English
281
Spectres of
Ireland:
Memory,
Representation, and Cultural Trauma
in Irish
Literature
Colleen
Booker Halverson
Melvill
411
(608)475-9665
Introduction
Through a study of Irish poetry, plays, fiction, and
film, this course will explore how the culture and history of Ireland is
reflected in and has shaped the literature. Special attention will be
paid to the various “spectres” of Ireland—the vampire, the fairy, and the
ghost—and how these figures reflect a literary preoccupation with issues of
memory, representation, and cultural trauma.
Some writers we will study are Sheridan Le Fanu, W. B. Yeats, James
Joyce, Máirtín Ó Cadhain, Seamus Heaney, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, Marina Carr, and Martin
McDonagh.
Course Texts
Unless otherwise noted, all texts
will be provided by the instructor.
Goals and Outcomes
By the end of the session,
students should be able to demonstrate
·
A broad familiarization
with the Irish literary canon and how that canon has been socially,
politically, historically, and culturally constructed
·
An understanding
as to how the fairy, vampire, and ghost figures function as signifiers to
larger historical, cultural, and social issues that shape Irish literature
·
A basic
understanding as to how recent movements in literary theory such as
deconstructionism, Marxist materialism, feminism, new historicism, and
postcolonial theory shape the ways in which we might engage in the work of
Irish Studies
·
An ability to
close-read and analyze literary texts
·
An ability to
engage constructively in the production of literary analysis including class discussions
(both face-to-face and electronic), presentations, recursive writing, peer-review,
and drafting.
Course Evaluation
The course will be broken
down in the following way:
Eight
Blog Posts: 40%
Historical/Cultural
Context Presentation: 10%
Presentation
of Literary Analysis and Peer-Review: 10%
Revision
of Literary Analysis Essay with Reflective Essay: 30%
Class
Participation: 10%
Total: 100%
Blog Posts 40%
Over the course of the
session, students will compose and post eight blog posts on our course blog www.spectresofireland.blogspot.com. On this blog, students will see a post comprised of a few questions
about a particular reading. Students
should post their responses to the reading by clicking on “Post a
Comment.” Make sure to write your name
so you can receive credit!
Blogs are to be completed
and posted by 7:00 am on the day we discuss a particular reading. I ask that you complete your blog post before class to help prepare you for
class discussion and to help inspire you to try out new ideas and new
perspectives. You may respond to my
questions, to a post by another student, or go off on your own tangent if you
feel so inspired. I understand that your
blog posts will be a little rough and that the ideas may be somewhat
unformulated. That is perfectly okay for
writing in this particular genre. I do,
however, ask that you attend to a few basic guidelines in order to receive full
credit for your posts:
- · While blog posts by their very nature are not always composed of fully-formed ideas, I do expect you to expand upon, explain, and support your ideas to the best of your ability with textual evidence and close reading. To that end, students must include at least ONE QUOTE from either the literary text we are reading, another student’s post or comment in class, a comment or post from the instructor, a piece of secondary literature such as a piece of literary criticism, or an excerpt from sort of historical or cultural text. Quoting from the text will help ensure that you can support your ideas with the text and provide an opportunity for close reading. Make sure to document your quotation(s) using standard MLA documentation style for in-text citations.
- · While there is no “official” page limit or word count, I do expect your posts to be around 250 words (roughly a page of writing). If you are struggling to meet this requirement, you should see me during office hours or email me for ideas on how to expand upon your writing.
- · As stated previously, I do understand that these blog posts are, by their very nature, a little informal. However, I do expect you to do your best to explain your ideas clearly and articulately with textual support and evidence. Use prose that will add to the credibility of your position and make sure that you proofread your work for careless spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes.
Missed Assignments and Late Work:
Because of the electronic
nature of the blogs and the accelerated course, I will not accept late blogs
and missed assignments cannot be made up.
If for some reason there is an issue with the technology, you can email
your blog post to me or give me a hard copy of your blog by 7:00 am that
morning.
