COURSE INFORMATION
ENGL 2112 02F World Literature II
CRN: 13005
Spring 2024
Online Aynchronous
The University Catalog describes this course as "A survey of representative works of world literature from the mid-17th century to the present, with emphasis on critical reading and writing skills."
It's essentially a whirlwind tour of some of the best things that have been written from the 18th century to the present day. Most of these texts are connected thematically through the author's desire to upset the status quo, call people to a different way of living, and imagine a new way of being in the world. Most, if not all of them, point out social ills, the complications of class, race, nation, gender, and sexuality, in order to give readers tools with which to fight the powers that be.
Everything you need to know for this class is in this syllabus. You might find this syllabus intimidating because of its length, but I made it a one-stop-shop for you in this course. Along with the usual material about course policies and procedures, academic integrity, and accessibility accommodations, it also contains the course schedule, explanations for all your assignments, the prompts for the papers you'll be writing, and the rubrics I'll be using to evaluate your papers and your discussion posts.
The course consists of 24 modules. Each module has a task list in Folio, so you should start and end each module there. Each module contains some background information on the author and/or the work we're reading, a podcast that offers a middle-of-the-road interpretation of the work, a number of discussion questions, and a quiz. You should listen to the podcast after you've finished reading the text, because it won't make sense to you until you are familiar with the text.
Instead of requiring you to buy an anthology that might contain all these texts (the cheapest one out there is about $90), I've made all the texts you'll need to read available for you to download from the course site in Folio.
- January 8: Classes begin
- January 8-11: Drop-Add period
- January 15: MLK Day; no class
- March 4: Last day to drop with a "W"
- March 11-15: Spring Break, no class
- April 29: Last day of classes
- May 1: Final Exam
Learning Outcomes are the knowledge or skills you should gain (and be able to demonstrate) by the end of a particular course.
Career Readiness Competencies are core competencies developed by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). They address eight areas where employers agree that your abilities and skills signify your readiness to begin and/or extend your career. Below are the skills you'll have the opportunity to practice in this course.
Upon successful completion of this course, you should be able to:
- Analyze works of literature in their historical and cultural contexts, critically examining the values they express.
- Demonstrate familiarity with literary language, periods, and genres.
| Self-Development | Communication |
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| Critical Thinking | Equity and Inclusion |
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| Leadership | Professionalism |
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| Teamwork | Technology |
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These career readiness skills will serve you well no matter what your next steps after graduation might be. Find out more about them on this page of the NACE site.
All reading selections for this class are available as pdf files in Folio, in the Texts folder.
A “trigger” is anything that might cause a person to experience a strong emotional and/or psychological response. Some triggers are shared by large numbers of people (for example, rape), while others are more idiosyncratic (for example, orange juice).
All texts read in this course, all class discussions, and all ancillary materials may contain instances of the following potential triggers, as well as other unanticipated and so unlisted potential triggers: ignorance; willful ignorance; cultural insensitivity; oppression; persecution; swearing, abuse (physical, mental, emotional, verbal, sexual), self-injurious behavior (self-harm, eating disorders, etc.), talk of drug use (legal, illegal, or psychiatric), suicide, descriptions or pictures of medical procedures, descriptions or pictures of violence or warfare (including instruments of violence), corpses, skulls, or skeletons; needles; racism; classism; sexism; heterosexism; cissexism, ableism; hatred of differing cultures or ethnicities; hatred of differing sexualities or genders; body image shaming; neuroatypical shaming; dismissal of lived oppressions, marginalization, illness, or differences; kidnapping (forceful deprivation of or disregard for personal autonomy; discussions of sex (even consensual); death or dying; beings in the natural world against which individuals may be phobic; pregnancy and childbirth; blood; serious injury; scarification; glorification of hate groups; elements which might inspire intrusive thoughts in those with psychological conditions such as PTSD, OCD, or clinical depression.
Unless expressly stated otherwise, the views, findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in the texts read in this course, the classroom discussions, and the ancillary material do not necessarily represent the views of the University or the course instructor.
All texts read in this course, all class discussions, and all ancillary materials may also contain instances of overwhelming beauty, profound truths, and serious reflection on what it means to be human.
By remaining registered in this class, you agree to be exposed to all of the above. As Jenny Jarvie has written,
Structuring public life around the most fragile personal sensitivities will only restrict all of our horizons. Engaging with ideas involves risk, and slapping warnings on them only undermines the principle of intellectual exploration. We cannot anticipate every potential trigger—the world, like the Internet, is too large and unwieldy. But even if we could, why would we want to? Bending the world to accommodate our personal frailties does not help us overcome them.
— Jarvie, Jenny. “Trigger Happy.” The New Republic, 3 March 2014.
In short, texts and/or discussions in this class may make you uncomfortable. . . for many of them, that may be the whole point.
COURSE STRUCTURE
The course has 24 modules that present information on historical and literary periods, the authors we're covering, and the texts we're reading. Each module contains links to texts, web pages and sites, a podcast about the text or period, a number of questions you should consider as you read the text, and a quiz.
Course modules are located within Folio/D2L. You should begin your work there, within Folio. If the module concerns a particular text or texts, it will also have a link to the text. Primary texts are all pdf files in Folio, and secondary texts will be web pages that contain introductory material about historical periods and intellectual movements.
Modules also contain the following:
- Links - These go to external sites for background information and podcasts about the historical, cultural, and biographical information behind each text, and literary and thematic interpretations of each text.
