Columbus
College of Art & Design prepares tomorrow's creative leaders for
professional careers. With a history of commitment to fundamentals and quality,
CCAD advances a distinct, challenging, and inclusive learning culture that supports
individual development in art, design, and the humanities.
Course Information:
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Faculty Information:
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Catalog
ID: 390 Section: 01 Term: Fall 2012
Course
Name: Readings in American Literature
Course
Prerequisite(s):
Meeting
Day(s): W, F, Meeting Time(s): 11-12:20
Class
Location: Crane 303
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Faculty
Name: Sophia Kartsonis
Phone: 614
437-7379
Email:
Office
Hours: T,H, 11-12:30
Office
Location: KH201
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Course
Description:
Involves critical study of selected readings from the Americas. Generally, the
readings will be drawn from Euro-American, African American, and Native
American works, and a wide range of periods and forms. Some sections may be
sharply focused on a period, genre, or issue. Students will write essays and
examinations. Emphasis and genre vary with professor.
Course Goals : To
give students a broader sense of how an uniquely American literature emerged
from the sum and interesting combinations of its various cultural
components. Through reading and writing,
students can reflect upon what it means to become and create American
literature.
Course Learning Outcomes:
Through the critical examination of literary periods, styles and the factors of
race, gender, faith, politics and culture, students will be able to think
critically about how a culture and what it makes evolves. Students should be able to communicate
clearly both verbally and through writing about various features of American
Literature.
This course is designed to help students
develop in the following areas (check all that apply):
Think
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Do
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Reflect
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Knowledge base X
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Organizational skills x
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Observation skills x
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Research skills X
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Presentation skills x
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Adaptive skills x
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Analytical skills X
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Interaction skills x
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Associative skills x
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Reasoning skills X
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Media skills
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Empathy skills x
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Ideation skills X
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Response skills x
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Feedback skills x
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Iteration skills X
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Mastery skills
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Critique skills x
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Required
Course Materials:
Required
Text(s): Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative NonFiction. Various
handouts and links.
Recommended
Text(s): Various.
Schedule
of Classes (including key events including assignments, projects due dates/exam
dates): See below
Methods/weights
of Evaluation (this is a list of items that will be used as the basis for calculating
students’ grades in the course, i.e., projects 30%, tests & quizzes, 30%,
class participation 10%):
Course
Grading Policies (this is a list of policies regarding due dates, late
submissions, standards and expectation regarding work, etc.):
CCAD Academic Policies:
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DISABILITY
SUPPORT SERVICES
(see the
Student Handbook for complete policy information)
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ADA
STATEMENT If you have a documented cognitive, physical, or psychological
disability, which includes learning disabilities (LD), attention deficit
disorder (ADD), depression, anxiety, or mobility, as described by Section 504
and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), it is recommended that you
contact Disability Services at 614-222-3292. They will assist you in
arranging appropriate accommodations with the instructor.
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ACADEMIC
DISHONESTY
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(see the
Student Handbook for complete policy information)
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ATTENDANCE
POLICY
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Students
are required to attend all classes on their schedule. (see the Student
Handbook for complete policy information)
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REQUESTING
AN INCOMPLETE
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(see the
Student Handbook for complete policy information)
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STUDENT CODE OF CONDUCT
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The
college expects students to conduct themselves in a manner consistent with
the high ideals and standards that CCAD has set for its community and its students.
(see the Student Handbook for complete policy)
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Week of 08/28
T 08/28 Intro.
H 08/30 Close
reading of This is Just to Say and The Red Wheelbarrow WCW.
Week of 09/04
W WCM discussion continued. Read bio.
and the following poems (Asphodel, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, and
Spring and All) on this
site. Also, to the left
margin, there is a string of essays discussing the poet and the period. Look to
those for some ways to discuss and write about these issues. As we discussed in
class, Imagism plays a part in Williams' treatment of subjects. We will talk
about that in class a bit, but feel free to review the essay on Imagism.
F WCW video.
Week of 09/11
W Looking at what the American Literature
timeline entails. Considering what we
think about when we think about American lit. (play off of contemporary
American author: Raymond Carver’s story title.) Discussion of and introduction to Walt
Whitman. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdW1CjbCNxw
Homework: Read all of the following:
Colonial overview:
Antebellum overview:
Antebellum literature:
Postbellum overview:
Postbellum Literature:
F:
Introduction to Modernism. Ezra Pound. T.S. Eliot. Wallace Stevens.
The Wasteland and Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. They will
likely feel a bit difficult, we'll discuss them in class, of course, but I will
want you to read them first.
