Fall 2015 Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1:25-2:40, CUE 219
Go to Fall 2015 Syllabus
Dr. Donna Campbell
Email (best way to reach me): campbelld@wsu.edu
202H Avery, 509-335-4831
Office Hours: 10-1 T, Th and by appointment.
Virtual Office Hours: Contact me via Twitter, Skype, and Google chat at dmcampbellwsu.
Course site: http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/engl372/index.html
Course blog: http://english372.wordpress.com
Required Textbooks. Books can be purchased at the Bookie and at Crimson and Gray. They are inexpensive editions; the whole list can be purchased new for under $35.
Wilde, Oscar |
The Picture of Dorian Gray |
Dover |
1993 |
978-0486278070 |
Chopin, Kate |
The Awakening and Selected Short Stories |
Simon & Schuster |
2004 |
978-0743487672 |
Dickens, Charles |
Hard Times |
Oxford World |
2008 |
978-0199536276 |
Shelley, Mary |
Frankenstein (1818 edition) |
Oxford |
2009 |
978-0199537150 |
| Twain, Mark | Pudd'nhead Wilson | Dover | 1999 | 978-0486408859 |
| Negri, Paul, ed. | Great American Short Stories | Dover | 2002 | 978-0486421193 |
| Course pack | Available soon at Cougar Copies in the CUB. You will need to bring a printed copy to class. | |||
Course Description
English 372 approaches Anglophone literature—literary and cultural texts in English from 1800 to 1900—through themes pertinent to the Victorian era and our own contemporary culture.
Making Monsters: Nature, Society, Romanticism, and Individualism
- Poems and essays by Byron, Wordsworth, Emerson, and Shelley
- Edgar Allan Poe, stories
- Frederick Douglass, from Narrative of the Life
- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
- Stephen Crane, "The Monster"
Imperial Outlaws: Race and Empire/The Empire Writes Back
- Rudyard Kipling, “The Man Who Would Be King” (story and film)
- John Rollin Ridge (Yellow Bird), from Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta
- Mary Seacole, from The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole
- Stories by Bret Harte, Sarah Orne Jewett, Charles W. Chesnutt, Stephen Crane
Was it . . . murder? Mysteries and the Science of Detection
- Edgar Allan Poe, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”
- Arthur Conan Doyle, “A Scandal in Bohemia”
- Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson
- Charles Dickens, Hard Times
Romanticism Revisited: Aestheticism, Decadence, and Sexuality
- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
- Kate Chopin, The Awakening
Content Note: These texts reflect the cultural attitudes of the nineteenth century, and they are presented in their original form. Although these books are not graphic when judged by twenty-first century standards, they may use words now considered offensive, may depict scenes upsetting to current readers, or may represent race, gender, or violence in ways that that run counter to current standards, even when the intent is to protest racism, sexism, or other forms of social injustice. If you believe you would be unable to read this material despite understanding its historical context, you should drop the class now.
Course Goals and Student Learning Outcomes. The goals and learning outcomes for students in the course are as follows. Each is addressed through multiple class activities and evaluated through class discussion, papers, quizzes, group presentations, debates, exams, reports, laptop days, and individual presentations.
- To read and closely analyze a number of works of literature and journalism within the course materials described.
- To view and interpret multiple kinds of texts, including maps, songs, and political cartoons, to understand the ways in which they comment on and reflect their culture.
- To learn about significant issues, movements, and trends in literature of global British and American literature of the 19th century.
- To search for instances of how 19th-century perspectives, language, and literature permeate contemporary culture and to assess the ways in which they affect our perspectives on issues such as individualism, industrialism and ecology, relations with other countries, and aesthetics, gender, and sexuality.
- To work with and learn to evaluate primary and secondary resources, including locating primary print sources and digitized versions online, learning to use the MLA Bibliography and other databases to find secondary sources, and learning to assess web materials for reliability, and locating primary source materials. These will be addressed on laptop days and during our visit to the MASC.
- To synthesize the knowledge thus gained and to produce into papers and other modes of presentation in order to disseminate those insights to the class (reports, presentations) and the world beyond the classroom (blogs).
Important: You need to bring your book with you to class each day. Having your book in class is a vital part of class participation: you'll be asked to read passages aloud, give page citations, and so forth. Reading the book online and then coming to class is not sufficient, and your class participation grade will be lower as a result.
