ENGLISH 800

Cultural Controversy, English Literature, and the Teaching of Composition

Meeting times:: Tuesdays 12-3
URL:: http://www.english.upenn.edu/~jenglish/Courses/Fall2001/800/
Professor:: Jim English
Office:: 308 Bennett Hall
Hours:: Thurs 1:30-3:00
Mentors:: Jeremy Braddock; Matt Hart; Bernie Rhie; Emily Zinn

Course Description | Schedule

Requirements and Grading | Books, Films, Bulkpack

Course Description

Our primary aim in this course is to facilitate good teaching in English 3 and in your subsequent, self-structured English Writing classes. A good deal of the preparation and discussion for English 800 will thus be directly keyed to what you are doing in English 3, and in particular to the teaching of writing. Both I and the peer mentors for 800 will be visiting your class, looking at papers you have graded, and meeting with you to discuss your teaching. And you will be visiting other English 3 instructors' classes and meeting with them to compare notes and to offer suggestions. Our secondary, and not unrelated, aim is to work out some broader cultural and pedagogical issues connected with the journalistic fetishes of "scandal" and "controversy," the stakes of cultural dispute, and the pedagogy of "teaching the conflicts." In what ways are these conflicts or "culture wars" being misrepresented, misdiagnosed, mistaught? Can we abandon the paradigm of "controversy" without capitulating to some false utopia of consensus or of discourse untainted by violence? Toward this aim, we will be reading a number of essays by theorists of education and pedagogy, and staging a mini-conference on "Controversial Approaches to Pedagogy / Pedagogical Approaches to Controversy" in two sessions at the end of the semester.

Requirements and Grading

On the schedule, below, you will see three categories of assignment for each of our class meetings: Teaching Prep, 800 Prep, and Presentations. In the final weeks of the semester, Presentations will take the form of Conference Papers and Spring Syllabi.

Teaching Prep simply lists the main things you will need to have done before teaching English 3 into the beginning of the following week. By keeping up with this part of the 800 syllabus, you will stay a week ahead in your preparation for English 3.
800 Prep refers to the additional materials that you should prepare for our discussion. I have kept these assignments fairly light, out of recognition that teaching a good English 3 will in itself require much of your time and energy this term. But keep in mind that English 800 is a two-CU graduate seminar, most likely the only seminar you will take on pedagogy, rhetoric and composition studies, and the history and theory of the discipline: very important fields to have gained some mastery over before you enter the job market.
Presentations will be chosen by sign-up sheet the first or second class meeting. Each of you will do one 15-minute presentation during the first 10 weeks of the semester. These presentations are geared to the upcoming week in English 3, and you should aim in them to provide background information, bibliography, handouts, and any other materials that might be helpful to your fellow teachers. The idea is to share the labor of preparation by assigning one student each week to do most of the library research and other legwork for that week's teaching. Keep in mind that these presentations do not need to be flashy or impressively sophisticated; they should be down-to-earch, classroom-oriented, helpful.
In addition to your teaching-materials presentation, you will also be presenting a 15-minute (8-9 page) conference paper on any topic that could fit under the typically broad and vague rubric "Controversial Approaches to Pedagogy / Pedagogical Approaches to Controversy." You should treat this as an actual conference paper; pursue a topic that genuinely interests you, and don't worry too much about achieving a perfect fit with the putative conference title. My hope is that most of you will present versions of these papers at actual conferences over the next year, thus gaining some useful professional experience and a line on your CV that reflects your serious engagement with pedagogical questions.
Your final presentation of the term will be a quick run through your spring syllabus. It is difficult to prepare a spring syllabus when you are in the midst of your fall teaching, but this is what we all have to do as teachers. Everyone will profit, I think, by seeing what the others are planning to do in their courses. This will also give me a chance to warn you away from what might be over-ambitious or otherwise inappropriate spring syllabi.

Grades for English 800 will be based on how well you accomplish all of this required work as well as on my assessment of how responsible and effective you have been as a teacher of English 3.

