PRESENTATIONS FOR E212 BRITISH LITERATURE SINCE 1760
CSU FULLERTON, SPRING 2011
EMAIL | SYLLABUS | POLICIES | QUESTIONS | PRESENTATIONS | JOURNALS | PAPER | EXAM
Most sessions will feature one or more student presentations that will give you a chance to hear different perspectives on the course readings, and I will also post the written versions students send me to a special blog so those interested can review them. Your presentations will also help me determine the direction my own comments, encouraging me to respond to your ideas rather than lecture continuously. See the syllabus for the presentation requirement’s value as a percentage of the course grade.
1. On the first day of class, look over the authors or texts on our syllabus and then, next to your name on the roll sheet I will pass around, suggest several authors or texts that you might like to present on. I’ll try to give you the choices you have made, to the extent that the schedule permits. Depending on class size, each student will give two or three presentations. Be aware that if you choose only very popular authors or texts (Jane Austen, Hamlet, etc.), I may need to schedule you for something different.
2. Within a few days, check the schedule on this page to see when and on which authors and questions you are slated to present. I will complete the schedule by choosing specific question/s to be addressed from among the full sets.
3. As early as you can before the in-class presentation, email me a written draft of the remarks you plan to make about the author/question you’ve been assigned. This draft should be proofread and spell-checked; it should also be substantive and refer to the actual language of the text being discussed, with page numbers, act/scene/line, or verse lines provided as appropriate. Include a copy of the question above your response. For any subsequent presentations, email me a draft at least five days in advance and I will soon email you comments either suggesting how the presentation might be improved or affirming that what you’ve written sounds fine. If, however, my return comments on the draft you sent me (whether intended as rough or final) suggested revisions, email me a final version at least one day before you present in class, again making sure to include a copy of the question at the beginning of your draft.
Insightful responses are better than “answers”. I encourage you in advance to develop your remarks so that they go beyond the question at its simplest. The office hour (or email consultation for second and subsequent presentations, if any) and “advance final draft” requirement is 30% of your grade for the presentation.
4. On the scheduled day and when we reach the appropriate point in our discussion, I will ask you to come to the front of the class and give the most up-to-date version of your presentation. Your presentation should take about five minutes. Some students prefer to read their comments lecture-style, while others prefer to depart from the full written version and speak from a separate outline. If you read from prepared remarks, how long should they be? I’ll use my own pace as an example: I speak at an average rate of 130 words per minute when I read conference papers. So a 5-minute presentation would run 650 words. Tips: Read the question first, address the entire class, and remind us of page numbers when you quote. Speak firmly and slowly enough so that everyone can follow. It’s best to avoid bringing technology such as Powerpoint into play given the presentations’ brevity. But I am open to creative ideas. I will not grade your in-class performance closely — it’s easy to do well if you prepare in advance and make a good effort, and your colleagues will be supportive. Completing the in-class component is 70% of the grade for each presentation.
5. Please check the schedule below on this page to verify the current status of your in-class presentation and blog entry. Within a few days after you’ve completed both, next to your name should appear the notation (Presented/Posted to Blog). If you see other notations as indicated below in “How I Evaluate Presentations,” please contact me by email.
HOW I EVALUATE PRESENTATIONS
I will judge presentations on the following grounds: did the student 1) meet with me or email me a timely advance final draft so that I can offer advice and determine the course of my own comments? and 2) seem to have put genuine effort into preparing rather than treating the presentation as a barren “answer” to a question set in stone? Students who do those two things will receive an “A” for the presentations requirement. I am not going to grade presentations so much on in-class factors as on how well students prepare and (again, if necessary) follow up. The following notations will help you keep track:
(Presentation completed)
(Presented in Class but no written version)
(Missed Presentation)
(Rescheduled Presentation)
MISSED PRESENTATIONS / RESCHEDULING PRESENTATIONS
If you find that you will be unable to make it to class for one of your scheduled presentations, please let me know in advance if possible. (I’ll make my cell phone number available when the semester begins, though I won’t post it on the Internet.) So long as you have provided me with a timely advance draft of your remarks (I usually print them out and bring them to class), I will read the presentation for you and give you partial credit for the “in-class” portion of the presentation grade. If you haven’t provided me with a final advance draft, I will not read it in class. In such cases, rescheduling on a new author or text may be possible at my discretion and if the schedule allows.
PRESENTATION / SESSION SCHEDULE
Below is a list containing four things for each session: the authors/texts we will discuss, the number of each study question I’ve chosen for discussion, the presenters’ names, and the color-coded status of the presentation. The author hyperlinks below will take you to the relevant study questions pages — they are the same pages from which you choose questions for your journal sets. *Please note that I may specify two questions rather than one (as in “12-13 combined”) if I find that two short questions go together well.