Also, really consider attending this. This is one of those
incredible artists
Aurora Robson
multimedia artist
Wednesday, Sept. 12, 7 p.m. Canzani Center Auditorium
Aurora Robson is a
multimedia artist known for her transformative use of plastic debris, excess
packaging, and junk mail as artmaking material. A Canadian, Robson has lived
and worked in New York City for the past 21 years. As a “subtle yet determined
environmental activist” and advocate for plastic pollution awareness, she has
exhibited all over the United States and Europe and is the founding artist of
Project Vortex, an international collective of artists, designers and
architects who also work with plastic debris. Her exhibition Sacrifice + Bliss is at Franklin Park Conservatory and Botanical
Gardens from Sept. 9-April 28.
This program is
free and open to the public. If you would like to support programs like this,
please donate any amount online (choose the
"exhibitions and visiting artists & scholars" option).
F Readings discussed.
Homework: Your first assignment will involve an imitation
piece or series (500 word minimum) of the Modernists. The work can be in
a variety of forms (essay, poetry, formal, etc.) as long as it meets the word
count. One way to tackle this might be to write a poem by the light of
one of these pieces and then to write a short letter or essay piece that
describes your process: how you worked from the imitation and how you worked
away from or against it. It will be due a week from today (09/20)
Read Wallace
Stevens, bio.
and all poems. He might be very helpful for your imitations so read him
early.
Week of 09/18
W Wallace Stevens.
F Discussion and turn in of your Modernist
pieces.
Homework: Read the
following sections in this link for The Fountainhead: Plot overview, context
and themes and motifs. http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/fountainhead/context.html
As well as the essay Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson. These readings will relate to two of our
visitors: Todd Slaughter’s American Primitives show on Sept. 27 and author,
Benjamin Anastas’ reading on Friday, Oct. 19th. Please plan to
attend both.
Week of 09/25
W Discussion: Emerson’s Self-Reliance
Todd Slaughter: American
Primitives Sept. 27–Nov. 8, 2012 Opening Reception: Sept. 27, 6–9 p.m.
Canzani Center Gallery Free & Open to the
Public
Over the last 12
years Todd Slaughter’s artwork has addressed the perception that safety is
synonymous with isolation and privilege in the gated communities of suburbia
and urban high-rises. This specific aspect of American identity is but one
point on a trajectory that, in the end, lands in the darkest of places. Through
a series of sculptural tableaux, American
Primitives points out parallels between the American
individualism defined by Thoreau and Emerson and its evil twin, isolationist
groups who feel that they, too, are manifesting core American values.
Slaughter is a
former CCAD faculty member who is currently a professor at Ohio State
University. His work has been given a major retrospective at the Chicago
Cultural Center, as well as exhibitions in numerous galleries and museums.
Permanent public works can be found in the Midway Airport, Chicago, and
Tarifa/Algeciras, Spain.
F
Homework: (This assignment will be due on 10/16)
Using
the writings of Emerson. Write a letter to the editor of an imaginary newspaper
as an invented character responding to the work directly or the way the notions
behind it or Rand (or I can even allow for Thoreau, if you’d like) are working
for or against “you” (as your character). We’ll flesh out this idea more in
class, but plan on a 500 word minimum where your “character” tells a bit about
him/herself and how the ideas in one of those works or in other more recent
writings have impacted him/her. If
you’re using another speech or text, make sure you provide the original or a
source for it. Then, you will be inventing a second character, one with a very
different or contrasting, even opposing viewpoint, to respond to your original
character. (250 words or more) Have fun with this. Name your newspaper, your
town, really try to imagine these lives. For inspiration, consider Lynch’s Interview Project:
http://interviewproject.davidlynch.com/www/#/route
Week of
10/02
W Formal
Poetry: Robert Frost, Langston
Hughes, Elizabeth Bishop, Marianne Moore, Robert Hayden
Homework: Readings: Frost, Hughes, Bishop, Moore.
Look over these
forms: sestina, sonnet, and villanelle,
and begin to decide which you will imitate (and discuss in a 300 word minimum
formal letter to your readers). We will
look over some examples for both components of this assignment: due 10/11.
Read: Girl
by Jamaica Kinkaid http://www.fphil.uniba.sk/fileadmin/user_upload/editors/kaa/Ivan_Lacko/Kincaid_Girl.pdfand
Everyday Use by Alice Walker. http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ug97/quilt/walker.html
Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway
(Walker
& Kinkaid to be discussed Thurs. and Carver and Hemingway a week from
today.
F Discussion Walker & Kinkaid.
Week of 10/09
W
Discussion Carver & Hemingway
Homework:
Read
William Harrison’s Present Tense Africa from your Touchstone Anthology p.220
F Discussion Harrison. Formal poems due today.
Homework: Read Allan Ginsberg bio and all poems. http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/8
And this
on The Beat Poets: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5646
and
contemporary American poet, Eliot Khalil Wilson’s response to Ginsberg (at the
end of this document.)
Week of 10/16
W Letters to the editor due.
