Prof. Bruce Harvey

 

AML 5505: American Romanticism: In Search of Sublimity

Summer B 2003, Monday and Wednesday  6:25-9:05


Office: AC1 346, (305) 919-5254

Office Hours: M/W 5:00-6:15 and by appointment

Home phone: to be given in class

harveyb@fiu.edu

 

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ASSIGNMENTS & POLICIES

 

Class Participation: I will give mini-lectures to highlight important issues, but most of the class will be discussion oriented.  Your participation will be worth 20% of your final grade. Missing class, especially as a graduate student, is considered very poor form: don't do it.  If you miss two days, we will have a serious discussion.  If you miss three, you will not be able to pass the course.

 

Discussion Threads:  I will set up the discussion thread web-link (only the class can access it) the first week of class.  You may initiate topics ("threads") or respond to topics I or other students propose.  Now and again, I may post significant quotes from theorists or critics to stimulate discussion. You should submit and read postings routinely, but I don't want it to become only busy work for you.  You should more or less have a meaty paragraph/exchange for each of our major texts/authors.  I will monitor the dialogue periodically (and perhaps occasionally intervene)--but this is intended to be your forum, not mine.  Heated debate is fine; but remember that basic rules of etiquette apply--be polite and avoid vulgarities.  Respectable grammar, spelling, and sentence style are expected.  About midway through the semester, I'll give you feedback about whether your online discussion up to that point equals an "A," "B," and so forth.   And you can always ask me how you are doing.  If the online discussion creates awkwardness for you in any form, please talk to me and we'll work the problem out.  The online discussion equals 20% of your final grade.  For those of you who do not have easy access to the Internet at home, there are many facilities on campus, available virtually all the time (logging in for 20 minutes before or after class once or twice a week would likely satisfy this portion of the course requirements).

 

Paper:  You have one 15 page (or longer) paper to turn in, due in final form as an email attachment no later than August 9.  Because the summer term is so brief, it takes time to get/develop topics, and I want to give draft feedback, you should write on either Dickinson or Poe or The Last of the Mohicans (film or novel)--i.e., what we focus on the first two weeks of class. (If you have a good reason to write on a different author, come talk to me.)  I will be happy to consult with you  about your project, and, towards that end, I request the following:

 

--if you want to turn in anything early, of course do so.  If you are hoping that you might get a paper topic that potentially will lead to your thesis (if you are an MA student), I especially encourage to talk to me early in the term.

 

--by July 9, tell me via email what author/text you want to write on along with a general statement of potential topic interest.

 

--by July 14, email me about a possible focus on your selected text (I'll help you shape it, propose avenues of inquiry, suggest a few secondary sources, and so forth).  Note: the worse thing you can do is to go to the library, without topic or tentative thesis idea in hand, in the hopes of finding one.  If you read, brood, and reread, you will likely come up with a thesis that turns out to be original, even if you have not yet turned to other scholars to discover whether your ideas, in fact, are original or not.  Grappling with the text comes first; informing your argument with received wisdom comes second. 

 

--by July 23, submit an email draft version of your essay, worth 20% of your course grade.  This should be at least a 1/2  cooked paper, but absent full dialogue with/use of secondary materials and excluding some sections and/or details of analysis. (The pace is fast, I know!).  The final version will expand via engagement with criticism and via the fine-tuning/elaborations that you develop in the interim.  With the draft, please give me, as well, a tentative bibliography (5-8 entries will suffice) of secondary criticism or historical/cultural materials to be integrated into the final version.  My goal is for you to complete a confident "take" on a text, before you worry too much about how to include other critical voices.  The final version, worth 20% of your grade, will be assessed for improvement, stylistic polish, and overall scholarly cogency (note, however, that students who show earnest work on the first version and significantly improve in the final version typically get rewarded with the latter being the grade that mostly counts--it becomes worth 40% of the overall course grade).  I will give extensive feedback on the draft, but little on the final version.

 

--by August 9 submit an email copy of the final version of your essay.

  

Oral Report: These will be individual reports (I'll given an instruction handout down-the-road), on a variety of historical, biographical, cultural, literary, or theoretical issues related to our authors.  They are group reports only insofar as three or four will be delivered each night about a particular author.  The group will need to coordinate to make sure there is little overlap in subject matter, etc. The report will be worth 20% of your final grade.       

  

 

MISCELLANEOUS
 

There is no final exam.
 

I am always available to meet with you during office hours to talk more about the readings or other course matters.  We should chat very early in the semester if you feel new to the art of literary or cultural analysis and research.  For questions or to set up a conference outside of my regular office hours, you may also call me at my home number (before 10:00 PM), leave a message on my office phone, or email me.

A graduate-level seminar is not simply a more intense 4000-level undergraduate course.  I look upon you as a potential teacher or colleague-in-the-making and thus, although I'm still leading the class, democracy more or less rules.  This means that while typically I will have an agenda, I have no problem with the class veering off into other illuminating avenues.  I also expect more active and regular participation than in an undergraduate class.  Passivity on your part--waiting for me to guide you to important passages and points--is inappropriate.  A high degree of intellectual inquisitiveness and resourcefulness is assumed of all students in a graduate seminar.