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Prof. Bruce Harvey

AML 5505 Modern Southern Fiction

Summer A 2005, Mondays & Wednesdays 6:25-9:05, Biscayne Bay Campus

Biscayne Bay Office and Hours: AC1 346, 305-919-5254, 5:00-6:15

Home phone: 954-920-8938

A region of incredible rural beauty and rich folk traditions, and yet also a land bearing the legacy of slavery and vast class inequalities--the South has inspired some of the most morally profound and artistically compelling writing of the twentieth-century. Our authors use their Southern experiences and the myths of the South and its history to offer complex insights about racial tensions, the relations between the sexes, family/dynastic life, and the rituals of growing up. We will explore their unique visions as well as what ties them together as Southerners, and we will consider whether a Southern "identity" still today exists, given the ubiquity of the American way of highways and malls, globalization and faux localism, and the migratory patterns and mobility of everyone.

I make no pretense of being an authority on Southern literature, and so especially welcome your input and insights. Throughout the course, although the focus is on fiction, we should all encourage each other to think broadly about aesthetic and cultural issues. We are studying the literature and culture of a region, but ultimately let's use this course as an occasion for thinking about the relation between geographical locale and text, geography and memory, earthy particularity and the abstractions of rhetoric.

More by accident than by intent: many of our readings in this course emphasize family in the context of a larger sociological/genealogical landscape (the declension of Southern history from mythological blue-blood family to something entangled, crass, or even grotesque). The family--its pleasures and horrors--in America is conceived as a tidy bourgeois unit/enclave and yet in reality comes with a lot of psycho-genealogical baggage. Southern writers especially express the tension between the myth-of-the-whole-family--or the aristocratic family--and its fragmentation/tensions.

I will give occasional lectures to fill in historical or cultural context, but the bulk of class time will be devoted to discussion. Besides introducing you to a fascinating area of study, a major goal of this course is to improve your analytical abilities--specifically, your ability to see how texts work rhetorically, aesthetically, and culturally. Another major goal is to develop your skill and pleasure in communicating ideas, both in class and on paper.

So that I know you've read this syllabus in its entirety, please email me saying "Read it." That way, I will also get your current email address.

TEXTS

--William Faulkner: Go Down, Moses

--Robert Penn Warren: All the King's Men

--Carson McCullers: Ballad of the Sad Cafe
--Flannery O'Connor: Three By Flannery O'Connor

--William Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury (you must buy the Norton Critical edition)
--Ernest Gaines: A Lesson Before Dying
--Lewis Nordon: Wolf Whistle

SHORT STORY HANDOUTS

--Pancake: "Trilobites"

--Welty: "The Wide Net"

--Tyler: "The Geologist's Maid"

FILMS LIKELY TO BE SEEN ENTIRE OR IN PART:

--Old South/Reconstruction South: "Birth of a Nation"
--Political South: "All the King’s Men"
--Grotesque/Love/Bible Belt: "Ballad of the Sad Café," "The Apostle," or "WiseBlood"
--Dynastic/Genteel South: "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof"

--Black Issues: "To Kill a Mockingbird" or "Rosewood"
--Grit Lit/Appalachia Documentary/Country Music: "Southern Comfort," "Dancing Outlaw," or "Coal Miner's Daughter"

GRADE PERCENTS & LINKS TO ESSAY ASSIGNMENT GUIDELINES

25% = In-class participation

25% = Discussion board participation

50% = Essay (or alternative project) final version

PAPER GUIDELINES NOW AVAILABLE

ASSIGNMENTS & POLICIES

Class Participation: Missing class, especially as a graduate student, is considered very poor form: don't do it. If you miss more than two days, 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. You may initiate topics/threads or respond to topics I or other students propose. You should submit and read postings routinely, but I don't want this to become just busy work for you. Think of it as a chance to exchange ideas about our readings informally. And, as with any dialogue or class discussion, sometimes you will have a lot to say (a nice meaty paragraph) and sometimes you won't have much to say at all. Sometimes you will engage the entire class; other times you and another student will have a sidebar exchange. Checking and submitting postings twice a week should suffice. Please try, once a main topic has been initiated, to keep responses subordinate to it; otherwise, the mechanism gets unruly to navigate. Also, try to keep current. If you respond to a topic that is two weeks old, it will be buried in the thread trail. Heated debate is fine; but 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.

At the end of the semester, cut-and-paste/print out all of your significant contributions, and submit them to me in sequence. In effect, such will be a journal of your interactions with the readings/films.

Instructions for logging on to the discussion site:

1. Click on the "Discussion Site" link at the top of this syllabus (www.bruceharvey.pageout.net), and click on our class/your group. If the class is large, I'll divide the discussion site into two sections.