Homework:
Read Benjamin Anastas’ essay here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/magazine/riff-ralph-waldo-emerson.html?pagewanted=all
(Review
Emerson, if need be.)
F Discussion Anastas.
Visiting artist/author:
Benjamin Anastas author
Friday, Oct. 19, 6:30
p.m. Canzani Center Auditorium
Benjamin Anastas is
the author of two highly regarded novels, and his memoir,Too Good to Be True, will be
published in fall 2012. His short fiction has been published in The Paris Review, The Yale Review, and GQ, while his criticism and essays have
appeared regularly in Bookforum,
The New York Times Sunday Book Review, and The New York Observer. Anastas’ essay
"The Foul Reign of Emerson's 'Self-Reliance,'" first published
in The New York Times Magazine,
appears in the exhibition catalog for American
Primitives and will be included inThe Best American Essays 2012.
Week of 10/23
W NY School Readings. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XKN0iZG_4s
Don Draper reads Frank O’Hara
F Discussion
Homework:
Charles Bukowski readings
At your
leisure:
http://bukowski.net/poems/
Week of 10/30
W NY School discussion,
Bukowski.
Homework: Eula Bliss The Pain Scale (p. 2, Touchstone)
F Discussion: The Lyric Essay through Bliss’
essay.
Homework: Selected readings: Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath,
Robert Lowell.
Week of 11/05
W The Confessionalists
F Discussion continued
Homework: Reading: Sonny’s Blues by James Baldwin,
Michael Cunningham’s White Angel,
Poetry
Comics article,
**Your
ekphrastic pieces and process papers (500 words minimum) are due on Tuesday
11/20.
The short
version of this assignment is that you will be responding or imitating a piece
of literature through visual art. Examples abound: W.H. Auden’s Musee de Beaux
Art or WCW’s Icarus (myth-painting-poem).
Or Charles Simic’s poems that respond to Joseph Cornell’s boxes (for the
reverse). Consider the poetry poem: http://www.tcj.com/a-bianca-stone-interview/
Week of 11/13
W TBA I will be giving a
reading at Florida Southern College (and representing CCAD) Your class plans are forthcoming.
F TBA
Week of 11/20
W THANKSGIVING BREAK!
F
THANKSGIVING BREAK! Safe travels
and happy Thanksgiving!
Week of 11/27
W Group Presentations of
Essays from Touchstone Anthology. (There will be an oral and written component
for each group member. More details forthcoming.)
F Group Presentations continued
Week of 12/03
W Group
Presentations
F TBA
Week of 12/10
W “”
F Last day of semester.
Ginsberg’s
Ghost: Atlantic City
By Eliot Khalil WIlson
Ms America you’ve
given everything and now you’re nothing.
5’4”, 143 pounds,
size fourteen dress, April 1, 2001.
Ms. America when
will you stop wobbling and wear human shoes?
When will you fail
to be eerily pleasant?
When will you stop
having your breasts stuffed with sandwich bags of carcinogens?
Ms
America you made me want to be Pamela Anderson.
Ms. America when
will you keep your clothes on?
When will you stoop
to help the three stooped women on the 100-rupee note?
Ms America when
will you send your Spode and silver to a random address in Cuba?
When will you say
that it doesn’t happen to every man and it is a big deal?
Aren’t you tired of
being mostly hair, bleached teeth, and padding.
When will you stop
aspiring to be an assemblage of gleaming cleavages?
Ms. America when
will you rule your own womb?
When will you stop
being sweet to the point of translucence?
When will you be
demonic? When will you refuse to be interrupted?
Ms. America are you
an unconscious victim only?
When
you will admit that you’ve been interpellated by Friends ?
I love Friends. Everyone so perky. I watch it
every chance I get.
Ross’s monkey has
vanished. It’s sinister.
When will you say I want and Fuck this and Fuck that ?
Ms America when
will you be Mr. President?
When will you end
this absurdly Pyrrhic war on drugs?
Ms America when can
we vote Texas off the island?
When will you blaze
up and tell us that George W. Bush never happened?
He’s
embarrassing. I’m getting nostalgic for Richard Nixon,
From
now on, Je suis Canadian.
When will you stop
letting your emotional life be run by Cosmo
magazine?
Are you a fun fearless
female with flirty moves that floor him?
Do you know seven
scorching sex tricks that make him ga-ga?
Ms. America come
talk to me.
It occurs to me
that I am Ms America.
I am talking to
myself again, and I miss my real lips.
I have to be
orange.
My spirit feels
overweight.
I need to learn to
eat like the other mannequins
Don’t speak to me.
I’m having a beauty crisis.
I lash out with
mascara now.
I can’t go anywhere
like this. I’m stooped and hairy.
I need a
billboard’s posture, emergency electrolysis.
Who will vacuum the
fat out of my body?
This is all
entirely too perverted and obscene for me.
Ms. America, I’d rather be dead.
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