- Podcasts - These are in mp3 format. You can either download them or stream them. You should listen to the podcast in each module after you've read the primary text for the module. A page with links to all the podcasts is located at this URL: jpellegrino.com/teaching/ENGL2112/FightthePower/000-Podcasts.html
- Quizzes - You'll take a quiz in each module after you've read the material, checked out the links, and listened to the podcast. The number of questions in each quiz varies. At the end of the course, when I'm calculating your grades, I'll drop your lowest three quiz scores.
- Discussion Questions - These are questions you might consider as you read the text in each module. Eventually you'll respond to one discussion question of your choosing for each major period we're covering (a total of three questions).
Throughout the course, you'll be responding to three discussion questions in the discussion forums, and then offering secondary responses to three initial posts done by other students. The forums themselves are arranged so that you have to post your own response first in order to see what others have said.
Each module contains a number of discussion questions. These serve two purposes. On a day-to-day basis, they should help you direct your reading as you go through the texts. And as we finish each major historical period (the Enlightenment, Romanticism, Modernism/Contemporary), you'll choose one discussion question from any of the works covered in that period and respond to it in a well-considered piece of writing that should be over 500 words. You'll then post your response (this is your "primary entry") to the appropriate discussion forum. After you've submitted your primary entry to the forum, you'll be able to see the entries of others in the class. You should read the primary entries of at least two other students, and respond with substantive comments to two of those entries (these are your "secondary entries"). You can agree, disagree, question someone's interpretation, add your own interpretation, etc., but you can't just say "You're so right! I totally agree!" You have to further the conversation.
As you will see in the schedule below, there are a variety of genres represented in this class, but there's quite a bit of poetry, more than some of you may be comfortable with. I've set up the class this way for two reasons; the first is philosophical and the second is practical. Primarily, I think the best way to capture the zeitgeist of a particular historical moment, or to understand the impact of a literary movement, is through poetry. Works in this genre contain far more distilled language than those in any other genre, so it's easier to get at the essence of the subject at hand. Also, studying poetry allows us to cover far more ground. We could spend the semester reading only novels, but the nature of the academic calendar means that we would deal with far fewer texts, and you'd be familiar with far fewer authors.
At a practical level, all of the reading material I'll pass to you is in the Adobe portable document format (.pdf). Since this is an online class, you can, of course, read all this material on a computer or another device. However, for some of the longer works (namely Candide, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass . . ., and Death and the King's Horseman), I'd suggest printing out the text to read it, because going through these longer pieces can get tiring if you're looking at them on a screen.
Another reason for printing out the texts is that you can take much better notes on them that way. And make no mistake about it, YOU SHOULD BE TAKING NOTES ON THESE WORKS AS YOU READ THEM. Believe me, you will have a much harder time in this class if you don't take notes on what you're reading.
Taking notes is an essential part of the reading process. It helps you internalize difficult ideas by putting them into your own words and can help you be more focused when you're reviewing for the exams. You're far more likely to remember material you have thought about and made notes on than material you have read passively.
Many people find it effective to take notes in two stages:
- Write down the main points (the setting, major plot points, characters, etc.)
- Summarize, condense, and organize those initial notes, making as many connections between those notes and your own experiences as you can.
In general, your notes should be brief and to the point.
- Don't attempt to write everything down, just reflect the main themes. Aim to get the gist of the topic or the main points.
- If you come across something you don't understand (especially in the podcasts), make a note of it and come back to it later.
- Don't lose track of your purpose in taking these notes in the first place; keep focused.
- Don't worry about whether anyone else could make sense of your notes; you're the only person who needs to read them.
If you come to see me to ask how you should study for the exams, or even what you should be studying for those exams, the first thing I'm going to ask is to see the notes you've taken on the texts and on the podcasts. If you don't have any notes from your reading and listening, or if those notes are thin and incomplete, there's not much I can do to help you succeed in this class.
You'll write two short papers for this class, both tied to the course learning outcomes. For both of these, you'll submit a prompt to the LLM/Chatbot (Large Language Model, like ChatGPT or Bard) of your choice, copy and paste the results of that query into a document, then address that response in a multi-paragraph document of between 500 and 600 words. These essays should be typed and double-spaced, with a 12-point font, and your name in the upper left corner of the first page. You'll submit them to the appropriate Assignment area in Folio, where they will go through the TurnItIn check for academic honesty.
You may use external sources in your essays, and if you do you will need to acknowledge where you got your information from. And if you use the source's language, put it in quotation marks.
You will get two bites of this apple, because the prompts for each of these essays will be almost exactly the same, and they will directly address the Learning Outcomes for this course.
As a reminder, the learning outcomes for this course are : 1) the ability to analyze works of literature in their historical and cultural contexts, critically examining the values they express, and 2) the ability to demonstrate familiarity with literary language, periods, and genres. In these assignments, you'll show your competence in the second outcome as you specifically address the first outcome. In a nutshell, you'll choose one of the texts we've covered up to a certain point in the class, have the LLM/Chatbot develop a list of the values you think are expressed within that text, then support your analysis by showing three different places in the text where you see those values expressed. Along the way to proving your point, you'll need to use the appropriate literary language. A more thorough prompt for each paper is below.
See below for an explanation of how I'll mark your papers.
We'll have two multiple-choice exams, one halfway through the course and one at the end of the course. These will be 33 questions each, with roughly 1/3 of the questions in these three areas: identification of a text, historical and cultural contexts for a text, and thematic concerns within a text.
Exams are available from midnight to midnight on the dates noted in the schedule. You may take the exam at any time on the day that is it available. For your first exam, once you open the exam, you'll have one hour to complete and submit it. For your second exam, since it is the final (but it is not cumulative), once you open the exam you'll have two hours to complete and submit it.
