Dr. Joanne E. Gates:
EH 404 Shakespeare: the late plays
Jacksonville State University
English Department
Syllabus for EH 404, Dr. Gates, Fall 2009EH 404 Section 001 [Sched. # 10273] Meets in SC 127 MWF, 11:15 a.m. to 12:15 p.m.
To reach Dr. Gates: 206 Stone Center, 782-5548. Office Hours 10:15-11:15 MWF and tba.
COURSE DESCRIPTION [JSU Catalog]: "404. Shakespeare: (3) [credits]. 404 semester: KING LEAR, MACBETH, and selections from later Romances and Tragedies."
PREREQUISITES: Successful completion of EH 102. Strongly recommended: completion of literature survey sequence.
Disability Accommodations Statement: Any individual who qualifies for reasonable accommodation under The Americans With Disabilities Act or Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 should contact the instructor immediately.
Standard Civility Statement: All students are expected to attend class fully prepared with appropriate materials and all devices which make noise turned to the off position (e.g., cellular phones, pagers, personal stereos, etc.). Any student behavior deemed disruptive by the professor will result in expulsion of the student from the classroom, with an absence for the day and possible disciplinary action.
The Professor Expects that you follow standard protocols of classroom behavior, abide by the JSU Student Handbook, and conform to particular requirements of assignments and class discussion as announced.OBJECTIVES
To study the plays of Shakespeare in their critical and historical contexts; to understand the ways that changing cultural contexts affect the production and interpretation of Shakespeare.To understand the background for Shakespeare's plays, including, where appropriate, the study of Shakespeare's sources.
To understand the literary and dramatic aspects of the plays.
To study the dramatic aspects of the plays with attention to what is learned from comparative production analysis, especially through films, published reviews, and creative approaches to the staging of Shakespeare.
To develop critical skills in responding to literature, to be able to write critically and personally about the literature (and the different genres of literature) in ways that demonstrate understanding and appreciation for the variety of interpretations that literature invites.
To exercise students' techniques of critical thinking, questioning, and problem solving.
ATTENDANCE POLICY. Cutting class is strongly discouraged. Because discussions, writing exercises, quizzes, and in-class assignments are graded or prepare you for graded work, cuts will likely affect your grade. The departmental attendance policy for this course mandates that you attend at least 75% of classes to receive a passing grade. Unlike composition courses, there is no difference between excused and unexcused absences; but if you miss two or more classes in a row, I consider it courteous and part of your responsibility as a student to speak to me about what you have missed and whether there is a need to make up work. There is no "Withdraw Passing" from the course allowed after you have exceeded your limit of 10 cuts (For classes meeting three times a week, 11 cuts = automatic F). Even though tardiness and leaving early are not officially counted as a partial absence, understand that it is extremely discourteous and rude. When you have unavoidable reasons for arriving late, leaving early, or otherwise attending the class sporadically, please inform the instructor ahead of time. The professor reserves the right to count these occasions as partial absences, but you will be warned ahead of time and notified as to the way any partial absences is recorded. Whenever in doubt, make sure to verify your record of attendance. Midterm and major assignments can be made up only at the discretion of the instructor (have a legitimate excuse for failure to attend on days when a major assignment is scheduled). I always drop the lowest quiz grade, and may offer an occasion at the last class to do a makeup quiz (a different assignment) to improve your quiz average. Otherwise, quizzes and class work for quiz grades cannot be made up. Exceptions made only in unusual circumstances.
REQUIREMENTS. To receive a passing grade of 60, you must complete all units of the course (midterm, final, quiz grade and reports grade) with an average of sixty or above.
TEXTS
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare, 2nd ed. Ed. G. Blakemore Evans and J.J.M. Tobin. Boston and N.Y.: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. [ISBN: 0-395-75490-9.]Occasional critical reading or source material, placed on reserve (or handouts and Internet access). Depending on the focus for the critical paper, there may be additional texts or critical works you are expected to consult.
EVALUATION:
First Essay. 3 plays compared and contrasted, with a focus thesis. = 15%Midterm, with prepared essay on 2 plays and short answer on 5 plays = 20%
Quizzes and class grades, the average of graded class work, including short written responses (some prepared reports, some on-the-spot). The short factual quizzes that test basic play knowledge cannot be made up nor taken at alternate times, even with legitimate and school-related excuses. You will be allowed to drop one of these quiz grades (either the lowest or one you missed). In addition to these play or weekly quizzes, there will likely be quiz grades assigned to short essays and reports, including reports on films viewed. More details will be forthcoming. If you have scored poorly in two quizzes at Midterm time, you should speak to me. An alternative assignment might be substituted for one of the non-factual, report-based quizzes, at the discretion of the instructor. The average of all but lowest quiz = 15% of Course Grade.
Critical Reports (for the primary grade, a brief, carefully prepared essay (due Monday November 23, but a progress draft encouraged earlier) with Class presentation that class and the following week where you present a part of your paper's argument, based on outside reading. All specific topics for the major report must be pre-approved. 25%
FINAL Exam (see below for schedule), 25% In both Midterm and Final, ample options in selections for essays and formal graded work allow students to focus and plan personal approaches to questions. Short answers test basic knowledge.
Notice: Please be aware that the Department of English has access to powerful software that scans and detects unauthorized documents that are submitted to your instructor. Use of such documents constitutes an admission of academic dishonesty. For this reason, you may be expected to submit a paper electornically, either by a save to disk procedure or by submitting it to the Safe Assign drop box through the Blackboard course shell.
Keep these dates that are on the Academic Calendar in mind:
September 1: Last day to register or add a course
September 8: Last day to withdraw/drop and receive 80% refund on tuition
September 22: Last day to withdraw/drop and receive 50% refund on tuition
October 28 Mid Term Grades are filed
November 5 Last day to Drop without Academic Penalty
November 18 Last day to Drop Passing for Fall 2009: signature required.
December 4: Last day of classes
(You must have a signed-by-the-professor drop slip: you can find me in Stone Center JSU campus on this day)SYLLABUS. Unless otherwise announced, it is best to have the entire play read on the day it is first due on the syllabus. That means excluding the annotation Introduction to. I will have sometimes very brief remarks on the next play for those days, you are not expected to have read the play nor the Introduction on those "Intro" designations.
Week 1 August 26, 28. Intro to course. Assign review of literary and dramatic terms and Watch The Tempest. Intro to Macbeth
Week 2 August 31, September 2, 4. Study of Macbeth. Introduction to Shakespearean Romance and The Tempest.
Week 3 September 9, 11. Measure for Measure and tragi-comedy
Week 4 September 14, 16, 18. Continuation of critical perspectives on Macbeth / Tempest. Discuss and write on Tempest / Macbeth / Measure for Measure. Introduce Cymbeline.
Week 5 September 21, 23, 25. Cymbeline and the Romance, Intro. to Lear.
Week 6 September 28, 30, and October 1. King Lear.
Week 7 October 5, 7, 9. Review; take short answer section of Midterm AND: Writing in class: Compare Lear and Cymbeline. It is the student's responsibility to know standing in the course.
[Midterm grades filed October 28]
Week 8 October 12, 14, 16. PericlesWeek 9 October 19, 21, 23. The Winter's Tale
Week 10 October 26, 28, 30. Antony and Cleopatra.
Week 11 November 2, 4, 6. Begin Selections of critical paper topics.
Revisit King Lear. Read an assigned play or source that will lead to assignment for Report.
There will be the opportunity to read a Source, an Analogue, or one additional late play by Shakespeare. (Each individual in the class will make selections from either a source to a play already assigned or All's Well That Ends Well, Troilus and Cressida, Timon of Athens, Coriolanus, Henry VIII, or, at the professor's discretion, make a decision to focus on a single one of these plays. An alternate strategy will be more targeted choices, so that a small enrollment section can focus on group work that includes a smaller subset of these choices.
Week 12 November 9, 11, 13. Thesis statements of papers due We will present these and workshop the paper's outline, if time. MLA bibliography review.
Oral reports on assigned critical paper. (Aim to lead us to a passage in your play as illustration of one of the points in the paper.) Intro. Two Noble Kinsmen.
Week 13 November 16, 18, 20. Two Noble Kinsmen. All read. Begin review for final.
Week 14. November 23. Papers due. Presentations.
Week 15. November 30, December 2, 4. Presentations and Review for Final.
Final Exam is December 11, in the classroom. 10:30 to 12:30. [Short answer and some written response. Also expect a component of the essay portion to be completed on Blackboard/ Safe Assign as a takehome. Please inform the professor well ahead of time if there is any conflict or official need to reschedule your exam.]
