UPDATED 8/30/06
"Only
connect! . . .Live in fragments no longer.” E. M.
Forster, Howards End (1910), ch. 22
‘One day when I was twenty-three or twenty-four this sentence
seemed to form in my head, without my willing it, much as sentences form when
we are half-asleep, ‘Hammer your thoughts into unity’. For days I
could think of nothing else and for years I tested all I did by that sentence
[...]” William Butler Yeats (cited in Frank Tuohy, Yeats, 1976, p.51 )
E 603A, Composition and Reading in
World Literature Fall 06
Instructor: Bump; <mailto:bump@mail.utexas.edu>;
Office: PAR 132 Office phone: 471-8747
Computer-Assisted
Instruction Substantial
Writing Component
11-12:30 PAR 104
office hours: Tu. 9:45-10:45
6:30-7 PM TH 9:45-10:45, 3:30-4, and by appointment.
“Larger universities must find ways to create a sense of
place and to help students develop small communities within the larger whole.”
Carnegie’s Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America’s
Research Universities (http://notes.cc.sunysb.edu/Pres/boyer.nsf)
We will focus on two of the core values of
this university: Leadership and Discovery. One goal will be to
adapt to reading and writing the discovery learning method promoted by the College
of Natural Sciences. Active learning has been used in English courses to explore
the inner world, but, like the natural sciences, we will start with the outer
world. Hence for us “World Literature” will mean primarily literature of the
world around you here on and near campus: the sense of the “world” as your “sphere
of action or thought; the ‘realm’ within which one moves or lives” (OED). And
we will expand the sense of “literature” as well: all of your world will be your
text. We will approach it as semioticians, those who study all signs, linguistic
and non-linguistic, including art, architecture, landscapes (geography), material
culture (archeology), etc. Hence, some class meetings will devoted to drawing
and writing about nature, buildings, and works of art, on campus, at the Japanese
garden at Zilker Park, and buildings downtown. We will identify objects around
us as palimpsests, tracing their layers of meaning back to various eras and places.
For example, in the first semester the carved dragons on the mantle in the Littlefield
House will lead us, via the internet, to medieval cathedrals, and what Adams
and Ruskin wrote about them. In the second semester, questioning fossils in Waller
Creek will lead us back to the origins of life on earth and forward to the writings
of Darwin and Tennyson and to the contemporary debate between evolution and creationism.
In
our writing we will employ the New Literacies, not only in our writing
for the internet but also in our participation in Second Life, which
is both a role-playing video game and a virtual world (secondlife.com).
There we will re-create the ourselves and the U. T. campus.
Readings
Discovery
learning applies to the inner world as well, of course. There we will
train ourselves to be leaders, both in our writing and by our reading about
heroes such as Hindu gods and goddesses, Buddha, Moses, Prometheus, Socrates,
Jesus, Mary, Mohammed, Dante, U.T. Alumni, etc.. In the first semester we will
begin with the questions “Who am I?” and “What am I doing here?” We will read
Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and
Through the Looking Glass;
Hardy’s Jude the Obscure;
and Beerbohm’s Zuleika Dobson
as commentaries on undergraduate life, as well as selections from Newman and
others on the purpose of university education. Then places on campus will lead
us to selections from the Wordsworth, Lopez, Pater, Dickens, Taniguchi, Jones,
Graves, Tennyson, Eiseley, Darwin, Oliphant, Barney, Berry, Lawrence, Harrigan,
Arnold, Forster, Dobie, Ruskin, Hopkins, PSugin, and Hugo.
Grades.
About 50% of the final grade will be determined by the multimedia web
projects and/or contributions to Second Life (15% for each first draft
-- 150 points each, 10% for each revision -- 100 points each), 14% by
the portfolio (140 points);
30% by informal writing which can also be contributions to Second Life (300
points); 6-24% by class participation (240 points). 900 points (out
of 1,000) are required for an A-; 800 for a B-; 700 for a C-; 600 for a D-.