Exams are listed below, in the Schedule section. If you miss an exam because you misread the date, or because you didn't check the syllabus, you should not expect to take it at a later date. If, however, circumstances cause you to need to take an exam early, please let me know and we will come to some accommodation.
COURSE EXPECTATIONS
The "Carnegie Unit" is how universities define credit hours and categorize the amount of work students do for each credit hour. Each credit requires 15 "contact hours," which are essentially the hours you spend in class during the semester. And each contact hour requires two hours of outside work, or time devoted to the class that doesn't happen in the classroom itself. This is a three-credit course, with 45 contact hours. Those 45 contact hours necessitate at least 90 hours of out-of-class work on your part. That's at least 135 hours committed for each three-credit class that you take.
If you're not a self-starter, or you have problems with deadlines, or you just don't think you can commit to this level of work, you should probably look for another section of this class.
I expect that you will conduct yourself within the guidelines of the Honor System. All academic work should be completed with the high level of honesty and integrity that this University demands.
I don't know of a person at this institution who tolerates academic dishonesty. Beyond the moral implications, as professors, we find it insulting. All instances of plagiarism will be reported to the Office of Student Conduct. Any instance will result in an F in the course and possible further sanctions. Plagiarism is presenting someone else's work as your own without giving them credit. Someone else is defined as anyone other than you: another student, a friend, a relative, a source on the Internet, articles or books. And work is defined as ideas as well as language. So taking someone else's ideas and putting them in your own words—or using someone else's words to express your ideas—is plagiarism. And, in the case of friends and family, it doesn't matter if they give you permission.
A note about group work: I encourage you to use an app like GroupMe amongst yourselves to discuss the texts we're covering, the assignments, and any other aspect of the class. If for no other reason, you need a space to complain about me, without me listening. This engagement, where you can share and improve each other's work, is, in many ways, the core of our endeavor, as we hone our own ideas about the material we're covering through discussions with others. You should also discuss your writing with your classmates, as hearing a number of ideas will help you create and polish your own. However, this does not mean that you should write your papers as a group. While discussion is obviously a group activity, writing is a solitary one, and should be treated as such. Any attempt to subvert this would be an instance of academic dishonesty.
LET ME JUST INTERRUPT MYSELF HERE TO STRESS A SIGNIFICANT POINT. You may have just passed right by that mention in the previous paragraph where I said that discussing your writing with other people is a good thing. But apart from devoting a sufficient amount of time to your writing and revising, having someone else read your work is the single most effective thing you can do to improve your writing. I'll have more about that later in this syllabus.
The University has an extensive definition of Academic Dishonesty (from the Student Conduct Code). It's what we use when we address matters of academic integrity:
CHEATING
Cheating is (a) the use or attempted use of unauthorized materials, information, or study aids in any academic exercise; or (b) actions taken to gain unfair or undue advantage over others. Examples of cheating include (but are not limited to):
- Receiving, providing, and/or using unauthorized assistance or materials on any work required to be submitted for any course to include (but not limited to) online services or social media.
- Alteration or insertion of any grade so as to obtain unearned academic credit.
- Fabricating information, research, and/or results such as taking, or attempting to take, an examination for another Student, alteration of legitimate research data, alteration or distortion of laboratory experiments, or deliberate distortion of another's work or results.
- Collaborating with others on assignments without the faculty’s consent.
- Impeding the ability of Students to have fair access to materials assigned or suggested by the Faculty Member (e.g., removal or destruction of library or other source materials).
- Demonstrating any other forms of dishonest behavior.
PLAGIARISM
Plagiarism is the offering of the words, ideas, computer data programs, or graphics of others as one’s own in any academic exercise. Examples of plagiarism include (but are not limited to):
- The offering of another's work, whether verbatim or paraphrased, as original material without identifying the source(s) in an academic paper, discussion post, exam, assignment or any other academic work.
- Directly quoting the words of others without using quotation marks or indented format to identify them.
- Self-plagiarism: re-submitting work previously submitted without appropriate or accurate citation or credit and/or without explicit approval from the instructor.
- Use of materials prepared by another person or agency to assist in the completion of coursework. This may include but is not limited to the selling of term papers or other academic materials, as well as the using of online platforms or websites to post/receive answers to coursework/exams.
- Demonstrating any other forms of dishonest behavior.
So let's say I think you might have copied and pasted some AI-generated material into your first paper. I am obligated to complete an Incident Report about it, because this isn't just about your integrity, but mine as well. If it's your first report, you'll be able to request a hearing through the Office of Student Conduct. Both you and I will speak at your hearing, and I'll send a copy of this syllabus along with the documents in question to the Hearing Officer. That means that you won't be able to claim that you didn't know that what you were doing was wrong, since I'm telling you it is right here.
