Syllabus

Required Texts
Course Description and Goals
Requirements and Grading

• Active Participation 
• Reviews of Events 
• Essays 
• Late-Term Test 
• Regular Attendance 
• Honor Code 
• Summary of Grading
• Calendar of Assignments

• Aristophanes.  Lysistrata.  Trans. Douglass Parker.  New York: Signet, 2001. 
• Dinesen, Isak.  Anecdotes of Destiny and Ehrengard.  New York: Vintage, 1993. 
• Forbidden Planet.  Dir. Fred M. Wilcox.  Perf. Walter Pidgeon, Leslie Nielsen, and Robby the Robot.  DVD.  Warner, 1956. 
• Guerin, Wilfred L., et al.  A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature.  New York: Oxford UP, 2005. 
• Mason, Bobbie Ann.  In Country.  Reissue ed.  New York: Harper Perennial, 2005. 
• Shakespeare, William.  The Tempest.  Ed. Virginia Mason Vaughan and Alden T. Vaughan.  Arden Shakespeare.  London: Thomson, 2003. 

• Ebest, Sally Barr, et al.  Writing from A to Z.  4th ed.  London: Mayfield, 2003. (Packaged with Random House Webster’s College Dictionary.)
• Random House Webster’s College Dictionary.  New York: Random House, 2000. 

This course will acquaint you with works in a variety of genres from the ancient world to the contemporary.  These works, all of which represent a quest for knowledge, include verse plays (one from ancient Greece, the other from the English Renaissance), a classic sci-fi film, a philosophical dialogue, short stories (or "tales"), and a contemporary novel.  They will allow us to examine a number of rhetorical devices, including allegory, analysis, argumentation, description, dialogue, narrative, and various figures of speech--the list is almost endless.  In-class discussions, occasional interaction on the computer, and out-of-class events will encourage you to wrestle with challenging ideas and so to develop your critical skills.  Those ideas will provide a context or basis for written assignments of an analytical nature.  Some of the assignments may require research; all of them will require formal (MLA) documentation.  Apply yourself conscientiously to the work of the course, and by the end of the semester you should be able 

• to analyze a text and to recognize how its rhetorical techniques convey a stance toward the subject matter; 
• to draw connections among our various texts and between them and other cultural elements; 
• to discover and develop arguments of your own; 
• to present those arguments in convincing written form; 
• to demonstrate mastery of basic grammar, mechanics, and usage; and 
• to conduct and document elementary research. 

• Active participation (20%).  You will be participating actively in this course if you attend class regularly (missing only for official, College-sponsored activities or for emergencies) and meet deadlines, and if you demonstrate your engagement in the course by scoring consistently well on reading quizzes, contributing valuably to in-class and computer-mediated discussions, and availing yourself in general of opportunities that enrich the course.  (Reading quizzes will come--when they do--at the beginning of the period.  If you are late for class, you will miss the quiz.  You may make up a reading quiz only if you are absent because of your required participation in a college-sponsored off-campus event, and then you may submit on the day of your return to class 10 objective questions and answers about the assignment that was due when you were absent.) 

• Reviews of events (20%).  Choose three events, each from a different category, and write a review of at least 350 words of each one: 1) an art exhibit at the Meadows Museum or Turner Gallery, 2) a production of Shakespeare by Shakespeare's Blackfriars Stage Company, 3) a program sponsored by the Centenary Film Society (as approved by me), 4) a musical performance at Hurley School of Music (as approved by me), and 5) an on-campus varsity athletic event.  Events for review do not include course-required ones, and you may not review events in which you participate.  For information about upcoming events, visit the "Calendar of Events" at the Centenary Web site.  You should model your reviews after brief ones appearing in the national press.  If you choose an athletic event, write a journalistic account such as one finds in the "sports" section of a newspaper.  Submit the reviews in whatever order you wish.  Due dates appear on the Calendar of Assignments. 

• Four 750-word essays (50%)--on topics to be announced.  Due dates appear on the Calendar of Assignments.  (One of the four essays will be written in class during the final exam period.)  Submit these essays unfolded and either loose or stapled in the upper left-hand corner.  Late essays will be penalized by at least a letter grade.  You must submit all four essays in order to pass the course.  These are the features that I will be evaluating:

• Thesis and introduction: Is the thesis contestable?  Is it substantial enough to merit at least 750 words of development?  Is the thesis, along with the introduction of which it is a part, specific to the essay at hand, or is it merely a generic one that could be pasted onto any other essay on the general subject? 
• Overall structure (macro-organization): Do the paragraphs have topic sentences that relate to the thesis?  Is the arrangement, the order, of the paragraphs sensible and effective?  How well do the paragraphs cohere one with another?  Are there transitions, signposts, that smooth the reader's journey from one topic to another?
• Micro-organization: Do the individual paragraphs have unity, order, coherence? 
• Content: Is there ample evidence to elucidate or otherwise demonstrate the validity of the topic ideas?  What is the quality of that evidence?  To what degree does it display a depth or an originality of thought on the part of the author, or the thoroughness of his or her research?  Has the author employed appropriate rhetorical modes? 
• Style: Is the expression of the ideas clear?  Does the syntax flow?  Is the tone appropriate to the subject?  Are there errors in grammar, diction or usage, spelling, or mechanics that impede effective communication?  (Especially serious are "sentence level" errors: comma splices, sentence fragments, and fused sentences.)
.
• Late-Term Test (10%).  There will be a cumulative objective test on Friday, December 2.

• Regular attendance.  To be present, you must be on time to class; you must have the assigned text with you; and you must stay awake.  You also must exhibit decorum, which includes disabling cell phones beforehand.  The English Department does not distinguish between excused and unexcused absences.  You may miss no more than six classes and still receive the maximum score for active participation.  It is the department's policy that anyone missing more than nine classes for whatever reason will fail the course.  Classes include these events, which may figure in reading quizzes and other assignments: 

• The President's Convocation, 11 AM, Tuesday, August 23, Brown Chapel 
• A performance of Return to Forbidden Planet by Shakespeare's Blackfriars Stage Company (formerly Shenandoah Shakespeare Express), 7 PM, September 20, 22, 24, Kilpatrick Auditorium
• A performance of Lysistrata at Marjorie Lyons Playhouse, 8 PM, September 22, 23, 24, 29, 30, October 1, or 2 PM, September 25
• The Presentation of the John William Corrington Award for Literary Excellence to Bobbie Ann Mason, 7 PM, November 2, Kilpatrick Auditorium 

• Honor Code.  Memorize the Honor Code.  You must write in longhand and sign the Honor Code on all work. 

• Active Participation (20%) 
• Reviews of Events (20%) 
• Essays (50%) 
• Late-Term Test (10%)