ENG 121 - Reading Literature

catalog number: AENG 121
title: Introduction to Literature
course number: 2357
semester: spring 2005
meeting: T & Th, 2:45-4:05pm
room: Humanities 132

instructor: Daniel Gremmler
office: Humanities 364
office hours: TTh, 1-2pm
phone: 442-2648
email: [email protected]

Course Details

GENERAL EDUCATION CATEGORY

This course fulfills the general education category requirement for HUMANITIES.

Characteristics of all General Education Courses:

General Education courses offer introductions to the central topics of disciplines and interdisciplinary fields.
General Education courses offer explicit rather than tacit understandings of the procedures, practices, methodology and fundamental assumptions of disciplines and interdisciplinary fields.
General Education courses recognize multiple perspectives on the subject matter.
General Education courses emphasize active learning in an engaged environment that enables students to be producers as well as consumers of knowledge.
General Education courses promote critical inquiry into the assumptions, goals, and methods of various fields of academic study; they aim to develop the interpretive, analytic, and evaluative competencies characteristic of critical thinking.

Learning Objectives for General Education Humanities Courses

Humanities courses teach students to analyze and interpret texts, ideas, artifacts, and discourse systems, and the human values, traditions, and beliefs that they reflect.

Humanities courses enable students to demonstrate knowledge of the assumptions, methods of study, and theories of at least one of the disciplines within the humanities.

Depending on the discipline, humanities courses will enable students to demonstrate some or all of the following:

an understanding of the objects of study as expressions of the cultural contexts of the people who created them
an understanding of the continuing relevance of the objects of study to the present and to the world outside the university
an ability to employ the terms and understand the conventions particular to the discipline
an ability to analyze and assess the strengths and weaknesses of ideas and positions along with the reasons or arguments that can be given for and against them
an understanding of the nature of the texts, artifacts, ideas, or discourse of the discipline and of the assumptions that underlie this understanding, including those relating to issues of tradition and canon

Introduction

ENG 121 is an introduction to reading literature, with emphasis on developing critical skills and reading strategies through the study of a variety of genres, themes, historical periods, and national literatures. This course is recommended for first and second year students. It does not count toward the English major in the revised curriculum; however, those students who matriculated prior to fall 2004 may use this course to fulfill major requirements. This course is offered multiple times during each semester and is taught by a wide range of faculty. Necessarily, then, the content may vary drastically from one class to another and one instructor to another, depending on the knowledge base and interests of each instructor. This particular course is no different. It is geared toward 'historical' or 'periodization' literature. There has been little attempt to include the major themes and modes from each period covered (each period could easily be a course unto itself), but the overall selection is quite eclectic in terms of genre, theme, mode, and, of course, period.

The bulk of our readings will be from what is commonly referred to as the 'Western Canon,' sometimes called 'Classical Literature.' But we will begin with literatures that predate or maintain an uneasy relationship with what has come to be known as 'Western Civilization' (Gilgamesh, Egyptian Poetry). We will then move to what is generally considered the antiquity of Western Civilization: Ancient Greece. We'll begin with the earliest extant Greek Literature (Homer), wade through the pinnacle of Athenian Drama (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes), and examine a philosophical critique of that period from an early Hellenistic point of view (Aristotle). We'll end our tour of 'antiquity' by reading excerpts from Augustan Rome, seeing how, already, the formation of a Western Tradition was being solidified. Next, we'll step into the medieval world with its mix of central & northern European values with those of the Mediterranean whence we've just come. We'll explore the ways in which the Judeo-Christian tradition filtered the narratives of these cultures and how they compared with the narratives of previous eras and locales (Beowulf). Then we'll move to the literature of th Italian Renaissance (Boccaccio) and study the influence it had on late medieval/early renaissance England (Chaucer). We will stay in England to sample Shakespeare and examine the ways in we relate to him are similar and different from the material of 'antiquity' -- was the Renaissance a 'new beginning'? or something else? Finally, we'll skip a few centuries, span an ocean, and examine the art of short stories and essay writing in twentieth century American literature.

Required Texts

Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces Volume 1, 7th ed. (isbn: 0393972895)
Course Packet (Available at Shipmates, Stuyvesant Plaza, located on the corner of Western Ave. and Fuller Road)

Course Requirements

Come to class prepared on a daily basis. That means...
- every day
- on time
- with the appropriate materials (texts! paper! pen/pencil!)
- having read the assigned readings for each day and/or completed the previous day's assignments
participate in class discussion
complete midterm, final paper on time
smile

Grading

Absolutely no work will be accepted late. The only slight exception to this rule is the annotated bibliography, which, if late, will receive a grade of zero but MUST be submitted, or I will not accept the final paper (resulting in two zeros).

Participation - 10%	raising hands, participating constructively in class discussions. people often think doing the assigned work and keeping up with the reading equals fulfilling the course requirements. it doesn't.
Final Paper - 20%	3-5 page research paper
Annotated Bibliography - 10%	required before final paper will be accepted.
(Group) Presentation - 20%	10-15 minute presentation of a selected topic (choose from a list I provide). Can be done individually or in pairs.
Midterm - 20%	in class exam. choice of a few essays. some short answer. some matching. some fill-in the blank. hey, if I have time, maybe even a crossword puzzle.
Daily assignments and reading quizzes - 20%	Daily assignments are all extraneous assignments that will occasionally pop up throughout the semester. Reading quizzes will probably occur once per week, but that depends entirely on how I feel the class is keeping up. If I sense people aren't reading, I'll administer more quizzes. If I feel otherwise, I'll cut back on the quizzes. Quizzes will be substantially more difficult than Daily Assignments, so let's keep up with the reading, huh?

