ENGL 301 (Section 001, Schedule #31836)
Virginia Commonwealth University
Spring 2019
MWF 1:00 -1:50pm :: Hibbs B024
Prof. David Golumbia
Office: 324D Hibbs Hall
Spring 2019 Office Hours: M 2-5pm

Introduction to the English Major

This class provides an overview of the study of literature and interpretation. Our focus will be on understanding the variety of approaches used in the discipline. Our time will be split about evenly between fiction and poetry. We’ll read both original literature and criticism about that literature, exploring the many ways that readers and writers respond to and make sense of textual expression. The class is taught primarily by discussion, and significant attention will be devoted to the construction of solid interpretive essays about literature, including workshopping each other’s papers and doing other classroom exercises about the written interpretation of literature and media.

Written Assignments

Week Five

• Fri Feb 15. READ: Graff and Birkenstein, They Say/I Say, through page 52. This is an ungraded, reading-only assignment. The first set of writing assignments will be based in part on the material in this section of the book.

Week Six

• Fri Feb 22. LOCATE an essay online about either Hurston's Barracoon or Rankine's Citizen. Look for an essay that has a strong argument about the book in question. Then WRITE a short summary of one main argument in the review, using the following template. POST your summary to the Discussion thread for assignments on Blackboard. Post your paragraph by 1pm, Friday, Mar 1 to get credit for the assignment.
  
  Your assignment should take the form of the following template. In your first statement of an argument made in the review, put a sentence or two from the review itself in quotation marks. In your second statement, rephrase those sentences in your own words. The rest of the paragraph should be entirely in your own words. The entire assignment does not need to be longer than a single paragraph of 5 or 6 sentences, though feel free to write more if you need to.
  
  Greg Clarke, "Carpenter's Gothic: William Gaddis's Compositional Self." LA Review of Books (Jan 31, 2019). https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/carpenters-gothic-william-gaddis-compositional-self.
  
  One major argument ___ presents in his review of ________ is "___________________________." Another way of stating this is _________________________. To support this argument, ________ notes that ____________ and ____________.
  
  
  

Week Seven

• Fri Mar 1. READ the argument summary paragraph directly above yours in the discussion forum. READ the review to which the summary refers. The objective of this exercise is to read and understand both the original article and the summary your classmate has posted, and to see how much of the summary you think captures the original argument. FILL IN the following template, and then POST your response in the same forum. This part of the assignment will also be graded pass/fail.
  
  Post your response by 5pm, Friday, Mar 15 to get credit for the assignment.
  
  The post by [classmate] accurately summarizes the original article by arguing ____________________________________. (1 or 2 sentences, in different language from your classmate's summary and from the original article).
  In addition to the evidence [classmate] provided, other evidence to support the argument might include ______________________________________. (1 or 2 sentences; this could be from the original article, or from your own reading of Barracoon or Citizen)
  Some evidence that might not fit this argument, or would tend to count against the argument, would include ____________________________________________________. (1 or 2 sentences; this could be from the original article, or from your own reading of Barracoon or Citizen)
  
  
  In addition to the written part of the assignment, READ Chapters 4-6 of They Say/I Say (pages 53-90). Material in these chapters will help you with the written part of the assignment.

Week Nine

• Fri Mar 15. READ Chapters 7-11 of They Say/I Say (pages 91-161). READ and REVIEW the entire thread of assignments and think about which summaries and responses do a better or worse job of capturing the arguments made by the original writers. There is no written assignment this week. Due 5pm, Fri Mar 22.

Week Ten

• Fri Mar 22. This essay derives from material in Chapters 4 and 7 of They Say/I Say. Your overall assignment is to locate a paragraph or two in a critical essay that makes a strong argument about a literary text we have read. COPY that paragraph or two into your own paper, using the format provided below. Then WRITE about 500 words (roughly two pages, but please use the word count feature in your word processing program) in which you respond to the following two questions about the essay and the text the essay is about. In both cases, support your analysis with material from the critical essay and from the literary text itself. Your assignment should include about one page devoted to answering the first question, and about one page answering the second question. This assignment is due due 11:59pm, Fri Apr 5.
  
  1. Using one of the templates from Chapter 4, explain some ways in which you agree with the argument made by the critic, and some other ways in which you disagree with it. You can use templates such as those on page 64, "Though I concede that __________, I still insist that ___________," or "the critic is right that ___________________, but they seem on more dubious ground when they claim that ______________."
  
