Week 1 of Class
Monday, August 25: Class Introductions, Syllabus Discussion, and course tech overview (WordPress and Canvas workshop). In class, read “The Wife’s Lament.” (Only one Post will be due today.)
Wednesday, August 27: Mounawar Abbouchi’s introduction translation of Yde et Olive (pg. 1-65) (wiki page); Read “The Wanderer” from The Book of Exeter; Ch 1. of Keywords for Disability Studies, “Disability” [hereafter KDS]. Read also Freak from KDS.
Week 2
Monday, September 1: Labor Day, NO CLASS
Wednesday, September 3: Finish reading Yde et Olive; Browse contemporary storyteller Daisy Black’s website; Cohen’s “Monster Culture (Seven Theses)” [Content Notice (hereafter CN): ableism, graphic violence]; Also read Human and Ability from KDS.
Week 3
Monday, September 8: Marie de France’s “Bisclavret” (author wiki); Medieval Disability Glossary entry on “Lycanthropy“; Hodes’s “Orcs, Britons, and the Martial Race Myth, Part I: A Species Built for Racial Terror” [CN: ableism, graphic violence, racist stereotypes]; Normalcy from KDS
Wednesday, September 10: Marie de France’s “Lanval“; Hoccleve’s “Complaint.” (author wiki) [CN: ableism, depression, suicidal ideation]; Medicalization from KDS
Bonus Reading: Piepzna-Samarasinha’s “As an Autistic Femme, I Love Greta Thunberg’s ‘Resting Autism Face“
Bonus Viewing: Watch David Lowery’s The Green Knight (2021) [OPTIONAL]
Week 4
Monday, September 15: Start reading The Pearl Poet’s The Green Knight…just kidding! Read this translation by Jessie Weston (1-38, books 1 & 2) [CN: beheading] (author wiki); read Rambaran-Olm’s “‘Black Death’ Matters: A Modern Take on a Medieval Pandemic.” [CN: pandemic, police brutality, systemic anti-black racism]; read Constance Grady’s “The magic, sex, and violence of the 14th-century poem behind The Green Knight.”
Bonus Readings:
Wednesday, September 17: Finish reading The Green Knight [CN: hunting and butchering]; read Hodes’s “Orcs, Britons, and the Martial Race Myth, Part II: They’re Not Human.” [CN: debunking racist stereotypes]; Citizenship from KDS
Sep 17, 7:00-9:00 PM: HCC Back-to-School Bash, Lamson Library Study Valley [Optional]
Week 5
Monday, September 22: Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, Book 1, Canto 1 (author wiki); Prefer audio? Check out Librivox. Deformity from KDS.
Wednesday, September 24: Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book 1, Canto 11; Prefer audio? Check out Librivox. Embodiment from KDS.
Week 6
Monday, September 29: Shakespeare’s Macbeth, act 1 [CN: political violence, mental health, suicide] (author wiki); The Countess of Pembroke, poems; Impairment from KDS; Trauma from KDS.
Wednesday, October 1: Macbeth, act 2; start brainstorming First Projects (due Oct 17)
Looking for sample projects as you brainstorm? Check out these examples from Fall 2020 posted on the Ellen Reeder, PSU English’s program blog:
Week 7
Monday, October 6: Macbeth, acts 3-4; Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella, 1, 2, 3, and 7. [CN: graphic violence, racism, sexual coercion]
Wednesday, October 8: Asynchronous project work. No class! Prep & Posts will differ accordingly (see below).
Week 8
Monday, October 13, via Teams: Macbeth, act 5; Madness from KDS; Also read “A Community Telling of Pawâkan Macbeth: A Cree Takeover by Akpik Theatre Company (review)”
Wednesday, October 15, via Teams: John Donne’s “The Ecstasy” and “The Flea”; Eugenics from KDS. Donne’s Holy Sonnets, “Batter my heart, three-person’d God.” and “I am a little world made cunningly”; Invisibility from KDS.
Week 9
Prof. Helms is out of town! Asynch readings and project work (see Canvas announcement).
Week 10
Monday, October 27: Catching up after the Interlude; workshopping class registration for Spring 2026
Wednesday, October 29: Rebuilding the course schedule; workshopping First Projects.
First Projects due by the end of the day on Friday, October 31 (11:59 pm).
Week 11
Monday, November 3: Read Middleton and Dekker’s The Roaring Girl, first half; (Royal Shakespeare Company 2014 production notes; play wiki); Gender from KDS.
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130, “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun“; Diversity from KDS; What Maya Angelou Means When She Says ‘Shakespeare Must Be a Black Girl’, by Karen Swallow Prior
[PAYWALL on the Atlantic! Here’s a substitute op-ed on Maya Angelou: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/maya-angelou-and-shakespeare/]
For a video of a cut (abbreviated) performance:
Wednesday, November 5: Read Middleton and Dekker’s The Roaring Girl, second half; Passing from KDS. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 20, “A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted”.