COURSE SCHEDULE
Week (deadline date) |
Modules (and their quizzes) Due |
Other Material Due |
|---|---|---|
1 |
Introduction to the Course |
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2 |
Module 2: Voltaire, Candide 1 |
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3 |
Module 4: Saikaku, from Life of a Sensuous Woman |
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4 |
Module 5: Introduction to Romanticism |
Discussion Forum 1 |
5 |
Module 7: Keats, poetry |
Discussion Forum 1 |
6 |
Module 9: Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave 1 |
|
7 |
Module 11: Tagore, "Punishment" |
Discussion Forum 2 |
8 |
Module 12: Yeats, poetry 2/29: Exam 1 Available |
Discussion Forum 2 |
9 |
Module 13: Introduction to Modernism |
PAPER 1 |
10 |
Module 15: Akhmatova, "Requiem" |
|
11 |
Module 16: Négritude |
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12 |
Module 18: Existentialism |
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13 |
Module 21: Mahfouz, "Zaabalawi" |
Discussion Forum 3 |
14 |
Module 23: Soyinka, Death and the King’s Horseman |
Discussion Forum 3 |
15 |
Module 24: Heaney, poetry |
PAPER 2 |
5/1 |
Exam 2 Available |
INSTRUCTOR
I'm Dr. Joe Pellegrino, an Associate Professor in the Department of English. I teach lots of different classes. My specialties are Irish literature and postcolonial literature, so I end up doing classes that don't fit into the standard Brit Lit/American Lit model, things like Irish lit, African lit, graphic novels, etc.
I went to school for a long time, and went to lots of different schools: Duquesne University, St. Louis University, Mannes College of Music, The New England Conservatory, and UNC-Chapel Hill, which is where I got my doctorate in English. I've also taught at a lot of schools: Duquesne, UNC, Eastern Kentucky University, Walden University, University of South Carolina-Upstate, Greenville Tech, Converse College, and here at Georgia Southern. I've had some experience in online education; while at EKU I was the University Director for the (short-lived) Kentucky Commonwealth Virtual University, and have taught online classes for over 20 years now.
Professionally, I edit a journal, The International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. I'm interested in a number of fields, but most of my publications are either on Irish studies, postcolonial lit, or teaching.
I also work on the British Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies Conference, the oldest and longest-running annual meeting of its kind in the United States. Check out that web site; the design is one of my best.
I have only one item on my bucket list: to see the Northern Lights. One day I'll get there, but in the meantime I check in on the site linked here, from the Churchill Northern Studies Center in Churchill, Manitoba. I've got two daughters who are growing in wisdom, beauty, and grace. I make heirloom furniture (pretty much a middle-aged guy cliché), try to keep up with new technology, wish I could spend more time doing music, and constantly try to keep my head above water.
Office:
Room 3308B, Newton Building
Phone: 912.478.5953
Office Hours: MW, 12:00 - 4:00
Email: jpellegrino@georgiasouthern.edu
English Department in Statesboro:
Room 1118, Newton Building
622 COBA Drive
Statesboro, GA 30460
912.478.0141
OK, maybe two words: CONTENT and FORM
CONTENT
Please don't hesitate to post to me if you have a question about any of the readings, especially if you're struggling to figure them out. But please think twice about posting questions where the answer is in this syllabus. If you do, I have two options for a reply: I can copy and paste material from the syllabus or schedule just for you—because you didn't actually check it yourself—or I can reply with something like "check the syllabus" or "check the schedule." Both of these options are redundant, because you already have access to the answer to your question, and you should already know to check the syllabus. And both of these options reflect poorly on your abilities, either to understand what is required of you or to comprehend what you have read. Since I don't want to think less of your abilities, neither of these options are satisfactory. So if you ask a question that is already answered in the syllabus or in the schedule, I won't be replying at all.
FORM
See that image there on the right? It's not just some funny advice about how to write an email to one of your instructors or teaching assistants; it's a set of guidelines that we expect you to follow. When you write anything, you change the form to suit the content. So you don't write an email to a professor like you're writing a DM to your friend. Look at the graphic, then follow the rules on it.
And as with the questions that have already been answered in this syllabus, I could embarrass you by reminding you of those rules when you don't follow them, or I could just not respond to you until you actually get it right. And just in case you can't parse what those rules are, I'll put them into a list:
- My name is not "Hey," "Yo," "'Sup," or "Dude" — use a proper greeting.
- Don't use acronyms or texting shorthand — write in full sentences. Use a grammar checker.
- Spell-check it before you send it. When you have tools available to you and you don't use them, you're not only demonstrating that you don't know how to communicate at anything beyond a middle-school level, you're also demonstrating your inability to use simple tools in order to make yourself look better.
- Check the syllabus before you make yourself look foolish (see the previous point).
- Sign your name.
So let me sum this all up:
if you don't hear back from me after you sent me an email, it's either because you can't write an email correctly for the audience you're trying to address, or you're asking a question that I've already answered in this document.
SERIOUSLY?
Yes, I'm serious about this. And no, it's not because I'm a formal person who insists that all the social niceties are observed. I insist on this because I know more than a dozen former students who have been passed over for promotions, missed merit raises, or even been fired because of the way they communicated in a professional environment (and only one of them was an English major, in case you think that writing well is only for them). The form I'm insisting on here is what's expected in almost any office environment, especially when you're passing information to or asking questions of someone who's higher in the chain of command than you are. So do yourself a favor; practice writing emails this way until it becomes second nature for you. With this writing style, you'll have one less thing to worry about when you begin your career, whatever it may be.
CLASS POLICIES
If you need additional work on the surface features of your writing, I'll let you know. Basically, if I can't understand what you're trying to say in your first paper, then you'll have to work at writing more clearly. I'll ask you to schedule sessions at the Writing Center in order to be more successful on your next paper.
The reason professors make students write papers is not because we love to mark them up, or because we somehow enjoy this. I'm willing to bet that every professor you ask would say that marking and grading papers is the worst part of their job. I know it is for me. The only thing that makes it bearable is hoping that I'll be able to engage with your ideas, or see the texts we're covering through your eyes. But if I have to stop after every sentence to figure out what you're trying to say, I'm most certainly not thinking about your ideas.
