ENGL 2190: Studies in Literature by Women,

Exile and Domesticity in Women’s Writing

Dr. Margaret E. Mitchell

TR 2-3:15 Hum 208

Office: TLC 2235

Email: mmitchel@westga.edu

Website: http: //www.westga.edu/~mmitchel

Phone: 678.839.4852

Office Hours: TTh 3:30-4:30; W 10-12 and 12-3

*You'll find changes or additions to the syllabus below in BOLD colors*

Course Description

Description: John Stuart Mill wrote that “if women had lived in a different country than men…they would have a literature of their own.” This course is based on the premise that women do in fact have a literature of their own, and one worth studying. Nevertheless, Mill’s remark raises intriguing questions about women’s literature and its connection to place, national identity…and, of course, men. Virginia Woolf cast the issue in a different light when she declared, “As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.” Implicit in both statements is a complex, even problematic relationship between women and place—nations, countries, states. The idea of “home,” for women, has often been more closely associated with domesticity—home in the most personal sense—than in terms of broader political bodies. If, as Woolf claims, women have no country, is that a condition of exile or freedom—or both? How do the often violent transformations that tend to recur in these texts relate to ideas of nation, space, and belonging? What kinds of forces are women writers responding to, and what kinds of worlds do they forge? In this class we’ll explore these and related questions while reading works by important British and American women writers from the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries.

Required Texts

Texts: Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë; To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf; The Awakening, Kate Chopin; Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler; Look At Me, Jennifer Egan. Selected short works or critical excerpts will be made available electronically.

Requirements

It will be crucial that you keep up with the reading for this class. Frequent reading quizzes will make it worth your while to come prepared. (Most reading will be assigned for Tuesday, our first class of the week, and this is when you can usually expect a quiz. For Thursdays you’ll usually have a short, specific assignment related to the week’s reading; sometimes this will be a short supplemental reading.) Since this is primarily a discussion-based class,  you also owe it to yourself and your fellow students to come to class ready to contribute informed, thoughtful insights to our discussions. I strongly encourage you to take notes on the reading: quizzes will be open-note, so any notes you take (NOT, however, the texts themselves!) will be available to you as you take quizzes. I’ll also expect you to be ready to bring specific passages to the attention of the class in order to focus and deepen our discussions. You must bring the text(s) under discussion to each class. There will be occasional short in- or out-of-class writing assignments designed to develop your analytical prowess and work on writing strategies; I won’t accept these late. You’ll prepare a short research presentation on contemporary culture and women’s literature toward the end of the semester. (Details on these will be provided in the near future.) You will be required to write two critical essays (one 5 pages, the second 7 pages) for which you will receive a list of possible topics in advance (you’ll also have the option of developing your own topics). Drafts are required, not optional, along with all process-based assignments associated with each paper. These will be graded as homework assignments, so failure to complete them (on time) will lower your overall grade. You may elect to revise (substantially) your first essay, in which case I will average the two grades. There will also be a midterm and a cumulative final.

Policies and Procedures

Your active presence is essential to the success of the class. Quizzes and in-class exercises cannot be made up regardless of the reason for your absence unless we have made arrangements in advance. For this reason, absences are likely to affect your grade. Papers will drop half a letter grade for each day they are late (from a B to a B-, for instance)—including weekends. Papers will be accepted only in class; please don’t email them to me or leave them in my mailbox unless you’re specifically instructed to. (If for some reason I do not receive your paper, whether you have sent it as an attachment or put it in my mailbox, it is your responsibility to provide a hard copy immediately. Make sure you always save your work. ) If you do miss class, it is your responsibility to find out what you missed and arrange to obtain handouts or assignments. You are allowed three absences. After that, you’ll lose half a letter grade for each additional absence. If you miss 6 classes (in other words, 3 entire weeks!), you will not pass. (If you have truly extraordinary circumstances documented by the university, I will consider exceptions.)

Please come to class on time; lateness may affect your ability to complete quizzes or in-class work within the amount of time allowed. Two lates will count as an absence. Please turn off cell phones and other potential sources of electronic disturbance before you enter class and remove them from your desk or your person. If such a device does go off during class, I will mark you late! (One person—the first offender of the semester—will simply receive a warning, and that should be considered a warning for everyone. I include myself in this, naturally).

Assignments and information relevant to the class will be announced in class and posted regularly on my website (NOT on Web CT). It is your responsibility to check this. If you are unsure about an assignment or deadline, it is your responsibility to contact me in order to clarify.

I check my email regularly; this is always a good way to contact me. Please note that, for legal and confidentiality reasons, I am not supposed to read or respond to emails from any non-westga accounts. Make sure to use your My Westga account when you write to me.

If you have special needs of which I should be aware, please meet with me as soon as possible to discuss satisfactory arrangements.

I expect you to preserve an atmosphere of courtesy, respect, and intellectual maturity in the classroom, to take your own work and that of the other students seriously. Very little is less respectful than napping: if you fall asleep, you will receive one warning; the second time you will be asked to leave. Your grade will suffer accordingly.

