and professional peers.
As students and scholars, we are constantly engaging with other people's ideas: we read them in texts, hear them in lecture, discuss them in class and encounter them on the web. Inevitably, we are influenced by the ideas of others and incorporate them into our own thinking and writing. To facilitate the free and honest exchange of ideas among scholars, we are expected give credit to those from whom we borrow words, images or ideas.
In simplest terms, writers must distinguish their own words from the words of others by placing the words of others within quotation marks, and by giving appropriate citations to the sources of quoted text. Neglecting to do so is plagiarism: stealing the words, images or ideas of others without clearly acknowledging the source of that information. It is academic shoplifting, in other words, and it is patently dishonest and disrespectful.
The prohibition of plagiarism is not unique to educational institutions. If the expression of an idea is recorded in any way or fixed in some medium — such as a piece of writing, drawing, photograph, painting, or web page — it is considered intellectual property and is protected by U.S. Copyright Law. To plagiarize is to steal the property of someone else; it is actually a blatant infringement of the law and can be legally punishable. Think of how businesses (and universities) protect their products, names, slogans, and logos from use by unauthorized persons or companies. It’s the same issue.
Plagiarism in any form, however minor, is a violation of the UNL Student Code of Conduct, section B.1.1c, which defines plagiarism as: “Presenting the work of another as one's own (i.e., without proper acknowledgment of the source) and submitting examinations, theses, reports, speeches, drawings, laboratory notes or other academic work in whole or in part as one's own when such work has been prepared by another person or copied from another person.” If you are discovered to have plagiarized, you will normally fail the assignment; instructors are, however, permitted to fail students who plagiarize for the entire course and they are strongly encouraged by the administration to report all violations of the plagiarism policy to the office of Student Judicial Affairs.
If you have questions about the proper way to cite someone else’s words or ideas in your own writing, ask me or contact an adviser in the Writing Assistance Center, 115 Andrews Hall, 402-472-8803.
When to give credit
To avoid plagiarizing, give credit every time you:
- use or refer to another person’s idea, opinion or theory that has been published in a magazine, book, newspaper, song, TV program, movie, web page, computer program, letter, advertisement, or any other medium
- cite or state any facts or statistics that are not common knowledge
- quote another person’s exact spoken or written words, either taken from the media listed above or heard first hand through conversation, interview or email (and these words must be placed within quotation marks)
- reprint (or use as a basis for graphics you create) any graphics, illustrations or pictures from any of the media listed earlier
- paraphrase another person’s spoken or written words
.
Questions, Problems, Issues, etc.
If at any time you have questions about the course, my expectations, or your performance – as well as about anything else that may be relevant to our work as a class and/or your own individual work, goals, plans, or whatever – please feel free to speak with me privately. I will hold regular office hours at the announced times, but I am on campus most days until mid-afternoon and so we can generally arrange appointments at other mutually convenient times.
Students with Disabilities:
Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD), located at 132 Canfield Administration Building, provides individualized academic support for students with documented disabilities. Support services can include extended test time, textbooks and handouts in alternative formats (electronic texts, Braille, taped texts, etc), classroom notes, sign language interpreters, and transcriptionists. SSD not only accommodates students that have visible disabilities, but students with other varying types of disabilities that impact college life. If you have a documented disability that is impacting your academic progress, please contact SSD at 402-472-3787 (or 402-472-0053 [TTY], or 402-472-0080 [FAX]) and schedule an appointment. If you do not have a documented disability but you are having difficulties with your coursework (such as receiving low grades even though you study more than your classmates or find you run out of time for test questions when the majority of your peers finish their exams in the allotted time), you may schedule an appointment to discuss the challenges you are experiencing.
I encourage any student with disabilities to contact SSD for a confidential discussion of her or his individual needs for academic accommodation. I will also be happy to chat confidentially with anyone about how to take advantage of SSD’s services. It is the policy of the University of Nebraska - Lincoln to provide flexible and individualized accommodation to students with documented disabilities that may affect their ability to fully participate in course activities or to meet course requirements. To receive accommodation services, students must be registered with the services for students with Disabilities (SSD) office, 132 Canfield Administration Building (see contact numbers above).