English 3328:
Masterpieces of British Literature
from the 19th Century to the Present
Professor John McNamara
Assistant Instructor: Dr. Mark Womack
Spring 2010
Course Website:
http://drmarkwomack.com/engl-3328/
This site contains course information and materials, including the syllabus and study questions.
Blackboard Vista:
http://www.uh.edu.webct/
You will submit ALL your work for this course (Weekly Journals, Research Paper, and Final Exam) on-line through Blackboard Vista.
We recommend that you use a safe, reliable browser to access the course, such as Firefox, Chrome, or Safari. (Internet Explorer is not secure, not dependable, and does not comply with Web Standards.)
YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=61F160C6F55F9E2B
You can find Dr. McNamara’s lectures for the class on the YouTube play list.
Format of the Course
While students were originally present with the professor in a studio classroom where classes were taped for later television broadcast, you will be taking this course in a form that is now known as “distance education.” Since you are viewing taped versions of these classes on YouTube, you will interact with the professor in different ways than the students in the “live” sessions. Thus, while you will be able to see and hear how those students responded to, or asked questions of, the professor, you will send in your own questions by e-mail to the assistant instructor or by leaving a telephone message at the number listed below. The assistant instructor for this course is Dr. Mark Womack.
Each class meeting of the original “live” version of the course consisted of three segments of 50 minutes each, with a break of about 10 minutes after the first and the second segments of each class. On YouTube, each class is presented in two 75 minute segments (A and B). You should plan to view a total of 14 complete classes (of 2 segments each) following the syllabus given below. (Please note that the Study Questions presented in the Review for the Final Examination in Class 14 will also be available on the course website listed above.)
Contact Information
To contact the professor or assistant instructor for any reason, you may call and leave a message at any time. Or you may send a message by e-mail or regular mail. For most communications, we prefer e-mail as the most reliable method.
Prof. McNamara: John.McNamara1@mail.uh.edu
Dr. Womack: mark@drmarkwomack.com
Telephone (Prof. McNamara’s office): (713) 743-2973.
You may leave a message giving your call-back number (very slowly and clearly), and your call will be returned.
Regular mail address:
Prof. John McNamara or Dr. Mark Womack
Department of English
University of Houston
Houston, TX 77204-3013
Texts:
|
Volume 2 (8th Edition) |
Charles Dickens |
Virginia Woolf |
| |
|
|
You may use ANY edition of Hard Times or Mrs. Dalloway for the class.
Syllabus
|
Week |
Lecture |
Topics & Assignments |
| 1: Jan 19 |
Introduction. Historical context for the emergence of Romanticism. |
|
| 2: Jan 25 | |
Blake, Songs of Innocence and Experience. Wordsworth, “Tintern Abbey.” |
| 3: Feb 1 |
Wordsworth, The Prelude (selections). Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (selections), Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan. Robinson, “The Haunted Beach.” |
|
| 4: Feb 8 |
Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto 3. Landon, “Love’s Last Lesson” and “The Proud Ladye.” Shelley, Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, “A Song: Men of England” and “England in 1819.” Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Letter to George and Thomas Keats and To Autumn. |
|
| 5: Feb 15 |
Victorian Issues (all selections). Additional illustrations from Wolstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, and Carlyle, “Captains of Industry.” |
|
| 6: Feb 22 |
Dickens, Hard Times. |
|
| 7: March 1 |
Tennyson, In Memoriam. Browning, “My last Duchess,” Fra Lippo Lippi, and Caliban upon Setybos. |
|
| 8: March 8 |
Ruskin, Modern Painters and Stones of Venice. Arnold, Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse and “Dover Beach.” Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur” and “The Windhover.” |
|
| March 15-20 |
SPRING BREAK |
|
| 9: March 22 |
Pater, Preface to The Renaissance. Wilde, Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray. Dowson, Brooke, Sassoon, Owen (all selections). |
|
| 10: March 29 |
The Emergence of Modernism 1: Conrad, The Heart of Darkness. Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden.” Achebe, “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.” |
|
| 11: April 5 |
The Emergence of Modernism 2: Yeats, “Easter 1916” and “The Second Coming.” Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock |
|
| April 6 |
Last Day to drop a course or withdraw with a “W” |
|
| 12: April 12 |
Eliot, The Waste Land. Woolf, A Room of One’s Own. |
|
| 13: April 19 |
Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway. |
|
| 14: April 26 |
Larkin, Hughes, and Heaney (all selections of each). Review for the Final Examination. |
|
| April 28 |
Final Deadline for Weekly Journals |
|
| April 30 |
TERM PAPER DUE (See instructions below for submitting your paper on Blackboard Vista.) |
|
| May 8 |
FINAL EXAMINATION (See instructions below for taking your exam on WebCT.) |
WebCT POSTINGS to fulfill the
JOURNAL REQUIREMENT
Journals have been replaced by participation on the WebCT Discussion Boards.
You will hear some discussion of a journal requirement in the lectures, but that requirement applied only to an earlier version of this course.
Each week you will post your personal responses to one or more of the works covered that week on the Blackboard Vista Discussion Boards. These Blackboard Vista postings can be composed as entries for a journal of your own thoughts about the works and/or as responses to other students’ responses to those works in the mode of a “chat room” discussion. You should have a total of at least twelve substantial postings (one per week, excluding Class 1 and Class 14) by the end of the course.