So do yourself a favor: give yourself enough time to do a good job on these papers. Remember that writing clearly takes far more time than you think it does, because you have to consider your argument from a reader's perspective, not your perspective.
I realize that the grand academic dance of submitting your work, having it evaluated, then responding to that evaluation (either through improving your work in your next paper, or by coming to see me in my office) is essentially a negotiation between us. You want to demonstrate your abilities with X amount of work, an amount that you think deserves a certain grade. You submit your work without knowing how others will see it, and only become aware of their perceptions when your work is returned to you with my comments. But this puts you at a disadvantage, because, as in any negotiation, the party that makes the first move does so blindly, and so gives up any hope of advantage.
So in the spirit of openness, let me make the first move, and try to level the playing field by giving you a few tips:
- I'll begin with a personal comment:
I know my reputation precedes me, and I know what it is, that I'm one of the closest and cruelest readers of student work in the English Department. I mark every little error. I ask condescending questions. I expect too much from you. My classroom demeanor and my grading don't match.
While I don't revel in that description, it's pretty accurate. I don't believe it's too much to ask that your subjects agree with your verbs, your tenses are consistent, and you write like you know what you're doing. Expecting anything less from you, or assuming that you can't write for an academic audience, is an insult to your intelligence. - This is academic writing, where clarity and concision are essential. If your work isn't clear, if every sentence doesn't hang together, you're losing the negotiation. What you have written may make sense to you, but it needs to make sense to your readers as well.
- At the post-secondary level, your writing isn't evaluated in terms of the amount of work you put into it. Just like any other skill, the amount of effort necessary to master academic writing varies from person to person. I am sure that it would take me far more effort than most of you to get back to playing football. But even if I did ten times the work you did, when we both showed up on the field we'd be evaluated on our skills, not on the time it took us to gain them.
- If you pay attention to what the prompt is asking you to write about, and keep that in mind as you think about your paper, you're making a good start.
- If you look at the rubric, especially the distinctions between the levels of performance in content and form, you should get a good idea of how successful your paper will be.
- If you're wondering if your "X amount of work" is enough, it isn't.
- I'll conclude with one last personal comment:
Before we had things like TurnItIn and other automatic checkers on academic integrity, I was the guy other faculty members went to to track down cases of suspected plagiarism. When Google was just getting off the ground, I was a beta tester for them (one of 25 in the country). I've also been teaching English for over 40 years now. So if you're thinking that you've changed enough of the material that you've copied and pasted to make it look like your own work, think again. If writing and evaluating papers is a negotiation, then presenting someone else's work as your own is a gamble, and you're betting your academic career that you can get away with it. I've just told you what I bring to the table, so if you really think you can get away with it, my only advice is to do it as early as possible, so you can spare yourself the work for the rest of semester, because you'll have already failed this class.
I DO NOT ACCEPT LATE ASSIGNMENTS. NO EXCEPTIONS, NO EXCUSES. A late assignment is any work that is not turned in by midnight on the Friday when it is due. This means that you must anticipate any problems that will occur. In other words, a computer / printer / drive / car / arm being broken at the last minute is not an excuse. To avoid last-minute catastrophes (which always occur), DO NOT WAIT UNTIL THE LAST MINUTE TO DO YOUR WORK.
You'll submit your assignments electronically to the appropriate section of the Learning Management System (Folio).
In compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), I will honor requests for reasonable accommodations made by individuals with disabilities or demonstrating appropriate need for learning environment adjustments. If you wish to avail yourself of any accommodations, you must disclose your disability to the Student Accessibility Resource Center (SARC) before I can implement any academic accommodations. That office will furnish you with a list of accommodations and a cover letter that you'll give to me. It's informally known as "a green sheet." Without that green sheet from the SARC, I can't offer you any accommodations.
For additional information, please call the SARC office at (912) 478-1566 on the Statesboro campus, or at (912) 344-2572 on the Armstrong and Liberty campuses.
Since we're an online asynchronous class, we're not really affected by things like the institution shutting down, so I'll skip right to more individual matters.
If you are under quarantine:
I can't grant you any extensions to your deadlines unless I receive a report from the GS CARES Team about your status. You can't just email me to say that you think you might have a virus and are self-isolating in order to minimize the chance of infecting others. That means that if you think you might have been exposed, or if you have tested positive, you must complete a COVID-19 Health Reporting Form, which can be found in the COVID-19 Information & Resources section of your MyGeorgiaSouthern page.
If you do have a CARES report and can't work on the class, it'll be like this class did not exist for you during your illness. If a paper is due during your quarantine, you'll have an extension until you return to class. If you miss either exam, we'll work that out on a case-by-case basis.
ASSIGNMENTS
Cultural values are what shape society, and shape and influence the people who live within that society. They are abstract concepts promoting the idea that certain kinds of behaviors are good, right, ethical, moral, and therefore desirable.
In this first essay, you will offer an analysis of the cultural values presented in any of the works we've covered up to this point. So you can write on either Candide, Life of a Sensuous Woman, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, "Punishment," or the poetry of Blake, Keats, Whitman, or Yeats. Given the background information for each historical period ("Introduction to the Enlightenment," "The Floating World," "Introduction to Romanticism") you should be familiar with how these values are manifested in these works. However, I'm not looking for a discussion of a character's personal values; that's a completely different subject. Rather, you should address the overarching values that the text is putting forth, and perhaps demonstrate how the author is either reflecting the values of the times, or pushing against those values.
I'd like you to take advantage of the AI tools available to you. So the first part of this writing assignment will be your submission of the highlighted section below to the chatbot or AI text generator of your choice. The bot will generate a response that is mostly unique and mostly accurate. In short, it will give you a solid foundation for your work.
