LIT 499-02 Seminar in Research and Theory: Dystopia and Utopia, summer 2020

5/26-7/17, MTR 11:00-12:20, online

Dr. Jean Graham

Office Hours: W 11:00-12:20 (online)

Email address: graham@tcnj.edu

Course description: This seminar focuses on dystopian and utopian literature, including young adult (YA) novels.  As dystopian and utopian literature critiques society, this focus will enable us to concentrate on cultural approaches to literature (e.g., gender, Marxist, critical race studies).

Prerequisites: LIT 201 and 202; English major or minor.

Course units: 1 (4 semester hours).  This course is 4 semester hours because the students are assigned additional learning tasks that make the semester’s learning experience more deeply engaged and rigorous, and no additional classroom time is needed.

Place in the curriculum: LIT 499 counts as a capstone in the English major. All capstones are writing-intensive.

Learning goals:  The seminars will challenge students to conduct advanced research in the humanities by building upon the basic research skills first introduced in LIT 201; foster the kind of intellectual independence and sustained, critical thought required for the production of high-quality literary, linguistic, textual and/or rhetorical scholarship; enable students to discover, assert and insert their own critical “voice” in the ongoing, and often interdisciplinary, dialogues, critiques, and debates that frequently characterize the humanities; encourage students to apply a range of critical theories–linguistic, literary, rhetorical, and/or cultural–to texts and their contexts in order to elucidate complex issues and concerns in the discipline and suggest additional avenues of critical inquiry; help students think theoretically, moving beyond issues of textual analysis into more abstract modes of thinking; cultivate a sophisticated understanding of issues of canonicity and disciplinary politics; encourage mastery of essential concepts and terms of literary, linguistic, rhetorical and/or textual analysis; and teach students how to prepare and conduct primary research of their own and communicate their ideas and their findings with precision and clarity, both in writing and orally.

English Department Learning Goals:

Students will be able to demonstrate familiarity with a range of critical, generic, and literary traditions (including recent theoretical approaches) that shape – and are shaped by – literary discourses and texts of particular periods or movements

Students will be able to read a literary work and characterize its main aesthetic, structural, and rhetorical strategies in an argumentative, thesis-driven essay or in a writing workshop

Students will be able to write a substantial essay of literary scholarship that is theoretically informed and engages with current research and criticism in relevant fields of study, asserting their own critical voice in ongoing dialogues and debates.

[The above goals map onto the following Humanities and Social Sciences Learning Goals: #1 Written Communication,  #5 Critical Analysis and Reasoning, #6 Information Literacy, #7 Interpret Language and Symbol.]

Required texts: Except for the first, the following texts should be available through TCNJ’s bookstore. This is the order in which we will read them.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Herland.  Free at Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32

Murfin, Ross, and Supryia M. Ray.  The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms.  4th ed. Make sure you get the 4th edition, not the 3rd.

If you already have a copy of any of the books below, it’s fine to use the one you have.

Orwell, George. 1984. Signet Classics, ISBN 978-0-451-52593-5.

Le Guin, Ursula K. The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia. Harper, ISBN 978-0061054884.

Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale. Anchor, ISBN 978-0385490818.

Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Del Rey, ISBN 978-1524796976

Bacigalupi, Paolo. Ship Breaker. Little, Brown, ISBN 978-0316056199

Farmer, Nancy. The House of the Scorpion. Atheneum, ISBN 978-0689852237

Jemison, N. K. The Fifth Season. Orbit, ISBN 978-0316229296

El Akkad, Omar, American War. Vintage, ISBN 978-1101973134

Alderman, Naomi.  The Power. Back Bay, ISBN 978-0316547604

Contacting Me: Feel free to email me (graham@tcnj.edu) or to visit me during my online office hours. If you haven’t heard back from me within a reasonable amount of time (24 hours), feel free to send me another message—especially if you think you may have accidentally emailed the wrong Dr. J. Graham.  (Dr. James Graham in Psychology will forward messages to me—and vice versa—but it will delay the email.)

Course assignments and grading.

1. Participation (100 points)
2. Theory quizzes (10 points each, with 30 points for the review quiz, for a total of 100 points)
3. Essay 1 (100 points)
4. Essay 2 (100 points)
5. Prospectus (60 points)
6. Essay 3 (50 points)
7. Preliminary Draft of Essay 4 (50 points)
8. Peer Feedback for Essay 4 (40 points)
9. Symposium (100 points)
10. Essay 4 (300 points)

Your course grade will be calculated as follows:  A = 93-100%, A- = 90-92%, B+ = 87-89%, B = 83-86%, B- = 80-82%, C+ = 77-79%, C = 73-76%, C- = 70-72%, D+ = 67-69%, D = 60-66%, and F = below 60%.

Your final evaluation for this course consists of Essay 4 (all stages–i.e., assignments 5-10).  See the College’s final evaluation policy in the Policy Manual: http://policies.tcnj.edu/

General expectations for essays: A passing essay will demonstrate understanding of relevant literary theory, criticism, and primary text(s), and provide appropriate support for each debatable point–support cited with integrity and accuracy.  A superior essay will provide ample support which is cited with correctness; above all, it will demonstrate that its writer has thought deeply about literary theory, literary criticism, and primary text(s) rather than merely accepting and regurgitating the comments of another scholar.  Each essay will be evaluated holistically according to the rubric in Canvas.

Specific assignments

Preparation and participation. Literary criticism is an ongoing conversation about primary texts and essential issues that arise from such primary texts.  In this course you will be engaging with complex ideas, often conveyed in challenging prose, as members of the conversation that is literary criticism.  You will be expected to prepare for that conversation by carefully reading the assignment in advance, recording your thoughts and questions so you can contribute to discussion.  This course will not succeed in creating a functioning community if you are habitually absent.  It is never really possible to reproduce or recapture the dynamics and flow of information for a missed class meeting (even if you get notes from someone), but if you positively must miss a class, I expect you to find out what you missed and to come fully prepared to the next class meeting.

You are expected to read the assignments with enough care and thought to be able to participate productively in all class activities including class discussions, break-out discussions, peer feedback, and quizzes to test your understanding of theory.  This doesn’t mean you are necessarily expected to understand everything you read prior to discussion, but you should at all times be ready and eager to voice your questions, doubts, and points of confusion as well as your conclusions and insights. Although attendance is not graded at TCNJ, please note that it is impossible to participate unless you are both physically and mentally present for the entire class period; therefore, absences, tardiness, leaving class early, and/or taking frequent or long breaks will adversely affect your participation grade in the course.  Also keep in mind that productive participation includes participating in a way that encourages the participation of others.

Quizzes:  Quizzes will be in Canvas, and will cover literary theory discussed and/or read during the semester (including key terms in the relevant sections of The Bedford Guide). Each quiz is 10 points except the final (review) quiz, which is 30.

Essay 1 and Essay 2: Note that these assignments are linked, building on one another. You may not submit Essay 2 without Essay 1.

Essay 1: Choosing 1984 or Herland, write a brief analysis of the novel’s critique of society using one or more pertinent ideas from one of the texts of literary theory that we have read: Althusser, Butler, or Foucault. Your essay should include a brief explanation of each idea that you use, written as if you are merely reminding readers what the theorist wrote. Your essay should focus on one or two very specific moments in the text, but may develop its argument with reference to language, images, or action elsewhere in the novel.  Be sure that your essay constitutes an argument–i.e., that it clearly presents a central point (thesis or claim) and then proceeds to support that point with logically sequential support from both the novel and the theorist.  Cite the literary text and literary theorist directly but keep quotations short.  You should have a works cited list with two entries, as demonstrated in class. You should do no research for this assignment.  Length: 3-5 pages.

Essay 2: Revise and expand your Essay 1 using a recent text of literary criticism that focuses on your chosen novel.  “Recent” will be defined in class.  Continue to make sure that your essay constitutes an argument–i.e., that it clearly presents a central point (thesis) and then proceeds to support that point with logically sequential support from the novel, the literary theorist, and the literary critic. As a minimum, the essay should include a single-sentence summary of the recent text of literary criticism and one quotation from this text.  You should have a works cited list with three entries, two of which were supplied in class for Essay 1.  This assignment involves research to find the single text of literary criticism.  Length: 4-6 pages.

Essay 4 and its related assignments: Most simply put, Essay 4 is to be a theoretically and critically informed discussion of a text, or of an issue or theme found in multiple texts. As long as you include at least one of the literary texts from this course, you may include others as well, as long as any additional text represents a dystopia or utopia.  (For instance, you may choose to write about Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and another Philip K. Dick novel or short story such as “Minority Report.”)  “Theoretically informed” requires that your critical approach be both current (no New Critics or old historicists!) and self-conscious (you should be able to describe what it is you are doing). “Critically informed” means that you are familiar with the relevant scholarship on your topic and you construct your own argument with respect to that scholarship. Further, the relationship between your own scholarship and prior work must be explicitly addressed in your essay. However, your focus is not to be on the scholarship you consult. Rather, your central goal is to develop your own argument—a single, original, coherent, unified, and well supported argument. Thus you want to use other scholarship as your context, use the text(s) as illustration and support, but use both of these only in the service of your argument. State your central point explicitly, support it directly, elaborate upon it intelligently, and you will succeed in this exercise. You may continue with what you wrote in Essays 1 and 2, or you may choose a new topic.  15 pages (not including list of works cited) is the expected length of the final draft.

Every stage (Prospectus, Essay 3, Preliminary Draft, and Final Draft) is required, and in that order.

Prospectus: The Prospectus is a 1-2 page informal essay that describes what you are planning to explore in your Essay 4, what you have done so far, and what your thinking is up to this point. Thus you should write about the text(s) and questions you plan to explore. You should describe the critical approach you expect to use. You should name any individual theoretical or critical works that you expect to be central to your project, and describe them if we have not read them and discussed them in this class. You should comment on any points of difficulty that you foresee.  A preliminary bibliography of at least six texts–in addition to anything listed on the syllabus–is required, even if you haven’t looked at the items in it. (If you have chosen a more recent text and have trouble locating six texts, please consult me prior to the due date.)  The purposes of this exercise are multiple: it will get you started on your project; if you have a general sense of what you want to do, it will force you to focus and clarify your ideas as you put them into writing; it will give you something concrete to work with as you discuss your project and seek advice from your peers and me; the preliminary bibliography will give you an idea of what you may need to order through Inter-Library Loan.  Because the summer session is half the length of a regular semester, you may not change your topic after I approve your Prospectus, but you certainly may–and probably will–change your thesis and bibliography (as the bibliography changes into a list of works cited).

Essay 3: Write the first three pages of your research paper (or at least a provisional version of those three pages), and a Works Cited page for sources cited in these three pages.  Select at least two secondary sources from which to cite in these three pages; at least one of them must be one which you have located through your own research.  These sources should be important to your argument, and may be theoretical or critical.  For instance, your argument may be informed by Butler’s ideas about gender, and you may find one critical article about your primary text with which you wish to grapple in your essay.  (You may be disagreeing with this article, or you may be extending its argument–it may concern another primary text, or it may concern your chosen primary text but without using Butler’s ideas.)  Or your argument may be informed by both Crenshaw and Anzaldúa, in which case you will still need to locate one theoretical or critical text through your own research.

• Regarding content, expectations include:
  • an interesting opening;
  • a clear indication of the text(s) you are examining;
  • the scope of your inquiry (in a thesis statement, located at the end of your first paragraph);
  • the nature of prior relevant scholarship and how your work relates to it;
  • a sense of your theoretical orientation; and
  • an “organization preview” of the rest of your essay.

  Regarding citations and attribution, you are required to:

  • directly quote at least two critical or theoretical sources;
  • quote your primary source(s) at least once;
  •  use ellipsis (correctly) at least once;
  • introduce and integrate the quotations correctly (i.e., as prescribed by me as well as MLA) and smoothly;
  • include parenthetical page citations for each quotation (as is customary in literary criticism, introduce the critic you are citing in the text of your paragraph, not in the parenthetical citation);
  • list your sources according to the latest MLA style in a “Works Cited” list; and
  • have an original title and a correct heading following MLA style

  Submit to Canvas.  Your classmates will read your paper and we will grade the MLA style together.

Preliminary Draft: Not much explanation is needed here, except that the preliminary draft should be a complete draft–not in the sense that everything that will end up being in the final draft is there (and in the same order) but in the sense that you should write your way through to the very end, including the fashioning of a conclusion.  My rationale for this is that you need a fairly good sense of where you want to be at the end of your essay in order to receive productive advice and begin the revision process effectively.  You will be expected to give constructive criticism on substantive matters to two peers: that is, you are to make specific suggestions or ask specific questions about content and organization, only referring to grammar and word choice if you do not understand something.  

Peer feedback on Essay 4: See the instructions above for the Preliminary Draft. You should offer both praise and constructive criticism.

Symposium: You will present your Essay 4 to the class as a conference paper. This may require you to condense your final draft. You will be expected to read with expression and eye contact (or what will appear to those of us watching as eye contact).

Final Draft: Remember to follow MLA format not only for citations but also for formatting (including font size, spacing, margins, pagination, and first page heading).

Policies

Absences and late work: In exceptional circumstances such as illness, please contact me immediately (771-3233 or graham@tcnj.edu). Such notification does not necessarily guarantee that absences will be excused.  (See TCNJ’s attendance and absence policies in the Policy Manual.) If a day of religious observation or similarly compelling planned absence interferes with an assignment, I will be glad to discuss an earlier due date if given advance notice; also note that TCNJ holds students responsible for “avoid[ing] outside conflicts (if possible).”  Participation, quizzes, and the Symposium cannot be made up.  Unless the circumstances are both compelling and documented, any other assignment submitted late will be penalized 20% of the maximum points available per day, where “day” means the 24-hour period beginning at the time which the essay is due, but each weekend counts as a single day. In other words, Essay 1 would be penalized 20% whether it were submitted at 12:21 pm on Thursday 6/11 or at 12:20 pm on Friday 6/12, but at 12:21 pm on Friday it would be penalized 40%. The penalty does not increase to 60% until 12:21 on Sunday 6/14.  At 12:21 pm on Tuesday 6/16 the assignment can earn no credit without appropriate documentation, but it still must be submitted–in time for me to respond to it–before Essay 2 can be submitted.  Essay 2 is due on Thursday 6/18: thus you can see how tight the schedule is.

Because even this special combined summer session is so short for a capstone, I am willing to give you an extension on Essay 4 and an incomplete in LIT 499 as long as you have submitted every other assignment on time or provided acceptable documentation of a compelling reason for the delay.

Academic integrity:  Only sources that are scholarly (http://graham.intrasun.tcnj.edu/scholarlysources.htm) are appropriate for use in this course.  If you have any questions about the appropriateness or correct citation of any source, you are welcome to ask me before the due-date of the assignment.  Whenever a source of information, ideas, words, images, music, etc. is used, a list of works cited is required, using the latest MLA format.  On the essays, that includes information from course textbooks.  Plagiarism is the appropriation of the words, ideas, etc. of others. It is intellectual theft, and a serious infraction of the college’s Academic Integrity Policy (in the Policy Manual) as well as the laws of our nation.  In accordance with the policy, suspected plagiarism and all other suspected violations of the Academic Integrity Policy (whether intentional or unintentional) will be reported to the Academic Integrity Officer of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences.  If you plagiarize or commit any other form of academic dishonesty, I will seek the most strenuous penalties available to me. Not only is academic dishonesty an intellectual crime, it is also an insult to me and to all your peers.

Accommodations: Anyone requiring special adaptations or accommodations will benefit from contacting the Office of Disability Support Services (differingabilities.pages.tcnj.edu/).  If you require special assistance, I will make every effort to accommodate your needs and to create an environment where your special abilities will be respected.  Please note that recording a class must be approved in advance by the instructor or the Office of Disability Support Services, and that all students must be made aware that the class is being recorded.  (See the Policy Manual.)

Diversity and Inclusion:  In this class, we will make an effort to read materials from and about a diverse group of fiction writers and critics, but limits still exist on this diversity. I acknowledge that it is possible that there may be both overt and covert biases in the material.  Please contact me (in person or electronically) or submit anonymous feedback at the end of the semester if you have any suggestions to improve the quality of the course materials.

Electronics:  For this class, all instruction will be online, so you must have reliable access to the Internet, and to a laptop or other electronic device with a camera and microphone; and you must read your TCNJ email regularly.  Grades and attendance will be recorded in Canvas.

Submission of Assignments:  On the date listed on the syllabus for each assignment, a copy is due in the specified location in Canvas (assignments if not otherwise specified).

Course schedule

This schedule is subject to revision at the discretion of the professor.  Changes to the schedule after the start of the summer session will appear in red.  The midway points in novels are suggestions; you may read further, if you wish.

Date	Assignment
T 5/26	Remember that Monday is Memorial Day. Read Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland in its entirety before class today.   In The Bedford Glossary, read the sections on formalism, poststructuralism, and deconstruction.
R 5/28	Read Rokheya Shekhawat Hossain’s “Sultana’s Dream” (Canvas) and a section of Part 1 of Joanna Russ’s The Female Man (section 2 in Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=I0xODwAAQBAJ&source=gbs_book_other_versions).  In The Bedford Glossary, read the sections on gender criticism, gay and lesbian criticism (sexualities criticism), and queer theory. Take the quiz on formalism, poststructuralism, and deconstruction.
F 5/29	TCNJ’s official make-up day for Memorial Day.  Read Part 1 of Orwell’s 1984. Read this selection from Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish: http://foucault.info/doc/documents/disciplineandpunish/foucault-disciplineandpunish-panopticism-html. Class today is on the Canvas discussion board.
M 6/1	Read Part 2 of 1984. In Canvas, read from Judith Butler and from Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality.
T 6/2	Read Part 3 of 1984. In The Bedford Glossary, read the section on Marxist criticism. In Canvas, read from Louis Althusser.  Take the quiz on gender and sexualities criticism and queer theory.
R 6/4	Read through chapter 6 of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed.  Take the quiz on Marxist criticism.
M 6/8	Finish The Dispossessed. Read the rubric for essays (in Canvas).
T 6/9	Read (in Canvas) Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,” Octavia Butler’s “Bloodchild,” and N. K. Jemison’s “The Ones Who Stay and Fight.”  In The Bedford Glossary, read the section on race and literary studies.
R 6/11	Essay 1 due. Read through chapter 7 of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. In The Bedford Glossary, read the section on psychoanalytic theory. Take the quiz on race and literary studies.
M 6/15	Finish reading The Handmaid’s Tale.  Read (in Canvas) Joshua Pederson’s article at least through p 344.
T 6/16	Read through chapter 11 of Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Read (in The Bedford Glossary) about disability studies and ecocriticism. Take the quiz on psychoanalytic theory and trauma theory.
R 6/18	Essay 2 due.  Finish Do Androids Dream?
M 6/22	Read through chapter 13 of Ship Breaker. Read the sample prospectus in Canvas. Take the quiz on disability studies.
T 6/23	Finish Ship Breaker.  Take the quiz on ecocriticism.
R 6/25	Read through chapter 19 of The House of the Scorpion. In The Bedford Glossary, read the section on postcolonial literature and theory.  Read this selection from Homi Bhabha: https://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bhabha/mimicry.html. Read selection from Gloria Anzaldúa in Canvas.
M 6/29	Finish The House of the Scorpion.   Take the quiz on postcolonial theory.
T 6/30	Read through chapter 11 of The Fifth Season. Prospectus due.
R 7/2	Finish The Fifth Season.
M 7/6	Read through the end of Part II of American War.  Essay 3 due.
T 7/7	Finish American War.
R 7/9	Read through page 180 of The Power
M 7/13	Preliminary draft of Essay 4 due at 11:00. Peer Feedback due at 12:20.
T 7/14	Finish The Power. Take the review quiz on literary theory.
R 7/16	Symposium. Final draft of Essay 4 due.