Historical/Cultural Context Presentation 10%
Over the course of the
session, students will give one 3-5 minute presentation on some historical event
or cultural aspect of Ireland that relates to the current reading. I will list key terms to research on our
syllabus, but students are welcome to do their own search with prior agreement
from the instructor. These presentations
are intended to provide some historical or cultural insight to issues within
the literary texts we are exploring in the course. While I will leave the scope and focus of the
presentation up to the individual student, successful presentations will
address the following guidelines:
- · A brief but comprehensive overview of the historical event or cultural aspect
- · A description of important people, ideas, philosophies, cultural signification, and historical consequences surrounding this event or cultural aspect
- · Students can explore and draw from a whole range of sources for their presentation, but at least ONE source must be of a scholarly nature, meaning that it has been peer-reviewed and contains real academic merit
- · A visual aid of some sort
- · A discussion of how this historical event or cultural aspect functions within the literary text we are discussing that day
- · At least two discussion questions related to our literary text
Presentation of Literary Analysis and Peer-Review
10%
Over the course of the
session, students will present a rough draft of what will become their final
literary analysis essay. Students will
choose one of the literary texts we will be reading this semester and on the
day we discuss that text, students will read their paper aloud to the class.
The purpose of this assignment is to generate discussion, but also for students
to receive feedback and develop ideas for their final revision.
A literary analysis, put
simply, is an argument about a particular literary text or texts. Successful literary analysis presents a
perspective that is debatable, complex, and indicative of close-reading. Literary analysis pays special attention to
language and meaning and uses a literary text to argue and support a specific
thesis. We will discuss what makes for
strong literary analysis in class, but you can also read through the OWL’s
explanation of these sorts of essays here:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/618/01/
On June 14th,
students will bring a revised version of their final literary analysis
to class for peer-review. Students will
need to bring copies of their essays for their peers and for me in order to
facilitate discussion.
Your grade for this
aspect of the course will be determined by the quality of your drafts and your
willingness to engage critically in the work of producing strong literary
analysis and your ability to critique and provide feedback for your peers. A part of your grade will be determined by
how well you field questions from the class and your ability to explore your
ideas in-depth with others.
Revision of Literary Analysis and Final Reflective
Essay: 30%
At the end of the
semester, students will turn in TWO
papers: a revised literary
analysis essay and a final reflective essay.
The revised literary analysis essay will take into account ideas and
comments from your peers—both from your presentation and peer-review—and should
be a polished, well-argued, well-supported analysis of one or more of the texts
we’ve read over the semester. While
there is no set page-limit for these papers, I do expect them to be around 3-5
pages in length, or enough to fully explain, illustrate, and textually support
your claims. This paper should also have
a works cited page and be in accordance with MLA guidelines for in-text
citations and documentation.
The final reflective
essay is a critical reflection of your work in the course. This essay should discuss your experience
with reading, writing, discussing, and revising within the course and should
explore some of the key ideas, terms, and concepts that you will take away from
the class. I will provide more explicit
questions for you to address in your final reflection later in the
session.
Class Discussion 10%
Class discussions are intended to
enact, in their own way, the processes of critical inquiry that you’ll also be
attempting to carry out in your writing and reading. This means that I cannot guarantee the
quality or outcome of discussions: those will depend on what each of you can
contribute, how well you can make the discussions “work” as collective attempts
to interpret and learn about particular writings and readings and about writing
and reading in general. Your
responsibility—both to yourself and to others in the class—will be to
participate as fully as you can in those attempts. During class meetings, you should therefore
always be prepared to speak meaningfully to the issue under discussion, most of
which will be about the writing you produce.
I will evaluate your performance in
the course partly according to how active a role you play, both in the general
class discussions and in any small group work.
Active participation involves not only asking questions and stating your
opinions but also explaining how and why you’ve arrived at these and exploring
how you want to revise them in light of what others have said. Thus, to participate actively, you’ll need to
listen carefully to what others have to say, to work individually and
collectively to make connections between different ideas that are expressed
(especially when they don’t initially seem to be connected), and to contribute
in ways that develop the line of thinking being generated by the class.