If you don't know the first thing about AI-aided writing, or want to try a new Large Language Model, check out the Writing Section of AIToolMall. They've got 110 writing bots listed there. Not all of them will be fit for our purposes, but about 40 will work and are either free to use or have a free trial period you can take advantage of.
Copy and paste the following into the AI text generator of your choice. You'll need to fill in the brackets with the title and author of the text you're working on. I've tested this with about a dozen bots, and it produces good results on them.
"Write a 500- to 600-word essay on three cultural values presented in [name of the text you choose] by [name of the author of that text]. This essay should not be about a character's personal values, but about the overarching values that the work as a whole is promoting."
Once the AI has cranked out a response that you like, copy and paste both the question you asked it and its response into a document with the proper formatting. This will make up the first half of your final paper.
For the second half of this assignment, you'll further expand on what the AI has written. What it should have returned to you was something close to a five-paragraph theme on three different values seen in your chosen text. The first thing you have to do, then, is demonstrate just where you see those values presented in the work. Consider them in the order that they are presented by the AI generator, then find and explain at least one example from the text of each value that the AI generated. Your explanation should include your thoughts on why you think each panel, page, or piece of text is a good example of the cultural value you're addressing.
For your conclusion, you'll have to answer an overarching question: WHY are these things or ideas valued in the text? That is, what do you know about the time period and culture in which the author is writing that connects with these three values? Is there something that the author(s) are responding to, or pointing out, or reacting against, in their culture? Or are their concerns more global, and they're writing about something common to all humans? Your thoughts here will be the real value that you add to the assignment.
The material that you'll be producing has two parts. In the first part, you're just doing the legwork for the AI, and showing that yes, those values that it noted are actually expressed in this text. And you're not just pointing out those examples, you're arguing for your choices as good examples. The second part addresses a more complicated question, where you look at the work in its historical, cultural, or social contexts and consider all the values you're addressing in the light of those contexts.
In order to successfully complete this writing assignment, you can't just repeat what the AI text generator has said already. Your focus needs to be, first, on finding and explaining at least one example of each AI-recognized value in the text. So you're essentially proving that the AI was correct in choosing the values it did. And one of the worst ways to prove anything, to anyone, is to argue that something is correct because it says it's correct. That's a circular argument.
After that, a successful paper will look at all three values the AI noted and consider them in a larger, real-world context. While we can never really know what an author's intent is in producing their work, we can consider what the author has produced in the light of those contexts mentioned above. For this, you'll need to consider not just the values that the AI gave you, but also the plot, characterization, drawing style, and thematic concerns of the book, all within those contexts. Are certain characters or actions "rewarded" by the author? Are others condemned? Why? Is the author pointing out the failings of their contemporary culture? Does it address something broader than just a single cultural or historical moment? Is this work a warning? Is the author holding up their culture as an example of how things should be? Questions like these are what you should be thinking about in this final section of your paper.
You should be able to complete the second half of the assignment in a multi-paragraph essay of between 500 and 600 words.
What you'll be submitting to the Writing Assignment 1 area in Folio is one document with two halves. First, there will be your prompt for the AI, and its response, formatted like your according to MLA 9 guidelines (look at The English Major's MLA 9 Formatting Cheat Sheet in the Course Materials section of Folio, so you can get it right). Then, beginning on a new page, you'll have your "Human Touch" section. And if you use any external sources in your paper, that section will be followed by a Works Cited page — again, properly formatted.
Cultural values are what shape society, and shape and influence the people who live within that society. They are abstract concepts promoting the idea that certain kinds of behaviors are good, right, ethical, moral, and therefore desirable.
In this second essay, you will offer an analysis of the cultural values presented in any of the works we've covered since the first essay. So you can write on either "This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen," "Death Constant Beyond Love," Zaabalawi," Death and the King's Horseman," or the poetry of Eliot, Akhmatova, Senghor, Walcott, or Heaney. Given the background information for each historical period and movement ("Introduction to Modernism," "Negritude," "Introduction to Existentialism," "Post-WWII Culture") you should be familiar with how these values are manifested in these works. However, I'm not looking for a discussion of a particular character's personal values; that's a completely different subject. Rather, you should address the overarching values that the text is putting forth, and perhaps demonstrate how the author is either reflecting the values of the times, or pushing against those values.
I'd like you to take advantage of the AI tools available to you. So the first part of this writing assignment will be your submission of the highlighted section below to the chatbot or AI text generator of your choice. The bot will generate a response that is mostly unique and mostly accurate. In short, it will give you a solid foundation for your work.
If you don't know the first thing about AI-aided writing, or want to try a new Large Language Model, check out the Writing Section of AIToolMall. They've got 110 writing bots listed there. Not all of them will be fit for our purposes, but about 40 will work and are either free to use or have a free trial period you can take advantage of.
Copy and paste the following into the AI text generator of your choice. You'll need to fill in the brackets with the title and author of the text you're working on. I've tested this with about a dozen bots, and it produces good results on them.
"Write a 500- to 600-word essay on three cultural values presented in [name of the text you choose] by [name of the author of that text]. This essay should not be about a character's personal values, but about the overarching values that the work as a whole is promoting."
Once the AI has cranked out a response that you like, copy and paste both the question you asked it and its response into a document with the proper formatting. This will make up the first half of your final paper.
