E320M, 30715, SPRING 04, CA-SW
19th
c. Literature, Architecture, and Art
Jerome Bump, SWC, Computer Assisted
TT 2-3:30 Par 104;
office Par 132: hours TT 10:45-12:15 and
by appointment
http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~bump/E320M2/
bump@mail.utexas.edu; Office phone: 471-8747, home:
267-7884
[Fulfills English
Major requirement for Comparative or Interdisciplinary Course]
“Larger universities
must find ways to find ways to create a sense of place. . . .” Carnegie’s Reinventing
Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America’s Research Universities (http://notes.cc.sunysb.edu/Pres/boyer.nsf)
We
will explore our senses of place and space, with special emphasis on the 19th
c. concepts of “Truth to Nature” and “Gothic.” The basic method of the course is discovery learning, learning by doing
(http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~bump/discovery.html).
Therefore, some class meetings will be outside, devoted to observing, drawing,
and writing about buildings and works of art, while those in the classroom will
focus on the literature which encouraged them and, via the internet, the
European buildings that inspired them. We will meet at buildings on campus
(such the Littlefield house) and off campus (such as St. Mary’s cathedral and
the state Capitol). We will also meet at the Humanities Research Center to
examine the art of Rossetti, Morris,
Burne-Jones, and others.
Students
should be prepared to think for themselves and for careful reading and a lot of
informal writing. Our specific techniques will be reading and writing in
response to basic questions about ourselves and our environments such as what
is this? where did it come from?
why is it here? and what does it mean? Many objects will reveal
themselves as palimpsests inviting us to trace layers of meaning in them back
to various eras and places. For example, in the second semester of this course,
the carved griffins on the mantle in the Littlefield House leads us, via the
internet, to medieval cathedrals, to medieval France, Spain and England.
Discovery learning means that there will
be fewer instructions for subjects of 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 they will have maximum freedom to be
creative, to be individual, and to write about what is important to them. More
features of my teaching philosophy can be seen at my web site.
Grades. 50% of the final grade will be determined by the
multimedia projects (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 (300
points); 6 % by class
participation (60 points). 900 points (out of 1,000) are required for an A-;
800 for a B-; 700 for a C-; 600 for a D-.Students will receive exactly the
grade recorded in the online gradebook in Blackboard, even if it is one point
short of the next higher grade. Grades will be reduced for each class day
assignments are late.
Projects
will be devoted to “a virtual semester abroad.” We will create two multimedia writing projects on paper or on the web,
of five to seven pages each, which can be combined to make a longer project. In
any case, they must be extensively revised. The project goal will be to convey our experience via
internet and intranet of the universities of Oxford, Paris, or Salamanca, all
dating back to the Middle Ages, and related responses in world literature,
visual art, music, and architecture. Students will explore the question, “How
would my life be different if I attended one of these universities?” Students
will be comparing not only their chosen foreign university with the University
of Texas but also the middle age with the modern age. A few classes will be
devoted to the Sorbonne and environs, but most of the course will focus on
Oxford. We will be drawing on literature written at or about Oxford, especially
Carroll’s Alice books, Hardy’s Jude the Obscure, and Beerbohm’s Zuleika
Dobson.
Class
participation consists of showing up in
class on time, having read the material assigned for that day, and being
prepared to talk about it. Students are encouraged to hand in journal pages
about the readings assigned in the syllabus for that day before class starts.
In any case, it is important to share in class: one of the goals of the course
is better spoken as well as written communication. Our primary concern is not
organized discussion of a topic, as in a speech contest, but rather each
individual learning to speak about feelings as well as thoughts, and each
individual learning to listen, concentrating when others are speaking.
Learning Record. Part of the
grades for class participation and the portfolio will be based on Learning
Record (LR) entries, encouraging students to set their own goals and become
aware of their learning styles and obstacles. The LR will include a personal
narrative, an interview with someone familiar with your intellectual
development, a series of self-observations, and short interpretive essays
written at midterm and semester's end.
Printed
Texts consist of the
Writing Skills Handbook by Charles Bazerman; The Illustrated Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm (Yale); Carroll’s The Annotated Alice (W. W. Norton); and the Norton
Critical Edition of Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure. Students will also need a collection of xeroxed materials selected from Norman
Crowe, Nature and the idea of a Man-made World; John Ruskin’s The Nature of Gothic and Bible of Amiens; Henry Adams’s
Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres;
and other sources, to be purchased from Jenn's, 2000 Guadalupe (basement of the Church of Scientology at 22nd,
473-8669).
Computer
literacy required. Students should be
familiar with keyboarding, operating systems, word processing, electronic mail,
and web-browsing. Students will also need an IF computer account. Students will
be expected to check their email frequently (maintaining the correct email
address in the U.T. Direct system) along with the Discussion Boards and Online
Gradebook of the U.T. Blackboard system. At times we will use networked
computers to examine buildings in England and France; to achieve more
collaborative class discussion; and to provide more feedback about projects.
Students are encouraged to download pictures from web sites and use multimedia
to fulfill all the writing requirements and ultimately hand in everything on
one web site or CD which they will retain at the end of the course. Even if a
traditional essay format is chosen for projects, pictures must be inserted into
the essay and text wrapped around them.
HTML. Only one class will be devoted to how to copy and modify HTML
templates; afterwards, if students are going to do web projects, they must have
or acquire basic HTML skills on their own in the first month. Multimedia
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