Carol Pasternack English 10 Syllabus
From UCSB English Department Knowledge Base
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[edit] Prof. Carol Pasternack
Office: 2704 South Hall, 893-8429
E-Mail: cpaster@humanitas.ucsb.edu
Office Hours: Mon. 1-2, Wed. 2-3, or by appointment.
Winter 1999
Requirements :
- Attendance and Participation in all class meetings.
- Always have the assigned reading completed before class and bring the appropriate books.
- Missing and/or not participating in classes will undoubtedly affect how well you learn the skills being taught. Missing and/or not participating in a substantial number of meetings (3) may lower your grade; missing more may result in a failing grade.
- If you miss a class, you are responsible for finding out from a classmate what you missed before asking the instructor. If you are missing class because of a personal or family crisis, please consult with the instructor.
- For many meetings, you will be asked to do specific analytical tasks as preparation. You will be asked to hand these in.
- Attendance at at least one special meeting: a showing of the film Zoot Suit.
- Participation in all group work, including acting as reader for members of your writing group and a group conference with the instructor (20%). Much of this work will be done on the Web.
- Quizzes, including culminating quiz on last day of class (20%).
- Three essays written in successive versions, with the assistance of your draft group. For each, you will post each paper, receive comments from your group, and post a revised-version. For whichever two you choose at the end of the term, you will also post an ultimate version, for which will receive a grade (each worth 30%).
NOTE WELL : Plagiarism will not be tolerated in this class. Using the words or ideas of another person without the proper citation is a crime. Possible penalties include failure of the assignment, failure of the course, or even expulsion from the university. All cases will be reported to the Dean.
Also note: This syllabus is subject to revision.
Texts :
- Reader at Grafikart, 6547 Pardall in Isla Vista
- M. H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms
- R. S. Gwynn, Poetry: A Longman Pocket Anthology, 2nd edition
- Steven Lynn, Texts and Contexts: Writing About Literature with Critical Theory, 2nd edition.
- Langston Hughes, Selected Poems
- Leslie Marmon Silko, Storyteller
- Dept. of English, UCSB, Success in English Courses
- Optional: Diana Hacker, A Pocket Style Manual
[edit] Calendar
The Text Itself
R Jan 7: Meaning and Pleasure. Translation (into prose) and loss (of meaning and pleasure). Millay, "Still will I harvest beauty where it grows" (R); Keats, "On first looking into Chapman's Homer" (110); Lee, "Eating Together" (329). Begin writing sample in class.
T Jan 12: Writing sample due: "The Purposes and Pleasures of Poetry: My Thoughts" (2-3 pp. Should be your own ideas but organized into an essay, with specific examples, if possible of quoted phrases or lines. Proofread!). The rose. Herrick, "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" (56); Edmund Waller, "Song: Go, Lovely Rose!" (59-60); Robert Burns, "A Red, Red Rose" (82). Abrams, "Figurative Language," "Imagery," "Lyric." Excerpts from Wirmatt, "The Concrete Universal" (R) on metaphor and role of critic. Advice: Read around in the anthology to choose the poem you want to write your essay about, due on Jan. 29.
R Jan 14: Against roses. Shakespeare, "My mistress eyes are nothing like the sun" (48); Millay, "Say what you will, and scratch my heart to find" (R); Parker, "One Perfect Rose" (199); Ana Castillo, "Women Are Not Roses" (R). Bring in a paragraph about the rose metaphor in one of the poems. The paragraph should be on a diskette (see below) and in a hard copy.
11 a.m. class moves to Pentium 333 Lab (Phelps 1526). Upload explication of a metaphor. Bring your paragraph on diskette formatted for IBM-compatible machine, in "text" or "ascii" format or "html" (see "Manual").
T Jan 19: Against roses, continued: Modeling in metaphors. Abrams, "Symbol." The sonnet's confines. Millay, "I will put chaos into fourteen lines" (R). Also read Spenser, "One day I wrote her name" (43); Sidney, "Loving in truth and fain in verse my love to show" (43-4); Shakespeare, "When to the sessions of sweet silent thought" (46-7); Donne, "Batter my heart, three-personed God" (53); Milton, "When I consider how my light is spent" (61); Cullen, "Yet do I marvel" (206). Read Abrams, "Alliteration," "Rhyme," "Sonnet." Workshop on the senses of sound. Bring to class a paragraph on a central metaphor in the poem you have chosen for your Explication Essay.
R Jan 21: The difference of rhythm (scansion as an interpretive tool). Donne, "Death be not proud" (53); Owen, "Dulce et Decorum Est" (198-9); Thomas, "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" (221); Brooks, "We Real Cool" (226). Abrams, "Meter"; Scholes, "Music" (R) Workshop on scansion of quatrains; discussion of the difference the rhythms make. Bring to class revised paragraph on metaphor, with discussion of sound incorporated into the discussion of metaphor.
