Peace & Justice Studies/English 360: War, Memory, & Literature

Dr. Richard Ruppel

Canvas
Assignments

Useful Links
May 7, 2024

                                                                               

Office: 07 Smith Hall
Office Hours:
TBD & by appointment   
Phone:
997-6754 (office)
Email: ruppel@chapman.edu
Class Meetings:
Tuesday/Thursday 1-2:15 pm – Smith Hall, 103

Upcoming Events & Opportunities

 

John Paul Lederach, whose daughter, Angela Lederach, teaches in our Peace & Justice Studies department, will speak at the Students for Justice in Palestine encampment at 2:30 Tuesday May 7.  Lederach is an emeritus professor of International Peacebuilding at Notre Dame. 

 

Marley and Bradley are in a Research Methods class for Psychology, and they are conducting a study about the connection between college majors and sexual attitudes. They would appreciate it if you would take their study.  Here’s the link:  https://chapmanu.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_5pvcsG0sw93xqsK

 

 

Thursday, March 14, at 11:40 AM - 1:05 PM KENNEDY HALL ROOM 147.  Israel, International Law, & the International Court of Justice.”  With DR. LIAM O’MARA, Jewish Historian, & PROF. NICOLE RANGEL, international lawyer and Chapman professor.

 

Tuesday, March 12, at 7pm in the Folino Theater in Marion Knott Studios. Conversations with Nobel Laureate Nadia Murad. Our Peace & Justice Studies Department and Dodge College will present three short documentary films created by Chapman undergraduates.  The films are about Nadia herself, about media stereotypes of Middle Eastern women, and about a new international code of conduct for international workers working with survivors of sexual assault.

 

Shared Humanity: Conversations between Jews and Palestinians for a Better Tomorrow
Monday & Tuesday, February 26 & 27, 4-5pm.  In the Fish Interfaith Center. 

 

Texts

Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway.  [First published 1925] Harcourt, 2005
Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms. [First published 1929] Scribner, 2014
Elie Wiesel, Night.  [First published (in Yiddish) 1956] Hill & Wang, 2006
Ruth Klüger
. Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered.  [First published (in German) 1992]          Feminist Press, 2003
Kurt Vonnegut,
Slaughterhouse Five.  [First published 1959] Dell, 1991.
Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried.  [First published 1990] Mariner Books, 2009. 
Dương Thu Hương, Novel without a Name.  [First published 1991] Penguin, 1996.



Course Description and Objectives:

 

War and conflict have been the central inspiration of literature since human beings began writing. The Epic of Gilgamesh, from Mesopotamia, composed over four thousand years ago, depicts King Gilgamesh’s battles with various demi-gods.  In the Hebrew Bible, known to Jews as The Tanakh and to Christians as the Old Testament, Jehovah is shown leading the Jews to victory in battle (or to defeat if they have been disobedient). The great Indian epic, the Mahabharata (completed and compiled by the fourth century), is centrally concerned with war. The Iliad and Odyssey, with the Hebrew and Christian Bibles the most influential literary productions of the West, depict the Trojan War in some detail, along with its origins and consequences.

 

This course will focus on the war literature of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.  Before the twentieth century, authors most often treated war solemnly. In literature, war brought glory. Here is part of the most famous tribute to war in English, from Shakespeare’s Henry V, spoken by King Henry before the Battle of Agincourt: 

 

From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

 

(And here is Kenneth Branagh’s stirring rendition.)

 

But the great wars of the twentieth century, anticipated by our own Civil War, introduced increasingly accurate and deadly techniques and weapons, and the inspiring words long associated with battle: glory, courage, honor – all accompanied by and confirmed by God’s sanction – began to ring hollow.  World War II, with its Holocaust association and its destruction of whole cities, culminating in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, fundamentally changed our vision of war.  Now I am become Death,” Robert Oppenheimer said after the first successful test of the atomic bomb, quoting from the Bhagavad Gita, “the destroyer of worlds.” 

