(updated 8.21.97)
Course: E124.018
Time: MW 830a-1000a
Location: 4175 Angell Hall
Office Hours: 10-noon Mondays
Office: 2034 SEB
Office Phone: 763-3120

My office is on the second floor of the School of Education Building (SEB), in the English and Education suite (E&E), right next to the IRIS minilibrary, just below the computer lab up on third floor. I do have an office in Angell Hall, but I hope to never be using it.

Course Rationale
I have always loved reading books: curling the covers of a paperback book in my hands as I move through a story, or feeling the weightiness of my Riverside Shakespeare when I pull it from the shelf. Books have been a big part of my life, and I will miss them dearly if they someday do not exist in their present form.

Despite my nostalgia for the old leatherbound volume, the world of publishing is rapidly changing, and we will never read books quite the same as we did when I was a lad. Books on tape, for instance, make reading the bestsellers even more accesible. With this course, I am embarking on a bit of an adventure for me, and I hope for you as well. We will be reading much of our material--not from bound books--but from on-line text sources, with this hyper-syllabus as your guide. Although this might feel a bit strange at first--it does for me as I put it together--my guess is that it will become rather standard in the next few years.

Our task is to write about literature. We'll be sharing what we know and love about reading literature, as well as learning a bit about how scholars look at literature. And we will be writing. Therefore, despite the course's apparent focus on literature, this is a writing course, and what we do as writers will be of primary importance. Come ready to do a great deal of writing: formal graded writing as well as informal experimental writing. And come ready to share your knowledge with your peers as we workshop our ideas into texts of our own. Finally, not everything we read will be of my choosing. Be prepared to select some things of your own.

Some Major Structures of this Course:
1. Journaling. No lame assignments just to show me you filled the page. Writers think about everything and they write down germs of ideas, snippets of conversation, theories, memories, dreams, fantasies, fears, everyday events. Your journal should be a record of what you thought, and how you thought, during the Fall term of 1997. And what you think about on those pages might also just be the ripe compost of some great pieces of writing. I'll collect journals periodically, read, and give some feedback.

2. Workshopping. This means bringing your writing in to class to read aloud, to be discussed by peers. Everyone learns something, but it requires some risks. We'll have to learn to care about each other a bit. Really.

3. Major Writing Assignments. Four papers--a rough and final draft of each paper. The final draft of each will be graded.

4. Conferencing. On at least two of the four papers.

5. Grading. Although you will receive a grade for individual pieces, I will also look at your collective work at the end of the term in a portfolio format. More on this at a later date.

6. Student Handbook. Part of my plan is not only to see what texts are out there on-line, but also to save you all some money. I could have assigned you to purchase a student grammar and writing handbook, but there are actually some online handbooks which ought to serve our purposes sufficiently. Refer to one when you write. We will be working in MLA Format for all our papers, unless you have a good reason why you want to use another format.

The Syllabus

Wed. Sept. 3