Dr. Gates EH 501 Spring 2007
D R A F T Assignment Overview, page 1
Assignments Spring 2007.
SHORT WRITTEN EXERCISES. 25%
Graded Work in this area:
Hamlet close textual reading. Week 2.
Hamlet Refutation. Week 3.
Paper Proposal One, from A or B or C. Turn in Feb. 27th
Paper Proposal Two from C, or D, or E. Turn in March 6.
Film Analysis. The Dead or Hamlet or both.
Also expected: Reports on the reading in Schwartz, Kliman, Ellman,
Habegger (or another biography) and the annotated bibliographies for two
paper proposals.
Exercises in this area will function like a quiz or double quiz. Expect one
every class. If you miss or your achievement is unacceptable, there might
be some occasions where you are expected to revise or to do an alternate,
make-up assignment to replace the missed grade. Be warned that a makeup does not necessary entitle you to a grade equivalent to doing the
assignment on time and acceptable the first time.
MIDTERM 25%
Expect essays that reinforce class texts and textual analysis: Hamlet, The Dead,
poems of Dickinson. Likely three exercises and a few short identification questions.
Expect one of the essays to be prepared ahead, one write in class, and one a takehome to be due before the next class. Scheduled on February 20.
COURSE PAPER: 25%. [Also, Expect a component of the final to include some
revisions.]
This paper is a development, after consultation with me of one of your two paper
proposals. Due date is listed as April 10th. But thesis, presentations, bibliographies,
are due earlier. It is your responsibility to get final approval from me as to which of
your two proposals (or an alternative) is accepted for the COURSE PAPER
expansion as soon after March 6 as possible. Aim for a 15-page section, at least, of
what you might design as a paper that might be expanded at a later date. Outline
the un-drafted portion, or show, in a complete outline, what part of the paper is in
need of expansion. Demonstrate good methods of compiling and revising
bibliography.
Choice A. The Dead and schools of criticism
Track the significant sources from one set of essays in Schwartz's volume of The Dead.
Aim to become both a specialist in as well as a critic of one of these "Schools" of
criticism on this text: either the psychoanalytic, reader-response, new historicist, feminist,
or deconstructionist criticism and to use it to delve into the wider debates on
interpretations of this text. Include not only the major sources that the contributors list
but at least three article-length scholarly interpretations of The Dead that have been
published since the volume, not represented in the combined bibliographies it includes.
Dr. Gates EH 501 Spring 2007
D R A F T Assignment Overview, page 2
Choice B. Refutation and analysis of Hamlet
Brian Vickers, in Appropriating Shakespeare, uses a more sophisticated method of
refutation to dismantle or discredit the schools of criticism (deconstruction, feminist,
Marxist, etc.) in Shakespeare studies. Apply his critical method to a particular essay on
Hamlet that is suitable for refutation by using the text of the play and the support of other
critics. Choose your essay carefully: not many Hamlet essays are suitable for refutation.
Get approval before proceeding. There are guides to tracking the particular debates in
Hamlet studies, and essays that are themselves refutations. If you find in your research
that someone has already accomplished the task you set for yourself, you need to
acknowledge this and adjust.
Choice C. Critiquing Literary Biography
Choose either Shields on Harper Lee, or Greenblatt on Shakespeare, or Janet Malcolm on
Sylvia Plath or Milford on Zelda Fitzgerald [or Ellman on Joyce or Habegger on
Dickinson--these we will look at in class], or another biographer (approval required)
What are the values of a literary biography, especially one that significantly alters the
reception of a writer's work or makes connections between the work and the life that New
Criticism would have rejected? You might investigate competing interpretations or
propose that the biographer risks a significant misreading of the work of their
biographical subject in order present a reading of the creative work which is more
appealing to his or her task as literary biographer. Acknowledge what we learn from
literary biography but also allow yourself to challenge an assumption that there is chiefly
an autobiographical purpose to Hamlet, The Dead, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Bell Jar,
The Great Gatsby.
Choice D. Evaluate Pedagogical Approaches
Compare Kliman's Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare's Hamlet with one other volume
in MLA's Approaches to Teaching series. Read the entire two volumes, rank and rate the
contributors' essays for undergraduate college-level teaching. In addition, find on your
own at least 3 additional pedagogical approaches (three total, to either text) not
anthologized in the series volume. In addition, locate and evaluate from sources outside
the volumes at least one ideal scholarly (non pedagogical) article on either Hamlet or the
second teaching topic. (One purpose here is to recognize that gearing a publication for a
teaching unit requires classroom experience and a writing voice that is personal. The
academic scholar rarely imposes a personal voice. Demonstrate in a section of your paper
the difference between the two styles of writing by rewriting at least two pages of text in
a less personal, more scholarly voice.
Choice E. Dickinson Studies
E1. Find an approach to Dickinson scholarship that interestingly and, without dismissal,
ranks three from these categories of critical inquiry:
The textual sources (readings in manuscripts, editing of manuscripts, including issues of
considering the fascicles, use of hypertext),
Dr. Gates EH 501 Spring 2007
D R A F T Assignment Overview, page 3
The autobiographical concerns (who might be the master; did Dickinson feel herself
intimate with Sue, what was her relationship with her father, her mother),
The philosophical concerns (how much Transcendentalism and aspects of religion are
important to readings)
Dickinson and the developing of an American canon.
The syntactical peculiarities of a Dickinson text: For this, use at least Emily Dickinson: A
Poet's Grammar by Christann Miller (to be placed on reserve).
E2. Alternatively, track Habegger's sources to more fully answer a particular issue in
reading Dickinson. Consider these sources and other Dickinson biography and
scholarship as you trace one particular puzzle (or mystery) in Dickinson
scholarship. What caused Dickinson not to publish? Which are the most
convincing positions on the Master letters? Is Dickinson's seclusion more a
fabrication that conforms to a simplified reading, or did she herself construct her
isolation as part of her poet's agenda?
E3. Rank the most effective Dickinson essays published in the last fifteen years in order
to argue that it is reductive to apply a school of criticism (psychoanalytic, feminist,
deconstruction) to Dickinson studies. Or argue that "thematic" study of Dickinson is
equally reductive. Specific criteria will be forthcoming.
FINAL EXAM 25% Tuesday April 24. One component, at least, will be take-home, due
at exam time.
TEXTS. Required:
Dickinson, Emily. The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition. Ed. R. W. Franklin.
Cambridge, MA, and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005.
[0674018249]
Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 6th ed. New York:
MLA, 2003. [0873529863]
Habegger, Alfred. My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson. New
York: Modern Library, 2002. [0812966015]
Joyce, James. The Dead. Ed. Daniel R. Schwarz. Boston and New York: Bedford/St.
Martin's, 1994. [0312080735]
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Ed. Cyrus Hoy. Norton Critical Edition. 2nd ed. New
York and London: WW Norton and Company, 1992. [0393956636]
Kliman, Bernice, ed. Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare's Hamlet. New York: Modern
Language Association, 2001. [0873527682]
TEXTS Optional:
Shields, Charles J. Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee. New York: Henry Holt and
Company, 2005. [080507919x]
Note that Shields is scheduled to speak for On the Brink, JSU's conference on emerging
writers, February 10. Those working on Shields for Option C should make every effort to
attend.