So this introduction to war literature will be skewed, and we will see war treated less as a path to glory than as a tragic waste, a foolish and useless source of pain and death, or even as a terrible, black comedy.  In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, God continues to lead some people to war, but for others, God can only be invoked in the name of peace, and for still others, the wars of the last century prove that God is dead. 

 

We will read a small selection of poetry, stories, novels, and memoirs provoked by the World Wars, the Holocaust, the Vietnam War, and, if there’s time, our current wars in Ukraine and Israel and Palestine. These readings are difficult; at times you will want to turn away. Our challenge will be to maintain an analytical, academic tone at the same time that we respond emotionally to these works of great sadness, pain, and beauty. 

 

Our Course Learning Outcomes:

 

1.     You will practice a good deal of critical reading, including poetry, leading you to learn to identify and analyze the formal, rhetorical, and stylistic features of different genres.

2.     You will improve your understanding of the development of war literature through the 20th century in its historical context. 

3.     As in most English courses, you will work on and improve your writing this semester.  We will have writing workshops before the first essay is due, and you will be allowed to revise one of your essays.


Weekly Syllabus*

Week 1 – January 30-February 1: Classical, Biblical, and Medieval Accounts of War
Week 2 – February 6-8:  World War I Poetry & Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway. 

Week 3 – February 13-15: Woolf.
Week 4 – February 20-22:  Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms.  
Week 5 – February 27-29: Hemingway. The Holocaust & WWII:  Elie Wiesel, Night. Rodgers Center visit Thursday. 
Week 6 – March 5-7: Elie Wiesel

Week 7 – March 12-14: Elie Wiesel and Ruth Klüger, Still Alive. (Paper 1 due, March 14)

 

Spring Break!


Week 8
– March 26-28: Ruth Klüger.
Week 9
– April 2-4: Klüger. Midterm.
Week 10 – April 9-11: Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five

Week 11 – April 16-18:  Vonnegut and Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried;

Week 12 – April 23-25: O’Brien
Week 13 – April 30-May 2:
Dương Thu Hương, Novel Without a Name

Week 14 – May 7-9: Wrap-up and preparation for final (Paper 2 due, May 9)
Week 15 Final:  Tuesday, May 14, 10:45-1:15. 

 

 


*We may agree to change the syllabus, but I will give you plenty of notice, and I'll keep the syllabus updated on the Web. 


Course and Paper Requirements

Final drafts of your papers should be submitted via email, directly to my email address:  ruppel@chapman.edu.  Do not send me the link to your paper or use Google docs.  Attach your essay in MSWord or as a text file.  If you don’t have access to MSWord and you can’t submit a text file, simply paste your essay into an email to me. 

If you anticipate having trouble getting an assignment in on time, let me know in advance. Unexcused late papers will be marked down one letter grade per week.

You will be allowed 4 free absences through the semester. But you will not pass this class if you miss 6 or more classes.

Keep on top of the reading and other work through the semester. If you haven't read the assignment, you will find our class discussion both incomprehensible and dull.

Minutes: Each of you will keep minutes for one week, sharing the duties with a partner.  Those minutes will be due the following Monday, and I will post them in Canvas. 

Grades:
Assignments & Participation*: 15%
Minutes:  10%
Essay 1: 15% (5-6 pages)
Essay 2: 20% (6-7 pages)
Midterm:  15%
Final: 25%

*This is primarily but not exclusively your grade on the Canvas Discussion Board posts; it will also take your class participation into account.  Here are my criteria for evaluating your 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. 

 

I will not post grades in Canvas. I have had too much trouble converting our standard four-point scale to the 100 point scale Canvas requires.  I average your grades based on a four-point scale:

A:  4.0
A-: 3.7
B+: 3.3
B: 3.0
B-: 2.7
C+: 2.3
C: 2.0
C-: 1.7
D+: 1.3
D: 1.0
D-: .7
F: 0

I will be happy to discuss your grades, and I am always happy to see you for any reason. 

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.)

