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Of Bodies, Texts, & Pleasures |
Week 1: 9 -11 Jan
Intro to course, texts, and
one another. Read The Pleasure of the Text, by Roland Barthes.
1-2 page typed response Due Thursday. Always be specific. Always quote from texts at least once.
The Continued Pleasure of the Text: Barthes and Dickinson. For Tuesday: Read Emily Dickinson,Open Me Carefully: "Introduction," and Section I. Tues: In-class response.If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.
These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way? --E. Dickinson to TW Higginson, 1870
Thursday: Read Ladelle McWhorter, "Views from the Site of Political Oppression, Or, How I Served as an Anchor Point for Power and Emerged as a Locus of Resistance." Bodies and Pleasures, 1-9.
For Thursday:Initial Proposal/Response Due: Write one-two pages explaining which text(s) you want to examine for your thesis. Please describe the text(s)—provide for each text the author’s name, date of publication, your sense of the literary period and nationality in which the text was written, and also describe the text in terms of genre, general plot/poetic content/subject matter. And most important: Why this text? What’s your history of reading this text?—when did you encounter it? Where? What was your initial reaction? Has your reaction changed over time? Why?) Is it a text of pleasure or a text of bliss to you? Or both? Or neither? Or . . .? Please quote from Barthes, Dickinson, or McWhorter in this piece.
http://cgi.student.nada.kth.se/cgi-bin/d95-aeh/get/foucault
1-2 page response due Tues.: incorporate McWhorter.
Online Resources and the Annotated Bibliography: 3 Online Resources, please read each of these: For Thursday: write an evaluation of the third site, by J. Towler, please.
By your conference time: Complete an EZRA, Ohiolink, and MLA search (and/or other on-line article databases). Bring evidence of your search: notes, etc. Ideally, also meet with a professor who is a specialist in the field you are looking at, and start working towards having some idea of which book you would like to review for the class.
Thursday, 1st: Read McWhorter,
9-33, Dickinson, selections. Continued Discussion of J. Towler’s Honour’s
Proposal (3rd website, above). For Thursday:Look
up one word that you believe will be important for your project
on the OED:
http://dictionary.oed.com/entrance.dtl
Write
a paragraph in which you explore the word, including at least
one quotation from the OED’s definition.
For Tuesday: A newly revised proposal (1-2 pages), with research questions, and first draft of your Annotated Bibliography. Shoot for ultimately using J. Towler as your model, but feel free to emulate the less formal but useful draft-model of "stubibsample." Your bibliography should contain at least 20 sources (NB: each essay that you use from a collection of essays should be cited and annotated separately!) and should have substantial annotations for a minimum 7-10 of them; write some comment about all of them, even if it is simply that you haven’t read it, gotten hold of it. Not a bad idea to include a statement like "Requested from Ohiolink on 6 Feb"
Graff, Gerald. "Scholars and Sound Bites: The Myth of Academic Difficulty." PMLA 115 (2000): 1041-52. (Handout) Please also examine all the websites listed on the first page of your syllabus. Response Due Tues.
For Thursday: read McWhorter, "Disorientation: Or, Beyond Sex-Desire," 101-35
Group or Individual Conferences Thursday: No Class
Let’s Go to the Wexner Center to see the Performance: Tue-Sun, Mar 27-Apr 1?