GENERAL GUIDELINES: I participate in a Teaching Inquiry Community at JSU. Its purpose is to share teaching strategies and generate communication to other teachers from classroom-based research. For this reason, I may retain selected written work in order to quote from it. Before doing so, I will first request permission from any students whose work I anticipate using. Assume that all anonymously collected evaluations might also be quoted.
My quizzes tend to vary a great deal in format. You should always be prepared for a rigorous quiz that tests the basic content of the play--keeping characters straight, knowing the plot--at the beginning of the class that it is listed for the syllabus (not on the Intro date). Depending on your schedule, some of you may be invited to do background reading, with a report to the class averaged as an additional quiz. Occasionally, there may be unannounced quizzes, which may take the form of open-book exercises, short essays, discussions, or reports on group work. I drop the lowest quiz, then average the remaining grades for 15 % of your grade for the course.
All formal written work, including the critical paper and test essays for the course should conform to the standard MLA format. Remember that when quoting from verse plays, it is necessary to list Act, Scene, and line numbers. There are two acceptable ways to do this. Whenever you use a quotation for class purposes, especially on the Midterm, Class Paper, and Final, get into the habit of proper citation form. Chose one or the other style and be consistent: Arabic numbers with periods (no spaces) separating the numbers: 4.3.115-117. Roman numerals with commas and spaces: IV, iii, 115-117. (Beware of secondary sources which include quotes which do not contain these references. Electronic editions of the plays may also contain unnumbered lines.)
Information that comes from a CRITICAL source must always be properly introduced and identified. This includes Monarch Notes, Cliff Notes, electronic resources, and all other guides to the plays. It is academic dishonesty not to give complete credit to your source, whether or not the idea is directly quoted. This course is not designed to require a great deal of critical scholarship, but I expect that those who do want to make use of, refute, or expand on interpretations of the play by previous scholars will check with me to make sure that they are using proper methodology. NOTE WELL: The instructor respects student individuality and innovative interpretive strategies. Group work and class discussions aim for the most populist/democratic discussion: all students encouraged to contribute; those monopolizing discussion time will be asked privately to moderate their vocal responses. You are expected to maintain academic standards, to turn in only original work, and to properly credit all sources not your own. This class is designed to properly train and assist you in doing so. You are expected to comply with the JSU Student Handbook with reference to all issues including code of conduct and academic dishonesty. While Web resources on Shakespeare are in abundance, you must be aware of disinformation sites, weigh the quality of the material, and accord proper credit, even for play and character summary sites. The professor may recommend supplemental reading on the web, to which links or printout will be supplied; and she will assist in proper documentation of web sites that are relevant for class study. (A review of MLA citation syle is built into the course. When in doubt, ASK.) She will not tolerate abuses of copied or altered information presented as the student's own work. Whenever a grade dispute, an attendance record dispute, or other issues of decorum arise, your FIRST responsibility is to arrange conference with the instructor.
I will distribute detailed guidelines for the paper at a later date. All topics must be approved. Note well: I will explain my philosophy and policies on the use of film to study Shakespeare in the near future. I am working to incorporate electronic literature into all my courses. I will speak more about possible projects for this course than include work with electronic texts of Shakespeare and Internet sites. Those of you who are interested in the Internet or use of Computer technology with study of Humanities should strongly consider for your critical paper a project which makes use of these interests. ALL PAPER AND PROJECT TOPICS and all make-up assignments MUST BE APPROVED.
TERMS YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO WORK WITH: http://www.jsu.edu/depart/english/gates/allterms.htm
[Some of these are less relevant to Shakespeare studies, but this list is a good review of terms you mastered in EH 102.]
Some useful links:
http://www.jsu.edu/depart/english/gates/learsour.htm (Sidney source for Lear, the Gloucester plot)
http://www.jsu.edu/depart/english/gates/shtragcv.htm ("Shakespeare and the Tragic Virtue" by James P. Hammersmith)
http://www.jsu.edu/depart/english/gates/shtragln.htm Other links to Shakespeare and Tragedy
http://www.jsu.edu/depart/english/engother.htm#Shakes My Departmental list of Shakespeare links; Shakespeare's Sources separated at the bottom.
Also, see links available at http://www.jsu.edu/depart/english/gates/shak
Dr. Gates's e-mail: jgates@jsu.edu