 

ChatGPT and other Large Language Model (LLM) chatbots:

1.  Typing a prompt into an LLM chatbot, copying the response, and then submitting that response for an assignment is an obvious form of academic misconduct.  Don’t do it. 

2.   Chatbots are sometimes inaccurate.  In the summer of 2023, when I asked ChatGPT for a biography of Richard Ruppel, a Chapman English professor, I found that I was born in Fairview (false), had been an expert on the Holocaust (mostly false), had graduated from Yale and Harvard (false), and was now dead (demonstrably, I hope, false).  People in the field describe these errors as “hallucinations,” but these hallucinations are presented with supreme self-confidence. Hallucinations are not uncommon. 

3.   If I suspect that you have pasted in a response produced by an LLM, I will check the various services that can detect this.  If those services confirm my suspicion, I will call you in for a conference, and we will go over your essay line by line while I ask pointed questions. 

4.  Chatbots can be inaccurate, but they do offer clear, useful information which users should check.  These are still early times, but through this semester (and through your academic career) we will all discover ways to help you use them to enhance your learning. 

 

The following discussion of the use of LLMs in academic settings was developed by Dr. Nora Rivera, a professor in Chapman’s English department: 

 

Acceptable Uses of LLMs

Not Acceptable Uses of LLMs

·       To improve your work

·       To brainstorm

·       To explore potential counterarguments

·       To fine-tune research questions

·       To draft an outline to organize your thoughts

·       To check grammar and style

·       To check format

·       To translate words and phrases

·       To replace your work

·       To cheat on the writing & research process

·       To obtain answers to assessments

·       To generate a full draft of your work

·       To generate large chunks of text with little or no input from you as an author

 

·       Students must cite AI technologies when appropriate (e.g., when using images generated by AI technologies, when referencing an answer provided by AI technologies, et cetera)

·       Copying works entirely generated by AI technologies and submitting them as original content is considered an academic integrity violation

·       Always revise your work before submitting it. You are responsible for any inaccurate, biased, offensive, or otherwise unethical content you submit regardless of whether it originally comes from you or an AI model.

 

In-Class use of laptops, tablets, and phones:

You may use a laptop to take class notes only when you are one of the week’s note-takers.  Otherwise, laptops and tablets must remain closed, and you may not consult your phone during class.  If you have a reason to consult one of these devices during class, you must receive my permission to do so beforehand.  If I see you consulting your phone during class, I will mark you absent. 

 

Chapman Equity and Diversity Policy:

Chapman University is committed to ensuring equality and valuing diversity.  Students and professors are reminded to show respect at all times as outlined in Chapman’s Harassment and Discrimination Policy.  Any violations of this policy should be discussed with the professor, the Dean of Students and/or otherwise reported in accordance with this policy. 

 

Chapman's 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 Disability Services Office, 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. 

It is very important to me that ALL students feel welcome and encouraged to learn in my classes.  If you have any concerns about participating in class, writing posts or papers, or taking our exams, do not hesitate to speak with me.  I want you to feel challenged in this class, but if you feel overwhelmed, let me know. 

 

 

Useful Links

 

Achilles & Patroclus. The archetype of transcendent friendships among soldiers.

 

Poetics

·       Dactylic meter: Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade” (1854).  Video reading. 

·       Anapestic meter: Byron’s “The Destruction of Sennacherib” (1815). Video reading. 

 

World War One

·       The Poetry Foundation’s fine collection of WWI poetry, with a brief introduction. 

·       War Poetry Website. 

·       Images of WWI, from the Britannica Website. 

·       Interesting New Yorker article on Rupert Brooke. 

·       Pro-war poetry.  Julian Grenfell, “Into Battle.” Jessie Pope: “The World War I Poet Kids are Taught to Dislike” (BBC), “War Girls,” “No!” “Who’s for the Game?”

·       Shell Shock - The Psychological Scars of World War 1.”  A brief video history of the condition. 

·       Wilifred Owen, probably the best English poet from WWI. 