PRESENTATION SCHEDULE
WEEK 1
01/25. Tu. Course Introduction.
01/27. Th. William Blake. Songs of Innocence and of Experience (81-97); The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plates 2-5 (111-14).
Blake. Presenter’s choice. STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
WEEK 2
02/01. Tu. William Wordsworth. “Preface to Lyrical Ballads“ (262-74); “We Are Seven” (248-49); “Expostulation and Reply” (250-51); “The Tables Turned” (251-52).
02/03. Th. William and Dorothy Wordsworth. William’s “Tintern Abbey” (258-62); “Three years she grew” (275-76); “I wandered lonely as a cloud” (305-06); “The Solitary Reaper” (314-15). Dorothy’s Alfoxden and Grasmere Journals (389-402).
Wordsworth, W. Question = Presenter’s Choice on “Tintern Abbey.” STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
WEEK 3
02/08. Tu. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. “The Eolian Harp” (426-28); “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (430-48); “Kubla Khan” (446-48); “Frost at Midnight” (464-66); “Dejection: an Ode” (466-69).
Coleridge. Presenter’s choice on “… Ancient Mariner.” STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
Coleridge. Presenter’s choice on “Dejection: an Ode.” STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
02/10. Th. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Biographia Literaria (474-85); Lectures on Shakespeare (485-88); The Statesman’s Manual (488-91).
Coleridge. Presenter’s choice on Biographia. STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
WEEK 4
02/15. Tu. Percy Bysshe Shelley. Defense of Poetry (837-50); “Mutability” (744); “To Wordsworth” (744-45); “Mont Blanc” (762-66).
Shelley. Presenter’s choice on “Defense of Poetry.” STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
02/17. Th. Percy Bysshe Shelley. “Ozymandias” (768); “Ode to the West Wind” (772-75); “To a Sky-Lark” (817-19).
Shelley. Presenter’s choice on any of this session’s poems. STUDENT NAME. (Rescheduled Presentation)
JOURNAL SET 1 DUE BY EMAIL SUNDAY 02/20; SEE INSTRUCTIONS. (Reminder: this set includes Blake through Shelley. Please expect an email from me verifying receipt of this and subsequent journal sets.)
WEEK 5
02/22. Tu. John Keats. “Ode to a Nightingale” (903-05); “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (905-06); “Ode on Melancholy” (907-08), “To Autumn” (925-26); Letters (940-955).
Keats. Presenter’s choice on “… Nightingale.” STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
Keats. Presenter’s choice on “Grecian Urn.” STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
02/24. Th. Charles Lamb. “Christ’s Hospital Five-and-Thirty Years Ago (496-505). William Hazlitt. “On Gusto” (538-41). Thomas De Quincey. “On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth (569-72).
Hazlitt. Presenter’s choice on “On Gusto.” STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
WEEK 6
03/01. Tu. Jane Austen. Persuasion. (Film)
03/03. Th. Jane Austen. Persuasion. (Film) and Persuasion, Vol. 1. (Separate text.)
Austen. Questions 1-2. STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
Austen. Question 16. STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
WEEK 7
03/08. Tu. Jane Austen. Persuasion, Vols. 1-2. (Separate text.)
Austen. Question 24. STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
Austen. Question 30. STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
Austen. Question 31. STUDENT NAME. (Rescheduled Presentation)
03/10. Th. Alfred Tennyson. “The Lady of Shalott” (1114-18); “The Lotos-Eaters” (1119-23); “Ulysses” (1123-25); from In Memoriam A.H.H.: Prologue (1138-39), 1-5 (1140-42), 54-56 (1157-59).
Tennyson. Presenter’s choice on “Shalott.” STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
Tennyson. Presenter’s choice on “Lotos-Eaters.” STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
WEEK 8
03/15. Tu. Thomas Carlyle. Sartor Resartus (1005-1024).
Carlyle. Presenter’s choice. STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
03/17. Th. John Stuart Mill. On Liberty (1050-61); Autobiography (1070-77); The Subjection of Women (1061-70).
Mill. Presenter’s choice. STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
JOURNAL SET 2 DUE BY EMAIL SUNDAY 03/20; SEE INSTRUCTIONS. (Reminder: this set includes Keats through Mill.)
WEEK 9
03/22. Tu. John Ruskin. Modern Painters (1320-24) and The Stones of Venice (1324-34).
