Welcome to Rethinking Modern British Literature, 1660-1945! For the Spring 2024 semester, we’re meeting in Lamson Library 124 from 10:00-11:40 AM on Tues and Thurs each week.
Professor Nic Helms (they/them) (nrhelms@plymouth.edu)
I’ll be in touch daily this semester via email and MS Teams (an Office 365 app available in my.usnh.edu). For drop-in appointments, I’ll be in my office in Ellen Reed 14 (top of the main stairs on the left) on Mondays & Wednesdays from 10:00-11:45 AM. If you’d like to schedule a meeting for another weekday or location, contact me.
I try to respond to all communications within twenty-four hours, except on weekends. (I treat the weekends as days of rest for me and for you! If something breaks over a weekend, let me know, but don’t worry: it can always wait until the following Monday.)
EN 2490 Rethinking Modern British Literature, 1660-1945 (4 Credits)
Catalog Course Description: Focuses on British literature from 1660 through the mid-20th century. Builds off of students’ preconceptions of modern British literature and analyses historical, national, and aesthetic constructions of the literary canon. Not open to students who have earned credit for EN 3621. Springs. (TECO)
TECO: Technology in the Disciplines
In the modern world, technology has applications to every academic discipline, and educated people must have an understanding of technology that will allow them to adapt to rapid technological change.
Students take a three-credit Technology in the Disciplines (T) course specified as required for the major. This course may be taught within the major discipline or not. The course will help students examine the role of technology within their own discipline and within a larger societal and cultural context. The TECO course will provide students with hands-on experience using current technologies; with a broad understanding of the concepts underlying current technology; with an understanding of the potential ethical issues involved with the use of technology; and with an understanding of forces, based in the needs and values of our culture, that drive technological innovation.
(These Connections are 3 or 4 credit experiences taken as part of the major and hence add no credits to those required for the major.)
Student Learning Outcomes
Use cultural, historical, and aesthetic contexts to inform their understanding of all kinds of texts.
Display analytical skill in their written responses to texts.
Write fluently and understand writing as an artistic and/or intellectual process.
Understand the conventions of literary genre as creative writers and critics.
Capably use research to accomplish their reading, writing, and thinking goals.
Understand the role of emerging digital technologies in writing, literature, and communication.
Draw connections between literature and contemporary society, tracing back the roots of present-day systems of oppression.
Texts
Required:
Moreno-Garcia, Silvia. Mexican Gothic. Del Ray; 1st Edition (2020), ISBN-10 : 0525620788
Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. W. W. Norton & Company; Reissue Edition (2016), ISBN-10 : 0393352560
Highly Recommended:
(I’ll be providing free online options, but I expect a lot of you will want physical texts anyway)
Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Bantam (1983), ISBN-10 : 0553211404
Optional:
If you’re feeling anxious about academic or literary writing, I suggest
Graff, Gerald, and Cathy Brikenstein. They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. Sixth Edition. Norton (2024); ISBN: 978-0-393-63167-8 (any edition will do!)
Sprockets and Springes 