Goals of ENGLISH 571, Fall 2002
As you know (I hope), this particular course is both writing and computer intensive. No need to panic about the computer part--there's nothing here that requires any arcane knowledge of computers, and if you are familiar with Windows, any wordprocessing program, and web surfing, you'll be just fine. [Teachers: you will need a good web connection since you are doing the class as a full "distance" class] In this class,you will be writing for every class, and you'll have the opportunity to post your papers for groupreview and revision before they are collected for grading.
With the aid of the computer, this will be a highly collaborative course in which everyone contributes fully, working through the assignments with the aid of on-line resources and class forums. That's what a graduate course should be all about anyhow--sharing research, ideas, and questions, but the computer allows us to do this in ways that the ordinary classroom cannot. My ideas and questions will be part of the class discussion mix, and I will have plenty of resources on-line for you to study. You will also learn by working through writing projects, and you will teach each other--and me, I'm sure. You will write for every class, posting and responding on the forums and/or the critical annotator, and that will be part of your grade, as well as the baseline for each class. You will also be doing some library and web research into scholarly readings of the works, expanding our own interpretations and learning how to incorporate research with our own close readings into good, critical analyses of works. You may also choose to create a study hypertext of one of our works; this would be a particularly good choice for the teachers who will likely create study materials for their own classes.
I assume that you have already read some, and perhaps many, works of American literature before this point, especially "classics" like The Scarlet Letter or Moby Dick. Also, many of you are taking a survey at the graduate level because you anticipate that you may be teaching these works at some point or you are already teaching them. These considerations have helped shape the course. There will be a great deal of reading, as we "cover the bases" of a survey, and some of it, because it fills in context, you should be able to read through once and fairly quickly and perhaps some works you have read before. But you should plan to reread important works even if you have studied them before, because you will be looking for different kinds of ideas in this course. In fact, most of your reading should be rereading, looking for patterns, contexts, and comparisons, although some of you may have mastered deeper reading skills for a careful first reading. Working through a few study hypertexts will help you develop those rereading skills even more.
In this course, you will be writing for the toughest audience of all--a group of students, all doing similar assignments and with vested interests in their own hard-won interpretations, and you'll have to figure out how to "sell" your own argument to them. You will also be writing for an eagle-eyed teacher who expects you to be able to edit your own work (warning--I can smell a sentence fragment or a misused apostrophe or comma a mile away!), but who will be glad to work with you on problem areas that you may still have in your writing. We'll also be focusing quite a bit on thematic, literary, and historical connections and contexts of the works--all quite helpful for teachers, present or future.