Instructor: Bump; <mailto:bump@mail.utexas.edu>; Office: PAR 132 Office phone: 471-8747

office hours: Tu. Th.9:45-10:45, 3:30-4 and by appointment.

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“Larger universities must find ways to 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)

http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~bump/E603B/

Our primary goal is to “create a sense of place,” an awareness of this campus as your second home, your Alma Mater (nurturing mother). One of our mottos will be “think outside the box.” Hence, some class meetings will be outside the classroom box, devoted to drawing and writing about nature, buildings, and works of art, at campus buildings and nature sites. In other words, we will become readers of all the texts the campus and the world present to us, especially those in nature and in architecture and their representation in world literature, science, sculpture, and painting.

  We will write answers to basic questions about ourselves and our environments, such as “what is this”? “where did it come from?” and “why is it here?” We will discover that objects around us are palimpsests with layers of meaning we can trace   through time back to various eras and places. For example, the carved griffins on the mantle in the Littlefield House will lead us, via the internet, to medieval cathedrals, and what Adams and Ruskin wrote about them.

  Our debate topics this semester will be something like:

   [1] Resolved: Evolutionary theory and a spiritual approach to nature are incompatible.

   [2] Resolved: The best style for campus architecture, sculpture, painting, etc. is a modernist style looking to the future.

  I will work into the course some way you can get considerable credit for reading and writing about a book of choice that you can use in one or both of these debates.

 

Readings:  Our introduction to the previous century will be THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN by John Fowles. It is set in the 19th century but written in a modernist way with an unreliable narrator, multiple endings, etc. It was a best seller in 1974, and the screenplay of the movie was written by Harold Pinter, who just won the Nobel Prize for Literature. We will be reading this novel first; in fact, it will be assigned in the first week or two of classes. Therefore, IT WOULD BE WISE TO READ THIS BOOK, AND THE BOOK OF YOUR CHOICE (see above), as soon as possible. In the second semester we will explore time as embodied in place, moving from the Littlefield house to medieval and medievalist art, architecture, and literature, guided by some of the authors studied in the previous semester and by Adams, Morris, the Rossettis, and others. The course will conclude with a “sense of place” as a region, comparing the south with the north, focusing on Ruskinese “Gothic,” and its key principle of “Truth to Nature” in Gawain and the Green Knight, and Jane Eyre. Students will do presentations on murals and paintings in the second semester.

                        Grades: The final grade (1000 points) will be determined as follows: 250 by  a formal argumentation project on the debate topics above (150 for the first draft, 100 for the revision), 350 by informal writing assignments (averaging about 45 pages per semester), 150 by the final portfolio of all of the student’s work of both semesters, and 250 by class participation.   Grades are not negotiable: students will receive exactly the grade recorded in the online gradebook, even if it is one point short of the next higher grade.  900 points are required for an A-; 800 for a B-; 700 for a C-; 600 for a D-.

                        Projects. Second semester projects will focus on the debate topics above. Initial comments on the projects will be made by the instructor and other students in Blackboard Discussion format, with the instructor then focusing on polishing subsequent hard copies for word choice, punctuation, etc. Rewriting and preparing almost perfect final drafts will be stressed. Procrastination and coming late to class will be heavily penalized.

Informal Writing includes reading journals, in-class exercises and quizzes, and your individual learning record (LR), encouraging students to set their own goals and become aware of their learning styles and obstacles. The LR is a series of self-observations, and short interpretive essays written at midterm and semester's end.

Class participation consists of showing up in class on time with the right books, having read the material assigned for that day, and being prepared to talk about it. It is important to share in class: one of the goals of the course is better spoken as well as written communication, and listening when others are speaking. Showing up late or not paying attention will be heavily penalized.

Pedagogy: Inspired by a famous Freshman English course at Amherst College, the method of this course is discovery learning, also known as active learning, or learning by doing. Hence at times there may be fewer instructions than what students may be used to from other courses. In other words, students should be prepared to think for themselves. 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. More features of my teaching philosophy can be seen at http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~bump     

                        Texts:  John Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman (NAL Signet, 1970); Gawain and the Green Knight (James Winny, trans.; Broadview, 1992);   Jane Eyre, the Writing Skills Handbook  by Charles Bazerman, which most students will have from the previous semester, and a collection of  xeroxed materials  to be purchased from Jenn's,  2000 Guadelupe (basement of the church of  scientology at 22nd),  473-8669. It will cost about $55; 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).

                        Fees: As much as $12.50 will be required for the Story of Texas museum.

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