·       Siegfried Sassoon, another fine WWI poet.  He was one of the models for Septimus Smith, in Mrs. Dalloway.   

 

Mrs. Dalloway

·       David Bradshaw’s (no relation to William) fine analysis of the way the novel responds to WWI (in the Canvas Module section). 

·       Elaine Showalter’s description of Mrs. Dalloway.  A terrific British Library production.

·       One source for Clarissa Dalloway, Kitty Maxse.   

·       Woolf Works.  A ballet based on three works by Virginia Woolf. 

 

Farewell to Arms

·       Passage from Huck Finn demonstrating Hemingway’s stylistic source.

·       Westron wynde” referred to on page 171.  Set to music. 

·       A video reference to the novel in The Silver Linings Playbook. 

·       Trailer to the 1932 film, full film with Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes. Trailer for the 1957 adaptation, 1957 full film.  With Rock Hudson and Jennifer Jones. 

 

 

The Holocaust

·       The Rogers Center for Holocaust Education at Chapman. 

·       Elie Wiesel bio from “The Academy of Achievement.” (In ITunes.) 

·       Brief, edited interview with Elie Wiesel in 2014.  Video obituary, NYTimes. 1994 Interview with Charlie Rose. 

·       United States Holocaust Museum.  The Ilse Salomon Collection. 

·       Holocaust Timeline.

·       The Los Angeles Museum of Tolerance. 

·       Poetry.  First They Came for the Jews”; “Holocaust Poem”; “The Little Boy with Hands Up”; “The Burning of the Books,” “Daddy.”

·       Jewish Women’s Archive biography of Ruth Klüger. 

·       2001 review of Still Alive in the NY Times – critical of Klüger’s feminism. 

·       Ruth Klüger discusses the reception of Still Alive. She reads from Still Alive at UCI.  She speaks at UCSB and reads from her book.  She speaks at Oregon State University on “The Shoah in Literature.”   

·       The New York Times obituary for Ruth Kluger. 

·       Khan Academy introduction to the Holocaust. 

·       United State Holocaust Museum (in Washington DC). An authoritative source. 

·       Auschwitz Camp Complex maps. 

 

World War II

·       Poems:  High Flight,” John Magee; “i sing of olaf, glad and big,” e.e. cummings; “Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,” Randall Jarrell.

·       Kurt Vonnegut.  Interview on his life and career (1983).  Extremely brief biography.  Vonnegut on “the shape of stories.” 

Vietnam

·       Straightforward account from one platoon commander about fighting in Vietnam.

·       The US defeat in Vietnam was a political choice.”  A defense of the war by a historian from the Hoover Institution, Victor Davis Hanson. This video is hosted by PregerU, a right wing foundation devoted to climate-change denial and other right wing issues.    

·       Trailer for the PBS Ken Burns special, Vietnam.  A PBS story on the series. 

·       Glossary of military terms from Vietnam. 

·       Poems:  Yusef Komunyakaa, “Tu Do Street.” Leroy Quintana, “Natural History.” Robert Borden, “Meat Dreams: A Poem of the Vietnam War.” 

·       Trailer to Apocalypse Now. 

 

Tim O’Brien

·       Tim O’Brien, on why he writes about Vietnam.  Interviewed about The Things They Carried.  Reading “How to Tell a True War Story.”  On “The Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong,” which, according to this Web page, may have been based on a true story. 

Thu Hương Dương

·       Biography of Thu Hương Dương; thorough NYTimes article from 2005; a multi-part video of an event involving Dương Thu Hương.  Part 1. Part 2. Part 3.  Part 4. Part 5. Part 6. Part 7.    

·       The story of Au Co and Lac Long Quan, a founding myth of Vietnam referred to on p. 247. 

·       A good review of Novel Without a Name. 

