English 10B - Spring, 2012

Literatures in English II: 1700-1900

Class Information

Instructor: Loar, Christopher
CRN: 72303
Time: TR 4:40-6:00
Location: 101 Olson

Description

English 10B is the second segment in the required three-part Literatures in English sequence. We will read prose, poetry, and drama produced and read between 1700 and 1900 in the English speaking world—primarily England, Ireland, and the United States. As in all 10-series courses, we will be working to prepare you for upper-division coursework. We will accomplish this by increasing your fluency with literary terminologies and methodologies and by familiarizing you with the social, intellectual, economic, and cultural networks from which these texts emerge. We will also be working to develop our skills as writers and conversationalists about literary topics; this course requires a great deal of reading, writing, and spoken communication.

Though no single theme would encompass all of the texts we will discuss, this course will take a special interest in the intertwined phenomena of migration and historical change—in narratives of motion and transformation and in images of stasis. I hope that this focus will allow us to ponder national and global literary histories not only from our own twenty-first century perspective but also from that of the authors of these texts.

Grading

(Tentative and subject to change)

Essay # 1 (3.5 pages): 15%
Preparatory work for second essay, including outline and short assignment: 5%
Essay # 2 (6-8 pages): 25%
Microseminars 15%
Final Exam: 20%
Online reading journal: 10%
Class Participation (including attendance, informal writing, and leadership in class discussions): 10%.

Texts

A Bold Stroke for a Wife, Centlivre
Robinson Crusoe, Defoe
Rasselas, Johnson
Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Franklin
History of Miss Mary Prince, Prince
She, Haggard