Week 1 of Class
Tuesday, August 27: Class Introductions, Syllabus Discussion, and course tech overview (WordPress and Canvas workshop); introductory discussion.
Thursday, August 29: Read the following:
This brief intro to the Old English poem “The Dream of the Rood.”
Hofstetter’s translation of “The Dream of the Rood.”
Ch 1. of Keywords for Disability Studies, “Disability.”
Week 2
Tuesday, September 3: Finish discussion from last Thursday.
Thursday, September 5: Group activity on building the semester (browse these lists before class)
Week 3
Tuesday, September 10: Abby Goode’s Slow Interdisciplinarity; Group activity on disciplinary knowledge.
Thursday, September 12: Ophelia Eryn Hostetter’s translation of “The Wife’s Lament” from The Book of Exeter; Ability from Keywords for Disability Studies [hereafter KDS]
Week 4
Tuesday, September 17: Maria Dahvana Headley’s Beowulf: A New Translation, [Grendel’s story, pp. vii-42 in Headley (or Beowulf, Fitts 0-12 (roughly the first third of the poem)); “What’s a Fitt?” you ask? It’s a stanza or chapter in Old English verse narrative.] [Content Notice: graphic violence]
Want a quick plot summary of the whole poem? Click here. (We’re only reading the first 52 seconds’ worth today.)
Read also Freak from KDS, and optionally Amber Knight’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Disability, and the Injustice of Misrecognition. [Just read the abstract if you don’t have time for the full article!]
(If you’d prefer audio, you can find a complete reading of Headley’s translation here, including performances by Miz Cracker, Neil Gaiman, and Felicia Day. Today’s reading/listening is until about 51:45, the end of Beowulf’s fight with Grendel.)
Beowulf Pt 1-25 All Readers from Grand Journal on Vimeo.
Thursday, September 19: Maria Dahvana Headley’s Beowulf: A New Translation, pp. 56-73 (or Beowulf, Fitts 19-25 (roughly the middle third of the poem)) alongside the optional The Ninth Hour [there’s a full Spotify playlist]; also read Human from KDS and Kim’s ‘The Question of Race in Beowulf.” [CN: graphic violence]
If you’d prefer audio, you can find a complete reading of Headley’s translation here. Today’s reading/listening is from 1:16:08 until about 1:47:48, when Beowulf returns from the fight with Grendel’s Mother.
Week 5
Tuesday, September 24: Marie de France’s “Bisclavret”; Normalcy from KDS
Thursday, September 26: Read Rivka Galchen’s essay on Boccaccio’s The Decameron (Second Day, Novel 1) optionally alongside ep. one of Netflix’s The Decameron; Impairment from KDS [CN: fraud, paralysis, plague]
Week 6
Tuesday, October 1: Read Edwidge Danticat’s short story from the NYT Magazine’s The Decameron Project, as well as Citizenship from KDS [CN: death, funeral, hospital, sickness]
Thursday, October 3: Hoccleve’s “Complaint”; Medicalization from KDS [CN: depression, gaslighting, isolation, madness]
Week 7
Tuesday, October 8: The Book of Margery Kempe (excerpts); Invisibility from KDS
Thursday, October 10:
There’s no reading for today and no opportunity for a Questions post today. Instead, before class, please write and post a brief (100-150 words) proposal for a possible project.
For our purposes, these proposals have two key components:
1) What facet of dis/ability do you believe most needs rethinking today?
2) What should we do to go about that work?
Or to put it differently, what’s the problem (remember Tackling a Wicked Problem?) and what’s your projected solution?
In class, we’ll be discussing, workshopping, and selecting amongst these proposals to choose projects for the remainder of the semester. We won’t make any final decisions today, but we’re beginning to sort things out!
Week 8
Tuesday, October 15: Project brainstorming day.
Thursday, October 17: Small group formation and planning day.
Week 9
Tuesday, October 22: Shakespeare‘s Macbeth, summary and act 1; Shakespeare’s Sonnets, #12.
If you’d like to watch a performance of Macbeth as you read, there are so very many to choose from, but I’ll recommend the 1979 production starring Ian McKellan and Judi Dench.
Thursday, October 24: Shakespeare‘s Macbeth, act 2; Madness from KDS; John Donne’s Holy Sonnets, “Batter my heart“.
Week 10
Tuesday, October 29: Shakespeare‘s Macbeth, act 3; Trauma from KDS; Lady Mary Wroth, “Love peruse me, seeke, and finde”.
Thursday, October 31: Shakespeare‘s Macbeth, acts 4-5; the Lady Macbeth Effect.
Week 11
Tuesday, November 5: Election Day! Prof. Helms’s classes are canceled. Go vote!
Thursday, November 7: Diversity from KDS; read Margaret Cavendish’s poems “It is Hard to Believe There Are Other Worlds in this World” and “Similizing the Brain to a Garden.”
Week 12
Tuesday, November 12: Read selections from Milton’s Paradise Lost (TBD); watch the video for Lil Nas X’s “Montero”:
Thursday, November 14: Project time.
Week 13
Tuesday, November 19: Project time.
Thursday, November 21: Project time.
Week 14
Tuesday, November 26: No class! Designated catch-up day (which includes catching up on REST.)
Thursday, November 28: No class! Happy Turkey Day!
Week 15
Tuesday, December 3: Project time.
Thursday, December 5: Project time, final touches.
Finals, Week 16
Our final exam period will be Tuesday, December 10th, from 2:00 to 3:30 PM.
We’ll be sharing our favorite moments 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.
Reflective Options TBD:
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 pre recorded video.
All finalized posts and projects have a deadline of the end of the day on Thursday, December 12 (11:59 PM).
Sprockets and Springes 