Dr. Gates EH 420/ G. R E P O R T S D I R E C T I O N S
Poem/ Poet report.
You have the option to teach a single poem OR to give a report on a poet’s career, highlighting a few notable or representative texts. Do not attempt to do both. An excessive amount of factual details is not good strategy.
Likely to count as major component for Week 2 grade. Those in the first paragraph of choices indicate that a film account of the poet is available. Those selecting these have the option to consult it, but for this report, it is sufficient to cover material only in the anthology. It IS possible to do your poet report and major critical report on the same writer, but I'd advise you to check your options and preferences, and draw up some alternative topics if you want to propose this.
Aim to speak for 3-5 minutes MAXIMUM. There could also be a few moments taken to clarify or re-emphasize points you make. Prepare a one-page handout and make copies for all students, plus two to turn in. You do not have to take up your time speaking every line of your handout. You may want to read a section of a poem and explain or raise interpretive possibilities.
Include on your handout:
Your name and course information.
Name of writer and pages in Norton.
Other sources you consulted if applicable.
Clear paragraph or list of several major biographical points.
List of titles, either Titles included in Norton (presumably you read them all).
Titles you recommend, titles NOT anthologized in Norton but only mentioned.
Brief statement of analysis of a poem that is in the book.
An overview of questions you consider relevant for discussing the work and /or the writer. (or an approach to teaching the poem)
Do not select a writer we are all reading from the syllabus. Choose from:
Sylvia Plath, Marianne Moore, and Edith Bishop Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Parker [films are available: each of the above are featured in an accompanying video. You do not need to consult it but it means that further investigation for the major critical report could include consulting that video ] ;
OR from:
Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, Amy Lowell, Mina Loy, Anne Spencer, Anna Wickham, Elinor Wylie, Hilda Doolitle, Edith Sitwell, Louise Bogan, Ruth Pitter, Stevie Smith, Dilys Laing, May Sarton, Muriel Rukeyser, Margaret Walker, Judith Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, Denise Levertov, Patricia Beer, Maxine W. Kumin, Anne Sexton, Ursula Fanthorpe, Adrienne Rich, Fleur Adcock, Audre Lorde, Lucile Clifton, Diane Wakowski, Margaret Atwood, Marilyn Hacker, Sharon Olds, Louise Gluck, Eavan Boland, Linda Hogan, Rita Dove, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Cathy Song
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Dr. Gates. EH 420/G Major report:
Unless otherwise announced 20% of grade here. I am expecting each student to work on a different author unless you pick C. Suggested length: a 5 page paper for undergrads; 710 page paper for graduate students. All paper and project topics must be approved by the instructor. CHOOSE ONE FROM THESE LETTERED OPTION CATEGORIES.
A) Critical work on a major title and criticism on it. (may include a treatment of the film version of a novel or play, but is not required to). Short list of major novels / plays on film is on the last page.
B). Or: criticism with a biographical emphasis. Examines the biographical material and proposes a reading of a work or works in light of the issues raised by the life details.
Evaluate the manner in which the specific biographical portrait informs the writing achievement(s) of the writer. This is not simply a book/film report on a biography; nor is it a text-analysis only assignment. Use the biographical portrait to argue for different or more informed readings of the author's work. Think of this as one biographical source informing one focus text (at least). Find places you agree and disagree with a critic’s biographical interpretation of works and propose your own rebuttal or expansion of a critic or critics’ position/s.
The poets Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Marianne Moore, and Edith Bishop who are the subjects of segments from the Voices and Visions series are also possible subjects for the biographical study. There are other women writers (not all are in the anthology) who have been the subject of documentary or biographical films: Dorothy Parker, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (Cross Creek), Lorraine Hansberry, Edna St. Vincent Millay. Isak Dinesen, Beryl Markham, Lillian Hellman (Julia), Anne Frank, Margaret Sanger, Helen Keller, Gertrude Stein, Vera Brittain (Testament of Youth), Jane Austen, Elizabeth I. Nora Ephron (Heartburn) Helen Hanff (84 Charing Cross Road). See below for C-SPAN writers.
C) A close comparison contrast between works of two separate writers. See sample; we’ll discuss other options.
D) A traditional research paper, using database searches and other bibliographical skills to review the subject field and write a refutation/response based on review of the biographical (and other) criticism of the literature as you see it informing a text or texts. Multiple primary sources in either biographical or literature area, or both. Though some good critical sources can be found on the Internet, print sources are also expected.
Due to limited class time, expect that only selected report summaries will be presented to the class. EVERY report topic, whether from the above list or not, must receive the permission of the professor as soon as possible after the student is inclined to select the topic. There may be cases where two student's preferences overlap, in which case specific theses must be approved to prevent duplicate topics.
Also for this, prepare a one-page handout and make copies for all students, plus two to turn in. Turn in 2 identical copies of full paper. You will get the marked one returned and the other will go on file. An interpretive thesis which states up front your full claims of the paper is expected. Do NOT organize with long plot summaries and surprises at the end that wander into a conclusion.