Books, Films, Bulkpack

BOOKS FOR ENGLISH 3 have been ordered through the Penn Book Center. Copies of the Corbett and the Lanham are available for consultation/photocopying in the English Writing Program office. You should purchase copies of these books and of the others if you don't receive free instructor copies. I will sell copies of the Newman book at a discount price reflecting the handful of instructor copies sent by the publisher:

Corbett, Edward. Little English Handbook. Longman.
Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. Norton.
Lanham, Richard. Revising Prose. Allen & Bacon.
Newman, Leslie. Heather Has Two Mommies. Alyson.
Pinney, Thomas. A Short Handbook. Harcourt Brace.
Santiago, Danny. Famous All Over Town. NAL/Dutton.

AN ADDITIONAL BOOK FOR ENGLISH 800 has also been ordered though the Penn Book Center:

Stoll, David. Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans. Westview Press.

FILMS for English 3 will be shown on ResNet:
- Lolita
- The People vs Larry Flynt
COURSEPACK for English 3 is available from Wharton Reprographics. Instructor copies are free.
Schedule
Note that while the three units of the course as indicated below correspond to those on the English 3 syllabus, our own readings and preparations for English 800 tend to run ahead of this schedule by about a week. To ensure that we get launched in time, we will meet on August 22 and September 5, before the semester officially begins.
You can take shortcuts to: unit 1, weeks 1-4 (Danny Santiago and Rigoberta Menchu) | unit 2, weeks 5-8 (Conrad, Lolita, and Larry Flynt) | unit 3, weeks 9-12 (Verses, Heather, Culture Wars)

Unit I -- Scandals of Authenticity:
Truth in Packaging of the Authorial Self

Sept 11

Teaching Prep:
Santiago, Famous All Over Town, Dunne essay in coursepack.
Prepare in-class writing assigment: 1-2 paragraphs on background and interests in things cultural, i.e. literature and all the arts.
Prepare take-home autobiographical writing assignment: 1-2 pages, emphasis on narrative voice, sounding "like oneself," etc. This is a non-graded, preliminary writing assignment. By the start of next week, you'll need to have the assignment for the first graded essay (Essay #1) ready to distribute.
Decide how you are going to use student postings the class listserv to augment more formal writing assignments and to ensure student input into your preparation for classroom discussions. Decide also how you are going to archive these posts; they will be regarded as part of the students' portfolios.
Spend some time reviewing the writing handbook (Corbett), and diagnose your own weaknesses regarding grammar, syntax, and punctuation. Do you know whether commas and semi-colons go on the inside or outside of single quotation marks? double quotation marks? Do you know when to use "whom"? Do you know the difference between "that" and "which"? Can you identify a dangling participle or misplaced modifier? All of these problems, and many others, will come up in your students' papers. If you are shaky on these sorts of things, as I certainly was when I started teaching composition, now is the time to start working on them. Jack Lynch's Grammar and Style Guide and his Literary Resources page can be useful references for you as well as your students.
800 Prep:
Read Boyce, "Moderate Classroom Incivility."
Discussion:
Departmental computing. Using the internet to teach. (Mark Sample)
What does it matter who is speaking? What approach should one take toward the problem of the author in the composition classroom? How does a concern with race and ethnicity shift the terrain on which the "death of the author" has been announced? Using Danny Santiago and Rigoberta Menchu to approach issues of authorship.
Student writing, autobiography, and the personal voice. The first two writing assigments.
Managing "incivility." Dynamics of power and discipline in the classroom.
Presentations:
The Santiago Controversy -- Stephanie Harzewski

Sept 18

Teaching Prep:
Prepare assignment for Essay#1 on style and voice. The purpose of this assigmnent is to help students with the problem of how to "sound" in their written work, and of how to think through the relationship between a piece of written work and its readership.

800 Prep:
Foucault, "What is an Author?"; Lester Faigley, "Ideologies of the Self in Writing Evaluation"
Discussion:
Further discussion of the status and function of the author, and of authorial "voice." Forms of composite and collaborative authorship.
Teaching voice, tone, style.
Evaluating the style vs. evaluating the individual
Presentations:
Literary Hoaxes and Frauds - Kathy Lou Schultz
Authenticity scandals: Little Tree etc - Joe Benatov

Sept 25

Teaching Prep:
Start reading Menchu.