Of course, I will focus discussions
on particular issues related to the readings and your written responses to
them. But you should view discussions as
being comparable to the writing assignments: as chances to test the usefulness
of particular ways of interpreting and questioning for increasing our
learning. Some ways of talking about
experiences or texts, you will find, are less helpful than others for
understanding them, some more immediately practical for particular
purposes. This is, in part, why your
instructor’s role will not be to give authoritative answers but to help you to
ask better questions and to arrive at better answers for yourself.
To help facilitate discussion,
students should bring their course texts and the assigned readings to class
every day.
Policies
Attendance,
Lateness, Leaving Early, and Packing Up Early
Because the class discussions
contribute directly to your ability to respond effectively to the assignments,
it is crucial that you attend all class meetings. You
are only allowed TWO absences in this course without penalty. Each subsequent absence will result in one
dropped letter grade. There are no “excused” absences in this course, so save
your absences for real emergencies.
Students who fall asleep, are
disruptive, come unprepared, and/or are unwilling to engage in class activities
will also be marked absent.
It is vital that you arrive to class
on time. You are allowed TWO tardies.
After your second tardy, you will be marked down ½ an absence. If you are more than 10 minutes late, you
will be marked as absent. If you leave
early, you will also be marked as “tardy” regardless of your excuse.
Bear in mind that these are
allowances for emergencies. It will
always reflect well on you as a student if you do your best to come to class,
on time, and prepared to discuss.
If it becomes a problem, I will also
begin docking students ½ absences for packing up early. Our class meets for two
hours and forty minutes. Unless
notified, I intend to use that full time (with the exception of a brief
ten-minute break) effectively. Packing
up early is disruptive. If you have
issues making it to your next class or your job after our class, I encourage
you to reschedule.
Essay formatting
Unless otherwise indicated, essays
must be computer printed (or typed) double spaced, and stapled. Be sure to include your name, instructor’s
name, and 102 section number on the first page. Before turning in an essay, you
should proofread it to correct any mistakes you have made in spelling,
punctuation, and sentence structure.
While I do have expectations about
the approximate length your essays should be, I do not specify an exact page
length for them. This is because I don’t
want you to focus on the length of your essays.
Instead, when writing your essays, you should focus on using your
writing to make connections between your reading and your thinking, paying
attention to the demands on your writing that the context in which it will be
read will make on it, trying more effective strategies to develop your essays,
and becoming more adept at using academic writing conventions. My experience tells me that when students do
this, the length of their essays takes care of itself.
Email and Email Etiquette
I will always try to answer my emails promptly
and thoroughly, but every once in a while my schedule will not allow me to do
so. Generally, I will answer my email within 48 hours, but if you don’t
receive a response, please send me a gentle reminder. Sometimes I do not receive student emails due
to a computer glitch. I also receive hundreds of departmental emails a day, so
it could be that I might have overlooked it (I am only human, after all).
Unless it is an emergency, emails sent after 5:00 pm or on weekends will have
to wait until the next working day for a response. Please take care in
composing your emails and write them with clarity and purpose. Provide a
salutation and a signature line, making sure you provide your full name.
I am responsible for several students, and it’s important that we avoid any
miscommunication.
Finally, I will from time to time email you
announcements, so please check your email daily.
Electronic Devices
Electronic devices of any sort are not allowed
in this classroom. This includes, but is
not limited to, pagers, cell phones, laptops, iphones, smartphones,
blackberries, ipods, game systems, etc. If I see you fiddling with an electronic
gadget of any sort during class, you will be marked absent. Period.
No discussion. Because the quality of our class is
contingent upon the quality of our discussions, we cannot have half the
students texting or on facebook. It just
won’t work. Make sure all your
electronic devices are turned to SILENT (not just vibrate), and if you forget
(I forget, too, on occasion), quietly shut it off.
If there is some sort of emergency that
requires you to be in touch via cell phone (you have young children in daycare,
your mother is sick at the hospital), please discuss the matter with me
privately.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism means presenting the
words or ideas of others without giving credit.
You should know the principles of plagiarism and the correct rules for
citing sources. If you do not, it is
your responsibility to seek assistance.
Students suspected of plagiarism could face disciplinary measures such as
failure of the course or expulsion from the university.
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