You must submit all your journal entires by April 28. We strongly encourage you to keep up with your weekly journal entries. But because we want to accommodate the greater scheduling flexibility of a distance learning class, we have not set specific due dates for each weekly journal.
Please Note: While your posting will feature your personal response(s) to the work covered that week, your response should be thoughtful and make specific references to the text you are considering.
Term Paper
You are to choose one of the “Victorian Issues” outlined in the Norton Anthology, then select a major work by an author who deals with one of those issues and write a paper of 8-10 (double-spaced, printed) pages in which you provide (1) a brief historical context for the issue your author treats, (2) an analysis of a specific work by your author showing how it treats the particular issue, and (3) an assessment of your author’s contribution to one of these “Victorian Issues.”
Please bear in mind that these “Victorian Issues” began to emerge some time before they were fully articulated in Victorian England, and they continued to exert considerable influence during the 20th century—and now into the 21st century. Moreover, some writers of the last two centuries have dealt with more than one of these issues, sometimes even exploring the relations among them. Accordingly, you may choose any British author writing during the time period covered by the course, and you may choose an author whose work deals with more than one of the “Victorian Issues.”
Alternative Topic:
You may rather choose to write on the colonial or post-colonial experience in the British Empire as depicted by an author from the last two centuries. In that case, you will provide (1) a brief historical context for the work you choose to analyze, (2) a detailed analysis of that work showing how it depicts the colonial or post-colonial experience, and (3) an assessment of your author’s contribution to this topic.
Please also bear in mind that while your primary task is analyzing a particular work, some research will be necessary for you to establish the historical context in which your author wrote that work, and all sources you use should be carefully acknowledged and documented.
Documentation:
All sources must be documented. While the MLA form is preferred, any reasonable and clear form for citing sources will be acceptable.
Due to be received by April 30.
You must submit your paper electronically (see instructions below). You do not need to submit a hard copy version of your essay.How to submit your Term Paper:
- Find the Term Paper-Spring 10 link on the main Blackboard Vista page (NB: You can only submit your paper through this Blackboard Vista link, NOT through the Turnitin web site.)
- Click the link for the assignment
- Click the “submit paper” icon
- Enter the Title of your paper
- Click “Browse”
- Navigate to the location of the file you want to upload (Microsoft Word preferred. Other acceptable file types: WordPerfect, PostScript, pdf, rtf, and plain text.)
- Click the “Submit” button
- View your paper in the window. Make sure the text matches the document you want to turn in (Click “No,” if the text does not match)
- Click the “Yes, Submit” button
- View the Turnitin digital receipt (Turnitin will assign an 8 digit paper ID for your paper)
After the instructor has posted grades:
- Click the link for the assignment
- Click the hyperlinked title of the paper under the Title column
- View your score at the top of the page
N.B. Remember always to keep a copy of your paper.
Final Examination
his examination will be comprehensive in that it will cover all the works on the syllabus and the material introduced in class lectures and discussions. In order to help you focus on the most important subjects for your review, you will be given a list of “Study Questions for the Final Examination” during the last class meeting. The examination will be based on these study questions, which are taken from subjects discussed in detail during the classes sessions. Note that the last two hours of class time will be devoted to a review of the course using these study questions as a guide.
The final will be available on Blackboard Vista all day on May 8. You will have 3 hours to complete the exam. On the honor system, you may use your text books during the exam but no other materials.
Please use paragraphs in your answers, they help organize and clarify your arguments. Designate the beginning of a paragraph by inserting the following code: <p> (Between paragraphs, without spaces, insert the left angle bracket, the letter p and the right angle bracket.)
NB: After you finish each portion of the exam, YOU MUST PRESS THE SUBMIT BUTTON TO SEND THE EXAM; otherwise your answer will be lost.
Final Grade
Term Paper
45%
Final Exam
45%
Weekly Journals
10%
Withdrawal Policy
While all students are encouraged to complete the course, we recognize that occasionally a student may need to withdraw, especially for non-academic reasons. Please bear in mind that it is your responsibility to fill out and turn in the necessary forms in order to withdraw formally from the course.
According to university policy, if you wish to withdraw from the course you must do so by the “Last Day to Drop a Course” as printed in the official academic calendar. The academic calendar for the current semester can be found by following the links on the home page for UH.
Please note that if you do not withdraw by the “Last Day to Drop a Course,” then you must be given a grade for the course. If a student simply does not turn in assignments and does not warrant a grade of “I” (Incomplete) then current university policy is to assign that student a failing grade for the course.
Policy on Incomplete Greades
The grade of “I” (Incomplete) is a conditional and temporary grade given when students are passing a course or still have a reasonable chance of passing in the judgment of the instructor but, for non-academic reasons beyond their control, have not completed a relatively small part of all requirements. Students are responsible for informing the instructor immediately of the reasons for not submitting an assignment on time or not taking an examination. Students must contact the instructor to make arrangements to complete the course requirements.
An Incomplete is granted only if (a) the student has sufficient reason for not completing the coursework within the term allotted; (b) the student has already completed a substantial portion of the coursework; and (c) the student requests a grade of Incomplete before the date of the Final Examination. Students who do receive an Incomplete grade must complete all the course requirements by a deadline set by the instructor. If the student fails to submit the work on time, the grade will be changed to reflect the work completed in the course. Bear in mind that a grade of “I” automatically changes to “F” at the end of a calendar year if all course requirements are not fulfilled by that time.