English 3328:
Masterpieces of British Literature
from the 19th Century to the Present
Professor John McNamara
Assistant Instructor: Dr. Mark Womack
Spring 2008
Course Website:
http://drmarkwomack.com/mcnamara/engl-3328/This site contains course information and materials, including the syllabus and study questions.
WebCT:
http://www.uh.edu.webct/You will submit ALL your work for this course (Weekly Journals, Research Paper, and Final Exam) on-line through WebCT.
We recommend that you use a safe, reliable browser to access the course, such as Firefox, Opera, 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=61F160C6F55F9E2BYou 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 (either on DVDs, on YouTube, or as they are broadcast on Channel 8) 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.The classes listed in the syllabus below will be broadcast early Tuesday mornings from 1:00 AM to 4:00 AM on Channel 8, the local PBS channel.
For those of you viewing the class on DVD or YouTube, you will see that each class meeting of the original “live” version of the course consisted of three segments of 50 minutes each, and there was a break of about 10 minutes after the first and the second segments of each class. You should plan to view a complete class (of 3 segments) every week, following the syllabus given below.
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.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.
Prof. McNamara: John.McNamara1@mail.uh.edu
Dr. Womack: mark@drmarkwomack.com
Regular mail address:
Prof. John McNamara or Dr. Mark Womack
Department of English
University of Houston
Houston, TX 77204-3013
SYLLABUS
Texts:|
Volume 2 (8th Edition) |
Charles Dickens |
Virginia Woolf |
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You may use ANY edition of Hard Times or Mrs. Dalloway for the class.
Broadcast Dates and Topics:
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| Jan 20 | Introduction. Historical context for the emergence of Romanticism. |
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| Jan 27 | |
Blake, Songs of Innocence and Experience. Wordsworth, “Tintern Abbey.” |
| Feb 3 | Wordsworth, The Prelude (selections). Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (selections), Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan. Robinson, “The Haunted Beach.” |
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| Feb 10 | 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. |
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| Feb 17 | Victorian Issues (all selections). Additional illustrations from Wolstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, and Carlyle, “Captains of Industry.” |
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| Feb 24 | Dickens, Hard Times. |
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| Mar 3 | Tennyson, In Memoriam. Browning, “My last Duchess,” Fra Lippo Lippi, and Caliban upon Setybos. |
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| Mar 10 | Ruskin, Modern Painters and Stones of Venice. Arnold, Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse and “Dover Beach.” Hopkins, “God's Grandeur” and “The Windhover.” |
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| Mar 13 | First Batch of Journals Due |
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| Mar 17 | SPRING BREAK (A repeat of the last class will be broadcast). |
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| Mar 24 | Pater, Preface to The Renaissance. Wilde, Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray. Dowson, Brooke, Sassoon, Owen (all selections). |
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| Mar 31 | 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.” |
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| April 7 | The Emergence of Modernism 2: Yeats, “Easter 1916” and “The Second Coming.” Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock |
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| April 14 | Eliot, The Waste Land. Woolf, A Room of One’s Own. |
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| April 21 | Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway. |
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| April 28 | Larkin, Hughes, and Heaney (all selections of each). Review for the Final Examination. |
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| May 1 | Second Batch of Journals Due |
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| May 2 | TERM PAPER DUE (See instructions below for submitting your paper on WebCT.) |
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| May 9 | 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.
Beginning with the second class, each week you will post your personal responses to the work(s) covered that week on the WebCT Discussion Boards. These WebCT 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 must post your first batch of six journals (on classes 2-7) before Spring Break: March 13. The rest of your journals (on classes 8-13) should be posted by April 28. You should have a total of at least twelve substantial postings (one for each week, excluding the first and final classes) by the end of the course.
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 May 2.
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:
After the instructor has posted grades:
- Find the Term Paper-Spring 09 link on the main WebCT page (NB: You can only submit your paper through this WebCT 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)
- 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
This 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.In case you have trouble with the DVD for this Review, it will also be available on the course website (above).
The final will be available on WebCT all day. 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 you have not completed all required assignments, but you do have a non-academic reason for missing an assignment, you should contact the professor or assistant professor to petition for a grade of “Incomplete.” Bear in mind that according to university policy, a grade of “I” is automatically changed to “F” at the end of a calendar year if all course requirements are not fulfilled by that time.
If a student simply does not turn in assignments and does not warrant a grade of “I,” then current university policy is to assign that student a failing grade for the course.