800 Prep:
Penn policies on plagiarism, student conduct, disciplinary procedures; Jim Swan, "Touching Words: Helen Keller, Plagiarism, Authorship"; Woodmansee and Jaszi, "The Law of the Texts: Copyright in the Academy" (handouts)
Discussion:
Honesty and integrity in written work
Initial discussion of Rigoberta Menchu
Presentations:
Menchu teaching materials -- Jenn Higginbotham
Plagiarism cases as cultural scandals (White Hotel, Roots, etc) --

October 2

Teaching Prep:
Finish reading Menchu
Read coursepack materials on Menchu
Start preparing assignment for essay #2 on using a short passage as evidence or example. The purpose of this assignment is to help students with the building blocks of an argumentative essay. They need to understand the method of close reading, the importance of focusing on textual detail, the function of a representative instance or example within a critical argument.

800 Prep:
Start reading Stoll
Mary Louise Pratt, "Humanities for the Future"
Discussion:
Menchu, continued.
Menchu in the "Western Civilization" debate at Stanford and elsewhere
Teaching evidence
Presentations:
Plagiarism at Penn - Michele Goldfarb
The Menchu Controversy, additional materials -- Leigh Anne Palmer

Unit II -- Scandals of Power:
Representing the Racial or Sexual "Other"

October 9

Teaching Prep:
Read Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Start preparing assignment for essay #3. This is the first essay that you will be evaluating primarily on the basis of its argumentative soundness. You should frame the assignment in a way that steers students toward a clear and defensible (even if not especially original or complex) thesis, so that you can assess their ability to construct a supporting argument. They will be revising these essays after conferences.

800 Prep:
Read Achebe and Sarvan essays(in Norton), and Denby (in coursepack).
Graff, "Teaching the Controversies"
Discussion:
Conrad. The canon and the canon debates.
Teaching argumentative logic.
Presentations:
Postcolonial approaches to Conrad -- Justine Murrison
Wider journalistic controversy over racism in the traditional literary canon -- Cy Mulready

October 16

Teaching Prep:
Read all of Lanham if you haven't already.
Prepare a handout on revision, based on our readings in 800 and the materials in Lanham.
800 Prep:
Materials on revision
Elbow, "The War Between Reading and Writing and How to End It"; John Guillory, "Writing Without Reading"
Discussion:
Teaching revision
Strategies for good student conferences
The place and status of English Lit and of "rhetoric and composition" in the contemporary academy
Presentations:
Useful materials from the field of Rhetoric and Composition -- Dahlia Porter
Scholarship on the history and politics of our discipline -- Stella Singer

October 23

Teaching Prep:
View Lolita and read coursepack materials
[you may find it usuful to look at this transcription and summary of the film]
800 Prep:
Read Dale M. Bauer, "The Other F Word: The Feminist in the Classroom."
Discussion:
Teaching film; working with film in the classroom
Teaching Lolita
Classroom approaches to feminism
Presentations:
Background on Kubrick's Lolita -- Stephanie Harzewski
Materials, backgrounds, sources for teaching of film -- Veronica Schanoes

October 30

Teaching Prep:
View People vs Flynt and read coursepack materials.
Start preparing assignment for movie reviews. This assignment should give students another opportunity to defend a thesis (probably an evaluative thesis) systematically with textual evidence. It is also a chance for them, as budding writers, to look for a model to emulate and hence to experiment with mimetic strategies of composition.
800 Prep:
Andrew Ross, "The Popularity of Porn"
Discussion:
Movie reviews as a genre
Pornography, free speech, and feminism
Presentations:
Foreman and Flynt
Crusades against Flynt and Hustler -- Kathy Lou Schultz

Unit III: Scandals of Belief:
Sexuality, Religion, and the Politics of Cultural Dispute

November 6

Teaching Prep:
Read Rushdie excerpt and related coursepack materials.
Start preparing assignment for essay#4. This is a longer (6-8 page), full-blown argumentative essay, and your assignment should stress the importance of students finding a good (disputable but defensible) thesis of their own. Students will be submitting provisional theses to you before they draft the complete essay. This is the last essay to be assigned, and most students will probably revise them.
800 Prep:
Additional Verses readings by Bhabha, Said.
Discussion:
The Verses Affair as an American controversy
Teaching the thesis
Presentations:
Rushdie before Satanic Verses -- Stephanie Gibbs

November 13

Teaching Prep:
Read Heather Has Two Mommies and coursepack materials
800 Prep:
Read Eve Sedgwick, "Pedagogy in the Context of an Antihomophobic Project."

