English_323.html American Literature and Culture In the 1930's:
Artistic Expression in an Era of Social Crisis
Fall 1998
Pat Day, Rice 114 Office Hours: W 1:45-3:30
ext. 8574; email: william.patrick.day T Th 1:30-2:45 http://www.oberlin.edu/~pday and by arrangement
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week 1 2/2 |
introduction |
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The Possibilities of Realism |
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week 2 2/9 |
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933) by
Gertude Stein |
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week 3 2/16 |
T: Visual Arts in the 30's |
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week 4 2/23 |
T: "Waiting For Lefty" (1932) Clifford Odets, |
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week 5 3/2 |
Tender is the Night, (1934) "The Crack Up" (1936) by F. Scott Fitzgerald |
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week 6 3/9 |
The Big Money, (1936) "The Workman and His Tools" (1935) by John Dos Passos |
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week 7 3/16 |
Reflections
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Fall Break |
3/20-3/29 |
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The Possibilities of Myth |
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week 8 3/30 |
Absalom, Absalom (1936) William Faulkner |
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week 9 4/6 |
T: Absalom, Absalom |
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week 10 4/13 |
T: Moses, Man of Mountains |
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week 11 4/20 |
T: The Big Sleep |
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week 12 4/27 |
T: The Day of the Locust |
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week 13 5/ 4 |
T: Citizen Kane |
English 323 Readings. I've collected the readings for this course in a booklet. You can (Must) purchase this for $9.50, check made out to Oberlin College or exact change; no plastic or barter. You can buy it in the English Department Office, Rice 130, from 9 am to noon and from 2 pm to 4 pm. M-F.
General Rules and Instructions
Attendance Policy
I expect you to attend class. I take attendance. We only have 24 meetings during the semester, it isn't that hard to show up. I expect you to keep track of your own attendance; "I didn't realize I'd missed that many classes" is not an excuse.
You get 2 unexcused absences, which are absences for reasons other than illness or family emergency. "I forgot, I hadn't read the material, I was working on a paper for another class, I'm in a production of The Sunshine Boys and we had rehearsal, my fish was depressed, I don't do Thursdays etc. etc. etc." are not excusable absences. After 2 unexcused absences you grade starts to go down.
After a total of 6 unexcused absences, you will have missed 25% of the course. After a total of 6 unexcused absences, don't bother to come back, because you've just No Entry-ed the course.
Incompletes Policy
Academic or emergency incompletes are yours to take if you choose, as long as you are in good standing in the course. You don't need to tell me the story, unless you want to; I trust that you wouldn't take an incomplete without a good reason. "Good Standing" means that you have completed all the work assigned for the first module and at least some of the work for the second.
Outside class discussion groups.
You must form a small discussion group (4 or 5 people) which meets each week outside of class to discuss the assignments.
How I comment on your written work.
The comments on your writing will be, as one former student put it, "ambiguous." I don't do much "this is good, that's bad" commenting. The comments I make will be directed to making you think about what you're writing about, raising issues you may want to consider in revising, or writing about in the next prep essay. For specific advice on how to revise, what to do with a particular argument, etc., we should set up a conference.
Grading
You won't receive any grades over the course of the semester. This isn't because the grade is unimportant (if it was unimportant we wouldn't give it, would we?) but because the work in the course is part of a process, rather than a sequence of discrete units. If I'm trying to encourage you to use your writing to be experimental and speculative, leading to your final essay, it makes little sense to grade it along the way. But if you want a sense of how you're doing, you should feel free to come and speak to me about your work. I will be able to tell you if you are making what I see as reasonable progress, what things you may want to work on, what things you seem to be doing best. I won't be able to be extremely precise about a grade equivilent, however. On a rough scale, though, I would say that if you are doing intelligent analysis of the works we consider and are able to state your own views clearly, that is C-/C/ C+ work. If you are able to interpret the material we are working with, discuss not only what is "said" and how but what its significance might be, you would be in the B-/B range. If in addition you can demonstrate a capacity for self-reflective critical work (thinking about your own way of thinking and what it means to think as you do) you would be in the B+ to A range. So these are the kinds of mental activity you will be doing in the course: analysis & response, interpretation, and evalaution & reflection.
