Welcome to English 626

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Day 1(12/30): Tom Paine,Common Sense: “Writing Revolution…”

  • 1. Make anIntroduction: On your home page, upload a picture of yourself and write a few sentences introducing yourself to the rest of the class. Tell us about where you are for this winter session: relaxing on a beach, at home with your family, soaking in a thermal pool in Iceland. You can also include information such as your major, interest and experience in English courses at UW-Madison, and anything else that would be useful for us to know by way of introduction. Please upload a picture as well.
  • 2.Read the first half of Paine’sCommon Sense.
  • 3.Post your critical reaction to the reading. For tips and expectations about responding to the reading, see the section in the syllabus ondaily responses to the reading. Your response should be roughly 150-300 words. Be sure to make specific reference to the reading. This means quoting passages, so that you and others can engage the language, themes, conflicts, and issues within our reading.
  • 4.Post aresponseto one of your classmates’ response to Paine. Your response should be a few sentences. For tips and expectations about responding to your classmates, please seeresponding to classmate's posts.

Day 2(12/31 and 1/1*)--because this is New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, you have 2 days to complete this assignment): Tom Paine,Common Sense: … or should it be, “Revolutionary Writing”

  • 1.FinishCommon Sense, including Paine's letter to the Quakers.
  • 2.Post your critical reaction to the reading (150-300 words).

Here’s apromptfor you: Imagine you’re living in the colonies in 1776 and that you have Loyalist (Tory) sympathies. How would particular passages fromCommon Sensechange or reinforce your feelings about the Crown? How might you react, for instance, to Paine’s closing exhortation, “Let the names of Whig and Tory be extinct, and let none other be heard among us, than those of agood citizen…and a virtuous supporter ofMANKINDand of theFREE AND INDEPENDENT STATE OF AMERICA.” How might you react to passages where Paine seems to say of British sympathizers that “you have the heart of a coward, and the spirit of a sycophant”?

  • 3.Respond to a classmate’s post on Tom Paine.

Day 3(1/2) Benjamin Franklin: Is Satire Revolutionary?

  • 1.Read Benjamin Franklin, “Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One”; “The Sale of the Hessians”
  • 2.Post your critical reaction to the reading. I’d like to offer a creative option. Franklin is deploying satire in these essays, first published in newspapers. Try your hand at producing a satire à la Franklin. Create a topic on anything from “Rules for Succeeding in an Online Course” to “The Sale of the Winter Holidays.” Whether you pursue this option or a more straightforward critical reaction, your post needs to be 150-300 words.
  • 3.Respond—un-ironically and un-satirically (!)—to a classmate’s post.

Day 4(1/3): Nathaniel Hawthorne, “My Kinsman, Major Molineux”

  • 1.Hawthorne’s story is set in a period of colonial unrest before the Revolution. So the action story predatesCommon Sense, although Hawthorne did not write it until 1831. Remember specificity is the key, so try focusing on a particular phrase or image that Hawthorne employs. Your response should be 150-300 words.
  • 2.Comment and respond on a classmate’s post.

Day 5(1/6): Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Young Goodman Brown” and “Wakefield”

  • 1.Twitter and Hawthorne. Here’s how it works: “Young Goodman Brown” is set in Puritan Massachusetts, specifically Salem. Multiple characters enter the story: church deacons, Native American sachems, a sketchy man with a walking staff that seems to wriggle like a serpent, a pair of newlyweds. What might these characters tweet on that strange night? Write 2-3 tweets that one of these personages might write. Feel free to have characters respond to one another.
  • Or, you might explore what the title character of “Wakefield” might tweet. Wakefield is a strange and perverse character, but is he rebelling against anything? (To be clear, I’m not asking you actually to tweet, but simply to post what might have been tweeted).
  • 2.Now that we have our Twitter feed assembled, your job is to tell us which one you would follow and why. You’re free to choose your original tweet or to choose a classmate’s, as you explore the intricacies of these stories. Your commentary on our Twitter exercise, should be 150-300 words.

Day 6(1/7): Herman Melville, “Bartleby, the Scrivener”

  • 1.Occupy Bartleby. In your post for this reading, I would like you to consider that Melville’s tale was performed in public readings by protestors at Occupy Wall Street sites in various encampments. “I prefer not to” became something of a protest slogan. Various media outlets comment4ed on the connection between “Bartleby” and Wall Street.TheNew Yorker, for instance, called Bartleby “a patron saint for occupy.” What do you make of this convergence? Do you think Occupy is offering a useful “interpretation” of “Bartleby” in making the connections to Melville? Or, is it a misreading? You don’t have to respond to these specific questions, but your post should explore the potential connections between “Bartleby” and OWS. After all, Bartleby does say to the lawyer at one point, “Not yet; I am occupied.” Your post should be 150-300 words.
  • 2.Respond to a classmate’s post on this topic—or to a response to a response, as might happen in a conversation—with at least 75 words.

Day 7(1/8):Paper 1due. Click here forinstructions and expectations.

