British Survey One

A Couple of Options: How To Construct a Survey Course

There are basically two ways to teach a survey class. In the first you choose a few (say eight or ten) representative works and develop the historical and literary themes of the age(s) in question from their texts. This provides an in-depth textual knowledge, but a limited breadth of knowledge. I prefer to err on the other side, giving a less detailed textual knowledge but covering more material in the process. Basically this means that we're going to be reading a lot in here -- a lot -- but not spending a lot of time on each piece. Some figures, who will be obvious as the semester wears on, will demand that we spend more time with them; others we can put together in what I hope will be interesting juxtapositions. All of this is just to warn you that we're going to be moving fast in here once we get moving; if you get behind on the reading you're going to be in trouble, so keep up. No, seriously, don't get behind.

What I hope to do during the course of the semester is to give you not only a sense of the literature from about 1100 to 1750, but a sense of the social issues and changes which occur and are reflected/commented upon in the texts themselves. This means that in addition to the literary readings assigned, I'm going to expect you to keep an eye on some of the contextual materials in the Longman. They're informative -- if sometimes windy -- and serve as good background. ("Keeping an eye on" may mean that I will quiz you on them, so be forewarned.) Anyway, I hope that the combination of social history and literature adds up to a good semester.

Writing is central to the English major; therefore, the Department of English has implemented a policy to encourage excellence in writing:

The faculty in the Department of English will return papers written by English majors, if they

	• do not follow correct MLA documentation (including failure to integrate quotations correctly, misplaced punctuation, incorrect work cited entries, etc.);
	• include more than one major grammatical error (run-on sentences [including fused sentences and comma splices], subject-verb agreement errors, and fragments);
	• contain excessive minor errors (i.e., misuses of commas, semicolons, misspellings, etc. which display a failure to proofread).

Instructors will return papers, final papers will be reduced by one letter, and students will have forty-eight hours to revise and re-submit papers. In many cases, instructors will not have read the entire paper once they have determined that an essay fails to meet the minimum requirements; consequently, students will need to review and revise essays from beginning to end to make corrections. If essays fail to meet these minimum standards after re-submission, students will earn Fs for those assignments.

Plagiarism

This is really simple: if you copy someone else's direct words or exact ideas -- intentionally or not -- without giving them credit you fail the class. Universities and colleges are built upon the notion that ideas matter; if you plagiarize someone else's ideas, you're denying that fundamental tenet. Thus there will be zero tolerance for plagiarism in here. If you do it, you will fail the course, period. (Please see also "Academic Dishonesty" in the College's catalog as well as the relevant sections in Hacker's Bedford Handbook.)

Texts:

A Couple of Options: How To Construct a Survey Course

Course Requirements:

Reminder: English Department Grammar Policy (Majors Only)

Plagiarism

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