For the second half of this assignment, you'll further expand on what the AI has written. What it should have returned to you was something close to a five-paragraph theme on three different values seen in your chosen text. The first thing you have to do, then, is demonstrate just where you see those values presented in the work. Consider them in the order that they are presented by the AI generator, then find and explain at least one example from the text of each value that the AI generated. Your explanation should include your thoughts on why you think each panel, page, or piece of text is a good example of the cultural value you're addressing.
For your conclusion, you'll have to answer an overarching question: WHY are these things or ideas valued in the text? That is, what do you know about the time period and culture in which the author is writing that connects with these three values? Is there something that the author(s) are responding to, or pointing out, or reacting against, in their culture? Or are their concerns more global, and they're writing about something common to all humans? Your thoughts here will be the real value that you add to the assignment.
The material that you'll be producing has two parts. In the first part, you're just doing the legwork for the AI, and showing that yes, those values that it noted are actually expressed in this text. And you're not just pointing out those examples, you're arguing for your choices as good examples. The second part addresses a more complicated question, where you look at the work in its historical, cultural, or social contexts and consider all the values you're addressing in the light of those contexts.
In order to successfully complete this writing assignment, you can't just repeat what the AI text generator has said already. Your focus needs to be, first, on finding and explaining at least one example of each AI-recognized value in the text. So you're essentially proving that the AI was correct in choosing the values it did. And one of the worst ways to prove anything, to anyone, is to argue that something is correct because it says it's correct. That's a circular argument.
After that, a successful paper will look at all three values the AI noted and consider them in a larger, real-world context. While we can never really know what an author's intent is in producing their work, we can consider what the author has produced in the light of those contexts mentioned above. For this, you'll need to consider not just the values that the AI gave you, but also the plot, characterization, drawing style, and thematic concerns of the book, all within those contexts. Are certain characters or actions "rewarded" by the author? Are others condemned? Why? Is the author pointing out the failings of their contemporary culture? Does it address something broader than just a single cultural or historical moment? Is this work a warning? Is the author holding up their culture as an example of how things should be? Questions like these are what you should be thinking about in this final section of your paper.
You should be able to complete the second half of the assignment in a multi-paragraph essay of between 500 and 600 words.
What you'll be submitting to the Writing Assignment 2 area in Folio is one document with two halves. First, there will be your prompt for the AI, and its response, formatted like your according to MLA 9 guidelines (look at The English Major's MLA 9 Formatting Cheat Sheet in the Course Materials section of Folio, so you can get it right). Then, beginning on a new page, you'll have your "Human Touch" section. And if you use any external sources in your paper, that section will be followed by a Works Cited page — again, properly formatted.
When I return your papers to you, they'll have marks on them, but almost no comments. Only in very rare cases, where errors aren’t immediately obvious, will I write a short comment. For the most part, your errors or issues are highlighted and marked with a letter representing one of four categories:
| MARK | EXPLANATION |
|---|---|
| A = ARGUMENT | These are errors or issues with the points you’re trying to make. They could be inconsistencies, the use of quotations that don’t do what you need them to do, fundamental contradictions in your macro structure, or a number of other things concerning how you’re moving your argument forward. |
| C = CLARITY | Usually sentence-level matters where you either need to be more clear and specific, explain yourself better, or resolve a contradiction. |
| F = FORMAT | You should use MLA 9 formatting for your paper. You'll follow it to set up how your paper looks on the page (your header, your margins, your page numbering) and how you handle things like titles of works, using quotations in your text, and creating a Works Cited page. You have The English Major’s MLA 9 Formatting Cheat Sheet available to you in Folio. “I used an online citation generator” is one of the most damning criticisms of your own abilities you can offer. If I suggested you weren’t capable of looking up and following a simple set of discipline-specific rules, you would be offended. So why would you admit that about yourself, especially since I'm telling you here that they are all, to varying degrees, inaccurate? |
| M = MECHANICS | Errors in sentence construction, usage, punctuation, spelling, etc. In general, there’s a reason why English has at least 64 different prepositions: they all mean something different. Oh, and burn your thesauruses. Using an elevated word that you think you might know the meaning of works doubly against you: it could be the wrong word for the situation, and it’s not the clear and concise word, which is what you want. |
You'll have a chance to revise your paper for a higher score. The final comment on your paper will conclude with a Conditional Grade and a Potential Grade. The Conditional Grade is what I have listed for you when I turn your papers back to you. The Potential Grade is what you could bump that grade to if you revised it properly.
If you'd like to do that, you'll have one week after I return your papers to do the following:
- In a separate document, copy and paste each highlighted error in your original submission. Then explain what the error is for each highlighted area of your paper. (The A, C, F, or M will be your initial guide to figuring this out.) Some of those will be easy to explain, like a spelling error or a comma splice. Others will be more difficult to explain, especially when your writing is unclear.
- Revise your paper, correcting EVERY error.
- Submit a) the document you produced explaining the errors, and b) your corrected revision, to the same dropbox where you submitted your initial attempt.
Just to be clear: you'll need to submit two new documents within a week to the same dropbox where you submitted your first one, in order to earn up to 10 more points (and yes, you can score over 100 if you're revising something that's already in the 90s. The number of points you earn will be based on how accurately and thoroughly you explain the initial errors, and how well you correct them.
Of course, if you're satisfied with your Conditional Grade, or just don't want to revise your paper, that's OK. A week after you have your papers returned to you your Conditional Grade becomes permanent.
GRADING
When I mark your papers, here's my process: I read your papers at least three times. The first time, I just go through them looking for your argument and if you addressed the prompt in your essay. In my next reading, I apply the following Minimum Standards Rubric, which comes from the Technical College system in South Carolina. This rubric is applied to papers from students at two-year schools, and it defines the minimum acceptable standards there. Once I've applied the Minimum Standards Rubric, I then read through your paper again, asking the questions here and evaluating it with the Essay Rubric below. This reading is where I mark your paper.
