Week 1 of Class
Tuesday, August 29: Class Introductions, Syllabus Discussion, and course tech overview (WordPress and Canvas workshop); introductory discussion.
Thursday, August 31: Franny Choi, “The World Keeps on Ending, and the World Goes On“; Shakespeare’s The Tempest 2.2. [Content Notice (hereafter CN): ableism, colonialism, racism]
Week 2
Tuesday, September 5: Equiano, ch. 1-2 [CN: graphic violence]; Nikole Hannah-Jones’s 1619 episode 1. [CN: colonialism, graphic violence, racism, slavery]
Thursday, September 7: Equiano, ch. 11-12; Wheatley (all poems).; watch Nikole Hannah-Jones interview with Trevor Noah, Feb 2020
and “Why did Phillis Wheatley disappear?”
Week 3
Tuesday, September 12: Soyinka, act 1 (available in the bookstore and on reserve in Lamson!); Oxford Reference entry on “total theatre“; Ruth Wilson’s “After Empire: Chinua Achebe and the great African novel.” [CN: colonialism, racism, rape, sexual coercion, suicide]
Thursday, September 14: Soyinka, act 2; Uzor Maxim Uzoatu’s “Sacred suicide: Re-reading Soyinka’s Death And The King’s Horseman forty years after“; Cheryl Savageau, poems.
Week 4
Tuesday, September 19: Soyinka, acts 3-4.
Thursday, September 21: Soyinka, act 5; Travis Chi Wing Lau, “On Virality, Corona or Otherwise.”
Week 5
Tuesday, September 26: Danticat, 3-68; [CN: graphic violence, misogyny, police brutality, racism, torture]
Thursday, September 28: Danticat, 69-120; Rodriguez’s “undocumented black boy.” [CN: deportation]
Week 6
Tuesday, October 3: Danticat, 121-181; Joy Harjo (selections).
Thursday, October 5: No regularly scheduled class! Instead, start working on your First Project. 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 three 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.)
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
Tuesday, October 10: Danticat, 183-242; Dawnland Voices (vol 9)
Thursday, October 12: In class project workshops.
First Projects due by the end of the day on Friday, October 14 (11:59 pm).
Week 8
Tuesday, October 17: Vermont poet and artist Shanta Lee visits class! And will be speaking at 7:00 PM at the Silver Center (details TBA). Before her visit, please read:
Book one of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, trans. by A. S. Kline. (Feel free to skim through some parts, I just want you to get a sense of how Ovid writes transformation.)
Author page for Black Metamorphoses
Selected poems from Iterant (8)
“The Return of Hyena Man,” from Nombono: Speculative Poetry by BIPOC poets (69-72)
Thursday, October 19: Discussion on Shanta Lee’s visit and work.
Week 9
Tuesday, October 24: Kalidasa, prologue and acts 1-2, and Rasa aesthetic theory.
Thursday, October 26: Kalidasa, act 3-4; overview of Said’s Orientalism, as well as this review.
Week 10
Tuesday, October 31: Kalidasa, act 5-6; Tagore, selections:
Thursday, November 2: Kalidasa, act 7; Hossain’s “Sultana’s Dream” and Lewton’s “Feminist Visions of Science and Utopia in Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s ‘Sultana’s Dream.’”
Week 11
Tuesday, November 7: Nguyen Du, Wikipedia plot summary, Author’s Opening Words, episodes 1-5 (roughly the first fifth, depending on edition); [CN: sex work and trafficking, rape, attempted suicide]; Kevin Nguyen’s “This Fucked Me Up: Ken Burns’s The Vietnam War“; Teresa Mei Chuc, all. [CN: war]
Thursday, November 9: Chikamatsu, act 1; Shonagon’s The Pillow Book, selections. [CN: sex work and trafficking, suicide]; If you’d like to see the original 1926 edition of Asatarō Miyamori’s translations, you can find it here on Google Books.
Week 12
Tuesday, November 14: Chikamatsu, act 2; Kawakami’s Breasts and Eggs, selection, and Motoko Rich’s “A Novelist Breaks the Code of Being a Woman in Japan.” [CN: sex work and trafficking, suicide]
Thursday, November 16: Chikamatsu, act 3; Alistair Te Ariki Campbell, all. [CN: war]
Week 13
Tuesday, November 21: No class! Designated catch-up day (which includes catching up on REST.)
Thursday, November 23: No class!
Week 14
Tuesday, November 28: Film adaptation of Chikamatsu’s play, Masahiro Shinoda’s 1969 film Double Suicide. [CN: sex, suicide]
Thursday, November 30: Finish film adaptation of Chikamatsu’s play, Masahiro Shinoda’s 1969 film Double Suicide.
Week 15
Tuesday, December 5: In class project workshops.
Thursday, December 7: In class project workshops.
Second Projects due by the end of the day on Friday, December 8 (11:59 PM).
Finals, Week 16
Our final exam period will be Tuesday, Dec 12, 2:00 – 4:30 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 WordPress, 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 14 (11:59 PM).
Sprockets and Springes 