link to Course Guidelines page link to Path 1 calendar page link to Class Discussion page link to Path 2 Calendar page link to Essay Prompts page


Sequence 6: British & American Modernism
Calendar for Class Discussion & Exams ("Path 1")

“But he kept this knowledge of his fear thrust firmly down in him;
his courage to live depended upon how successfully his fear
was hidden from his consciousness" (42).
Richard Wright's Native Son (1940)


for pre-class "points for reflection," click on the
colored bar above each day's assigned readings

D1: talk about types of trauma, and how what one considers to be trauma is inflected by ideology & politics: trauma of someone being elected president, trauma of watching TV show as a kid; trauma of actual assault; trauma . . .

Date
Readings: Path I
Topics
link to study questions for class on Tuesday, September 15
T, 4-2

Signposts & Battlegrounds
NOTE: this is the one day I will bring paper copies of assigned poems for students
Thomas Hardy's "In Time of 'The Breaking of Nations'" (1915; 1916), PDF / REALISM
Fenton Johnson's "The Old Repair Man" (c.1913-20), PDF/ THE REDEMPTIVELY GROTESQUE
Claude McKay's "The White House" (1922), PDF
/ THE LITERARY ROMANCE
Angelina Weld Grimké's "The Puppet-Player" (1923), PDF / THE ABSURD
W. H. Auden's "Musée des Beaux Arts" (1938; 1940), PDF / NATURALISM

  • course guidelines
  • themes: global, ideological, and personal pressures
  • format: slideshow-directed discussion of narrative modalities / PDF
R, 4-4

This Silent Grief
Charles W. Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition (1901), chps. 1-6
Letter from Chesnutt to Booker T. Washington, Norton Critical 204
Letter from Chesnutt to Houghton, Mifflin, Norton Critical 208-209
Chesnutt's "The Courts and the Negro" (1908), excerpt, Norton Critical 224-26
Chesnutt's "The White and the Black" (1901), excerpt, Norton Critical 228-31

  • topic: historical context
  • format: roundtable discussion
 
T, 4-9 Remorse of Conscience
Charles W. Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition (1901), chps. 7-15
"A Negro Festival," from the New York Tribune (July 20, 1870), Norton Critical 343-46
"The Cake Walk," from the New York Times (Feb. 18, 1892), Norton Critical 351-52
  • pre-class film clip: scene from The Jazz Singer (1927) involving black face
  • topic: the sensuous surface
  • format: small group exercise
R, 4-11 A Slender Stream at Best
Charles W. Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition (1901), chps. 16-24
The 1898 Wilmington Riot, Norton Critical 248-57
  • format: roundtable conversation
T, 4-16 INTERLUDE: The Body Politic
Dr. M's intro. to Green's Baby Face, coming soon at Digging in the Dirt
Alfred E. Green's Baby Face (1933), watch at Internet Archive, transcript
Zora Neale Hurston's "Muttsy" (1926), Dover 99-112
  • topic: gender, power, and freedom
  • format: slideshow-directed discussion
R, 4-18
 A Cultivated Conscience
Charles W. Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition (1901), chps. 25-31
Stephen P. Knadler's "Untragic Mulatto" (1996), excerpt, Norton Critical 499-507
  • format: choreographed debate

T, 4-23 A Life of Vengeance and Cruelty
Charles W. Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition (1901), chps. 32-37
Each student brings 3-4 self-generated questions concerning the final chapters of The Marrow of Tradition to help drive discussion
Gwendolyn Bennett's "Hatred" (1922), PDF
Amiri Baraka's (LeRoi Jones's) "The Invention of Comics" (1964), PDF
  • lecture: The Harlem Renaissance
  • format: student-created discussion questions about novel

link to study questions for class on Thursday, September 17

R, 4-25

Art and Artifice in Ireland
W. B. Yeats's "The Stolen Child" (1886, 1889), PDF
W. B. Yeats's "Adam's Curse" (Nov. 1902; 1902, 1903), PDF
W. B. Yeats's "Sailing to Byzantium" (1926; 1927, 1928), PDF
James Joyce's "Eveline" (1904) in Dubliners (1914), PDF
James Joyce's "Araby” (1905) in Dubliners (1914), PDF
  • topic: visions of Ireland, real and imagined
  • format: short lecture (PDF); roundtable discussion

