Texts

(* Texts that are available on the internet I did not order in book form)

* T.S. Eliot: Ash Wednesday and Four Quartets
Ernest Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms
Saul Bellow: Henderson the Rain King
Willa Cather: The Professor’s House
Eudora Welty: Collected Short Stories
Flannery O’Connor: Wise Blood
William Faulkner: Light in August
* The Navajo Night Chant
N. Scott Momaday: House Made of Dawn
Eugene O’Neill: The Iceman Cometh and Long Day’s Journey into Night
Marilynne Robinson: Housekeeping

Assignments

Every day at the beginning of class, submit an index card with a discussion question or comment on it. The questions can range from meta-questions about the whole era or about literature itself. You will write 7 one-page response papers and submit them to the class newsgroup. There will also be three formal papers, 4-6 pages each, due at humane intervals during the semester. Finally, the 15-page research paper is due on November 30. There may be a midterm and there will be a comprehensive final examination. As always, punctuation and grammar matter. Pop quizzes will also count towards your final grade. I do not generally accept late papers; when I do, a penalty of 20% per day will be assessed.

Paper draft conferences

Before each paper due date, you can schedule an appointment with me (for 15 to 20 minutes) and we will go over your drafts and generate suggestions for revision. Surviving students tell me that conferences are the best thing I do, so take advantage of it.

Course format

The course will be a bit of lecture and a lot of discussion. Therefore, your attendance and participation are necessary. So is your reading the assignments and being prepared to discuss the readings of the day. If your name shows up on the absent list three times, your final grade will drop half a step. If you know you are going to be absent, you are responsible for finding out what happened in class. Quizzes (they appear when I sense people are not doing the reading) missed cannot be made up.

Final exam

NO EARLY FINALS CAN BE GIVEN. Please don’t ask me to make any unfair exceptions.

Grades

Grades are brought to you exclusively by Excel. In borderline cases, your attendance and participation will determine the direction your grade takes. I follow the standard code:

Policies

Fairness

First and foremost, all students are entitled to the same fair treatment. I work very hard to honor both the individuality of each student and the integrity of the classroom community. To that end, I keep regular office hours, meet with students by appointment, and hold individual paper conferences. I also read and answer email regularly. Everyone is entitled to the same timely feedback and information regarding his or her progress in the course.

Because fairness is the most important aspect of creating an authentic learning space, please help me to be fair to you and your peers by not requesting exceptions to any policies, deadlines, or expectations. In other words, please don’t request an exception that should not pertain to everyone in the class.

Moreover, you are responsible for maintaining a positive learning environment in the class. Anyone who disrupts the class or undermines the hospitable environment of the class will first be warned, in writing, that the behavior must stop, and the student must confer with the teacher and a third party regarding the behavior and its reasons and remedies to agree on a course of action. After a written warning has been issued, any subsequent disruptive actions will result in an automatic one-letter grade drop per incident.

Governmental Policies

I adhere strictly to the policy regarding the legal rights of individuals with disabilities, as stated in the college catalog: "No otherwise qualified person with a disability in the United States...shall, solely by reason of...disability, be denied the benefits of, be excluded from participation in, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance." For further information, see http://www.uvsc.edu/asd/rights.html.

Responsible Scholarship

Please do your own thinking and your own work for the course; document your research carefully. According to department policy, anyone caught plagiarising will fail the course.

I also expect that the work you submit will be for this class only, which means that you do not submit any work for this class that you are also submitting for another class, or work that you submitted for another course in a previous semester (even if another instructor has given you permission to "double dip.").

Tentative Schedule