Honors 322: Political
Literary Theory and the Modern Novel - Richard Ruppel
Updated November 17, 2011
Blackboard Access
Assignments
Useful
Links
Meetings: Tuesday & Thursday, 1-2:15pm Demille Hall 146
Office: 24A Wilkinson Hall
Phones: (714) 997-6754 (Office)
Email: ruppel@chapman.edu
Office Hours: Tuesday & Thursday
9-11am & by appointment
Course Description & Goals:
Novels sometimes
explore politics directly (most famously and frighteningly, Orwell’s 1984), but all novels may be read
politically and culturally. Through the semester, we’ll read novels
linked with readings by or about political and cultural philosophers and
analysts. We’ll learn to read politically, to unearth a novel’s political
and cultural assumptions, and we’ll become familiar with Marxist, feminist,
new-historical, and cultural ways of reading.
This course includes
a good deal of close reading and writing. Students will respond to
readings online (via Blackboard discussions) and via short essays, culminating
in one longer, researched analysis of a work that may or may not be represented
on the syllabus. Students will also lead discussions.
Required Texts:
Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent (1907) (Broadview)
Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier (1915) (Norton)
D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love (completed 1917, published 1920) (Penguin)
E.M. Forster, Passage to India (1924) (Penguin)
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (1925) (Mariner - Available for rent from the bookstore)
Readings from and about theorists such as Karl Marx, György Lukács, Walter Benjamin, Raymond Williams, Mikhail Bakhtin, Gayle Rubin, Michel Foucault, Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, and others who have written about politics or about literature from a political or cultural perspective.
Methods of Evaluation:
|
Responses to the Discussion Board on BlackBoard* |
10% |
|
4 brief (3-5 pages) essays |
50% (12.5% each) |
|
Presentations |
15% |
|
One 10-12 page essay due at the
end of the semester |
25% |
*Criteria for
Discussion Board Posts
1. The posting should respond as specifically as possible to the
prompt (or you should indicate why you’re modifying the prompt).
2. The posting should reveal close engagement with the work under discussion.
3. The posting should contribute to the discussion, so later postings should
not simply repeat earlier postings, and they should reflect some engagement
with earlier postings.
4. Postings should be substantive.
Honors Program Learning
Outcomes:
1.
To provide a starting point for integrative exploration of the
development of cultures and intellectual achievements through a variety of
disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives;
2.
To help students develop the ability to critically analyze
and synthesize a broad range of knowledge through the study of primary texts
and the encouragement of active learning with fellow students, faculty, and
texts (broadly understood);
3.
To help students intentionally apply more integrative and
interdisciplinary forms of understanding as they engage advances in knowledge
and deal with dramatic challenges shaping the world;
4.
To help students develop effective communication skills,
specifically in the areas of written and oral exposition and analysis.
HON 322 will give
you the opportunity to develop and enhance all of these skills, which you will
demonstrate in your Discussion Board responses, presentations, and essays.
Weekly Readings & Paper Assignments*:
August 30 - September 1: Introduction & Chapters 1 & 2 of The Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx, 1848)
September 6-8: Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto, begin The Secret Agent.
September 13-15: The Secret Agent.
September 20-22: The Secret Agent. Mikhail Bakhtin's "Dostoevsky's Polyphonic Novel."
September 27-29: The Good Soldier.
October 4-6: The Good Soldier. (First essay on The Secret Agent due.)
October 11-13: Women in Love.
October 18-20: Women in Love. Michel Foucault's What is an Author? (Second essay on The Good Soldier due.)
October 25-27: Passage to India.
November 1-3: Passage to India. (Third essay on Women in Love due.)
November 8-10: Mrs. Dalloway. Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own.
November 15-17: Mrs. Dalloway. (Fourth essay on Passage to India due.)
November 22: Start of student presentations & Thanksgiving.
November 29-December 1: Student presentations. (For those writing on Mrs. Dalloway, fourth essay due.)
December 6-8: Student presentations.
December 15: Final exam period, 8-10:30am - extended essays, including research, due.
*I may modify this schedule of readings, but I'll give you plenty of notice.
Attendance: Missing more than
three classes will lower your grade unless you provide acceptable evidence that
the absence was unavoidable.
Reading: This
is a reading intensive course. Be sure to have the theoretical piece or
novel read before we begin our class discussions.
Essays: Please
submit your essays electronically in MSWord, using MLA documentation
format. You'll write a brief essay on four of the five novels, and one
extended essay.