Discussion:
Homophobia in the classroom
Helping students to produce more advanced theses, to get outside the box of point-counterpoint cultural debates (e.g., in discussing "family" in the context of the Heather debates)
Presentations:
Homosexuality and teaching in American schools (background materials to supplement discussion of Heather) -- Alex Fleck

November 20

Teaching Prep:
Start reading the "Culture Wars" materials from coursepack
800 Prep:
to be assigned
Discussion:
Culture Wars and the American Right
Teaching the contemporary as history
Presentations:
The Culture Wars of the late 1980s - Stella Singer
More recent Culture Wars

November 27

Teaching Prep:
Culture Wars materials from coursepack
800 Prep:
Prepare your conference papers
Discussion:
Syllabus guidelines, sample syllabi
This class meeting will begin our Mini-Conference on pedagogy and controversy in the contemporary academy.
Conference Session I: Composition Pedagogy - Some Provocations
Alex Fleck, "The Use of 'I' in Undergraduate Writing: A Manifesto"
Joseph Benatov, "Who is this Paper's Author (and Will He/She Live or Die?)"
Stella Singer, "Wot No Grammar? Dispensing vs. Dispensing with Grammar"
Dahlia Porter, "Disrupting Rhetoric: Literature and Composition Pedagogy"

December 4

Teaching Prep:
None
800 Prep:
Work on your spring syllabus for presentation next week.
Discussion:
Conclusion of our mini-Conference
Session II: Controversies Over Judgment and Evaluation
Justine Murison, "Evaluate This! Fear and Loathing in the Land of the Student Evaluation"
Kathy-Lou Shultz, "Class in the Classroom: Identifying (Invisible) Barriers Faced by Working Class Students in College Writing Courses"
Veronica Schanoes, Gender and Differential Treatment of Teachers by Students
Jennifer Higginbotham, "I'm Not Your Mother: Feminism, Pedagogy, and Power in the University Classroom"
Session III: Literary Histories and Cultural Contexts
Stephanie Gibbs, "Troubles of Access: the Threat of Translation in Medieval and Modern Pedagogy"
Cyrus Mulready, "'An extravagant and wheeling stranger': Bringing the Early Modern Moor into a Post Civil Rights Classroom"
Leigh Ann Palmer, "Reforming Matthew Arnold and 'Rethinking the Western Tradition'"
Stephanie Harzewski, "Jeanette Winterson's Satantic Verses: The Fatwa She's Managed to Evade"

December 11

Teaching Prep:
None
800 Prep:
Prepare spring syllabus. Make enough copies to distribute to the class.
Discussion
"Writing About Lit" syllabi that best serve your interests and those that best serve your students' interests: pitfalls of overambition.
Presentations:
Spring Syllabus presentations (10 minutes per student)

ENGLISH 800

Cultural Controversy, English Literature, and the Teaching of Composition

Course Description | Schedule

Requirements and Grading | Books, Films, Bulkpack

Course Description

Requirements and Grading

Books, Films, Bulkpack

Schedule

Unit I -- Scandals of Authenticity: Truth in Packaging of the Authorial Self

Sept 11

Sept 18

Sept 25

October 2

Unit II -- Scandals of Power: Representing the Racial or Sexual "Other"

October 9

October 16

October 23

October 30

Unit III: Scandals of Belief: Sexuality, Religion, and the Politics of Cultural Dispute

November 6

November 13

November 20

November 27

December 4

December 11

Unit I -- Scandals of Authenticity:
Truth in Packaging of the Authorial Self

Unit II -- Scandals of Power:
Representing the Racial or Sexual "Other"

Unit III: Scandals of Belief:
Sexuality, Religion, and the Politics of Cultural Dispute