COURSE DESCRIPTION AND GOALS
This course takes as its
theme works that illustrate imaginary societies functioning beyond some sort of
utopian trench. Since 1516, when Thomas More’s fictional king Utopus cut a
defensive channel between his island of “high culture” and a nearby continent
teeming with the “uncouth” and the “rude,” utopian writers (or, as Frederic
Jameson calls them, “crackpots”) have continued to hypothesize the advantages
and disadvantages of a great divide between the what-is and the what-might-be.
Most of the works we’ll look at here examine fictive twentieth-century
societies that have gone wrong, especially when individual freedom is
concerned. These texts, which form part of the utopian sub-genre called
“anti-utopias” or “dystopias,” depict societies and individuals that suffer,
for instance, the daily spiritual acidity of oppressive, totalitarian systems;
or they may fight androids for survival on a post-apocalyptic and radioactive Earth; or, as inhabitants of a not-too-distant future, they may be burdened by
withering physical and mental atrophy; or, worse yet, they may witness the utter
victory of unquenchable consumerist capitalism.
We’ll be looking at several
motifs in these texts: the nature and genesis of the trench; the tensions
arising between forces of the particular and the universal; the characterization
and representation of individuals and of individual responses given such context;
the resonance between the oppressive forces in the fiction we’re reading and
the reality we posit we’re living; the instances of quirky self-revelation on
the author’s part; and, more generally, the written representation of dystopian
imagination as it plays out in human relations, religion, gender, art, music,
education, and science.
Since this is a second year, Introduction to
Literature course, you are not expected to bring specialized information to
this class. All I ask you to do is read every word of the assignments
and think about them so that when we get together as a class, you will have
questions to ask and ideas to share. Our classes in the English department are
relatively small because we expect and depend upon interested and animated
conversation between professors and all students. I call on everybody, a
lot. As I do this, I hope that you, in turn, will both express yourselves
better and listen better to others by the end of the course. To encourage you
to read closely, I will give many easy, announced quizzes. If you’ve read the
assignments well, you’ll know the answers.
Through the semester, you will contribute
weekly to an informal on-line class forum on our Laulima page. You will do two
written presentations of your summary of a published article about a course
text. You will belong to a five-student team that will lead in-class
discussions six times. Since the course has a “writing intensive” designation
(W), we will spend an important part of our time together reviewing the basics
of composition and writing about literature: refining a thesis, structuring an
essay, using various rhetorical modes, formatting, and so on. In response to topic
questions I’ll give you, you will write and
rewrite four four-page essays. We will workshop these essays in class in
order to refine our skills of attentive reading and listening, of giving and
receiving feedback. The course final exam will be a take-home essay (a rewrite
of the fourth of our four essays) that will give you the chance to integrate and
reflect upon the various critical approaches we will have explored throughout
the semester.
COURSE WORK
Final grades will be
determined by the following criteria:
- Four four-page
essays, drafts, and rewrites (40%) - Weekly
participation in an e-mail forum (minimum 250 words) (20%) - Quizzes (20%)
- Critical writing
presentations (10%) - Team Discussions
(10%)
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
- Attendance is
required and recorded. Three absences will be automatically excused; unexcused
absences thereafter will lower your final grade by ½ grade per absence.
Non-emergency medical appointments are not considered excused absences.
Anyone arriving more than five minutes late is marked “absent” for the class
period. In any and all cases, anyone with more than six absences will fail the course. - You are expected
to contribute to in-class discussion. - You must be able
to access the Web because you are required to contribute to a weekly e-mail
forum discussing the readings. I am asking for a paragraph of 250 to 300 well-chosen words that illustrate your observations of the readings (see e-mail
sheet). Read your colleagues’ thoughts; we will regularly discuss your e-mail
contributions in class. I must receive your postings by nine a.m. on
the day the post is due; posts received later will be marked “no-credit.” - The
shorter readings will be posted on our Laulima site. You are not required to print
them, but if our classroom does not have a computer and projector I will ask that you have in class your own electronic access to the texts, preferably a laptop or a tablet. - Students’ essays
are to be done on a computer, double-spaced, MLA format. You are required to
bring in one hard copy of each of your essays on the due date for workshopping
with your peers.
REQUIRED TEXTS (available in the campus bookstore)
Thomas More: Utopia. (Norton Critical 2nd
Ed.) (ISBN-13: 978039396 1454)
H. G. Wells: The Time Machine (Signet Classic,
ISBN-13: 978-0451470706)
Yevgeny Zamyatin: We (Penguin, Clarence Brown, Trans.
ISBN-13: 978-0140185850)
Aldous Huxley: Brave New World (Harper Perennial Modern
Classics; ISBN-13: 978-0060850524)
George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-Four (Centennial
Edition, Penguin; ISBN-13: 9780452284234)
Philip K. Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Del
Rey/Random House; ISBN 0-345-40447-5)
The editions of the above texts are required so that we are able to read passages together in class.
Other texts (short stories
and excerpts, approximately 300 pages in all) will be
available for downloading on our Laulima page.