Grades:

Quizzes: 20%

Misc. short assignments: 10%

Oral presentation: 10%

Essay #1: 10%

Essay #2: 20%

Midterm: 10%

Final Exam: 20%

Academic Honesty:

Presenting the language or ideas of someone else as your own constitutes plagiarism--whether your source is a friend, a relative, or a critic; whether the uncredited material is a phrase, a paragraph, or an entire paper; whether it is a formal or an informal assignment. Plagiarism will result in a failing grade for the class, and may have consequences at the university level. If you are ever concerned about what constitutes plagiarism, please consult me. You may also see the English Department website for more details.

http://www.westga.edu/%7Eengdept/Plagiarism/index.html

This policy is not negotiable. If you cheat, you will fail the class.

Schedule

Jan 8 Intro

Jan 13 Chopin, The Awakening: 43-109 (Chapters I –XIX). For Thurs.: select and type out one passage from the novel that you think says something significant about the difference between men and women. Be prepared to discuss.

Jan 15 Chopin, cont'd.

Jan 20 Finish The Awakening.

Jan 22 The Awakening, cont'd.

Jan 27 Brontë, Wuthering Heights: 1-95 (Chapters I-X, Vol I). Also complete your Nina Baym exercise involving The Awakening.Jan 29 Writing Workshop, essay # 1

Feb 3 Email me a one page paper proposal (see assignment) by 2:00. Keep reading WH. Class will not meet.

Feb 5 Wuthering Heights: 96-201 (through Chapter VII, Vol II)

Feb 10 Workshop, essay #1 (bring 4-page rough draft to class)

Feb 12 FinishWuthering Heights. Final WH quiz.

Feb 17 Workshop: Essay #1. Bring your paper. Review for Midterm.

Feb 19 Midterm. Guidelines.

Feb 24 To the Lighthouse: 3-82. Essay #1 due.

Feb 26 To the Lighthouse

Mar 2—Last day to withdraw with a W

Mar 3 Finish To the Lighthouse

Mar 5 Butler, Parable of the Sower. (To p. 85). Sign up for conferences.

Mar 10 Individual conferences

1:30 Renee Hightower

2:00 Colin Boddy

2:30 Brittany Scott

3:00 Megan Payne

3:30 Ashley Clayton

4:00 Matt Bryant

4:30

5:00

5:30

Mar 11

1:00 Michael Murray

3:00

Mar 12 Parable to p.178.

 Start thinking about your presentations. Follow link for guidelines.

Spring Break

Mar 24 Finish Parable.

Mar 26 Revisions of Essay #1 due.

Mar 31 Look at Me, Part One: Double Life:

Apr 2 Discuss essay #2. Egan, Look at Me.

Apr 7 The Mirrored Room The Mirrored Room (finish)

Apr 9 NO CLASS DUE TO UNDERGRAD CONFERENCE--ALL ENGLISH CLASSES CANCELLED THIS AFTERNOON. Paper proposal due. Submit via email to the following address: memitchell_99@yahoo.com. Use the subject heading 2190 PROPOSAL. If you did not receive the essay guidelines in class, follow this link. You are responsible for all deadlines. Make sure you are working on your presentation--don't wait until the last minute!

Apr 14 Workshop. COME TO CLASS WITH YOUR "MOUNTAIN OF NOTES." Continue discussion of Egan's _Look at Me_ Make sure you finish the novel if you haven't already. There WILL BE A QUIZ. You may use it to replace a LOWER quiz grade.

Apr 16 Presentations: Contemporary culture and women’s literature (Ashley, Colin, Matt, Brittany, Courtney)

Apr 21 Presentations: Contemporary culture and women’s literature (Michael, Kayla, Renée, Megan)

Apr 23 Draft workshop, essay #2

Apr 28 Last day of class: Final paper due.

Final exam Tues., May 5, 2-4. Guidelines.

Course Goals

• Students will develop the ability to recognize, identify, and contextualize significant achievements in literature by women.
• Students will develop an appreciation of the nature and achievements of the arts and humanities.
• Students will develop the ability to apply, understand, and appreciate the application of aesthetic criteria to "real-world" circumstances.
• Students will develop enhanced cultural awareness and analytical skills.
• Students will demonstrate their command of academic English and of the tenets of sound composition by means of thesis-driven analytical prose.

Program Goals

• Oral and written communication will be characterized by clarity, critical analysis, logic, coherence, persuasion, precision, and rhetorical awareness (Core Curriculum learning outcomes I)
• Cultural and Social Perspectives: Cultural and social perspective will be characterized by cultural awareness and an understanding of the complexity and dynamic nature of social/political/economic systems; human and institutional behavior, values, and belief systems; historical and spatial relationship; and, flexibility, open-mindedness, and tolerance. (Core Curriculum learning outcomes III)
• Aesthetic Perspective: Aesthetic perspective will be characterized by critical appreciation of and ability to make informed aesthetic judgments about the arts of various cultures as media for human expression (Core Curriculum learning outcomes V)
• This course fulfills the Area C.2 requirement in the core for all students.
• Area C (Humanities/Arts) Learning Outcomes:

1. To develop the ability to recognize and identify achievements in literary, fine and performing arts;
2. To have an appreciation of the nature and achievements of the arts and humanities; and
3. To develop the ability to apply, understand, and appreciate the application of aesthetics criteria to "real world circumstances.

• This course contributes to the program goal of equipping students with a foundation in literary history and the issues surrounding literary study in contemporary culture.
• This course broadens students' desire and ability to take pleasure in their encounter with literature.