Required Texts
Course Description and Goals
Requirements and Grading

• Active Participation 
• Reviews of Events 
• Essays
• Final Exam 
• Regular Attendance
• Honor Code
• Summary of Grading 
• Calendar of Assignments

• Plato.  The Republic.  Trans. Benjamin Jowett.  Dover, 2000.
• Homer.  The Odyssey.  Trans. Robert Fagles.  Penguin, 1997.
• O Brother, Where Art Thou?  Dir. Joel Coen.  Videocassette.  Touchstone, 2000. 
• Shakespeare, William.  Henry IV, Part 1.  The Folger Shakespeare Library.  Washington Square, 1994. 
• London, Jack.  The Call of the Wild.  Ed. Dan Dyer.  U of Oklahoma P, 1997.
• Hurston, Zora Neale.  Their Eyes Were Watching God.  HarperPerennial, 1998. 
• Longley, Michael.  Selected Poems.  Wake Forest UP, 1999.
• Spiegelman, Art.  Maus: A Survivor's Tale I [My Father Bleeds History] and II [And Here My Troubles Began].  Pantheon, 1986 and 1991. 

• Ebest, Sally Barr, et al.  Writing from A to Z.  3rd ed.  Mayfield, 2000. 
• Random House Webster's College Dictionary.  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 address the theme of forbidden knowledge, include folk epic, a Hollywood film (with a folk musical soundtrack), a philosophical dialogue, a verse play, two short novels, lyric poems, and a memoir-as-comic-book.  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, 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 for written assignments of an analytical nature.  Some of them may require research and formal 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 demonstrate your engagement in the course by scoring consistently well on reading quizzes, contributing valuably to Blackboard and in-class discussions, and availing yourself in general of opportunities that enrich the course.  (Reading quizzes will come 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 (15%).  Choose three events from three of these five categories 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 theatrical production at Marjorie Lyons Playhouse or by Shenandoah Shakespeare Express, 3) a program sponsored by the Centenary Film Society (as approved by me), 4) a musical performance at Hurley School of Music, 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.  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.  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.) 

• Final exam (15%).  There will be a cumulative exam, including an in-class essay, on these dates:

• ENGL 101A: 8-11 AM, Tuesday, 16 December
• ENGL 101B: 8-11 AM, Thursday, 18 December. 

• 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 your cell phones beforehand.  The English Department does not distinguish between excused and unexcused absences.  Miss more than nine classes for whatever reason and you will fail the course.  Classes include these events (as appear in the FYE brochure), which may figure in reading quizzes and other assignments:

• The President's Convocation, 11 AM, Tuesday, 26 August, Brown Chapel
• A performance of Henry IV, Part 1, by Shenandoah Shakespeare Express, 22-28 September, Kilpatrick Auditorium (times to be announced)
• The lecture by Dan Dyer, editor, The Call of the Wild, 11:10, Tuesday, 30 September, Kilpatrick Auditorium
• The Presentation of the John William Corrington Award for Literary Excellence to Michael Longley, 7 PM, Tuesday, 4 November, Kilpatrick Auditorium
• The talk by Rose Van Thyn, 7 PM, Thursday, 13 November, Kilpatrick Auditorium
• Living with the Enemy, a photo exhibit by Donna Ferrato, 17-21 November, Turner Gallery.

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

• Active Participation (20%) 
• Reviews of Events (15%) 
• Essays (50%) 
• Final Exam (15%)