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Joe Calabrese FH 232
calabj@unr.edu
Office Hours: Fall 2015 Monday 12-1:00 TR. 10-11; also by appointment
Website: http://wolfweb.unr.edu/homepage/calabj/ 1
Welcome to Writing About Literature (Eng. 298)
Description
Over the semester we’ll read short stories, poetry, drama and novels. We’ll talk
about all this reading and write about selected items.
A few of my expectations for each of you:
 A genuine interest in literature; if this is lacking, change
majors
 A semester-long pursuit of literary judgment
 A commitment to bringing your best game to class, every
class
 A commitment to your best reading: attentive, curious,
open
 Sincere effort in writing, reading, discussion
Our class is not lecture-oriented. Every meeting will focus on discussion. How
can you get the most from such a format?
Read assigned material carefully (rather than casually). It’s
helpful to look at stories or poems—any of our texts really—as the result of
choices made by writers. Behind a choice there’s an intention and it is useful to
get at this. If James Baldwin chooses to focus the last third of a short story on
describing a jazz performance, readers should consider that choice very
carefully.
Take notes. If you really want to turbo charge your learning,
write these in a journal. The notes may take the form of questions. Why does
Boyle repeat “bad” so many times? Some notes are just observations. “Boyle
repeats “bad” at least ten times.” Sometimes it’s all about what moves you. “I
love the way Faulkner exaggerates Miss Emily’s independence.” You might be
moved in a different way: “I hate the implication that Miss Emily lived with a
corpse.” Often, the value of notes only appears in retrospect, when you have
finished a text and you are trying to organize your thinking (often in
preparation for an essay). Enjoy the reading. That’s the real point. Pleasure
instructs.
Workload
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This is not Webcampus ; it’s my site, on the faculty homepages.
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I’ll assign several papers and there will be short exams as well. The papers
must be typed, double-spaced, and the pages numbered. We will have a final
exam; for this you will be a character in one of the Ives plays. Break a leg. I plan
to augment discussion with panels. You will be assigned to two of these. They
require strictly formatted one-page responses presented in the panel and then
turned in for credit.
Goals/Outcomes (aka SLOs)
 an ability to read comprehensively
 skill in limiting writing topics
 skill in integrating textual material into personal writing
 skill in building persuasive arguments about texts
 familiarity with critical nomenclature
Grading
Papers 70%
Exams 15%
Groups 15%
You have to do all the work to pass, and it has to be yours. If you get caught
cheating, your “work” will be sent to the department chair and college dean.
You get an “F” in 298, and your social life may expand to include those two
officials. See the UNR policy below. I don’t post grades during the semester. You
can see me during office hours if you have questions about your grade.
What I look for in papers.
 correct English (I don’t review this.)
 sensible structure and clear focus
 proper incorporation of quoted material in your prose
 writing that makes me believe you have really read and
thought about the reading and the prompt
Policies in part
Website: My webpages are at http://wolfweb.unr.edu/homepage/calabj/ I will
post assignments and course materials there, not on the WebCampus site.
Check the webpages regularly because if I make changes to paper due dates or
the reading schedule they will appear on this site.
Attendance: Come to class or risk failure. You can miss three classes with no
harm to your grade. After that, “harm” can mean a little or a lot. Some people
like to have an exact number beyond those three, or an exact correlation
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between absences and impact on the grade. Those people need to take another
section of 298. I’m not unreasonable about absence but tolerance has its limits.
Don’t ask me what we did in classes you missed. Ask a classmate.
Email: Don’t email papers unless I tell you explicitly that a particular item may
be mailed to me. Feel free to email me about any class matters, or drop by my
office to discuss things.
Miscellaneous:
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Don’t make a habit of coming in late. It’s disruptive.
Things happen occasionally but if you are chronically
coming in late we will be meeting about it.
Laptops, Kindles, and smart little phones are here to stay
but don’t fart around with your devices in class.
I accept late work sometimes. It’s better than no work, but
if you miss an extension deadline, you may get an “F” in
the class (you must do all the coursework to pass).
See my Policy link on my homepage
Several more important reminders:
Academic Dishonesty: “Cheating, plagiarism or otherwise obtaining grades
under false pretenses constitute academic dishonesty according to the code of
this university. Academic dishonesty will not be tolerated and penalties can
include canceling a student's enrollment without a grade, giving an F for the
course or for the assignment. For more details, see the University of Nevada,
Reno General Catalog.”
Disability Services: “Any student with a disability needing academic
adjustments or accommodations is requested to speak with the Disability
Resource Center (Thompson Building, Suite 101) as soon as possible to arrange
for appropriate accommodations.”
Audio and Video Recording: “Surreptitious or covert video-taping of class or
unauthorized audio recording of class is prohibited by law and by Board of
Regents policy. This class may be videotaped or audio recorded only with the
written permission of the instructor. In order to accommodate students with
disabilities, some students may be given permission to record class lectures
and discussions. Therefore, students should understand that their comments
during class may be recorded.”
Academic Success Services: “Your student fees cover usage of the Math Center
(775) 784-4422, Tutoring Center (775) 784-6801, and University Writing
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Center (775) 784-6030. These centers support your classroom learning; it is
your responsibility to take advantage of their services. Keep in mind that
seeking help outside of class is the sign of a responsible and successful
student.”
