UPDATED 9/7/07
"Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.” E. M. Forster, Howards End (1910), ch. 22
"We go for a walk in nature, we see a beautiful sunset — we breathe the order in through our senses, we feel connected. The inside begins to mirror the magnificent outside. In the Vedic tradition that connectedness is called 'yoga.'”
Chris Adamason, Vedic Architecture
‘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, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (*cited in Frank Tuohy, Yeats, 1976, p.51 )
"If I Had a Hammer .... I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters/ All over this land” words and music by Lee Hays and Pete Seeger
E 603A, Composition and Reading in
World Literature Fall 07 Unique No.
34895
Computer-Assisted
Instruction Substantial
Writing Component
11-12:30 PAR 104
office hours: Tu. + Thur.: 9:45-10:45
one of the inspirations for this course:
“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
In addition to our theme, "Only Connect," we will focus on two of the core values of this university: Discovery and Leadership; and two related values: Compassion and Diversity, especially as they relate to Pre-Med and related concentrations.
Reading
We will read some traditional world literature, but will also 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, as in the natural sciences, at times we will start with the outer world. Hence for us, to help you adjust to U. T. and create a sense of place here, “World Literature” in the first semester will at times mean "literature" of the world around you here on and near campus. In this respect, “world” means your “sphere of action or thought; the ‘realm’ within which one moves or lives'” (OED). We will also expand the sense of “literature” to the meaning used in the science of semiotics: all of your world will be your textbook, including art, architecture, and landscapes. Hence, some class meetings will devoted to drawing and writing about nature, buildings, and works of art on campus; buildings downtown; and the Japanese garden, and Hindu and Buddhist temples in and around Austin. In this way we will identify objects around us as palimpsests, tracing their layers of meaning back to various eras and places. For example, 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 spirituality. In the second semester the carved dragons on the mantle in the Littlefield House will lead us, via the internet, to medieval cathedrals, and what Adams, Ruskin, and Greeley wrote about them, and to the images of the female in art.
Discovery learning applies to the inner world as well, of course. There we will train ourselves in leadership, compassion and respect for diversity, in our writing and our reading about role models and heroes such as Hindu gods and goddesses, Buddha, Moses, David, Isaiah, Socrates, Jesus, Virgil, M. L. King, and Gandhi; famous writers such as Hemingway, Yeats, Keats; and singers such as Grace Slick and Bob Dylan. 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 as a commentary on undergraduate life, as well as selections from Newman, Giametti, Brickley, Arnold and others on the purpose of university education. Our journey through world literature will begin with the Ramayana in the first semester, followed by the Bhagavad Gita in the second. At times places on campus will lead us to selections from Ruskin, Hopkins, Forster, Arnold, Hardy, Dobie, Browning, Watts, Wordsworth, Mill, Blake, and others. One of our touchstones in our discussions of these authors will be our relationship to nature.
During the second semester we will adapt our readings to the needs and interests of the students, but likely readings will be The Bhagavad Gita, Gawain and the Green Knight, Compassion in Medicine, How Can I Help? The Bluest Eye, and Woman Warrior; along with selections from Hero of a Thousand Faces and The Origin of Species.
Writing
About 50% of the final grade will be determined by multimedia web projects: 10% for Project 1 —100 points; 20 % each for Projects 2 and 3 — 200 points each. 14% is determined by the portfolio (140 points); 36% by informal writing (360 points); and 10% by class participation (100 points). 1000 points (out of 1,200 or more) are required for an A-; 900 for a B-; 800 for a C-; 700 for a D-. Because more than 1200 points will be available, 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. ("Class participation" includes the art of listening as well as speaking in public. "Informal writing" will be primarily our reading journals.
Students’ "formal
writing," their multimedia web projects, have been inspired by the Leadershape
program of the College of Engineering. They will write leadership visions to
motivate them during their college years and beyond. For the first semester,
the student’s formal writing will focus on a role model. For
these assignments especially, students should be
prepared to think for themselves. Discovery learning
means that there will be fewer instructions for projects 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 most important to them. Initial grades and 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. Rewriting and
preparing almost perfect final
drafts will be stressed. Because the secret of writing is rewriting, procrastination
will be heavily penalized. Obviously, time management is essential.
PRINT LITERACY
Printed Texts for the first semester consist of the course anthology*; the Annotated Alice (Pub: Norton, 0-393-04847-0); and Lester Faigley’s The Little Penguin Handbook (Pearson Longman 2007 032124401X). For the second semester you will need the Bhagavad Gita: Annotated and Explained (SkyLight Paths Publishing: 1-893361-28-4); among other texts. BUY ONLY THESE EDITIONS.
*FOR THE FIRST ASSIGNMENT, students
will 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).
You will be required to use U.T.'s Blackboard (courses.utexas.edu) to receive and send email several times a week, to post and reply to journals and projects on its Discussion Boards, and check their grades. In addition, you will also be asked to save your writing documents as multimedia web projects; to upload them to U.T.'s Webspace or a similar system; and to a collaborative writing site called SWORD. Finally, each student will produce an electronic portfolio of their work in the course.
The
portfolio will include some of the materials you uploaded to Facebook,
where we will have a closed group "to
help students develop a small
community within
the larger whole"(Carnegie's Reinventing
Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America’s Research Universities
Another small community we will create will be on Second Life, where we will create avatars of our role models. For one session in Second Life students will “become” their role models and interact with other leaders. The transcript of that discussion will be then help them revise their writing projects on their role models.
If students believe they will need more training in digital literacy, they are encouraged to sign up as soon as possible for some of the free classes and workshops 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 has
been a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and a National Endowment for the Humanities
Fellow. He 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
sixty chapters and articles. For more information
about him, his teaching philosophy, or his courses see http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~bump/
