Professor Judith Goleman                                                             

 Email:Judith.Goleman@umb.edu

Phone/voicemail: 617-287-6707

Office Hours: TTH 11:00-12:00 + app’t.             

Office #: Wheatley, 6th floor, room 14

Class Website: www.litandwriting.umb.edu

Teaching Apprentice: Elizabeth Sampson

Email: Elizabeth.Sampson002@umb.edu

Required text: Living Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. John Brereton. Pearson Longman 2008.

Supplies: Dedicated notebook or binder that allows for note-keeping and storage of all course work.

Course Introduction to English 200: Understanding Literature

              Understanding comes to fruition only in the response. (Mikhail Bakhtin)

Welcome to Understanding Literature, a course that introduces students to the study of fiction, drama and poetry at the college level. As the quotation above suggests, understanding can grow and mature only through active dialogue between readers and texts.  As the words on a page speak to you, you can learn to speak back in ways that allow for rich insights to develop-- insights that challenge or even displace those more commonplace notions or messages that may come to mind after reading a work but which ultimately serve only to reduce it to the lowest common denominator.

Just as the philosophy of this course is based on the importance of response, so too is the structure. Your daily reading assignments will always be accompanied by some kind of written response which will be the basis of class discussion and will propel your understanding forward. Through a process of reading/writing/discussing/re-reading/re-writing your interpretive capacities will grow and you will find yourself able to compose persuasive college-level essays about literature that mean something to you personally and that you are proud to hand in.

Course Description

The course is broadly divided into the three major literary genres: fiction, drama and poetry. We’ll study the defining features of these genres and practice applying them to selected works that we’ve chosen for their power, beauty and challenge to conventional thinking. Each unit will culminate in graded projects that invite you to consolidate and advance your understanding of a genre. We hope you will not only love the fiction, drama and poetry you read in the course but love as well what these literary works enable you to become through the process of grappling with them.

Toward these goals, each unit will involve playing around with texts— transforming a work that was written in one genre into another genre.  What happens, for instance, when you turn a short story into a news report or when you turn a play into a short story or a poem? What impact does this have on a work’s meaning or force? What is the relationship between genre and meaning? These are questions you’ll have a chance to think about in depth.  Doing so, you’ll begin to feel like more of an insider when it comes to the making of literature, seeing things from an author’s point of view, and the making of meaning about literature (a critic’s point of view).

The process we’re describing does not involve back-breaking work, but it does involve persistence and time. You should expect to spend between two and three hours preparing for each 75 minute class. We explain the relationship between persistence and grading in the next section.

Grading

Your daily assignments will be numbered; they should be done in sequence and none should be skipped. Most assignments will be assessed as check-plus, check or check-minus. The assignments that are given letter grades will be clearly announced. Whether letter-graded or checked, every assignment counts toward your final grade.

To qualify for an A or B in the course, you must have successfully completed no less than 80% of all the work, including both graded papers and checked assignments. Students who do not successfully complete at least 60% of the course will not pass, regardless of their grades. (A check-minus does not count as successful completion.) Class participation will count as one paper grade. You are expected to come to class with all necessary materials, ready to contribute to class work and discussion. If you are very shy and have difficulty talking in class, we can discuss ways to compensate. Everyone should aim for an A in class participation; it only means doing your fair share to keep the course running. In the name of active and engaged education, we have composed the following list of requirements and procedures.

Course Requirements and Procedures

1. You must come to class regularly and on time with your book.  Any student with 4 or more absences should not expect to pass the course.  If you develop a chronic pattern of lateness, we reserve the right to convert tardies to absences (3:1) and even to deny entry to class.

2. All assignments must be handed in on time. We will accept 1 late paper, no questions asked. A second late paper will lower your final grade by half a mark; a third late paper by a whole mark. No more than 3 late assignments will be accepted.

3. No assignment will be accepted more than a week late--except for emergencies where we can make exceptions.

4. Assignments handed in on time can be revised within 10 days for a new grade. 

5. If you miss class, get the assignment from the course website.

6. Keep all your written assignments in a folder; save your drafts.

7. All graded papers should be typed and proofread.  You can correct errors on a final draft with a pen.

8. If you have a disability and feel you will need accommodations in order to complete course requirements, please contact the Ross Center for Disability Services at 617-287-7430.

9. Plagiarism will result, minimally, in course failure as described in the English Department Academic Honesty Statement.

Finally, we are looking forward to working with you. Whether in conference, in class, or in the margins of your papers, we will try to be both supportive and challenging.  We are interested in helping you to say what you want to say about the literature we read within the context of the assignments and with great respect for your point of view. We invite you to come and see us, to talk over any matter, large or small. We can both be reached by email as well.

Syllabus