The Responsible Artist
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SS: Etymological Essay
SS: Sample Q-H-Q
SS: Close Reading
SS: Annotated Bib
SS: Prospectus
SS: Research Essay
SS: Presentations
A Prefatory Note  Office Information
  Calendar

I'm the kind of writer who mostly doesn't know what he's going to say when he goes to the page.  I need a "thing" to know that I'm going in the right direction.  Sometimes this is an idea, but since I'm not really an abstract-thinking kind of guy -- why do you think I tell all those stories? -- more often than not it's a word, or phrase.  I write it down and somehow, for some reason, it resonates.  From the phrase I find the idea and then there's something to be said.  The page gets filled. 

course the right people and balance of reading and writing helps, too.)  For this Senior Seminar I went through about a dozen different titles, phrases I hoped would carry me -- carry us -- through a semester.  Mostly, they were awful:  momentary interest, no resonation.  I can't even remember what they were.

But then I got up one morning and there it was:  The Responsible Artist.  No idea what it meant, or means.  That's for us to determine as we go along this semester.  I simply know that the idea of "responsibility" when tied to "art" will be a productive, interesting, hopefully entertaining pastime for us this spring.  It ought to give us lots to talk about and, eventually, lots for you to write about.
I find more and more that the same habit of mind works with my classes.  If I can come up with a phrase that resonates properly, I stand a good chance at generating an interesting course.  (Of

The Course

As I said in my email last semester, this is the course where you earn your degree.  It is designed to be demanding on your time, on your intellect, and on your skills.  You will read primary and secondary texts and then craft your own research project along the way.  You will also be responsible for mastering at least one text/area/author and sharing that knowledge with your peers.  Heady, huh?

So how's this going to break down?  Well, I'm planning on having an additional weekend meeting for the first eight weeks of the semester, in addition to the regular TR meetings.  Why?  Because I want to front-load the course so that you know more earlier, which will help you research and write better later.  Thus, you can count on being taxed most on the front end, and relaxing into your own research later.  See the calendar below for the exact breakdown.  (Note, though, that the weekend meetings are likely to "cluster" with the daytime meetings, so I would advise reading ahead and then reviewing items as classtime approaches.)

In addition to the long research essay, there will be several shorter assignments along the way, hopefully helping you build into your final essay.  They break down this way:

  • Etymological essay on "Responsibility" itself.
  • Close reading of passage (2-3 pages), more or less of a diagnostic so that I can gauge your reading/writing skills.
  • Q-H-Qs* (undetermined number; about one page in length) for texts
  • Annotated Bibliography on proposed topic/author.
  • Prospectus (4-5) pages, laying out the basic argument of your research essay, including a literature review.
  • Rough Draft (at least fifteen pages) which will be evaluated. 
  • Final Draft (at least 25 pages)

*Q-H-Qs are "Question-Hypothesis-Question" heuristics, a useful tool for exploring a text.  You read something, write a leading question about it at the top of your own own blank page, hypothesize a page-long answer to that question by thinking hard about the text, then end the heuristic by asking another leading question to which your hypothesizing has led you.

Finally, be mindful that in about three weeks, I'm going to ask you to turn in your Senior Portfolio.  This means that you need to be reviewing its contents, making sure they meeting the Portfolio Requirements, and writing that final (3-4 page, generally) overview of your English major career here.

Texts

  • Aristotle.  from The Poetics.
  • Sir Philip Sidney  "An Apology for Poetry" (aka "Defense of Poetry")
  • Plato. The Republic, Book X.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson.  "The American Scholar"
  • Charles Dickens. Hard Times.
  • James James.  Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
  • WB Yeats.  The Yeats Reader. 
  • Virginia Woolf.  A Room of One's Own.
  • T.S. Eliot.  "Tradition and the Individual Talent."
  • Salman Rushdie.  The Wizard of Oz.
  • Salman Rushdie.  Haroun and the Sea of Stories.
  • Art Spiegelman.  Maus. (Volume One)
  • Jeanette Winterson.  Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.
  • Harold Jacobson.  The Finkler Question.
  • A set of photocopied handouts of further readings.  This is on reserve in the library (in fact, I'll likely reserve several copies) and you each should plan on spending the price of a good book and photocopying it.  The essays therein are required texts for the class.

In this course, you will find that I've provided a number of secondary sources in addition to the primary ones above.  My hope is that you will begin to see them, like the primary texts, as resources, and not simply assignments to be "read" -- by which I mean skimmed, partially digested, generally unconsidered.  Our topic is a complex, and long-considered one; to do it justice we have to examine not only art, but people discussing art, and that's what the secondary texts ought to help us do.

Calendar

Note #1:  I've left discussion of Winterson and Rushdie until after Spring Break.  However, I anticipate theirs being some of the most popular books of the semester, so I encourage you to read them early on -- they're both quick reads -- so that you give yourself the option of writing on them.

Note #2:  On the Thursdays after Spring Break, in the "Writing" column, you'll find a number of phrases in brackets.  These are guidelines to help you break down your long essay into smaller pieces.  They are suggestions only, but if each of those are a minimum of five pages, you'll make your length -- and your argument -- no problem.

Note #3:  This Calendar, as with all my calendars, is a thing of beauty in flux.  Whatever version is online constitutes the current and binding version.

DatE
 READINGS WRITING

R 01/13      

Emerson  
S 01/16 Aristotle; Sidney Etymological Essay due

T 01/18   

Sidney & Plato Q-H-Q #1

R 01/20

 Abrams "Orientation of Critical Theories"; Booth "Relocating Ethical Criticism"  
S 01/23 Hard Times, Book the First Q-H-Q #2

T 01/25     

Hard Times, Book the Second  

R 01/27

 Hard Times, Book the Third
[You really ought to be thinking about ordering interlibrary loan materials already]
S 01/30 Wilde "Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray"  Abrams "Varieties of the Modern Moment"; Joyce 1-2 Q-H-Q #3

T 02/01

 Joyce 2-3 Close Reading Exercise due

R 02/03

 Joyce 4-5 Oh Boy!  PORTFOLIO Due
S 02/06 Expansion Day  

T 02/08

 WB Yeats (Assigned in Email)  

R 02/10

 WB Yeats (Ditto)  
S 02/13 WB Yeats (Ditto) Q-H-Q #4

T 02/15

 WB Yeats - Last Day of Catching Up  

R 02/17

 Eliot "Tradition and the Individual Talent"; Woolf  
S 02/20 Woolf  

T 02/22

 Woolf Q-H-Q #5

R 02/24

 Eliot "What is a Classic?"; Stein "What are Master-pieces and Why Are There So Few of Them?  
S 02/27 Barthes "The Death of the Author"   

T 03/01

 Spiegelman  

R 03/03

 Spiegelman Annotated Bibliography due

T 03/08

 Spring Break

R 03/10

T 03/15

 Winterson  

R 03/17

 Winterson {Literature survey + thesis}
T 03/22 Winterson Prospectus due

R 03/24

Rushdie "Wizard of Oz"

 {Firstreading}

T 03/29

 Rushdie Haroun and the Sea of Stories  

R 03/31

 Rushdie Haroun {Second reading}

T 04/05

 Writewritewritewritewrite  

R 04/07

 Writewritewritewritewrite {Third reading}

T 04/12

 Writewritewritewritewrite  

R 04/14

 Writewritewritewritewrite Rough Draft due

{Conclusion}
T 04/19 Scots Day -- but not for you, because you're writing

R 04/21

 Presentations on Research Revise
T 04/26 Presentations on Research  Revise lots more

R 04/28

 Presentations on Research

Revise until it hurts

T 05/03

 Gather to Submit Final Essays  Revise until you bleed

Things We're Not Reading, But Which Are Still Pertinent:

At the end of the photocopied packet there are lots of artists (painters and sculptors) talking about art, from various periods and in different ways.  You ought to check them out for follow-ups to the secondary sources we are reading.  They're short and interesting.

Alexander Pope.  "An Essay on Criticism" (posted in three parts) http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1634.html
http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1635.html
 http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1636.html

Wm. Wordsworth "Preface" to the Lyrical Ballads
 http://www.bartleby.com/39/36.html

Percy Bysshe Shelley "A Defence of Poetry"
 http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/display/displayprose.cfm?prosenum=6

 

Final Reminders:

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.

 

The Mellinger Learning Center


The Mellinger Writing Center is available for all students: strong as well as inexperienced writers can benefit from suggestions and help from others. Even professional writers get feedback from colleagues, friends, and editors. Our writing fellows provide confidential help with any stage of the writing process: generating ideas; organizing paragraphs; writing introductions, conclusions, or transitions; or developing an analysis or topic.

 

 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.  (Please see also p. 31 "Academic Dishonesty" in the college's  2005-06 catalog and Section 54 of Hacker's Bedford Handbook.)