2. Click on "Student Registration" and follow the directions, using the class password at the end of the registration fields (not to be confused with your personal password that you will choose in a moment). The class password is ___________. If you do not enter a unique user ID and personal password, you will have to enter both items again along with the class password. The class password may not be needed.

3. Write down your user ID and personal password here (or somewhere): ______________ ____________.

4. Click on "Discussion Area".

5. Click on "Enter Discussion Area".

6. Login. Cookies must be enabled in your browser.

7. Leave a posting.

8. When you are at home doing this, you can create a favorite link to the actual discussion page. All you will need to do, then, is to enter the your login user ID and password.

Traditional Analytical-Research Paper: You can write on any of the texts we are reading, and you can--if you have an interest and experience--write on a film we will be watching. I assign a grade to the draft, which is less a mark of the "quality" of your draft than of how much remains to be done to produce a successful essay. As early as possible--in the context of the compressed summer semester, the second class!-- tell me what you are interested in, so I can help guide you. The essay should be about fifteen pages long or longer. It must incorporate a decent amount of secondary research: historical-cultural, biographical, and/or critical. Longer essay guidelines and tips and citation method/bibliographic format will be given down-the-road.

I do not customarily give paper topics to grad. students, but as you must get started on your papers long before you've read the bulk of this semester's works, here are some open-ended possibilities:

--a number of our writers fixate on earthiness (Pancake in "Trilobites," Faulkner differently in "The Bear"), but language/earth are disparate ... what does it mean to rhetorically express "the woods"?

--figure out Quentin's problem in The Sound and the Fury, or if you love Faulkner, figure out what it means for The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom! to be linked via Quentin.

--explore (metaphysically, narratologically, psychologically) the abrupt shocks of revelation in several O'Connor stories.

Theoretical Alternative: Buy an introductory literary theory book (I will consult with you), read it in its entirety, and then submit two assignments: a 7-10 page review of how several theories might be applied to one of our texts; and then a 3-5 page application of a particular theory to an issue or aspect of the text or film previously written upon. For those who have a particular interest in film this assignment can be modified so that you use film theory.

Journal Alternative: Everyone must participate in the online discussion, but a practical option--given the difficulty of getting a topic and researching it in the rush of the summer--is for you to convert your spontaneous musings into more formal journal entries. That is, embellish, reconsider, supplement, and rewrite your most significant online contributions into a sequence of refined analytical reflections. You should comment, in a significant way, on all of our major readings, for a total of about 15 pages. You must diligently and amply revise what you otherwise wrote for the regular online contributions, as the formal journal and online journal equal two separate grades.

June 3: Email me a 1/2 page statement of your essay topic (or desire to do the theory or journal alternative). You should send me a topic the second week of class if possible.
June 13: Email me a draft of your essay (or 7-10 page theory assignment).
June 25: Email me a final version of your essay (or 3-5 page theory assignment or journal alternative).

Miscellaneous:

There is no final exam, but our last class will be during exam week.

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 also want and encourage the class to veer off into other illuminating avenues. I expect more active and regular participation than in an undergraduate class. Passivity on your part--always 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.

SYLLABUS

Underneath the class date, I will put links to websites relevant to the issues/texts of the week or to my lecture/review notes or to ProjectMuse/JSTOR articles (these are articles in scholarly journals, available online through FIU's library). The sites and articles sometimes will be directly related to our readings, and sometimes less so. You do not need to print them out.

In the syllabus listings per se (right main column) I will post miscellaneous updates in red.