See the Attendance section below. It can and will affect one's grade.

Attendance

The following is quoted directly from the Undergraduate Bulletin:

Students are expected to attend all classes and all examinations and to complete all course requirements on time.

Faculty have the prerogative of developing an attendance policy whereby attendance and/or participation is part of the grade. As noted in the following section, �Syllabus Requirement,� instructors are obliged to announce and interpret all course requirements, including specific attendance policies, to their classes at the beginning of the term; an instructor may modify this or other requirements in the syllabus but �must give notice in class of any modification� and must do so �in a timely fashion.�

Students will not be excused from a class or an examination or completion of an assignment by the stated deadline except for a compelling reason. Students who miss a class period, a final or other examination, or other obligations for a course (fieldwork, required attendance at a concert, etc.) must notify the instructor or the Dean of Undergraduate Studies of that compelling reason and must do so in a timely fashion.

Although the Office of Undergraduate Studies provides letters to instructors asking that students with compelling reasons be granted consideration in completing their work, faculty are strongly encouraged to use their best judgment when students have appropriate documentation for legitimate absences and not to rely on Undergraduate Studies when it is not necessary.

If the student foresees a time conflict in advance that will prevent attendance at a class or examination or completion of an assignment, the student is expected to bring this to the attention of the instructor or the Dean of Undergraduate Studies as soon as the conflict is noted. In the case of an unforeseen event, the student is expected to notify the instructor or the Dean of Undergraduate Studies at the student�s first opportunity to do so after the fact.

This timeliness is important since if the reason cited by the student is not considered a sufficient excuse, the student will need to know this as soon as possible. Even if the reason warrants granting the excuse, a student�s delay in contacting the instructor or the Dean of Undergraduate Studies may make it more difficult for the University to assist the student with acceptable options of making up the work that was missed.

My policy is simple enough: you're allowed to miss two weeks of class without penalty. This semester, that translates into 4 classes. A fifth absence will result in a 10% drop of your overall grade in the course (the equivalent of a "full letter grade," i.e., an A would become a B).

I don't care why a student is absent. The fact of the absence does not change. This means that even you have a compelling reason to miss class (i.e., a reason that either myself or the Dean's Office approves), that still counts as an absence. Pay attention; this is where it gets tricky: absences for compelling reasons alone will not result in a grade penalty. In the unlikely event of 5 excused absences, a student will not be penalized a letter grade. However, any combination of excused and unexcused absences WILL result in a grade penalty. I don't care if you have 1 excused and 4 unexcused or 4 excused and just 1 unexcused. The fact of the matter is that ANY unexcused absence is one too many. My concern is that a person missing more than two weeks of class time isn't participating in the course.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is probably the highest 'crime' one could commit in the academic community. Below is the University's definition of plagiarism as defined in the Undergraduate Bulletin:

Presenting as one�s own work the work of another person (for example, the words, ideas, information, data, evidence, organizing principles, or style of presentation of someone else). Plagiarism includes paraphrasing or summarizing without acknowledgment, submission of another student�s work as one�s own, the purchase of prepared research or completed papers or projects, and the unacknowledged use of research sources gathered by someone else. Failure to indicate accurately the extent and precise nature of one�s reliance on other sources is also a form of plagiarism. The student is responsible for understanding the legitimate use of sources, the appropriate ways of acknowledging academic, scholarly, or creative indebtedness, and the consequences for violating University regulations.

EXAMPLES OF PLAGIARISM INCLUDE: failure to acknowledge the source(s) of even a few phrases, sentences, or paragraphs; failure to acknowledge a quotation or paraphrase of paragraph-length sections of a paper; failure to acknowledge the source(s) of a major idea or the source(s) for an ordering principle central to the paper�s or project�s structure; failure to acknowledge the source (quoted, paraphrased, or summarized) of major sections or passages in the paper or project; the unacknowledged use of several major ideas or extensive reliance on another person�s data, evidence, or critical method; submitting as one�s own work, work borrowed, stolen, or purchased from someone else.

When a faculty member has information that a student has violated academic integrity in a course or program for which he or she is responsible and determines that a violation has occurred, he or she will inform the student and impose an appropriate sanction. A faculty member may make any one or a combination of the following responses to the infractions cited above:

Warning without further penalty; requiring rewriting of a paper containing plagiarized material; lowering of a paper or project grade by one full grade or more; giving a failing grade on a paper containing plagiarized material; giving a failing grade on any examination in which cheating occurred; withholding permission to withdraw from the course after a penalty has been imposed; lowering a course grade by one full grade or more; giving a failing grade in a course; imposing a penalty uniquely designed for the particular infraction.

If a willful act of plagiarism comes to my attention, the offending student will be failed immediately. That means failure of the course, not just the particular assignment. If I deem the incident unintentional, then I will require the assignment to be resubmitted, provide an alternate assignment, and/or lower the grade of the particular assignment accordingly.

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