  2. Using one of the templates from Chapter 7 as well as the advice given in Chapter 7, explain why this argument is important or why anyone should care about it. You can use a template such as "Ultimately, what is at stake here is________" or "although X may seem of concern to only a small group of _________, it should in fact concern anyone who cares about ___________________," from page 98, or another template from Chapter 7.
  
  CHOOSE one of the following critical essays in the Norton Critical Edition of either the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass or The Marrow of Tradition. From Douglass: essays by Andrews, Baker, McDowell, or DeLombard; from Marrow of Tradition: essays by Najmi, Friedman, Thomas, Pettis, Sundquist, Simmons, or Knadler.
  
  
  
  FORMAT for quoting material and using a Works Cited list:
  
  Andrews writes that "the American jeremiad foretold America's future hopefully" (Andrews, 133). In his Narrative, Douglass says that his "master found religious sanction for his cruelty" (Douglass, 43).
  
  
  WORKS CITED
  Chestnutt, Charles W. 1901 (2012). The Marrow of Tradition. Norton Critical Edition. New York: W.W. Norton.
  Douglass, Frederick. 1845 (2017). Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Second Norton Critical Edition. New York: W.W. Norton.
  
  Andrews, William L. 1986. "Frederick Douglass and the American Jeremiad." In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Second Norton Critical Edition, 2017. New York: W.W. Norton. Pages 133-142.
  
  

Week Eleven

• Fri Mar 29. See above.

Week Thirteen

• Fri Apr 12. This assignment is to WRITE A PAPER of at least 1250 words, not counting long quotations (approximately 5 pages, but please use the word count tool in your word processing program) on the following question. Please choose from the following texts: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass; The Marrow of Tradition; Citizen; Barracoon; Eichmann in Jerusalem. You are encouraged to think about specific events as well as the book as a whole, so please don't automatically choose Citizen so that you can just focus on a short poem. Citizen is a perfectly appropriate text for this assignment, but it is just as complex and multifaceted as the rest of the works and papers should engage with more than just one poem in it. Remember to use a proper citation format for any works you quote in your paper, as in the earlier assignments.
  
  PROMPT: Discuss the nature of "historical truth" as the author makes use of it, referring specifically to one or more significant events that are in one way or another depicted in the text. Your paper should take the following form: [BOOK] shows that a text can express the historical truth about events in the way it portrays the following scenes. However, [BOOK] also raises questions about the nature of historical truth itself, in the following ways. Note that while your paper should address both parts of this question, you do not need to precisely divide your paper into two equal portions for each answer.
  
  This assignment is due 11:59pm, Fri Apr 19.

Week Fourteen

• Fri Apr 19

Week Fifteen

• Fri Apr 26. This assignment is to WRITE A PAPER of at least 1250 words, not counting long quotations (approximately 5 pages, but please use the word count tool in your word processing program). Choose one of the following prompts. In all cases, your goal is to write a paper with a clear argumentative, interpretive thesis--although, as in other assignments, you can argue both for an against that thesis:
  
  1. Open prompt, on any topic about the readings this semester. You must get your topic approved prior to writing the paper, by emailing me a 1-2 sentence description, which I will respond to by either approving the topic or suggesting alternatives.
  2. You may also choose to write a second paper on the nature of "historical truth" explored in assignment 3. but you must choose different texts than you chose for your prior paper.
  3. Develop an argument about the relationship between the interpretation of a text, and the interpretation of historical events. Use one or two texts we read in class to ground your argument. This assignment asks you to think more about what "interpretation" is to begin with than prompt #2. You should nevertheless choose different texts than you used for assignment 3.
  4. Both Homegoing and Tar Baby are, arguably, novels about the impact of the transatlantic slave trade on contemporary African-American life in the US. Develop an argument about what some of the points might be that the authors are making about contemporary African-American life, and compare and contrast the methods the authors use to illustrate those points.
  5. Write a close analysis of the narrative point of view in one of the non-fiction books we read (Douglass, Arendt, Hurston). Are the ideas about "reliable" and "unreliable" narrators we use for fiction books applicable to nonfiction books? In what ways might those concepts be useful and/or not useful for reading non-fiction?
  
  
  This assignment is due 1:59pm, Fri May 3, the end of the final exam period for the course. There is no other final exam.
  

Week Sixteen

• Mon Apr 29

Final paper is due by the end of the final exam period for the course, 1:50pm, Fri, May 3, 2019, per the registrar's exam schedule. The paper should be submitted on Blackboard. No late papers can be accepted for the final paper assignment. There is no other final exam for the course.

Last updated  April 21, 2019.