link to study questions for class on Tuesday, September 22
T, 4-30

A Soft Kind of Rock
Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent (1907): chps. 1-2
Paul Laurence Dunbar's "The Scapegoat" (1904), Dover 45-56
  • topic: modernist, indeterminate tone
  • format: slideshow-directed discussion

link to study questions for class on Thursday, September 24
R, 5-2

This World of Contradictions
Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent (1907): chps. 3-5
Rupert Brooke's "The Soldier" (1914; 1916), PDF
Siegfried Sassoon's "Glory of Women" (1917), PDF
Siegfried Sassoon's "They" (1919), PDF
Siegfried Sassoon's "Everyone Sang" (Apr. 1919), PDF
  • topic: conflicting perspectives
  • format: sml grp discuss & report

link to study questions for class on Tuesday, September 29
T, 5-7

The Bottom of the Matter
Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent (1907): chps. 6-8
Wilfred Owen's "Disabled" (1917), PDF
  • topics: disability and difference
  • format: roundtable conversation

R, 5-9

INTERLUDE: Disposable Objects [a virtual, synchronous session to be held via Zoom--Dr. M will be in Canada for a conference]
Dorothy West's "Mammy" (1940), Dover 158-65
Dr. M's intro. to Happiness [Le Bonheur] (1965),
Agnes Varda's Happiness [Le Bonheur] (1965), available through Kanopy (library) / subtitle transcript
Midterm Exam Study Guide / PDF

  • topic: female interiorities
  • format: sideshow-directed discussion

link to study questions for class on Thursday, October 1

T, 5-14

Thinking in Pictures
Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent (1907): chps. 9-11
H.D.'s "Sea Poppies" (1916), PDF
  • topics: genre, tone, and story
  • format: roundtable discussion

link to study questions for class on Tuesday, October 6

R, 5-16

Struggling Against Terror and Despair
Conrad's The Secret Agent (1907): chps. 12-13
EXAM #1: closed-book essay & objective [80 min.] / bring blue book and 100-question scantron

  • topics: faith, loss, death, hope
  • format: roundtable discussion
Mon., May 20 thru Sat., May 25 PAPER CONFERENCES
email term paper outline to Dr. M and everyone in your Path 2 group before attending one-hour workshopping of outlines

  
T, 5-21

Holding onto Space
T. S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men" (1924-25; 1925), PDF
Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own (1928; 1929), chps. 1-2
TERM PAPER assigned
  • topic: mental spaces & maneuvers
  • format: passage analysis
R, 5-23

Sexual Divisions and Synergies
Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own (1928; 1929), chps. 3-4
Edna St. Vincent Millay's "I, being born a woman and distressed" (1923), PDF
Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Love is Not All" (1931), PDF
BRING: Dr. M's comments on Impassioned Pleas and the Path 2 essay
  • topic: identity & society
  • format: sml grp passage analysis exercise
T, 5-28 NO CLASS / FINISH WRITING TERM PAPERS TODAY
TUES. CLASSES FOLLOW MON. SCHEDULE, S24		  

R, 5-30

Masterpieces Are Not Single
Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own (1928; 1929), chps. 5-6
Peer Review of Completed Term Papers

  • format: dry-erase sml grp exercises

T, 6-4

Post-War Wastelands
Langston Hughes's "Afro-American Fragment" (1959), PDF
Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" (1954-55; 1956), online
Samuel Beckett's Endgame (1957), PDF / experience by watching Conor McPherson's Endgame (2000) at YouTube with script in hand
  • topic: facets of stressed identities
  • format: slideshow-directed discussion

R, 6-6

Paths Taken & Untaken
W. E. B. DuBois's "Jesus Christ in Texas" (1920), Dover 72-80
F. O'Connor's "The Comforts of Home" (1960; 1965), PDF
James Baldwin's "Letter to My Nephew" from The Fire Next Time (1963), PDF
  • format: roundtable discussion

W, 6-12
TERM PAPER due Wednesday, June 12 by 11:59 p.m.
(send Word file with .doc extension via email)

 


Dorothea Tanning's surrealist painting entitled Far From Home, portraying multicolored bodies dissolviing into a fog-like background
Far From Home (1964)
Dorothea Tanning


Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu