Introduction to Literature and Writing

Winter 2002

English 2120, Section 005

Instructor: Julianne Newmark

 

“Nativisms”

 

 

Class Times:

Our class meets in 315 State Hall on Mondays and Wednesdays from 12:50 p.m. to 2:40 p.m.

 

Office Hours, etc.:

My office hours will be held in my office, room 2244 (second floor, 51 W. Warren), on Mondays and Wednesday from 2:45 p.m. to 3:45 p.m. Also, if these times are not convenient for you, appointments can be made to see me. Just stop by my office or call 577-5627. I can also be reached over email at j.newmark@wayne.edu. I do check it often, so this is also a good way to ask me questions or get a hold of me.

 

Required Texts:

The following texts will be available at Marwil Bookstore (located on the southeast corner of Cass and Warren) unless otherwise noted.

 

Bartolomé de las Casas, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies

James Fenimore Cooper, The Deerslayer

Zitkala-Sa, American Indian Stories

John Higham, Strangers in the Land, Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925

Coursepack (available at University Copy Center, two doors east of Marwil)

 

Plus, A style guide of your choice. The guide you use must have full information on MLA style. The Essentials of MLA Style by Joseph Trimmer is a good and inexpensive one to buy, and some of you may have it already from a pervious course. Ann Raimes’s Keys for Writers is also excellent.

 

There will be various other required readings for our course. I will give information on these as needed; certain supplementary texts may be handed out during class or they will be on reserve at the Purdy/Kresge Library. I will let you know if/when this is the case

 

Other Required Supplies:

You will need something to take notes in during each class period. It is imperative that you do take notes; it is virtually impossible for a student to absorb all the material covered in class when passively listening. Become active in learning the material of the course; write it down! Also, you will need to purchase two “blue books” for your in-class writing exercises (these are sold at Marwil and the campus bookstore; they are little stapled packets of lined paper with a pale blue cover. They are very cheap).

 

Policies:

Attendance; Pariticpation

You are expected to attend this class, of course. Class attendance does figure into the calculation of your grade. After missing class three times, with no pre-approval from me, further absences will begin to seriously affect your grade (unless your absences are due to a medical emergency or another kind of serious crisis). If you do miss class more than three times without documented reasons for your absences, you will be required to meet with me to discuss whether you will continue in the course. Please come to me if you know you will be missing class and we will work on arranging for any missed work to be made up. Attending class is very important as it figures as 5% of your final grade. That 5% may sound like a marginal figure, however it could really help you in the end. You will not be considered “in attendance” in class if you leave in the middle. Also, it is unacceptable for students to leave class more than once per class session (unless there is a legitimate reason to do so). If you arrive more than five minutes late for class, you will be considered late (this equals half a point on your attendance grade). If you arrive more than twenty minutes late to class, you will be considered absent. Attendance is crucial to success in this course. I also expect each student to participate in our class discussions. You are required to have read each text by the day it is listed on the syllabus so that you are prepared to discuss it if I call on you. This participation in class will help to ensure that you receive 5 percentage points for the “participation” part of your grade. This 5% will also be affected by your work on in-class assignments and any impromptu work that I may assign in class.

 

Late Assignments

I expect assignments to be handed in on the day they are due, at

the beginning of our class time. If you are unable to do so for a legitimate reason, please come talk to me. If your paper is not collected with the rest of the papers in the class (at the beginning of our class session), your paper will be considered “late.” A late paper suffers the penalty of a one-grade-level deduction (for example, an “A” paper would become an “A-“ if it was turned in one day late; each day the grade drops one level lower). For certain assignments, I accept NO LATE PAPERS. These are noted on the course calendar.

 

Format of Papers

I expect all assignments that are to be handed in to be typed,

double-spaced, with one-inch margins. Further details of paper

formatting will be discussed in class, and we will adhere to the MLA guidelines. Generally however, I require that you use twelve-point or eleven-point font on all of your papers, and please use a font of a reasonable size (Times New Roman for example; if you use Courier New, like I have in this document, you must use ten-point font). Please do not enclose your papers in binders or folders. Also, it is not necessary to have a cover page. The above rules apply, again, to all handed-in work.

 

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is very, very serious. Plagiarism is the use of another person's ideas, words, theories, etc. without giving the proper annotation or acknowledgment. This means that if you include someone else's words or ideas in one of your papers, and do not adequately cite the reference (by using quotations marks, parenthetical reference, or in-sentence citation), you will be guilty of plagiarism. Plagiarized papers will receive an E and the student will receive an E for the course. The plagiarized paper will then be turned over to the English Department which will pursue further action in accordance with University guidelines. To avoid this awful fate, be sure to sufficiently quote and acknowledge the sources in your papers. The

Essentials of MLA Style, by Joseph Trimmer, or the MLA Handbook provide ample information on proper annotation. If you have any questions, just ask me.

 

Various

Please turn off pagers and cellular phones during class. If you

rely on your beeper or phone for significant reasons and must have it on during class, you must turn it to vibrate.

 

Please do not engage in classroom behavior that will detract from your ability, or another student’s ability, to learn in the course. Such behaviors include: eating smelly or noisy food, talking to your neighbor in class, sleeping, gasping or sneering at a classmate’s comments, or any other immature and academically insubordinate behavior. You are, after all, a college student by choice. Thus, adhere to the standards of academia – pay attention in class, respect your fellow students as you wish to be respected, perform your duties as a student by completing all assignments, and attend each day of class.

 

If you have a physical or mental impairment that may interfere with your ability to complete successfully the requirements for this course, please contact EAS in Room 583 of the SCB to discuss appropriate accommodations on a confidential basis. Telephone: 577-1851.

 

Goals of the Course

According to the “General Syllabus for Literature-and-Writing Courses” at WSU, some central aims of this course are: “to develop your skill in reading and understanding literary texts”; “to enhance your ability to compose and revise analytical, interpretive, and critical essays about literature”; and “to deepen your understanding of the nature and function of language, and to use that understanding to enhance your own writing.” We will indeed accomplish the above aims – and more.

 

I expect that all of you will come to this class with a working understanding of the requirements of college-level academic writing. You should all be comfortable writing a paper in which you cite and discuss outside sources, in which you pose a thesis of your own creation and support it throughout the essay, and in which you adhere to the tenets of MLA style in terms of both coherence and citation guidelines. If you do not think that you are prepared to demonstrate your proficiency in these areas, please do see me immediately.

 

This semester we will be reading a variety of texts, representing various literary genres. However, all of the texts will focus on a central concern: What does it mean to be a “native” of a place (and specifically, of this place, America)? Also, a question that is coexistent with the one above is, who do “we allow” to become a “native” of a place? You should think, first of all, about the status of Native Americans in contemporary American culture. Also, think of the ways in which Americans employ the powerful dynamic of “us versus them” -- socially, politically, and ideologically. The group termed “them” is not necessarily always Native peoples of the United States (although it has been in many historical moments), but “them” is often the newest immigrant group, the cultural “Other,” the socially deviant, and any other group that “we” consider representative of the socially marginal. Nativism can be both a fascination (or conflicted affinity) with all things associated with the “Native” (in the sense of a fascination with indigenous peoples), or it can be a term associated with American anxieties about who "the national people" want to include in the composite American national identity – this kind of nativism is marked by the xenophobia that often comes with it.

 

We will examine texts that consider Nativism in a variety of ways, speaking to it as an issue in both of the above senses (and in various combinations of the two). We will look at the history and politics associated with Nativism. Finally, we will interrogate the significance of the phenomena, on both literary and “popular-cultural” levels. At this point, the notion of Nativism may seem an abstract one. However, all of you have some experience with the term, and it is this experience that you will bring to our course. Each student will allow new channels of discourse to emerge and we will reach rewarding levels of discussion about the texts on the syllabus and the day-to-day issues related to them.

 

Grading:

Three two-page Protocol assignments 15% (5% each)

Four Quizzes 5%

Essay 1 (six pages) 15%

Essay 2 (six pages) 15%

In-Class 1 10%

In-Class 2 10%

Final Paper (ten pages) 20%

Participation 5%

Attendance 5%___________

Total 100%

 

Grading Scale:

A: 94% and up A-: 90%-93%

B+: 87%-89% B: 84%-86% B-: 80%-80%

C+: 77%-79% C: 74%-76% C-: 70%-73%

D+: 67%-69% D: 64%-66% D-: 60%-63%

E: Below 60%

 

[There will be the opportunity to earn two points of extra credit for participation or attendance at the Y|X Conference in March. I will give further details about this in class.]

 

COURSE CALENDAR:

 

WEEK ONE

Monday, January 7 Introduction to Nativisms

Review Syllabus; Introductory questionnaire; Hand out Wasserman

 

Wednesday, January 9 Discuss Wasserman handout on Nativism

Introduce Bartolomé de las Casas; Assign pages

WEEK TWO

Monday, January 14 de las Casas

 

Wednesday, January 16 de las Casas; Introduce The Mission

 

WEEK THREE

Monday, January 21 NO CLASSES – MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY

 

Wednesday, January 23 Watch The Mission

 

WEEK FOUR

Monday, January 28 Conclude The Mission

Discuss film and relate to de las Casas

Hand out Protocol 1 Assignment

 

Wednesday, January 30 Quiz 1

D.H. Lawrence essay on Fenimore Cooper (CP)

Hand out Essay 1 Assignment

 

WEEK FIVE

Monday, February 4 Protocol 1 Due

Watch Last of the Mohicans

 

Wednesday, February 6 Conclude Last of the Mohicans

Discuss Wasserman, “Cooper and the Image of America” (CP)

WEEK SIX

Monday, February 11 Essay 1 Due

Deerslayer through Chapter 6

 

Wednesday, February 13 Deerslayer, Chapters 7-10

 

WEEK SEVEN

Monday, February 18 Deerslayer, Chapters 11-17

 

Wednesday, February 20 Deerslayer, Chapters 18-22

 

WEEK EIGHT

Monday, February 25 Quiz 2

Deerslayer, Chapters 23-27

Hand out Protocol 2 Assignment

 

Wednesday, February 27 Deerslayer, Chapters 28-end

 

WEEK NINE

Monday, March 4 Protocol 2 Due

D.H. Lawrence, “The Woman Who Rode Away” (CP)

Review for In-Class 1

Hand out Essay 2 Assignment

 

Wednesday, March 6 IN-CLASS WRITING EXERCISE 1

 

WEEK TEN

Monday, March 11 SPRING BREAK!

 

Wednesday, March 13 SPRING BREAK!

 

WEEK ELEVEN

Monday, March 18 Quiz 3

Johnson, “A Red Girl’s Reasoning” (CP)

Zitkala-Sa, chapters to be assigned

 

Wednesday, March 20 Essay 2 Due

Zitkala-Sa, chapters to be assigned

DeCerteau, “The Politics of Silence . . .” (CP)

Dawes Act and bridge to political Nativism

 

WEEK TWELVE

Monday, March 25 Strangers in the Land, Chapters 1 and 2

 

 

Wednesday, March 27 Strangers in the Land, Chapters 3 and 5

Hand out Protocol 3 Assignment

 

Y‌X Conference this Friday! Attendees and Participants receive two points extra credit. If you are attending, be SURE to see me at the event.

 

WEEK THIRTEEN

Monday, April 1 Whitman Leaves of Grass excerpts (CP)

Hart Crane excerpts (CP)

 

Wednesday, April 3 Protocol 3 Due

Strangers in the Land, Chapters 8 and 9

 

WEEK FOURTEEN

Monday, April 8 Quiz 4

Strangers in the Land, Chapters 10 and 11

Strangers in the Land, concluding discussion

 

Wednesday, April 10 FINAL PAPER DUE

NO LATE PAPERS WILL BE ACCEPTED

Contemporary Nativism; internet articles (TBA)

Cofer, “American History” (CP)

WEEK FIFTEEN

Monday, April 15 History and Nativism, discuss

Native Americanism and Nativisms

Review for In-Class 2

Evaluations

 

Wednesday, April 17 IN-CLASS WRITING EXERCISE 2

Last day of class