T Jan 26: New Criticism. Read the "Introduction" and "Critical Worlds" in Lynn, Texts and Contexts, to get an idea of the range of methods possible for critical writing. Then read closely Lynn's chapter, "Unifying the Work" and Abrams, "New Criticism." Also read closely Gwendolyn Brooks, "the mother" (225-6, and included in Lynn's chapter). We will discuss, "What important aspects of the poem has Lynn omitted in his sample essay on 'the mother'?" Quiz 1.
R Jan 28: Thesis workshop. Bring in draft of your explication essay with thesis paragraph and also a paragraph that uses rhythm or other aspect(s) of sound to help explicate meaning.
The Text and Its Readers: You and Others
T Feb 2: Barbie and You. Lynn, "Creating the Text" (to p.56); Cisneros, "Barbie-Q"; Soto, "Barbie. " For one of the Barbie stories, write down your personal response; in class, we will broaden that to "the implied reader's" response. Abrams, "Reader Response." Also, Schweickart, "Reading Ourselves" (R).
R Feb 4: Point of View: Whose? Paredes, "Macaria's Daughter" (R); Cisneros, "Woman at Hollering Creek" (R). Comments due on Explication Essays.
You and the Library. Lynn, "Investigating the Work" (to p. 222). At 11 a.m., we will move to the Library, Room 1414C.
T Feb 9: Reading the Other. Viramontes, "The Cariboo Cafe" (R). Mazon, "Introduction," The Zoot-Suit Riots (R).
R Feb 11: Viewing the Other. Zoot Suit: Mazon, "The Sleepy Lagoon Case," The Zoot-Suit Riots (selections) (R). Abstract due of one critical or theoretical essay, on disk.
T Feb 16: Viewing Gender. Zoot Suit: Scholes, "The Elements of Film" (R). Lynn, "Investigating the Work" (remainder of chapter). Thesis workshop.
Texts and Their Contexts
R Feb 18: The Codes of Race. Langston Hughes, "Afro-American Fragment" (3), "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" (4), "Aunt Sue's Stories" (6), "Negro" (8), "October 16" (10), "As I Grew Older" (11), "Dream Variations" (14), "Song for a Dark Girl" (172), "The South" (173), "Bound No'th Blues" (174). Abrams, "Free Verse." George S. Schuyler, "The Negro-Art Hokum" (R); Hughes, "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" (R), Gates, "Writing, Race, and the Difference It Makes" (R). Homework: in your own words, write down the thesis for each essay, Schuyler' s, Hughes's, and Gates's. Quiz 2.
T Feb 23: The Idea of Harlem. Hughes, "The Weary Blues" (33), "Morning After" (43), "Harlem Night Song" (61), "Trumpet Player" (114), "Widow Woman" (139); Nathan Irvin Huggins, "Introduction" and "Harlem" (R). Homework: In your own words, what is the thesis that Huggins advances? What is one method he uses to persuade you of its truth? In class: Blues tape.
R Feb 25: Bebopped. Lynn, "Connecting the Text." Abrams, "New Historicism." Hughes, Montage of a Dream Deferred, through "Tag"; Walter C. Farrell, Jr. and Patricia A. Johnson, "Poetic Interpretations of Urban Black Folk Culture" (R). What is the thesis of Farrell and Johnson's essay? What are its concerns? In class: bop tape.
T Mar 2: Hughes, Montage, "Theme for English B" through end. Thurgood Marshall, "The Legal Attack. . ." (R 2916); See also: Ralph J. Bunche, "The Programs . . . " (R). Homework: What codes of race does Hughes create/draw on? How does Marshall contribute to/draw on codes of race? In class: workshop on a thesis re. codes of race in the 1940s.
Optional related texts in the Reader: Alain Locke, "The New Negro"; Malcolm X, "Saved" from The Autobiography of Malcolm X; Miguel Covarrubias, "The Aframerican Cakewalk"; Carl G. Jung, "Your Negroid and Indian Behavior"; Hughes, "Slave on the Block"; James Baldwin, "Sonny's Blues."
R Mar 4: Storyteller (read at least through p. 42, eventually the whole book); Silko, "Language and Literature from a Pueblo Indian Perspective" (R).
T Mar 9: Storyteller; Paula Gunn Allen, "The Sacred Hoop: A Contemporary Perspective" (R).
R Mar 11: Storyteller.
T Mar 16: Storyteller.
R Mar 18: Course conclusion and Quiz 3 (cumulative).