Class 1: May 9	PAST, PASTORAL, & POLITICS: THE ISSUE OF AUTHENTICITY Course syllabus and policies Begin Film on Old South/Reconstruction South (Birth of a Nation)
Class 2: May 11 Birth of a Nation essay (also covers Gone with the Wind via confusing links at bottom) South Timeline Pancake Bio. Welty Bio.(just skim the 1st 1/4th or so)--slow loading site)	Pancake: "Trilobites" (handout) Welty: "The Wide Net" (handout) Finish Film on Old South/Reconstruction South (Birth of a Nation)
Class 3: May 16 Country music Country music Go Down, Moses summary and Faulkner bio. link within this site genealogy of characters in Go Down, Moses	Faulkner: Go Down, Moses ("Pantaloon in Black," "The Bear," & "Delta Autumn") Cash: "The Mind of the South" Click & Read W.J. Cash was a famous cultural historian of the South. The above e-text is an excerpt from one of his key chapters; the photos, though, are not from Cash's work. More recent historians have taken issue with Cash, but his basic debunking of the myth of Southern aristocracy still makes a good deal of sense. You will be frustrated by Faulkner's Faulknerese, especially in the notorious section IV of "The Bear." The genealogy to the left will help out some, but Faulkner always requires several readings just to figure out what is happening. I had my undergraduates read The Sound and Fury two or three times last semester; 70% of them on a survey said it was the best book in the class (alas the survey was not anonymous so I can't vouch for its accuracy!). Below is taken verbatim from SparksNotes online (which I hate because undergrads plagiarize from it). If you read this brief summary, part IV of 'The Bear" will become clearer: "Isaac returns to the farm near Jefferson, to the old McCaslin plantation. Time passes; eventually he is 21, and it is time for him to assume control of the plantation, which is his by inheritance. But he renounces it in favor of his cousin McCaslin Edmonds, who is practically his father. Isaac has a long argument with McCaslin in which he declares his belief that the land cannot be owned, that the curse of God's Earth is man's attempt to own the land, and that that curse has led to slavery and the destruction of the South. McCaslin tries to argue with him, but Isaac remembers looking through the old ledger books of Uncle Buck and Uncle Buddy and piecing together the story of the plantations slaves, and he refuses the inheritance. (One of Isaac's inferences is particularly appalling: Tomey, the slave who Carothers McCaslin took as a lover and the mother of Turl, may also have been Carothers McCaslin's daughter by another slave, Eunice. Eunice committed suicide shortly before Turl's birth, and from this and other factors, Isaac deducts that she must also have been Carothers McCaslin's lover.) So, Isaac refuses the inheritance, moves to town, and becomes a carpenter, eschewing material possessions. He marries a woman who urges him to take back the plantation, but he refuses even when she tries to convince him sexually. He administers the money left to the children of Tomey's Turl and Tennie, even traveling to Arkansas to give a thousand dollars to Sophonsiba, Lucas's sister, who moved their with a scholarly negro farmer who never seems to farm. He continues to hunt and to spend all the time he can in the woods." (from online SparksNotes guide on "The Bear") Dear Students: I'm very concerned that the monster size of the class will swamp some of you from participating. I want everybody to have airtime, as is key to the intellectual fun of a graduate seminar. So, if you hold up your hand to talk and I look the other way sometimes, don't think it's because I don't pedagogically love you; I just want to hear from all. To make things cozier, I might occasionally break the class into small groups with specific tasks, with me bouncing back and forth b/w groups. FYI (courtesy of Sharon) about "cracker culture": http://www.locustprojects.org/physical/current/
Class 4: May 18	Tate: "Ode to the Confederate Dead" (e-text to print out) Scholarly essay on "Ode" Click & Read Film: All the King's Men Photos from James Agee's Let us Now Praise Famous Men (to be seen in class) Follow-up#1: Here is a link that will briefly define J. Lacan's concept of the "Real"/language that I used in class. I find Lacan's idea useful to explain (if you don't want to go metaphysical) the eerie sublime delight that Ike has as the bear print (a form of writing, of inscription!) dissolves into the (sentient) wilderness/swamp-nature-as-mom. It is as if, before all the excessive talking/genealogy in part IV, Faulkner wants to reverse the separation from the Real. If you click on the "Home" link at the above site, you will go back to a very nice all-purpose theory site ... a sensible overview of what otherwise can be extremely obfuscating. Follow-up#2: Ralph Waldo Emerson: from "Nature" (1836)--"Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, -- no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, -- my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, -- all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God." Given that we have the nice DVD projector available, and the likely chaos of trying to split the class, we'll just see the films, all together, in the classroom.
Class 5: May 23 Warren Bio.	Warren: All the King's Men PAPER GUIDELINES NOW AVAILABLE
Class 6: May 25 Duvall Interview Review of Apostle	MISFITS & ISOLATED HEARTS: SOUTHERN GROTESQUES/SOUTHERN LOVE Note syllabus sequence adjustments. Film: The Apostle
May 31 No class	Memorial Day Holiday
Class 7: June 1 McCullers Bio	Note syllabus sequence adjustments. See links above left to The Apostle. McCullers: Ballad of the Sad Cafe Email me a 1/2 page statement of your essay topic no later than Friday June 3 of this week.