Online Course Evaluations: Your chance to evaluate this English course will
appear two weeks before the last day of classes in the form of a new course on
your WebCampus home page. This new course contains only the evaluation
survey. These online course evaluations are extremely important to your
instructor and to the Department of English, so please take a few minutes to
complete your course evaluation when it becomes available. The evaluation is
completely anonymous and your comments can never be connected with your
name. Instructors cannot see the evaluation course on WebCampus and will
not have access to the contents of these evaluations until after final grades have
been posted.
EXAMPLE PANEL PAPER
What does Bad mean in “Greasy Lake”?
Bad’s meaning develops as the story is told. (underline your thesis)
Right at the outset, the narrator claims that back in the day “it was good to be
bad,” which seems to mean something like “cool.” Then he lists some behavior of bad
people, meaning him and his friends. “We drank gin and grape juice, Tango,
Thunderbird, and Bali Hai…We were bad.” Then he gives the essence of the term:
“[W]e struck elaborate poses to show that we didn’t give a shit about anything.” They
can roll a joint and dance and slouch. The narrator also mentions that read André Gide,
an author who would probably shock their parents. Appearance is everything to them.
Bad in this sense is all about posing. It isn’t “the real thing.”
The next time we see bad it modifies “greasy character,” and this guy is violent,
a real ass-kicker who takes on three guys who disturbed him when he was getting it on
with his “fox.” This greasy character is not a poser, he’s a man of action as the narrator
says. He is probably how they imagined themselves before that night. He comes out
swinging and decks the narrator and then lays out Digby, who tried out one of his
Bruce Lee moves on the guy.
But the most interesting and problematic uses of bad come after the narrator
uses a tire iron to knock out the greasy character and the three young men are about
to rape “the fox.” The narrator says, “We were on her…panting, wheezing, tearing at
her clothes, grabbing for flesh. We were bad characters….” He has beat a man
unconscious and all three are in the first moments of sexual assault, of a gang rape.
This is primal bad, crossing the-line and outside-of-civilization bad, and experiencing
it is probably the defining moment of the story. The boys are interrupted, forced to
abandon the rape, but for a time they are genuinely bad and no one is more surprised
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at their “badness” than the posers themselves. At this point the narrator retreats into
the lake with its murky water and “primal ooze,” and it’s like he’s sinking into his own
primal nature.
At the end of the story, the boys reunite and they turn down a chance to party
with two women, one of whom calls them bad characters but the narrator feels like a
frightened child rather than a bad character. All three guys just want to go home.
YOUR RESPONSE WILL BE ONE FULL SINGLE-SPACED PAGE.
IT WILL INCLUDE SPECIFIC REFERENCES AND DIRECT QUOTES.
Grading: up to 10 points per panel paper
A good paper answers the prompt concisely in a well-formed thesis developed with
support from the text. That support will include properly incorporated quotes.
Paragraphing is necessary; this is a short paper. A good paper is free of usage errors.
An average (mediocre) paper has a thesis that is properly formatted but it is not wellformed. The problem might be slack imprecise language or half-baked thinking. For
example, the thesis above is Good. If the thesis had been “bad means how they behave
in the story” it would be mediocre. OK also means the thesis is not sufficiently
developed and the prose is unstructured. There may also be some usage/grammar
errors.
Do your best. This is 15% of your grade. Late panel papers will not be accepted. If you
are going to miss your day, arrange ahead of time to email the paper before the class
in question. I will not reschedule students who miss. This is required work. Do it. If
you miss both days but turn in papers I will still deduct 5 points from your overall
score. I want you here to address the class and field their questions.
Questions for upcoming panels
ROUND ONE basics
Group 1) Sept. 9: What’s Chopin’s view of marriage generally?
Group 2) Sept. 11: What is the central revelation in this story?
Group 3) Sept. 16: How has the narrator of Cathedral changed by the end of the story?
Group 4) Sept. 30: What do Eliot Rosewater and Billy have in common?
Group 5) Oct. 2: What are three important things the Tralfamadorians teach Billy”?
Group 6) Oct. 5: What do you find paradoxical in the Narmada creation myth?
ROUND TWO a little advanced
Group 1) Oct. 14: How is sexuality central to the musician’s experience (pg. 194-226)?
Group 2) Oct. 26: How are the two fathers presented in these poems?
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Group 3) Nov. 2: How does color help develop a key contrast in “Disillusionment at Ten
o’clock”?
Group 4) Nov. 18: In II 1, Gonzalo imagines ruling an isle. Considering the whole act, how
good a ruler would he be?
Group 5) Nov. 25 Look closely at Lady Macbeth’s “prayer” in I, 5, 42-55. What exactly
does she want the “spirits who tend on mortal thoughts” to do to her nature?
Group 6) Having read the entire play now, who in your view, suffers more, Macbeth or his
wife? Assume that they are not equal in this regard.
These papers are not busy work so don’t mistake short for casual. These are
compact essays, each with a carefully worded thesis and the goal is to compress
insight, to say something substantial in a short space.