This course is a senior capstone course, designed for students completing their last semester of college work.  The primary aim of the course is to crown your undergraduate education by helping you become more independent learners.  By the end of the term you will:

  • Use the library and electronic resources to gather information on broad and focused topics in English;

  • Make a formal academic presentation on a "revolutionary" book;

  • Lead and participate in lively and challenging class discussions;

  • Write a 15-20-page argumentative research paper characterized by unity, organization, and support; appropriate style and documentation; and standard usage and mechanics;

  •  Have a sense of what ways a book may be considered revolutionary.

I assume that you have had a number of English classes and have completed all the British and American literature survey courses, that you know the basic rules and guidelines of MLA documentation, that you can write an argumentative essay on a literary topic, that you know basic literary terms for poetry and fiction (plot, symbol, metaphor, etc.), that you expect to have your work criticized so that you can improve, that you want to learn more about literature and are willing to work hard to do so, and that you will seek help from me if you ever have problems in the course.

This course will require a great deal of work, discipline, and dedication on your part.  As individuals you will drive the discussions and conversations in our class, probably more than in any other class you've had.  There are two formal assignments:  a team presentation on one of our books and an argumentative research paper.  At the beginning of the course, I will outline the formal expectations, make all of the assignments, and give you a review of the research tools available in our library.  The second week of class I will demonstrate a sample presentation on Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads, and then we will discuss the collection for two or three days.  Weeks four and five will be devoted to research and conference time with me on your presentations.  Generally we will meet briefly in the library, and I will then help you gather and organize materials for your presentation.  I will also set-up an optional tutorial on Power Point for those people interested in using this resource for their presentation.  The rest of the course will be made of two-week segments beginning with a team presentation, followed by two days of discussion on the works, and ended with a day devoted to the individual research projects.  Generally, segments of the research project will be due on these days, and we will often engage in peer review. In addition, our class will have optional meetings outside of class to view film versions of some of our books, listen to music influential to one of our writers, celebrate days important to literary history, and other such activities.

The topic of the course is Revolutionary Books, and we will use this topic as a loose way to organize and draw connections between the texts.  We will look at different connotations of the label and consider different ways a work might be considered revolutionary, whether from a technical/formal, Marxist, political-historical, feminist, or cultural perspective.  I do not want the word to stay in the foreground and guide all of our discussions (boring!), but it should be in the back of your minds as we read, think about, and discuss the books.  My hope is that by the end of the term you will have toiled to produce two pieces of  work that you can look back on and feel proud of.

 Attendance: You're seniors now.  I expect you to attend all classes and to have read all assignments.  Students who are not prepared for class and who do not attend regularly will not pass the course.

  Books (in chronological order)

  • Wordsworth, William & Samuel Taylor Coleridge.  Lyrical Ballads. 1798. Ed. R.L. Brett and A.R. Jones. 2nd Edition. New York: Routledge, 1991. 

  • Whitman, Walt.  Leaves of Grass. 1855. Ed. Malcolm Cowley.  New York: Penguin, 1976.

  • Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. 1925. New York: Harcourt, 1990.

  • Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Own. 1929. New York: Harcourt, 1989.

  • Hughes, Langston.  Fine Clothes to the Jew. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927. [photocopy]

  • Plath, Sylvia. Ariel. New York: Harper Perennial, 1999.

  • Fowles, John.  The French Lieutenant's Woman. 1969. New York: 1998.

  • A grammar handbook (1998 copyright or later) with guidelines for MLA documentation (preferably Bedford Handbook). 

SYLLABUS IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE.