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