Week 12
Monday, November 10: Zoe Senese-Grossberg’s Boy My Greatness, script on Canvas (playwright’s website) [CN: plague, suicidal ideation, gender dysphoria, mentions of child abuse and sexual assault]; Sexuality from KDS.
Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress.” [CN: misogyny, sexual coercion]; Sex from KDS.
Wednesday, November 12: Finish Boy My Greatness.
Week 13
Monday, November 17: John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Book 1, and Book 3, lines 1-371; Margaret Cavendish’s “It is Hard to Believe There Are Other Worlds in this World“; Senses from KDS.
Looking for a plot summary? Check out Spark Notes: https://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/paradiselost/quick-spark/
Curious about previous depictions of Hell? Here’s Dante’s version.
Wednesday, November 19:John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Book 9, and Book 12, lines 466-649 ; Wollstonecraft‘s Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Chap. II. “The Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual Character Discussed,” para. 1-8. [CN: misogyny]; and Cavendish’s “Similizing the Brain to a Garden.” Cognition from KDS.
Also, a three-minute adaptation of Paradise Lost: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6swmTBVI83k (for class discussion).
Week 14
Monday, November 24: Optional Readings & Paper Workshopping. Designated catch-up day (Posts are optional this week. You may complete up to 3 for bonus credit.)
Milton’s Samson Agonistes, script cut by Nic Helms (play wiki; author wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Milton) [CN anti-pagan prejudice, mental health]; Lady Mary Wroth, all. [CN: damnation, suicidal ideation]; Blindness from KDS.
You can find details on our Assignments page if you scroll down to “Projects, Literature Classes.” You can find past student projects categorized as “Archived Projects.”
On days like this one when we’re working on Projects, your Daily Posts are different. You have four options and, as usual, two are expected. Each Post you complete should be posted to the Canvas Discussion for today.
- Brainstorm: Complete a brainstorming activity like freewriting, listing/bulleting, 3 perspectives, or so on.
- Drafting: Put pen to paper / fingers to keyboard and get your words down, the great ones and the ones you feel uninspired about. Aim for at least a paragraph of material for now, but don’t feel like you need to finish a draft. Progress – any progress – is the point!
- Writing Center: Visit the PSU Writing Center to discuss what you’ve written so far. (The Writing Center can email you a summary of your session, which you can post to Canvas.)
- Creative/Wacky option: use one page from the text of any edition of anything we’ve read. (I’d suggest Macbeth). Create a ‘blackout’ poem, and post a photo of it to Canvas.
Not sure what a blackout poem is? Check out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oww7oB9rjgw
https://justaddstudents.com/how-to-teach-blackout-poetry/
Wednesday, November 26: No class! Off for Turkey Day.
Week 15
Monday, December 1: Readings from throughlines.org. TBD.
Wednesday, December 3: Readings from throughlines.org. TBD.
Second Projects due by the end of the day on Friday, December 5 (11:59 PM).
Finals, Week 16
Our Final Reflective Class Period is Monday, December 8th, 2:00-3:30 PM.
We’ll be sharing our favorite projects from the semester and reflecting on the arc of the course. Individual reflections will be posted to Canvas, and I’ll ask you to talk through your Reflection during the Final Exam meeting. This is our final class conversation reflecting on the semester. (Treat each of the options below as Reflections posts; you may complete up to all three of these Reflections posts this week if you so choose. If you’d prefer not to talk during our Final Exam meeting, you can prepare an audio or video recording beforehand and put it in your post (60-90 seconds), or contact me for other presentation options.)
Before class, select one to three of the below. Your post(s) should include either 150-200 words of text or 1-2 minutes of audio, and should link back to the project being discussed or the PSU Habits of Mind page.
#1: Present via a new Weekly Post (can involve audio) your favorite project from the semester that you completed.
#2: Present via a new Weekly Post (can involve audio) your fav project someone ELSE completed this semester
#3: In a new weekly Post, Reflect on the PSU Habit of Mind “Integrated Perspective” and what you’ve learned on that front this semester: what have you learned from class readings, discussions, and assignments about “ the recognition that individual beliefs, ideas, and values are influenced by personal experience as well as multiple contextual factors—cultural, historical political, etc.”?
During our Final Exam period, we’ll go around and bring up one of each person’s post(s) in turn. You can choose to either talk through your post live or to play your prerecorded video.
All finalized posts and projects have a deadline of the end of the day on Thursday, December 11 (11:59 PM).
Sprockets and Springes 