ENGL 2010: Introduction to Literary Analysis

SPRING 2017
Section 02: T/Th 1:40-2:55pm // CSOB 263
Section 03: T/Th: 3:05-4:20pm // CSOB 263
Dr. James Arnett
James-arnett@utc.edu
Office Hours: T/Th 9-10am; W 2-4pm

Required Texts:
Chris Baldick, The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms
[Oxford, ISBN: 978-0198715443]
Aristotle, Poetics
[Dover Thrift Edition; ISBN: 9780486295770]
Derek Walcott, Omeros
[Farar, Straus & Giroux; ISBN: 0374523509]
Tony Kushner, Angels in America: Complete & Revised
Edition
[Theater Communications Group; ISBN:
9781559363846]
Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing
[Knopf; ISBN: 978-1101947135]
Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad
[Doubleday; ISBN: 978-0385542364]

Additional Readings:
Additional stories, essays, articles, and selections will be
scanned, uploaded, and/or linked to our class Blackboard site. On
the days when we discuss those materials you will be required to
have a hard copy of the text in front of you. Posting these
materials to Blackboard still significantly reduces the cost of the
class, and additional printing credits can be purchased
affordably. You are advised to print more than one page per sheet
(see links on Blackboard to printer setting changes to
accomplish this) in the interest of saving paper and money.
Having a hard copy is nonnegotiable (unless documentation is
provided through the Disability Resources Center). Much
research has been done that demonstrates that content retention
is much less significant in classes where students are using
devices.
GRADING POLICIES
For the sake of simplicity, the grades in the class will be
given on a point scale, which at the end will total 100 points.
These points then correspond to a standard spread (charted
below:) of letter grades for the final grade.
89.5-100 points: A
79.5-89 points: B
69.5-79 points: C
59.5-69 points: D
< 59 points: F

ATTENDANCE AND PARTICIPATION [10 points]

Three things are required for you to be considered present
and participating: you must be present within the first 5-7
minutes of class time; you must have the correct text for the
day’s discussion; and you must speak, ask questions, register a
challenge, point to a passage, or otherwise demonstrate
engagement.
You are allowed three free absences.
0-3 absences & reasonable participation: 10 points
4 absences & reasonable participation: 9 points
5 absences & reasonable participation: 8 points
6 absences & reasonable participation: 7 points
[regularly subpar participation & any of above: 7 points]
7 absences: failure for the entire course

ASSIGNMENTS:
**PAPER ONE: Building Stories: Unit, Form, and Arc [10
points]
Due: Thursday, January 26th
4pp paper. In this paper, you will need to think through
Lukacs and Northrop Frye and determine how you
accordingly would construct the narrative of building
stories. Over several class periods of reading, asking
questions, pairing up and discussing Chris Ware’s Building
Stories, I want you to isolate and sequence the four
narrative chunks that you think work well together. In this
paper, I want you to account for the order of those narrative
chunks, and to explain how the images/visuals/schema of
the selected pieces work (or don’t) together, stylistically);
explain how that maps an arc that conforms to comedy or
tragedy (according to Aristotle and Meredith); what
archetypes (or, in Frye’s map of this, what ‘season’) the
narrative conforms to; and what you think the ultimate
“meaning” of your constructed narrative arc is.

PRESENTATION ONE: Poetic Device [5 points]

Scheduled: January 31-February 14
For these presentations, you’ll be responsible for
delivering a presentation on a particular poetic device or
effect (from a preestablished list of fifteen) on a specified
date. However, over the course of reading the long poem,
you should always be prepared to be called upon to locate,
identify, or explain your poetic device under a system of
“cold calling.” Cold calling is never meant to isolate or
shame a student who is not prepared, although that is an
inevitable byproduct: it is, however, meant to keep you
focused and accountable to the assignment and the text.
[assignment handout posted to Blackboard site]

MIDTERM: Poetry & Poetic Devices [14 points]

Scheduled: Thursday, February 16th
Over our long reading of Omeros, we will be talking
about a large range of poetic devices, figures, techniques,
structures, and tricks. This exam will be short answer;
selections from Omeros will be used to prompt you to
perform short readings based on identifying the operative
figure or technique. In addition to the in-class exam, you’ll
be required to bring in a four-page paper that makes an
argument about the term you presented on in Presentation
ONE and how that device functions in Walcott’s poem.