Day 8(1/9): Frederick Douglass, “The Heroic Slave”

  • 1.Watch the video that features the radical professor debating the more old-fashioned liberal professor about the politics of Douglass’s novella. You can watch the video here. With whom do you tend to agree? What questions might you ask of these personages talking about Mr. Listwell’s and Madison Washington’s relationship? Are there points or passages not addressed by the speakers that you would raise?
  • 2.Continue the spirit of the debate by commenting on a classmate’s post.

Day 9(1/10): Charles Chesnutt, “The Doll”; W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Criteria of Negro Art”

  • Passive Resistance: Although the highly regardedThe Atlantichad accepted and published other work by Chesnutt, it rejected “The Doll.” The story was eventually published inThe Crisis, the journal of the NAACP edited by W.E.B. Du Bois. You may want to reflect on this publication history, as you consider the story. Why didThe Atlanticturn down Chesnutt’s submission? You could try responding creatively by pretending you’re the editor ofThe Atlantic, who explains to the author why this piece of fiction is not acceptable. Or, you may want to imagine how the black readership ofThe Crisismight have responded to the story.
  • For context, on this point, I’m also asking you to read Du Bois’s determined manifesto, “The Criteria of Negro Art,” where he lays out a series of provocative propositions about art and propaganda.
  • Visit a classmate’s page you haven’t yet visited or rarely visited, and leave a comment there.

Day 10(1/13): Kate Chopin,The Awakening

  • 1.You should finish and comment on the first half of the novel today. As you do so, you might consider these assessments of the novel when it was first published: “unhealthy”; “not wholesome”; “Miss Kate Chopin is [a]… clever woman, but she has put her cleverness to a very bad use… the purport of the story can hardly be described in language fit for publication.” You might want to zero in a passage or scene that could have given offense to readers in 1899 when the novel was first published.
  • 2.You know the drill: keep those conversations going by commenting on a classmate’s page.

Day 11(1/14):Critical Précis

  • 1.Post your critical précis. Click here for more on thecriticalprécis.
  • 2.Post a question or leave a comment about acritical précis posted by one of your colleagues. Perhaps you’ll want to suggest what looks useful about an approach; perhaps you’ll want to ask the author if the article might help illuminate some of the ideas your drawing together for your FINAL PAPER (which is due in 4 days).
  • 3. Remember, this assignment is also about crowdsourcing. If a classmate is gearing up for the final paper and asks you for more information about the article you read, please share the knowledge that you've accumulated in reading the article you've chosen.

Day 12(1/15): Kate Chopin,The Awakening

  • 1.Once you finish the novel, listen to the first half of thisradio showfrom Wisconsin Public Radio yon Kate Chopin’s novel. It features someone who might be familiar to you. Check out the first 30 minutes for the conversation among the WPR host, the UW-Madison professor, and the Chopin biographer. And if you’re interested stick around for the callers. In your post for this day, you might write about which question you might have called in to ask. Or you might say how you would have answered a question from one of the callers.
  • 2.Comment on and respond to a classmate’s post.

Day 13(1/16): e.e. cummings, “Buffalo Bill’s”; “Poem, or beauty hurts Mr. Vinal”; “Next to of course God America I”; “I sing of Olaf Glad and Big”; “as freedom is a breakfast food”

  • 1.After reading the poems, clickhere to listenandhereto cummings read “Next to of course God America I” and “I sing of Olaf Glad and Big.”
  • 2.What did you thinking of cummings’s reading? Did his reading of his poetry add to or change your understanding of the poems? These are just some possible starter questions. Whatever you do focus on in the poems, be sure to focus by talking about specific images, word choice, meter, etc.
  • 3.Find a colleague’s reading of the poetry that does not tally with yours. Comment upon the difference.

Day 14(1/17): Langston Hughes

  • Read “Let America Be America Again”; “Christ in Alabama”; “Southern Gentlemen, White Prostitutes, Mill-Owners, and Negroes”; “Freedom Train.” As you'll see, I've included the original publication context of "Christ in Alabama" which has an accompanying article by Hughes that explains the context and occasion of the poem. Likewise, "Freedom Train" gestures to a specific history involving the transportation of original copies of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution by train for everyone to see. When the exhibit traveled to segregated states of the South, blacks were not allowed to enter with whites or where denied entry altogether.
  • Prompt 1: You might consider writing about how poetry engages history? What does it mean to write a poem that comments on history?
  • Prompt 2: Go macro: what sort of conclusion to the course does Langston Hughes provide for you? Or, go micro: Focus in on 2-3 words that caught your attention from any one of these poems or the article.

Day 15(1/19):FINAL PAPER DUE

  • For your final posting, take a few moments to reflect on the online nature of this course. Was it different from your expectations? What in your opinion are the salient differences with a class taught by traditional means? What’s your experience of online education and learning?

GRADING

Daily writing and participation 20%

First Essay 25%

Critical Precis 20%

Final Essay 35%