However, more than 1000 points will be available so that students can emphasize
formal over informal writing or vice versa, class participation more than the
portfolio, etc. At the end of the course, students will receive exactly the
grade recorded in the online gradebook, even if it is one point short of the
next higher grade.
Requirements
First-semester
multimedia web and Second Life projects will address undergraduate life, often
comparing U.T. and Oxford, and culminate in a personal vision statement. Second
semester projects will culminate in a leadership vision. Informal writing consists
primarily of self-reflection and reading journals. Class participation includes
the art of listening as well as speaking in public.
Students
will need to have or get in the first semester multimedia and web skills.
Students should also be prepared to think for themselves. Discovery learning
dictates that for projects there will be fewer instructions than what students
may be used to from other courses. This can be frustrating for some, especially
those who want a detailed formula that will guarantee them a good grade.
Instead students will be encouraged to be creative and write about what is
important to them, within limits. Initial comments on the projects will be made
online by the other students in the class, with the instructor then focusing on
polishing the final drafts for punctuation, word choice, etc. Rewriting and
preparing almost perfect final drafts will be stressed. The first
requirement for rewriting is time management. Hence procrastination will be
heavily penalized.
Printed Texts consist of the course anthology and Lester Faigley’s The Little Penguin Handbook {Pearson Longman 2007} (You must buy this book as my corrections on your essays will be based on its code and you will not understand them otherwise) and his Picturing Texts (Norton 2004). (It is also on PCL reserve for this course as Lester Faigley, PICTURING TEXTS, P 93.5 P53 2004).
Students will
immediately need the course anthology, a collection of xeroxed materials from
Jenn's, 2000 Guadalupe (basement of the Church of Scientology at 22nd ,
473-8669). It will cost from $40 to $50. Jenn’s takes major credit cards, of
course. If you don’t get there within the first few days you might want to call
ahead to make sure they have a copy reserved for you (sometimes they do not
print them all right away).
Computer-Assisted
Instruction. Because two
of the "Five Characteristics of a Successful Student at U.T." are
"Good computer skills" and "Strong writing skills" this
course emphasizes computer dexterity as well as writing ability. Students should be familiar with keyboarding,
operating systems, word processing, electronic mail, and web-browsing. Students
will be expected to check their email frequently (maintaining the correct email
address in the U.T. Direct system) along with the course Discussion Boards and
Online Gradebook. Students are encouraged to download pictures from our class
web site and use multimedia to fulfill all the writing requirements and ultimately
collect everything on one portfolio web site.
You
will be required to use U.T.'s Blackboard software to receive and send
email several times a week, to post and reply to journals and projects
on its Discussion Boards, and to convert your writing documents into
hypertext, multimedia projects and upload them to U.T.'s Webspace system.
Other courses will also require the use of Blackboard and perhaps Webspace,
but this course goes beyond introducing you to these programs. We will
be using a Virtual World of U.T. to explore the college experience.
This virtual world is an RPG (role playing game) called secondlife.com
Students will make their projects part of this virtual world, by writing
about places in it and/or creating "bots" (robots),
characters who seem to be able to carry on a conversation with a visitor to the
virtual world. HTML. If students are going to do advanced web projects,
they must have or acquire basic HTML skills on their own in the first month.
Website project students should expect to spend a considerable amount of time
outside of class, sitting in front of a computer, and may also find it useful
to attend some of the free classes and workshops on various technical topics offered
by ACITS, TeamWeb, or the General Libraries. See http://www.utexas.edu/computer/classes/http://www.utexas.edu/cc/training/handouts/tutorials.html#internet
About the
Professor
Jerome Bump
was awarded the Jeanne Holloway Award for undergraduate teaching, the Dad's
Association Centennial Teaching Fellowship for instructing Freshmen, the Rhodes
Centennial Teaching Fellowship for directing the Computer Writing and Research
Laboratory (devoted primarily to lower division instruction), and chosen as a
Mortar Board Preferred Professor. He is the author of Gerard Manley Hopkins and many essays and reviews. At the moment he is
particularly interested in writing about nature and architecture, especially
gargoyles. For more information about him, his teaching philosophy, or his
courses see http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~bump/