 


Assignments

For Thursday, February 1:  Read Thomas Hardy’s “Channel Firing,” “Drummer Hodge,” (reading), “A Wife in London,” “The Man He Killed”; David Ferry, “The Soldier”; Rupert Brooke, “The Soldier”; A. E. Housman, “Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries”; Hugh MacDiarmid, “Another Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries”; Carl Sandburg, “Grass”; e.e. cummings, “my sweet old etcetera,” (read) “i sing of olaf glad and big,” (read) & (read); and Siegfried Sassoon’s “The Redeemer,” “Christ and the Soldier,” “They,” “The Hero,” “The General,” “Glory of Women,” “Everyone Sang”). Be prepared to read aloud and discuss one of the poems. Begin reading Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, which we’ll begin discussing Thursday, February 8.

 

For Tuesday, February 6:  Read Wilfred Owen’s “Anthem of Doomed Youth,” (read), “Dulce Et Decorum Est” (read), “Exposure,” Insensibility,” “The Send-Off,” “Futility,” “Strange Meeting,” “The Sentry,” “Spring Offensive.” By 10am, February 6, on the Canvas Discussion page, briefly describe the ways the poetry we have read both confirmed and contradicted your sense of what constitutes "war literature."  Continue reading Mrs. Dalloway. 

 

For Thursday, February 8:  Continue reading Mrs. Dalloway. I’ll give an introductory lecture.

 

For Tuesday, February 13:  Finish Mrs. Dalloway and by 10am February 13, respond to the question in Canvas about how Woolf presents the consequences of World War I.  

 

For Thursday, February 15:  Wrap up Mrs. Dalloway.  Begin A Farewell to Arms.  

 

For Tuesday, February 20:  Read the first half of A Farewell to Arms.  (Through page 140 of our edition, the first 24 chapters.)

 

For Thursday, February 22:  Finish A Farewell to Arms and respond to the discussion question in Canvas by 10am the 22nd. 

 

For Tuesday, February 27:  Continued discussion of A Farewell to Arms.  Begin reading Elie Wiesel’s Night.

 

For Thursday, February 29:  Rodgers Center visit (4th floor, Leatherby Library).  Continues reading Night. 

 

For Tuesday, March 5:  Finish Night.  Bring one comment and one question about the memoir to class. 

 

For Thursday, March 7:  Continued discussion of Night. 

 

For Tuesday, March 12:  Begin Still Alive. 

 

For Thursday, March 14:  Continued discussion of Still Alive, first essays due by midnight. 

 

For Tuesday, March 26:  Finish Still Alive, and respond to the prompt in Canvas asking you to compare one feature of Still Alive and Night. 

 

For Thursday, March 27:  Continued discussion of Still Alive.  Preparation for the midterm April 4. 

 

For Tuesday, April 2:  Finish discussion of Still Alive.  Begin Slaughterhouse Five.  Respond to the Canvas discussion question asking that you create a prompt for the midterm. 

 

For Thursday, April 4:  Midterm.  Bring a blue or green book. 

 

For Tuesday, April 9:  Read the first 4 chapters (through page 109) of Slaughterhouse Five. 

 

For Thursday, April 11:  Finish Slaughterhouse Five.

 

For Tuesday, April 16:  Respond to the Discussion question by reading and briefly summarizing an article on Slaughterhouse Five.  We’ll begin Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried Thursday, April 18.

 

For Thursday, April 18:  Read through page 110 of The Things They Carried. 

 

For Tuesday, April 23:  Finish The Things They Carried.

 

For Thursday, April 25:  Respond to the discussion question about linking one story from The Things They Carried to an earlier work we’ve read this semester.  And choose one story you’d like to discuss. 

 

For Tuesday, April 30:  Read through page 143 of our last work, Dương Thu Hương’s Novel Without a Name.  Remember that you will need to clear your second paper topic with me sometime that week. Bring a tablet, laptop, or phone to class to fill out your course evaluation. 

 

For Thursday, May 2:  Finish Novel Without a Name. 

 

For Tuesday, May 7:  By 10am Tuesday, May 7, respond to the OPTIONAL Discussion Board question, which asks you to formulate a final exam essay prompt. 

 

 

 

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