Writing Assignments
Short Essays
There are four short (3 page) essays for this course. The first is attached to this syllabus and is due on Monday, February 9 at my office. (This essay can be up to 5 pages)
The second is due at the end of week 4, February 27. This essay should focus closely on a particular work we have be working with. In this essay you should write about the relation between the craft and style of the work anbd its content and apparent purpose.
The third is due on March 20, right before break. This essay should be retrospective; ita a chance for you to reflect on the issues and concerns we've been dealing with develop your perspective on the material in the course more fully.
The fourth is due at the end of week 10, April 17. In this essay you should explain how you are thinking about the course so far and what you want to write your final essay about. You should also define the audience for who you want to write.
Long Essay
For the long essay in this course I want you to address the issue of the value/ use of one or more of the works we've read. This will involve a critical analysis of the work(s), but what I don't want is a essay that simply records that analysis, or one which "proves" that you can read the work in this particular way. For instance, a Marxist reading of Tender is the Night could say things about capitalism and its effect on identity and sexuality. This reading could claim that either Fitzgerald is saying these things, or that though Fitzgerald didn't know it, this is what the novel says when you read it using Marxist categories of analysis. The question would remain: why is this a valuable way to read this novel now? Are you making the claim that what you say is The Truth? If so, how are you going to persuade somebody to agree with you? If it is the Truth, why did we have to read Tender is the Night to learn it? What kind of value are you trying to create through writing your essay? What are you trying to offer your reader? How does this relate to what Fitgerald is trying to offer the reader, both in 1934 and now? You should think of yourself as writing about literature and culture in the 1930's to a contemporary audience. While this is a course paper, think of an audience you'd like to write to and keep this audience in mind when you are writing. Your writing should be as grounded in our moment as their writing was in the 1930's.
There is no one way to approach this assignment. You could focus on the aesthetic/artistic value of the work, its ethical or social uses, the way it helps us to understand something about the nature of narrative or the relation between art and history, or the nature of identity and its relation to fiction. The point here is to write an essay which communicates a point of view and a value to the readers, which makes clear the reasons you want to write the essay and why we should be interested in an essay about work(s) written over sixty years ago. The The quality of the writing is as important as the quality of the argument.
This essay should be 10 pages long (double spaced, 12 point Palatino --none of that New York or Geneva stuff-- 1 inch margins top, bottom, sides.) That's about 3000+ words
You will have to read the drafts of two other people in the course and comment on them. Comments will be turned in with the final draft.
A draft of this essay is due at the end of week 11, April 25
The final version is due at the end of reading period, May 1
Essay Assignment #1
I'd like you to write about why you're taking this course and what you expect/want to happen in it. This essay should help you define your own relation to the course, your goals and interests, and help me understand what you and the other members of the class are like, what you want, where we, as a group, are starting from. I'm asking you to write the essay because I think people get more out of a course if they can define what they want, and see themselves as actively pursuing their own interests than if they just accept the terms of the course as designed and hope they find some way to fit in. If your taking the course because you think the subject is interesting or, god forbid, because you've heard I am interesting, say exactly what that means to you. If in writing this you find you don't have a good reason for taking the course, consider dropping it. This part of the essay should take about a page.
In addition to your reasons for taking the course, I'd like you to think about these questions in writing the essay: What do you assume about American literature and culture in the 1930's? What do you know about the 1930's & the Great Depression? What do you think is the relation between literature and the era in which it is written? What kinds of things do you think you can learn by studying the literature of this or any era? When you have come to some sort of conclusion, ask yourself: what does it mean to say what I have just said? This part of the essay should take about 3 or 4 pages.
5 pages
Essay is due Monday, February 9