EXTRA CREDIT: Recitation [+2, +4, +6]

Scheduled: Tuesday February 14th
Everyone should memorize a piece of verse sometime
in their life. You will choose a series of five, six, or seven
tercets from Omeros, and you’ll recite them, without notes
and from memory – OR – dramatically/performatively and
with notes. Either way you slice it, do it with panache.
PRESENTATION TWO: History & Context [10 points]
Due: February 23rd, 28th; March 2nd, 7th, 9th
1-page handout with 3 documented sources; 3-minute
presentation off-handout with visuals. You will choose from
a list of topics – that is, historical information, cultural
context, extratextual references – and make up a handout
of pertinent information about that event/object/figure using
three different sources & documenting/citing those sources
accurately on your handout. You’ll then need to present,
separately, a 3-minute visual presentation of the material –
so think about how your presentation might embellish or
illustrate the information on your handout. [assignment
handout located on Blackboard site]

PAPER TWO: Discerning a Theme, a Motif, a Trope [15

points]
Due: Tuesday, March 21st
4-5pp. After we’ve gone through the historical and
cultural context presentations on Kushner’s Angels in
America, and built up an archive around the plays that gives
it breadth and depth, I want you to isolate a theme, or a
trope or a motif in both plays, and craft an argument about
its meaning and effect in the text, making use of at least
three of the presentations/handouts/materials.

**PUBLIC SERVICE: Local Histories [6 points]

3-4pp. Assignment TBA.

PRESENTATION THREE: Article, Annotated [10 points]

Due: April 11th, 13th, 18th, 20th
1-page handout with accurate MLA bibliographical
citation for an article you’ve found in the UTC Library
database from our Library session on MLA International
Bibliography, or one chosen from a list provided by the
professor. You will need to read the article, compose a
thoughtful annotation of it, & make a handout of it. Beyond
that, you’re responsible for giving us a 3-minute quick-and-
dirty, breathless summary of the article, making note of the
methodology or approach or theory operative in the article,
 and making note, too, of the kinds of essays that appear
alongside that article in the journal in which you found it.
These handouts will conform to a template posted to UTC
Learn.

PAPER THREE: Final Paper [20 points]

6-7pp. At the end of the semester, we’ll be reading a
small range of prose works that all center around a singular
theme. You will sign up for one of three end-of-semester
works (Homegoing, Underground Railroad, Lemonade), with
five students on each work. I want you to foreground that
text as the center of an analysis of the text that uses your
annotated article; someone else’s annotated article; two
book/text reviews from popular sources (newspapers,
magazines); and an additional scholarly, peer-reviewed
source.

GENERAL GUIDELINES FOR PAPERS

Papers should generally be 12-pt Times New Roman or
Helvetica font; double-spaced; mandatory MLA parenthetical
citations; MLA formatted Works Cited page; a creative title (ie:
not Paper #2); a brief, four-line heading (single-spaced) that notes
your name; your class section; my name; and the date. I will not
always knock up an assignment handout, so you’re responsible
for attending to paper due dates and assuming these general
guidelines.

KEEPING TRACK OF GRADES

…is your job. I will grade and return papers as efficiently as
possible, but it if your job to know where you stand in the class. I
will endeavor to provide an update before the end of the
semester, but it should merely serve as confirmation of what you
already recorded yourself.

LATE WORK
You can elect to turn in only papers one class period late at
a penalty of 2 points. There is no further grace. You should
certainly not get in the habit of taking these, and be advised that
this policy explicitly does not apply to presentations, midterms,
or the final paper.
PRESENTATION DUE DATES / PHOTOCOPYING
On the day of your presentation, when a handout is
required, please email Dr. Arnett by noon on the day of, and he
will make photocopies sufficient for the class. Otherwise, you are
on your own. [And – whew – I know that trees are lovely and
wonderful and paper is wasteful, but I want you to have at least
one experience of a self-cultivated archive, a handbook.]

UPLOADING TO UTC LEARN

Even though I want us to have a paper archive, I will build
out folders for presentations on UTC Learn where you will need
to post links to, or upload, your visual presentations and
additional annotation handouts. This will serve as the digital
archive for the class.

COURSE SCHEDULE & ASSIGNMENTS

Day One: Tuesday, January 10:

Syllabus, Spirit Animals, Lab Partners
Northrop Frye, “The Archetypes of Literature”

UNIT ONE: Close Reading: Form & Formalism

Day Two: Thursday, January 12: [in Library 326]
Lukacs, from Theory of the Novel (handout)
Aristotle, Poetics (first half)
Day Three: Tuesday, January 17: [in Library 326]
Aristotle, Poetics (latter half)
Chris Ware, Building Stories [library reserve]
Day Four: Thursday, January 19: [in Library 326]
Chris Ware, Building Stories [library reserve]
Day Five: Tuesday, January 24: [in Library 326]
Chris Ware, Building Stories [library reserve]

UNIT TWO: Close Reading: Poetry: Figure & Unit \\ POETRY

Day Six: Thursday, January 26: [back in regular classroom]
Edouard Glissant, Caribbean Discourse (selection)
(Bb)
Derek Walcott, Omeros
PAPER ONE DUE
 Day Seven: Tuesday, January 31:
Katherine Burkitt, “Reading Derek Walcott’s Omeros
as Post-Epic” from Literary Form as Postcolonial
Critique (2012) (Bb)
Derek Walcott, Omeros [+ PRESENTATION One]
Day Eight: Thursday, February 2:
Derek Walcott, Omeros
Day Nine: Tuesday, February 7:
Derek Walcott, Omeros
Day Ten: Thursday, February 9:
Derek Walcott, Omeros
Day Eleven: Tuesday, February 14:
Derek Walcott, Omeros
Recitations
Day Twelve: Thursday, February 16
MIDTERM

UNIT THREE: Literature: Context, History, Biography \\ DRAMA

Day Thirteen: Tuesday, February 21:
Michel Foucault, Introduction, The History of Sexuality
Tony Kushner, Part One: Millennium Approaches Act
One
Day Fourteen: Thursday, February 23:
Tony Kushner, Part One: Millennium Approaches Act
Two
+ three presentations [Presentation TWO]
Day Fifteen: Tuesday, February 28:
Tony Kushner, Part One: Millennium Approaches Act
Three
+ three presentations --
Day Sixteen: Thursday, March 2
Tony Kushner, Part Two: Perestroika Act One and Two
+ three presentations --
Day Seventeen: Tuesday, March 7:
Tony Kushner, Part Two: Perestroika Act Three and
Four
+ three presentations --
Day Eighteen: Thursday, March 9: GUEST PROF:
Tony Kushner, Part Two: Perestroika Act Five
+ three presentations --
SPRING BREAK: MARCH 13-19

UNIT FOUR: Criticism, Research \\ PROSE

Day Nineteen: Tuesday, March 21:
COA WORKSHOP: local histories
PAPER TWO DUE
Day Twenty: Thursday, March 23:
LIBRARY PRESENTATION: MLA International
Bibliography
Gyasi, “I’m Ghanaian-American. Am I Black?”
Day: Twenty-One: Tuesday, March 28:
Gyasi, Homegoing
Day Twenty-Two: Thursday, March 30
Gyasi, Homegoing
Day Twenty-Three: Tuesday, April 4
Gyasi, Homegoing
Day Twenty-Four: Thursday, April 6
Gyasi, Homegoing
PUBLIC SERVICE ‘PAPERS’ DUE

Article Presentations: Annotated Bibliography

Day Twenty-Five: Tuesday, April 11
Whitehead, Underground Railroad
+ 4 annotation presentations [Presentation THREE]
Day Twenty-Six: Thursday, April 13
Whitehead, Underground Railroad
+ 4 annotation presentations
Day Twenty-Seven: Tuesday, April 18
Whitehead, Underground Railroad
+ 4 annotation presentations
Day Twenty-Eight: Thursday, April 20
Beyoncé, Lemonade
+ 3 annotation presentations

FINAL PAPER DUE:

Section X: Thursday, April 27th, by 5pm
Section Y: Tuesday, May 2nd, by 9am