For more information about the FYW's decision to use shared texts, please read these notes compiled by Jane Hill from departmental discussions on 10-2-02 and 10-3-02.
Reasons for a shared text
- National movement toward common text(s) for first-year students to create sense of community and a common knowledge base that can be assumed by all faculty
- UWG’s movement toward Learning Communities, programs to enhance retention, strengthen core curriculum
- Opportunity to expose students to a writer of renown and to create literary events on campus (despite limited funds for doing so)
- Create more substance for workshops and mentoring experiences
- Train students to read, analyze, and write about a full-length work by a single author (“Basic Skills” section of core)
- Support writing-across-the-curriculum by engaging faculty in other disciplines in the subject matter of the shared text(s)
Reasons for a specific shared text
- Challenging and accessible to students
- Availability (and affordability) of author for campus appearance
- Potential for “connecting” texts—other works that can be used with the shared text to create a course that is coherent and unified
- Instructor enthusiasm and experience with teaching the text
Complications of having a shared text
- Need to “remake” our courses (repeatedly)
- Possibility of teaching a book we don’t like
- Sense that we are being told what to do, how to teach
- Discomfort with our preparation for using the chosen text
- Increased cost of course texts for students
How adding a shared text(s) alters a course
- Material must be cut from existing course to accommodate new material
- Material and assignments for existing course must be rearranged to accommodate new material
- Two options: a) Standard texts—1101, for example, a handbook, a rhetoric, and/or a reader and 1102, for example, a handbook and an introductory literature anthology—plus the shared text; or b) a set of individual texts chosen to complement—through contrast or further development of a theme, etc.—the shared text
- (Movement toward a specified handbook for 1101/1102 sequence, all English courses, and even as a University handbook)
How to decide which option to choose
- Personal preference
- How to make the most effective, coherent course that best meets learning outcomes agreed upon
- How to model a “typical” humanities course that students might take in the core or at the upper-division
- How to model reading and thinking in depth about a focused topic
Sample Course Readings Integrating To Dance with the White Dog as a Shared Text
Option 1: Standard introduction to literature anthology plus shared text
- Read Kay’s novel and establish themes of marriage, aging, family life
- Poetry selections from anthology to support examination of these themes: Linda Pastan, “Ethics”; Donald Finkel, “Hands”; Theodore Roethke, “My Papa’s Waltz” and “I Knew a Woman”; Alden Nowlan, “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner”; Richard Hugo, “In Your Young Dream”; William Carlos Williams, “This Is Just to Say” and “To Waken an Old Lady”; Ray Young Bear, “Grandmother”; Margaret Atwood, “You Fit into Me”; Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”; E. E. Cummings, “Buffalo Bill’s”; Robert Browning, “My Last Duchess”; T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”; Tess Gallagher, “Under Stars”; Seamus Heaney, “Sunlight”; Howard Nemerov, “Storm Windows”; Wallace Stevens, “Peter Quince at the Clavier”; Mark Strand, “Keeping Things Whole”
- Story selections from anthology: William Faulkner, “A Rose for Emily”; Katharine Anne Porter, “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall”; John Steinbeck, “Chrysanthemums”; Anton Chekhov, “Lady with a Lapdog”; D. H. Lawrence, “The Rocking-Horse Winner”; Tillie Olsen, “I Stand Here Ironing”; Ann Beattie, “Dwarf House”
- Plays from anthology: Henrik Ibsen, A Doll House; Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman
- Possible films: Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, Shoot the Moon, Crooklyn
Option 2: Set of individual texts
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Kay’s novel
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Linda Pastan’s An Early Afterlife
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Bobbie Ann Mason’s Shiloh and Other Stories
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Proof, Wit, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Dancing at Lughnasa (dramas)
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Clyde Edgerton’s Raney or Lee Smith’s Fair and Tender Ladies
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Marvin’s Room, ‘Night, Mother (or any of the films from option 1)
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Department of English and Philosophy
1601 Maple Street, Carrollton, Georgia 30118
Phone: (678) 839-6512 - Fax: (678) 839-4849
Email: engdept@westga.edu
Last updated 09-23-2005 -- Email Susan Holland with
problems or questions about the site.
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