Presentations: Each
of you will help lead a class discussion of one of our theoretical texts or one
that you choose. You may do this with a partner.
Chapman University Academic
Integrity Policy:
Chapman University is a community of scholars that
emphasizes the mutual responsibility of all members to seek knowledge honestly
and in good faith. Students are responsible for doing their own work, and
academic dishonesty of any kind will be subject to sanction by the instructor
and referral to the university's Academic Integrity Committee, which may impose
additional sanctions up to and including dismissal. (See the Undergraduate
Catalog for the full policy.)
Students with disabilities Policy: In
compliance with ADA guidelines, students who have any condition, either
permanent or temporary, that might affect their ability to perform in this
class are encouraged to inform the instructor at the beginning of the term.
The University, through the Center for Academic Success, will work
with the appropriate faculty member who is asked to provide the accommodations
for a student in determining what accommodations are suitable based on the
documentation and the individual student needs. The granting of any
accommodation will not be retroactive and cannot jeopardize the academic
standards or integrity of the course.
For Thursday, September
1: Read the first two
chapters of The Communist Manifesto.
Come to class with one observation and one question. You might also begin reading Conrad’s The Secret Agent.
For
Tuesday, September 6:
Read
the second two chapters of the Manifesto. Answer the question in the Blackboard
Discussion Board section by 9am Tuesday.
Continue reading The Secret Agent.
For
Thursday, September 8:
Read
through the first 8 chapters of The
Secret Agent.
For
Tuesday, September 13:
Finish
The Secret Agent and answer the Blackboard
question (concerned with “the public” vs. “the private”) by 9am Tuesday.
For
Thursday, September 15:
No
new assignment. Start
thinking about paper topics for The
Secret Agent.
For Tuesday,
September 20:
Answer
the second Secret Agent question on
Blackboard by noon Monday (the 19th). Bring your topic for the first essay to
class.
For
Thursday, September 22:
Read
Mikhail Bakhtin's "Dostoevsky's Polyphonic
Novel." We’ll begin discussing it
Thursday. And start reading the next
novel: The Good Soldier.
For
Tuesday, September 27:
We
won’t have class, but you’ll respond to a post concerning the Bakhtin
chapter. (See the Blackboard discussion
board. The assignment is due by noon, September
28.) .
For
Thursday, September 29:
Finish
The Good Soldier.
For
Tuesday, October 4:
Bring
a hard copy of your first essay. And send me an
electronic copy as well.
For
Thursday, October 6:
Begin
reading Women in Love. We’ll begin discussing the first 16 chapters
on Tuesday (October 11).
For
Tuesday, October 11:
We’ll
discuss through chapter 16 of Women in
Love on Tuesday (and through chapter 28 Thursday). Respond to the Blackboard question on the
novel by noon, Monday, October 10.
For
Thursday, October 13:
Read
through chapter 28 of Women in Love. Finish the novel for October 18.
For
Tuesday, October 18: Read the rest of Women in Love and Michel
Foucault's What is an Author? Your second
essay (on The Good Soldier) is due October 20.
For
Thursday, October 20:
Begin
reading Passage to India.
For
Tuesday, October 25: Read the first 18 chapters (through page 161 of our
edition) of Passage to India. Respond to the question about “What
is an Author?” on Blackboard.
For
Thursday, October 27:
Read
through the end of Part 2 (through page 266 of our edition) of Passage to India.
For
Tuesday, November 1: Finish Passage to
India. Read my piece on colonial literature
in the Documents section of Blackboard.
For
Thursday, November 3: No new assignment.
Begin reading Mrs. Dalloway,
which we’ll discuss beginning November 8.
(Read the first 100 pages of our edition by Tuesday.) And we’ll discuss Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own beginning Thursday,
November 10.
For
Tuesday, November 8: Finish through page 100 of Mrs. Dalloway. Finish the
novel and the first two chapters of A
Room of One’s Own for Thursday, November 10.
For
Thursday, November 10: Finish the novel and the first two chapters of A Room of One’s Own.
For
Tuesday, November 15: Finish A Room of
One’s Own and respond to the Discussion Board question that asks you to
discuss parallels between the essay and the novel. The essay on Passage to India is due November 17.
For
Thursday, November 17: No new assignment.
Bring your essay on Passage to
India (and remember to submit an electronic copy.)
For
Tuesday, November 22: Student presentations: Emily and Isabelle.