For each sentence in your paper, I ask the following questions:
- What are you saying?
At a basic level, I’m trying to decode the meaning of each sentence. If I cannot understand what you’re trying to say, everything that follows is problematic. If your sentence is confused, convoluted, or contradictory, you make it difficult, or even impossible, for me to answer this basic question. - Is what you’re saying accurate?
Does this sentence demonstrate that you understand the text or the critic you’re addressing? For instance, if you’re summarizing someone else’s argument, I need to assess if you’re being true to the original author's intent. In your response, I’m assessing your evidence and examples. - Is what you’re saying well-expressed grammatically and mechanically?
This assumes that your grammar and mechanics aren’t so bad that I’ve been stymied back up at Question #1. - Does your writing have appropriate flow?
Does each idea link up with the one before it and the one following it in a way that meets audience needs, attitudes, and knowledge?
If I can answer all four of these questions positively for every sentence, you’re doing well. But when the answer is no, complications ensue. If I can’t understand what you’re saying, I have no way to engage with your ideas, and so I have additional questions.:
- Do you not understand the original text you’re addressing?
- Do you understand the original text, but your writing leaves a gap between that understanding and what is written on the page?
This is the first rubric your papers must pass in order to be evaluated through the Essay Rubric. Since it was designed for students at a two-year technical college that grants only Associates degrees, and you're attending a university for a Bachelor's degree, you are more than capable of satisfying the requirements of this rubric. However, if your paper doesn't meet these minimum standards, you'll fail the assignment.
| Minimum Standards Rubric (from Greenville Technical College) | |
|---|---|
The following errors are serious, and therefore warrant special consideration as your papers are being graded: |
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These errors in grammar and usage are unacceptable in college-level academic writing:
Any paper having a combination of four or more of these serious errors will automatically receive a failing grade (F). |
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Any paper having six or more different misspelled words will automatically receive a failing grade (F). (Misspellings include mistakes with the use of the apostrophe.) |
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A combination of the above-mentioned serious errors and misspellings, even though not sufficient to fail a paper, will lower the grade substantially. |
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A paper can fail for other reasons as well, such as weak content, poor organization, confused sentence structure, not addressing the assignment requirements, or plagiarism. |
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Your writing assignments for this class will be evaluated according to this rubric:
| ENGL 2112 WRITING ASSIGNMENT RUBRIC | ||
| GRADE | CONTENT | FORM |
| A |
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| B |
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| C |
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| D |
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| F |
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Your contributions to the class discussions will be graded according to this rubric:
| Very Good 10 Points |
Satisfactory 8 Points |
Needs Work 6 Points |
Unsatisfactory 0 Points |
| Entries are in complete sentences or paragraphs. | Entries are in complete sentences or paragraphs. | Entries are in complete sentences or paragraphs. | Entries are not in complete sentences or paragraphs. |
| Entry distinguishes between your thoughts and the thoughts of others, | Entry distinguishes between your thoughts and the thoughts of others, | Entry distinguishes between your thoughts and the thoughts of others, | Entry does not distinguish between your thoughts and the thoughts of others. |
AND
|
AND |
BUT
|
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| is predominantly made up of your own thoughts, | is predominantly made up of your own thoughts. | is predominantly made up of the thoughts of others. | |
WHILE
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| the thoughts of others are used to support your ideas. | |||
| 3 entries (primary and two secondary) are posted in the discussion board area, | 2 entries (primary and secondary) are posted in the discussion board area, | 2 entries (primary and secondary) are posted in the discussion board area, | Fewer than 2 entries are posted in the discussion board area. |
AND |
AND |
HOWEVER |
|
| 750 or more words total are posted (500+ for primary, 250+ for secondary). | 500-750 words total are posted (500+ for primary). | Each entry is posted but is brief (less than three sentences). | |
PLUS (a or b) |
PLUS (a or b) |
OR |
|
| (a) Each entry contains thoughtful, substantive ideas concerning the assignment or content related to it. | (a) Each entry contains thoughtful, substantive ideas concerning the assignment or content related to it. | (a) Each entry has little in the way of thoughtful, substantive ideas concerning the assignment or content related to it. | |
OR |
OR |
OR |
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| (b) Your entries are responsive to two peers, with detailed remarks about their writing or discussion response. | (b) Your entries are responsive to one peer, with detailed remarks about his or her writing or discussion response. | (b) No entries respond to your peers, or your response to a peer is just a personal remark, not a substantive reply (e.g., "Good. I really liked your comment."). | |
PLUS (c or d) |
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| (c) Your primary entry includes an outside resource, or a relevant, specific real-life application. | |||
OR |
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| (d) Your responses to your peers clearly indicate your position on what they posted (e.g., agreeing, disagreeing, adding to, modifying, extending or questioning), all while explaining yourself thoroughly. | |||
The material from the Student Code of Conduct outlined above applies also to your work in the discussion forums. Don't cut and paste from another site. Don't alter every fifth or sixth word from another site and claim the work as your own. Don't attempt to hide the fact that you're using someone else's ideas. There's nothing wrong with using other sites, other critics, or other commentaries on the texts, as long as you give them credit.
EVALUATION
| Module Quizzes | 25% |
| Discussion Forum posts | 15% |
| Paper 1 | 15% |
| Paper 2 | 15% |
| Exam 1 | 15% |
| Exam 2 | 15% |
| TOTAL | 100% |