O'Connor Short Story Plots Class 8: June 6	O'Connor: from Three by Flannery O'Connor (Violent Bear it Away novel and selected stories: "Everything That Rises Must Converge," "Greenleaf," "A View of the Woods," "The Comforts of Home," "Revelation," and "Judgment Day") Also read parts I & II of the editor's intro. (Part III gets too detailed interpretively vis-a-vis the short stories) See the plot summaries to the left--review quickly before you come to class. Summary of course thus far: The course’s first arc/set of issues had to do with the way individual desire or one’s life story gets articulated in terms of the secretive or precious or under-threat-of-modernity/commercialism woods or agrarian South, or in terms of class issues (the raw authenticity of Stark speaking to the hick masses), or in terms of some turmoiled patrimony and genealogy. With the film "The Apostle" we turned to more intimate and eccentric or bizarre/extreme expressions of selfhood, very loosely in the category of Southern grotesquerie or Southern gothic. This arc includes McCullers and O'Connor. Faulkner (and Williams in "Cat") more intensely focus on the pathos of loss and what I've referred to (I'm borrowing) as the Southern Hamlet syndrome, but also are part of the Southern gothic/grotesque tradition, which some have argued emerges as an aesthetic revolt against plantation romance/genteel tradition, and others argue reflects cosmopolitan sensibilities--e.g., McCullers--writing about Southern regional isolation/benightedness. The latter point applies to some extent to writers addressing racial tensions (racist backward South, more enlightened progressive Northeast/European sensibility--primary example is Richard Wright in Black Boy). It's true no doubt of much good fiction/writing: but Southern literature seems especially to profit from authorial ambivalence towards a region, the mix of nostalgia and critique, a desire for reconciliation with the ghosts of the past and anger against them, etc. Message to all: lively discussion and a little bit of satiric give-and-take is OK, but please remember it's a big class and good ole' fashion civility should always ultimately prevail. If you've talked a lot, perhaps don't quite hold your hand up so fast in the next several classes so those with less caffeine-driven reflexes (moi--guilty as charged!) can squeeze in. Thanks. REMINDER: you should be cutting & pasting your more substantial online contributions, so that I can evaluate them at the end of the semester and so that you can revise them if you're taking the journal option. Film if time: Wiseblood
Class 9: June 8 Faulkner Bio. S & F Plot & Character Guide Thematic guide/review to Sound and Fury	SELF, GENDER, AND FAMILY: THE INK OF SOUTHERN MELANCHOLY Faulkner: The Sound and Fury Read this in its entirety rapidly including Faulkner's Appendix. If time allows we will in small groups discuss paper topics (groups being defined by the text you're working on). For those who are doing the theory option, I'd like to have some mini theory review session and review some points from my online lecture notes for my theory course ... but it likely will be tough to schedule time for that. Maybe over beer after class on Monday 13th?
Class 10: June 13	Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury: Parts 1 and 2 again *Maybe review theory over beer after class this night?* Email me a draft of your essay if writing the standard research paper. The due dates in the policy section above say the 7 pg theory assignment is due June 13 and the 5 pg part is due June 25th. That's mismatched with what I've said in class and below about the due date for the entire theory assignment being due June 20th. Follow what I've emphasized in class--the entire theory assignment is due on the 20th. If this doesn't work for some of you because you were going by the June 13th/June25th sequence, accommodations can be made.
Class 11: June 15	Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury: Parts 3 and 4 again and selected criticism from the Norton edition: --Woodward --King --Howe --Jehlen --Matthews --Bleikasten --Weinstein (For a total of about 70 pgs; in class, I will likely choose or ask groups to choose key passages from the essays, to launch discussion about S&F per se and the habits of contemporary scholarship/criticism.) ~~Film: to be decided (maybe Cat on a Hot Tin Roof)~~ Film: begin "Rosewood"
Class 12: June 20 No class	SOUTHERN BLACK MANHOOD & BLACK/WHITE RELATIONS SCHEDULE CHANGES: DUE BY JUNE 24: TURN IN (OR EMAIL ME) A COMPILATION OF YOUR SUBSTANTIAL ONLINE CONTRIBUTIONS. No class, but individual conferences as needed. I'll be in my office 4:00-8:00. We will need to discuss whether we want to hold the June 27th class--which is technically past the end of the semester; and where if we do (i.e., my house). It could be an optional meeting--really a party--to watch the film.
*June 22* Gaines	SCHEDULE CHANGE DUE BY JUNE 24: TURN IN (OR EMAIL ME) A COMPILATION OF YOUR SUBSTANTIAL ONLINE CONTRIBUTIONS. Gaines: A Lesson Before Dying CUT ~~Tyler: "The Geologist's Maid" (handout)~~ Film: finish "Rosewood" Course Evaluations Email me your alternative paper. June 25: Email me the final version of your standard research essay. We will need to discuss whether we want to hold the June 27th class--which is technically past the end of the semester; and where if we do (i.e., my house). It could be an optional meeting--really a party--to watch the film. I turn in grades on the 26th.
Class 13: June 27 Dancing Outlaw	CONTEMPORARY GRIT LIT. (AND BLACK/WHITE RELATIONS) Nordon: Wolf Whistle Film: "Dancing Outlaw" We will need to discuss whether we want to hold the June 27th class--which is technically past the end of the semester; and where if we do (i.e., my house). It could be an optional meeting--really a party--to watch the film. I turn grades in on the 26th.