Winter 2006
English 564.04:  Major Twentieth-Century Author (James Joyce)
T-Th 3:30 - 5:18
Evan Laboratory 2001
Instructor:  David Herman
Office: 409 Denney (office hours M 3:00 - 4:30, TR 5:30 - 6:30, and by appointment)
Phone: 292-6123; e-mail: herman.145[at]osu.edu

Web address for this syllabus: http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/herman145/ENG56404.html

Course Description:

Welcome! This course will focus on the work of James Joyce, examining the forces—historical, sociopolitical, religious, and artistic—that helped shape Joyce’s oeuvre. Drawing on biographical, historical, and critical sources, we will contextualize Joyce’s innovative themes and techniques in Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Exiles, and Ulysses; time permitting, we will also study an excerpt from Joyce’s final work, Finnegans Wake. Class discussions will foreground questions suggested by Joyce’s own texts: What is the relation between art and politics? What are some of the major intertexts on which Joyce drew, and in what sense do his works reframe rather than reject prior texts and traditions? What is the nature of identity, and what fictional techniques can capture the ever-shifting patterns of memory and consciousness in everyday life?
    Although focusing on the works of James Joyce in particular, the course is designed to improve your ability to appreciate, analyze, and write coherently and persuasively about all sorts of texts, equipping you with interpretive skills that will assist you in your lifelong practice of reading.

Required Texts (Available at SBX):
 *When reading Dubliners and Portrait, you may wish to consult Don Gifford's Joyce Annotated, which is on reserve in the library in the ETC Reading Room under call number PR6019.09Z5335. This volume contains information about historical and political events mentioned in Joyce's texts, place names specific to Dublin, etc.

**When reading Ulysses, you may wish to consult Gifford's Ulysses Annotated in addition to the Blamires text. Gifford's book is on reserve in the library in the ETC Reading Room under call number PR6019.O9 U418 G42; it contains a line-by-line analysis of Ulysses, in parallel with the commentary that Gifford provides for Dubliners and Portrait in Joyce Annotated.

 In addition, the following items are available on electronic reserve at OSU's library:
Click here for full bibliographic citations for the items on e-reserve.

Course Requirements:

Please note that I use a +/- system of grading and a 10-point grading scale.  Your grade for the course will be determined by the following factors:
1. Attendance and active class participation. I expect this class to be a collective endeavor, and your attendance and participation are crucial. You will get more out of each class if you come having done the assigned reading and prepared to discuss it. More than two unexecused absences will lower your participation grade by one whole grade: for example, from a B to a C. I may also give occasional quizzes and in-class exercises that will also factor into your participation grade.
2. A collaborative oral presentation. Each student will team up with several classmates to present a research report on a topic related to our class discussions. The dates of the reports are indicated on the schedule of readings. You will sign up for a group during the second week of the quarter; at that time I will also distribute more specific guidelines for the report. Presentations should be about 15 minutes long and should be shared by all of the students in the group.
3. Two papers. Two expository essays, word-processed and submitted in hard copy, not by e-mail. The first essay is to be 1250 words and is due Tuesday, January 24. The second essay is to be 1500 words and is due the last day of class, Thursday, March 9. Please use your word-processing program to do a word count for each assigned paper, and type in the number of words at the end of your paper. Paper topics will be distributed well in advance of the due dates for your essays, and specific details will be discussed in class. In the meantime, for general guidelines concerning how to compose and format your papers, click here. 
    These papers must represent your own work; all cases of suspected plagiarism will be reported, in accordance with university rules, to the Committee on Academic Misconduct. Plagiarism and cheating are serious offenses at OSU and will be reported to the appropriate officers of the university. Plagiarism is the representation of another's work or ideas as one's own; it includes unacknowledged quotations as well as paraphrases of someone else's words or ideas. Penalties may range from failure of the particular assignment, to failure of the course, or worse.
4. A midterm and comprehensive final examination. The midterm exam is scheduled for Tuesday, January 31, and will contain brief definition questions; identification questions, which ask you to identify and analyze passages from works we’ve discussed; and an essay question asking you to compare and contrast several works. The final exam, scheduled for Tuesday, March 14, will be comprehensive and have the same format as the midterm.

Grading:

Attendance and participation: 10%
Oral presentation: 10%
First paper: 15%
Second paper: 20%
Midterm: 20%
Final: 25%

Completing Assignments:

All assigned readings must be read before the date listed on the syllabus. All out-of-class assignments are due at the beginning of class. If an emergency arises and prevents you from turning in your assignment on time, always call me and leave a message on my voicemail if I am not there. In the absence of any previous consultation with me, work handed in late will be graded down, normally one letter grade for each day that it is late.

Other Policies:

Cellphones:

Please make sure that cellphones, pagers, etc. are turned off before you enter the classroom. 

Special needs:

Anyone who feels s/he may need an accommodation based on the impact of a disability should contact me privately to discuss your specific needs. Anyone with such needs should also be aware of the the Office for Disability Services in room 150 Pomerene Hall (614-292-3307) which provides services for students with documented disabilities.

The Writing Center:

All members of the OSU community are invited to discuss their writing with a trained consultant at the Writing Center. Go to http://www.cstw.org or call 688-4291 to make an appointment.

Course Schedule:

The following is tentative course schedule. Depending on the actual pace at which we proceed during the quarter, we may have to make adjustments to the syllabus as we go.

January

T 3  Introduction; read Woolf, "Modern Fiction," and Stevenson, "Modernism and Modernity" [both on electronic reserve]

Th 5  Dubliners; also read Williams, "Modernism and the Metropolis" [e-reserve]

T 10  Dubliners; also read Butler, "Joyce the Modernist," and Leonard, "Dubliners" [e-reserve]

Th 12  Dubliners; A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

T 17  Portrait; also read Rainey, "The Cultural Economy of Modernism," and Trotter, "The Modernist Novel" [e-reserve].

Th 19  Portrait; also read Riquelme, "Stephen Hero and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" [e-reserve]

T 24  Exiles; FIRST ESSAY DUE 

Th 26  Exiles. Group presentation #1

T 31  Midterm examination

February

Th 2  Ulysses, chapters 1-3 (for all assigned chapters from Ulysses, please read corresponding chapters in Blamires' New Bloomsday Book)

(Click here for an image of Joyce's 1921 "schema" for Ulysses; click here for an underground-style "map" of the novel. I am grateful to Eric Hevesy for these images!)

T 7  Ulysses, chapters, 4-7; also read Lukács, "The Ideology of Modernism" [e-reserve]. Group presentation #2

Th 9  Ulysses, chapters, 8-9  

T 14  Ulysses, chapters 10-12. Group presentation #3

Th 16  Ulysses, chapters 13-14; also read Johnson, "Joyce and Feminism." Group presentation #4

T 21  Ulysses, chapter 15. Group presentation #5

Th 23  Ulysses, chapter 15 continued; also, chapter 16

T 28 Ulysses, chapter 16 continued; also, chapter 17

March

Th 2  Ulysses, chapter 18. Group presentation #6

T 7  Flex day: depending on our progress up to this point, we will either finish discussing Ulysses or read the "Anna Livia Plurabelle" episode of Finnegans Wake [available on e-reserve]

Th 9  Catch up and review; SECOND ESSAY DUE
Final Examination: Tuesday, March 14, 3:30 - 5:18