Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Read Langston Hughes

Read: All of the poetry and the biographical information. Have a sense of his place in the Harlem Renaissance and what that term was and meant.

The Jazz Age was defined by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Read the following:
Quotes by Zelda

Look through all the links. It is kind of playful but also very interesting.
Zelda art and etc.A subjective but kind of int. overview of Fitzgerald's life.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Next Readings

Introduction to Modernism
Read Wallace Stevens
POEMS: (Be Quiz-ready on all of today's reading)
The Snowman, The Emperor of Ice Cream, Thirteen Ways of Looking..., Disillusionment of Ten O'clock
---------------
Imagism
Ezra Pound
And the poems In a Station of the Metro, The River Merchant's Wife,

William Carlos Williams
Read the poems: This is Just to Say, Spring and All and The Red Wheelbarrow

---------------
Robert Frost
And these poems: After Apple-Picking, The Road Not Taken, Nothing Gold Can Stay, Directive, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Mending Wall.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

FIRST ASSIGNMENT DUE Tuesday 06/29

You will have two types of larger assignments coming up.

The first (due to be presented on Tuesday 06/29) is to be an ekphrastic or artistic response to a piece of writing or literary movement we have studied. You can choose anything up to the due date. (Whitman, Dickinson, Woolf, Gilman, etc.)

Your response can be in drawing or music, sculpture, animation, illustration, fashion, advertising. Be prepared to ask any questions in class.
-------------------------
You will also be writing a formal poem (sonnet, villanelle, pantoum or sestina) based on a piece of art. Begin thinking about gallery or museum exhibitions that you would like to consider for this piece. I will give you an "outing" afternoon to take notes. For now, just begin thinking about it.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Syllabus Update Thurs.

For today, you will be watching the Whitman film and we will be doing an introduction to Emily Dickinson. Beyond that, the weekend will include a large reading assignment by Virginia Woolf and Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
I'll post more specifics on that later.


The Dicknison poems we will begin today but that must be read thoroughly (quiz-ready) by next week are:

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20283
The Soul Selects

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20466
Safe in their Alabaster

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20250
My Life Closed

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15391
I Felt a Funeral

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15394
I Measure Every Grief

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15393
I Heard a Fly

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15392
I'm Nobody

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19729
Hope is a Thing

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15389
I Taste

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15396
Fame is

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19039
Wild Nights

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15390
There's a Certain

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19730
There is no Frigate
--------------------------
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
http://www.online-literature.com/charlotte-perkins-gilman/

The Yellow Wallpaper
http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Charlotte_Perkins_Gilman/The_Yellow_Wallpaper/The_Yellow_Wallpaper_p1.html
or
http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/wallpaper.html

Virginia Woolf:
About a Room of One's Own
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Room_of_One's_Own

A Mark on the Wall
http://www.bartleby.com/85/8.html

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Course Policy and First Week

Readings in American Literature
Tuesday through Thursday 1:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m.
KH 224
Sophia Kartsonis
skartsonis@ccad.edu

Text: We will work with various online texts. You are expected to read, note and bring in relevant print-outs.
Additionally, we will be watching many videos in here. The Voices and Visions series is invaluable for giving you a sense of the authors. Your attendance will be docked if you text, talk, sleep or open your laptop during these. (I will count you absent for any of the above, and that will mean dropping the course with the stringent absence policy I have for summer—see below

Course Policy:
Attendance:
Because we are taking a fast train through the subject matter, as summer courses often require, attendance will be crucial. We will be reading a lot and dealing with that reading in class with writing assignments and activities.
You will be afforded one absence for reasons I will not need to know. I do not excuse any absence after that first one and if you accrue two absences (as the course is so short,) I will likely ask that you drop the course. Please don’t inform me as to the reason for your absence. What time you missed you will be expected to catch up on your own with the blog. Some things cannot be caught-up. Quizzes, class discussions, videos. Ideally, for any shot at a decent grade, you will be here every one of our too-few days.

Tardies: After two you have an absence.

Grades: You will be graded heavily on class participation and attendance: (30%) Your written work will comprise 70% of your total grade. Perfect attendance does not mean that you have that 30% guaranteed. I expect lively discussions and real engagement with the topics. I hate to resort to pop quizzes, but I have decided that we will be having quizzes many days before we begin discussion. It will be good for you to be prepared, have done the reading and to know that you will be quizzed.

The written work will consist of some reading responses, in-class exercises and at least one artistic or ekphrastic interpretation of the material. Please be generous and thoughtful in your class discussions.

Cell Phones: Please turn them off. Brain surgery can wait.

I am available to conference with you at any time throughout the course. Please contact me in class or through the email address and we can set a time to meet.



JUNE
T 15 Introduction.
Poetic Terms, what makes something literature? Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman

Homework:
Read all of the biographical materials here:
Walt Whitman
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/126
and the following poems:
America: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20157
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20006
I Sing the Body Electric:
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15753
O Captain, My Captain!
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15754
Song of Myself:
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15755
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20277
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16402
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16133
When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16083
When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom’d
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20270

Emily Dickinson:
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/155

W 06/16: Quiz and Discussion of Whitman, Dickinson.


H 06/17: Continued Discussion
Possible Movie.