Office Hours:
Mondays 12:30 - 2:00
Tuesdays and Thursdays 3:15 - 4:00
And by appointment

Detailed investigation of a specific author, period, text, or topic in literary studies, composition and rhetoric, or linguistics. Substantial research and at least one oral presentation required.

This course is designed to create an intellectual and pedagogical atmosphere in which English majors will examine and interrogate a common theme or set of issues. Because this course is designed for English majors who have fulfilled their departmental requirements, each major will develop a reading and research methodology individually suited to his or her interests and particular experience of fulfilling his or her English major and university course requirements. In other words, this course is designed to present a theme or issues around and through which all students will participate idiosyncratically so that, ideally, the students will perceive both the diversity and common bonds of the discipline of English.

The common theme and set of issues around which we will develop this course is the idea of hybrid frontiers. In other words, even though we are in the beginning of the twenty-first century, we find that the discourse of frontiers is still present in an altered form. We will explore the permanence of frontier discourse from literary, pedagogical, and aesthetic perspectives.

On Reserve in Michener Library:
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. The Philosophy of History. (Selections)
Poling-Kempes, Lesley. The Harvey Girls: Women Who Opened the West. (Selections)
Turner, Frederick Jackson. "The End of the American Frontier."

Week 1:
1/15 Introduction, Hegel
1/17 Frederick Jackson Turner

Week 2:
1/22 Cooper
1/24 Cooper

Week 3:
1/29 Cooper
1/31 McCarthy

Week 4:
2/5 McCarthy
2/7 McCarthy

Week 5:
2/12 Film
2/14 Film

Week 6:
2/19 Poling-Kempes
Paper #1 due at the beginning of class.
2/21 Poling-Kempes

Week 7:
2/26 Custer
2/28 Custer

Week 8:
3/5 Backus
James Galvin will be reading at 7:30 pm in the Panorama Lounge in the University Center. Galvin’s presentation will be the second evening of presentations that are part of the 2002 Writing Conference, Mapping Identity: A Sense of Place. You are encouraged to attend as much of this conference as possible.

3/7 Backus
Pam Huston will be speaking at 7:30 in the Panorama Lounge in the University Center.

Week 9:
3/12 Jaramillo
3/14 Jaramillo
Paper #2 due by 5:00 on Friday, March 15

Week 10:
3/26 Silko
3/28 Silko

Week 11:
4/2 Silko
4/4 Van Gieson

Week 12:
4/9 Van Gieson
4/11 Pedagogy workshop
Annotated Bibliography due at the beginning of class.

Week 13:
4/16 Pedagogy workshop
4/18 Creativity workshop

Week 14:
4/23 Creativity workshop
4/25 Elementary workshop

Week 15:
4/30 Elementary workshop
5/2 Conclusion

8:00-10:30 Tuesday, May 7. You must be present at the final exam. Short of your death or admittance to hospital, I will accept no excuses. Failure to attend the exam during the scheduled period will result in a grade of zero. Plan your plane flights, family activities, psychosomatic illnesses, traumas, disasters, lost pets, insanity (zodiacal, lunar, and criminal), and spiritual torpor and/or existential paralysis appropriately.

Course Requirements

Grading Percentages:
20% Annotated Bibliography
20% Paper 1
20% Paper 2
30% Workshop/Research project (20% class presentation, 10% written summary)
10% Class attendance and participation (to be determined by comments in class as indicator of whether assigned readings have, in fact, been read by individuals).

Method of Evaluation

Letter grades, A-F

Annotated Bibliography:

This assignment is not as hard as it sounds. Using MLA format, list at least ten references related to each of the first two sections as the theme intersects your particular field and/or area of interest (creative writing, pedagogy, theory, American lit., English lit., gender issues, sexuality issues, etc.). Each bibliographical entry is followed by a three or four sentence synopsis of the major points and/or argument of the article of book. The total bibliography will contain at least twenty references.

Papers:

Paper topics will be assigned in class. Paper will be eight to ten pages in length, typed, double-spaced, in MLA format. Cite relevant texts using MLA format.

Important Note:

I will deduct one point for each circled mistake, and these points will be deducted from the score your paper merits for content. Submit papers in MLA format. If you do not use MLA format, then I will deduct one letter grade from your overall score.

Workshop/Research Project:

Rather than a standard research paper, for this class I require that you turn participate in one of three workshops. In the first weeks of class, I will assign students to one of six workshops, two in pedagogy, two in creativity, and two in elementary. We will further develop the goals of the workshop as we proceed through the semester.

Late Assignment Policy:

I will deduct ten percent of the assignment’s overall grade for every day that the assignment is late. If you miss an assignment, by all means turn in something within five days – twenty or thirty percent is certainly better than zero.

Plagiarism:

Plagiarism occurs when an individual represents someone else’s work as his or her own. If you download a paper off of an internet cite and turn it in as your own, that is plagiarism. If you copy sentences or passages written by someone else and do not attribute the source, that is plagiarism. If I suspect plagiarism, I will investigate by whatever means available, including various internet sites designed to specifically find passages copied from websites. Be advised that these internet search engines are extremely efficient. Plagiarized assignments will receive a grade of zero and will be reported to the proper authorities. Do not plagiarize.

Disability Access Statement

Presence and Participation: To receive the most benefit from this course, you should attend each scheduled class meeting. Since almost all of you are legal adults and most of you are going into debt to attend college, I do not enforce an attendance policy. If you skip class, you are wasting your own time and money. Be advised that I do design tests and writing assignments in relation to class discussion. Over the course of my years here, the students who attend class earn higher grades. As a general rule, I use the following scale to grade your attendance and participation:

100% – consistent contribution to class discussion
90% – frequent contribution to class discussion
80% – occasional contribution to class discussion
70% – pleasant demeanor, attentive presence
60% – napping, drooling, doodling, mild surliness
50% – reading newspaper, chatting with neighbors, growling
40% – sickness in class, bleeding on floor (bonus points for bringing and using plastic bags)
30% – dragging intestines, bones protruding through skin (bonus points for determination)
20% – death in class (internment is generally not covered in your student fees)
10% – decomposition in chair (90 bonus points for diligence, however)
0% – face, name, existence utter mystery to Professor

As a General Education course, this course intends to help you: understand aesthetic and intellectual achievements in art, music, literature, history, or philosophy; understand the intellectual, cultural, and historical framework of these disciplines; know various contributions these disciplines make to the enhancement of our lives; and demonstrate abilities in analytic thought, the use of language, aesthetic appreciation, or research techniques.

Que le vaya bien.