Ruskin. Presenter’s choice. STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
03/24. Th. Matthew Arnold. “The Buried Life” (1356-58); “Dover Beach” (1368-69); “Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse” (1369-74); “Preface to Poems“ (1374-84).
Arnold. Presenter’s choice on any poem. STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
Arnold. Presenter’s choice on “Preface.” STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
WEEK 10
03/29. Tu. Spring Recess. No classes all week.
03/31. Th. Spring Recess. No classes all week.
WEEK 11
04/05. Tu. Robert Browning and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Browning’s “The Bishop Orders His Tomb. . .” (1259-62). Hopkins’ “God’s Grandeur” (1516); “As Kingfishers Catch Fire” (1517); “The Windhover” (1518); “Pied Beauty” (1518); “Binsey Poplars” (1519); “Duns Scotus’s Oxford” (1520); “Felix Randal” (1520-21); “I wake and feel . . .” (1522-23); “No worst, there is none” (1522); “That Nature Is a Heraclitean Fire . . .” (1523); from Journal (1524-26).
Browning. Presenter’s choice. STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
Hopkins. Questions 10-11. STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
Hopkins. Questions 17-18. STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
04/07. Th. Dante Gabriel and Christina Rossetti. Dante Gabriel’s “The Blessed Damozel” (1443-47). Christina’s “Song — She sat and sang alway” (1460-61); “Song — When I am dead . . .” (1461); “In an Artist’s Studio” (1463); “An Apple-Gathering” (1464); “Winter My Secret” (1464-65); “No Thank You, John” (1478).
Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Presenter’s choice. STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
Christina Rossetti. Presenter’s choice. STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
WEEK 12
04/12. Tu. Oscar Wilde. The Importance of Being Earnest (Film + text Act 1. 1698-1740).
Wilde. Question 1. STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
04/14. Th. Oscar Wilde. The Importance of Being Earnest (Film + text Acts 2-3. 1698-1740).
Wilde. Question 6. STUDENT NAME. (Rescheduled Presentation)
Wilde. Questions 8-9. STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
JOURNAL SET 3 DUE BY EMAIL SUNDAY 04/17; SEE INSTRUCTIONS. (Reminder: this set includes Ruskin through Wilde.)
WEEK 13
04/19. Tu. WWI Writing. Voices of World War I Section — Sassoon (1960-64); Gurney (1965-66); Rosenberg (1966-70); Owen (1971-80); Cannan (1981-84); Graves (1984-87).
WWI. Presenter’s choice. STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
04/21. Th. W. B. Yeats. “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” (2025); “The Second Coming” (2036-37); “Leda and the Swan” (2039); “Sailing to Byzantium” (2040); “Among School Children” (2041-42); “Byzantium” (2044-45); “Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop” (2045-46); “Under Ben Bulben” (2047-50); “The Circus Animals’ Desertion” (2051-52).
Yeats. Presenter’s choice on “Sailing to Byzantium.” STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
Yeats. Presenter’s choice on “Among School Children.” STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
WEEK 14
04/26. Tu. James Joyce. “The Dead” (Film).
04/28. Th. James Joyce. “The Dead” (2172-99).
Joyce. Question 2. STUDENT NAME. (Missed Presentation)
Joyce. Question 8. STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
Joyce. Question 9. STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
Joyce. Question 14. STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
05/03. Tu. T. S. Eliot. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (2289-93); “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (2319-25).
Eliot. Presenter’s choice on “Prufrock.” STUDENT NAME. (Missed Presentation)
Eliot. Presenter’s choice on “Tradition….” STUDENT NAME. (Missed Presentation)
05/05. Th. Jean Rhys. “The Day They Burned the Books” (2356-61); “Let Them Call It Jazz” (2361-72). W.H. Auden. “In Praise of Limestone” (2435-36); “The Shield of Achilles” (2437-38); “Poetry as Memorable Speech” (2438-41).
Rhys. Presenter’s choice. STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
Auden. Presenter’s choice. STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
WEEK 16
05/10. Tu. Tom Stoppard. Arcadia (Act 1, 2752-89).
Stoppard. Question 4. STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
Stoppard. Question 7. STUDENT NAME. (Missed Presentation)
05/12. Th. Tom Stoppard. Arcadia (Act 2, 2789-2820).
Stoppard. Question 13. STUDENT NAME. (Presentation completed.)
JOURNAL SET 4 DUE BY EMAIL EXAM DAY; SEE INSTRUCTIONS. (Reminder: this set includes WWI Voices through Stoppard.)
FINALS WEEK
Final Exam Date Thursday May 19, 12:00-1:50. Due by email by Sunday May 22: Term Paper. (I must turn in grades by Friday May 27, 2011.)