Some samples:
A1. Make the claim that the film adaptation of Willa Cather’s The Song of the Lark reduces the powerful sensibilities of the interior drive of a young artist’s coming of age, but that the film/book study is a better introduction to Cather’s sensibility than The Norton’s selection by Cather, “Coming Aphrodite,” which looks in on the before and after state of a young singer, and loses empathy with Cather’s life-long passion for the female artist because it is told mainly from the male admirer’s viewpoint.
A2. Argue that Bobbie Anne Mason, in the book In Country, gives an interior sensibility to Sam (Samantha) that deals with a series of rich and vital concerns for the graduating senior that make the film adaptation seem hollow. (List the effective treatment of limited omniscient point of view, of Sam’s dreams and need to know her father’s and uncle’s story.)
B1. Propose the thesis that new information in the Voices and Visions segment on Plath by her mother and acquaintances gives us alternative ways to read her poems about her father than some critics would argue. Specifically, “Daddy” and the bee poems free Plath to be her own person, not a victim as the surface text of “Daddy” suggests.
C1. Use Plath’s The Bell Jar to argue that the shock treatment Esther Greenwood undergoes makes the equivalent criticism of treatment of women’s mental health for its era that Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” did in its age, in Gilman’s attack upon the “Rest Cure.”
D1. Argue that The Bell Jar exposes women’s adjustments to adolescence in the fifties the way that Mary Pipher’s Reviving Ophelia does for the 1990s. Though sexual maturity for young women (detailed in the book; only suggested in the film) came later in adolescence for Plath and her generation, the lack of cultural awareness of the need to support young women is an important universal message and lifts Plath’s work out of a narrow psycho-biographical interpretation.
All options will conform to proper MLA citation and bibliography style, which we will review. In all types of projects, as well as for the prepare-ahead essays, aim for your interpretive thesis must be supported with your examples (including direct quotations) from the literature; critical thinking is expected. The type of "research" project that merely pastes together other viewpoints and concludes with a brief personal summary is not acceptable; you need to do your own examination of the primary text. Students misunderstand the technical procedure of introducing documentation if they fail to properly introduce the sources. (See in your handbooks coverage of signal phrase or phrase of attribution.) Equally important is to credit a critic for making a point about a certain passage of a text you are analyzing. If you use that critic's example, give appropriate credit with introductory signal phrase and proper transition between your own voice and a level of discourse that makes it clear who is responsible for the observation. Don't simple lift quotes from a critic, but record the "chain of attribution." Example:
Marcus claims that Woolf's assertion, "We think back through our mothers if we are women" is a crucial statement for acknowledging Woolf's significance in establishing the importance of a female tradition in literature (qtd. in Marcus ##).
Some goals of this component of the class:
To examine the manner in which biographies and personalized life writing of women writers make significant differences in the acceptance of a writer's importance in the canon.
To appreciate the writing of women writers and their popular acceptance through the use of film adaptations of their works; to analyze film treatments in order to more fully appreciate the style and message of the written accomplishment.
Two writers receiving critical attention during the month are Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mary Chestnut. (Part of American Writers Series on C-SPAN) The Stowe episode will have aired live on June 4 at 8:00 a.m. But there should be replays later that day, 4:30 p.m. and twice on the Friday night following. Tapes of Sojourner Truth and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (previously aired) may be available.
Reports for EH 420, Dr. Gates, page 1
Partial List of films excluding bio pics
Not all are available or appropriate
Novels and fiction
(in approximate order of composition):
Northanger Abbey
Pride and Prejudice, Emma (mult. vers.)
Sense and Sensibility (mult. vers.)
Mansfield Park (the BBC version)
Persuasion
Wuthering Heights (mult. vers.)
Jane Eyre (mult. vers.)
Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Silas Marner
The Mill on the Floss
Adam Bede
Middlemarch
The Revolt of Mother
The Yellow Wallpaper
The Awakening (Grand Isle)
The House of Mirth (not yet avail.)
Ethan Frome
The Age of Innocence
The Buccaneers
Rebecca (2 versions)
My Antonia
O Pioneers!
Song of the Lark
Orlando
Mrs. Dalloway
To the Lighthouse
The Jilting of Granny Weatherall
Ship of Fools
The Dollmaker
Babette's Feast
Wise Blood
The Women of Brewster Place
The Color Purple
In Country
The Handmaid's Tale
Cold Sassy Tree
Housekeeping
Beloved
The Joy Luck Club
Fried Green Tomatoes
House of the Spirits
Like Water for Chocolate
The Perez Family
Plays
The Little Foxes
Watch on the Rhine
The Children's Hour
A Raisin in the Sun (2 versions)
Member of the Wedding (2 versions)
Getting Out
'Night Mother
The Wake of Jamie Foster
Crimes of the Heart
Miss Firecracker
Uncommon Women and Others
The Heidi Chronicles
Reports for EH 420, Dr. Gates, page 1