Day

Reading

Goings On

Aug 31 (Th)
 

intro’s

Sept 3 (M)

George Orwell, “Why I Write”
Encyclopedia Britannica “George Orwell”

agree or disagree with Orwell

Sept 5 (W)

Robert Lennon, Happyland, part one
 

Sept 7 (F)

Happyland, part two
Wikipedia “Satire” 

discuss satire

Sept 11 (T)

Happyland, part three
Mel Gussow, “Wilsonian Vision of Ibsen”
Adrienne Rich, “When We Dead Awaken” 
 

discuss the role of imagination in real life

Sept 13 (Th)

Happyland, part four
Nancy Geyer, “There Is No Happyland”

Sept 17 (M)

Marilynne Robinson, “Facing Reality”
Barry Glassner, “Introduction,” The Culture of Fear

recommended: the rest of The Culture of Fear
 

fiction and truth

Sept 19 (W)

Glassner, “Black Men” from Culture of Fear
Jeff Chang, “Prelude” to Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop

discuss “My Generation” essay

Sept 21 (F)

Due: “My Generation” Essay (1-2 pgs)

Sept. 25 (T)

Jonathan Swift, “Modest Proposal”
South Park, “American History”
Wikipedia, Reality TV and its parodies
 

parody and truth

Sept. 26 (W)

HERITAGE DAY
Marilynne Robinson speaking

Sept. 28 (F)

Due: Critical Essay (2-3 pgs)
 

Day

Reading

Goings On

Sept 28 (F)

Ryunosuke Akutagawa, “In a Grove” and
      “Rashomon”
Herman Melville, “Bartleby” (GASS)*
Wikipedia “Point of View (literature)” 

* GASS = Great American Short Stories
 

discuss point of view
discuss “Re-Vision” assignment 

Oct 2 (T)

Akira Kurosawa, Rashomon (movie)
Wikipedia “Point of View Shot”

technology and “point of view”

Oct 4 (Th)

Due: Re-Vision (3-4 pages)
 

Oct 8 (M)

Aesop, “The Ant and the Grasshopper” and
      “The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing”
Harriet Beecher Stowe, “The Freeman’s Dream: a
      Parable”
Washington Irving, “Traits of Indian Character”
     and “Philip of Pokonoket”
Richard Wright, “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow”
 

discuss genre: fable,  parable, sketch, (metaphor, allegory)

Oct 10 (W)

Edgar Allen Poe, “The Tell-Tale Heart” (GASS)
Charles Chesnuut, “The Goophered Grapevine”
      (GASS) 
 

more genre: the tale and the short story

Oct 11-12
 

FREE

DAYS

Oct 16 (T)

Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Minister’s Black Veil”
Sherwood Anderson, “The Egg” (GASS) 

meta-allegory

Oct 18 (Th)

Mary Wilkins Freeman, “A New England Nun” (GASS)
Kate Chopin, “A Pair of Silk Stockings” (GASS)
Kenneth Burke and/or Hayden White on “The Four Master Tropes”
 

stories as diagnostic anatomies – metonymy, synecdoche, irony, and symptom

Oct 22 (M)

Samuel Johnson, “The New Realistic Novel”and
      “Literary Imitation”
Mark Twain "How to Tell a Story" and
      “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences”

recommended: Last of the Mohicans (movie)
 

lecture on the history of fiction and on romanticism, realism, naturalism, modernism, and postmodernism

Oct 24 (W)

Introduction to Horatio Alger, Jr.
Twain, “Good Little Boy” and “Bad Little Boy”

realism through parody

Oct 26 (F)

free study day :-)

Oct 30 (T)

Bierce, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (GASS)
Jack London, “To Build a Fire” (GASS)
Henry James, “The Real Thing” (GASS)

recommended: Twain “Private History…” (GASS)
 

irony and the sense of the real

Nov 1 (Th)

Bret Harte “The Luck of Roaring Camp” (GASS)Ernest Hemmingway “The Killers” (GASS) 

the sentiment of the real

Nov 5 (M)

Gertrude Stein, The World Is Round  
(within Stein's Writings, on reserve in both CSB and SJU libraries)
 

modernism  

Nov 7 (W)

Ursula Le Guin “Texts”, “She Unnames Them” and
     “Schrodinger’s Cat”
Sandra Cisneros, "Barbie-Q" and "Mericans"
 

postmodernism

Nov 9 (F)

review day
 

Nov. 13 (T)

Mid-Term Exam

Day

Readings

Going's On

Nov 15 (Th)

Edger Allen Poe, “The Purloined Letter”
G. K. Chesterton, “The Wrong Shape”

the detective story and the reading of signs

Nov 19 (M)

Charlotte Perkins Gilman “The Yellow Wallpaper” (GASS) and “Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper”

signs and the social symptom

Nov 21-23
 

THANKS-

GIVING

Nov 26 (M)

The Big Sleep (movie)
Wikipedia “noir fiction” and “film noir”
from Pauline Kael’s Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
 

noir

Nov 28 (W)

Walter Mosley, Devil in a Blue Dress
Raymond Chandler, “The Simple Art of Murder”

Nov 30 (F) 

Walter Mosley, Devil in a Blue Dress
 

Dec 4 (T)

Walter Mosley, Devil in a Blue Dress
 

noir and the social symptom

Dec 6 (Th) 

F. Scott Fitzgerald “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” (GASS)
 

diagnosing society

Dec 10 (M)

Willa Cather, “Paul’s Case” (GASS)

recommended: Hawthorne, "Young Goodman Brown" (GASS)
 

reading signs or imagining significance
 

Dec 12 (W)

Sarah Orne Jewett “A White Heron” (GASS)
Doreen Baingana “Tropical Fish”

re-imagining the self

Dec 14 (F)
 

Workshop Final Essay