Western New Mexico University
Department of Humanities
Silver City, New Mexico
The Enlightenment
ENG 547- CRN # 10985
Fall 2011
An Online Course
Professor: Dr. Deborah Heller
Office Phone: (575) 538-6527
Virtual Office Time: Tuesdays and Thursdays 2:30-3:30 (Mountain Standard Time)
Emergency email (other than Blackboard): hellerd@wnmu.edu
Required texts: you must use these specific editions. Pay close attention to the ISBN numbers
when you order from online vendors such as amazon.com.
(1) *Dorinda Outram, The Enlightenment, 2nd ed., Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005
ISBN: 9780521546812
(2) Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights, Norton, 2007. ISBN: 9780393331998
(3) Voltaire, Candide, Zadig and Selected Stories, trans. Daniel Frame, Intro. John Iverson,
Signet Classics (Imprint of New American Library), 2001. ISBN: 9780451528094
(4) David Williams, ed. The Enlightenment, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1999. ISBN:
9780521564908
There will be assorted additional texts supplied by the instructor in the form of PDF files.
*IMPORTANT NOTE regarding the required handbook, Dorinda Outram’s The Enlightenment:
I want to make a special note about the important role of this text. You will be submitting formal
answers to questions about chapter 1; thereafter, you will be asked to offer opinions/reactions to
other chapters in Discussions. I strongly suggest that you read the entire book (only 160 pages)
from start to finish during the first month of the course, making notes in a file about points that
catch your attention. Later you can consult the text along with these “refresher notes” when I ask
you to discuss her arguments.
Communication with instructor:
We will communicate through Blackboard email. If this email system is down or dysfunctional,
then you should use my WNMU email address. However, always try to use Blackboard services
first. I do not answer email on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. You will submit all of your
writing assignments through Blackboard as well. Always post them as MS word attachments,
using the ‘assignments’ function, not the email function.
Course Description:
Once upon a time (circa 1980 in fact), a university English course on the intellectual culture of
the eighteenth century would have had a different name—probably ‘Restoration and EighteenthCentury Literature’ It would have focused solely on literary works and the national context
would have been conspicuously British: the poetry of Dryden and Pope, the novels of Fielding,
Sterne and Smollett. This sort of course might teach you a great deal about the literature of the
eighteenth century (it did teach me quite a lot), but the materials would not be international and
the focus would be strictly literary, omitting philosophy, history and politics. Our course, while it
uses several famous texts by canonical writers (including Voltaire, Rousseau and Burke), is not
fundamentally about eighteenth-century literature, and it certainly does not limit itself to Britain.
It is a class that blends together literature, philosophy, political science and history. And it is not
really about specific authors and their works. It is about the massive cultural shift, called the
Enlightenment, which began late in the seventeenth century and whose effects are still very
much with us today. This shift brought about new notions of equality, gave us concepts of human
rights (including, potentially, women’s rights and the rights of racial and sexual minorities),
incited numerous political upheavals and revolutions, and inspired the framework and working
parts of the system of government known as democracy. The Enlightenment made it possible for
untitled individuals, which is almost certainly everyone in this class, to vote, to secure protection
through laws, to acquire education and economic prosperity, and ultimately to conceive of
themselves as beings naturally endowed with individuality, rationality, freedom and equality.
In a sense, then, this is a class about the way you got to be (were enabled to be) who you turned
out to be. That is part of what we will be investigating during the next few months. But there is a
lot more to the Enlightenment than a success story about individualism. The Enlightenment both
attacked serious problems and created many new questions and problems, problems we still
struggle with today: for example, the problem of deciding how to fairly allocate social resources,
or whether we ought to allow the flag to be burned in public anti-government demonstrations, or
the question whether women and men are or are not inherently different in aptitudes and abilities.
(In an ironic reversal of 18th-century arguments in favor of inherent equality between the sexes,
some feminists today argue for inherent difference!)
These sorts of questions and problems lead us to the additional fact that the Enlightenment has
not escaped criticism by social and political theorists who have described it as more of a
compromise with power or a co-optation of the means of power than a successful revolt against
power. We shall have to think about this critique while we investigate the Enlightenment as a
vastly complex philosophical and cultural phenomenon. Notice that I say both philosophical and
cultural: I want to emphasize, even in this very preliminary description, that the Enlightenment is
not something that happened through a handful of philosophical treatises written by elite men in
powdered wigs (Locke, Hume, Voltaire, Diderot, Kant, et al); indeed, the scholarly emphasis
today is not on learned men and erudite publications but on the multifarious cultural practices of
both men and women, famous and obscure, that made up Enlightenment society in all of its
different locations—France, the Americas, England and Scotland, Austria and Germany.
Course Organization:
The course is organized into five units or Learning Modules: they are strategized according to
content and detail, so that we start with the fundamental question, “What is Enlightenment”
(which we explore through a number of relevant texts), and from there we move on to more
complex topics and questions dealing with treatises on Natural Law, critiques of political and
religious injustice, the role and activities of Enlightenment women, and the emergence of and
battles around human rights.
As stated in the course Preview, this course is quite demanding in both assigned reading and
writing. Students should expect challenging reading in philosophy, political science and
literature as well as an introduction to the newest theoretical approaches to the subject. They
should also expect to do substantial writing: each Learning Module involves multiple writing
assignments, and over the entire course your written work will amount to12,000-14,000 words.
(For those of you who have taken English 522, Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, the
writing requirement of that course and that of The Enlightenment are very similar.)
Assignments and Responsibilities:
Important note: if you do not introduce yourself and contribute a substantial discussion
contribution by midnight Sunday, August 21, I reserve the right to drop you from the
course without additional warning.
Complete all the readings assigned by the stated due dates and prepare well-written and
thoughtful responses to the assigned Directed Reading Questions by the stated due dates.
That is, I will provide questions about the various works to be studied in each Learning Module.
You will have these at the start of the study period for each Module, and they will help to direct
your attention as you read the assigned materials. Depending on the material, I might pose five or
six complex questions asking for quite detailed answers, or I might pose eight smaller questions
and ask for shorter responses. In any case, even the shorter questions require a minimum
response of several paragraphs, and some assignments will call for actual essays of 1,000 to
1,200 words.) These assignments will be graded on a percentage system (see below under
grading system). They must be turned in by the stated deadline or you will not receive any credit
for them.
Of course, it is very important that you devote critical fastidiousness to anything that you write
and turn in for my review. Do not lard your written work with “opinions” from the experts; be
especially chary of depending on the internet for ideas and positions.
Students must follow MLA documentation guidelines in all of their assignments. This means being
sure to document your use of the words as well as ideas that you take from any source. Failure to
document the source of quoted or paraphrased or otherwise borrowed material may result in an
“F’ for that assignment or even failure for the entire course. Students who are unwilling or
unable to follow basic MLA documentation guidelines will face poor or failing grades on
assignments. See Academic Integrity Policy below, especially the paragraph on plagiarism.
In addition to the formal writing assignments, you are also responsible for sharing your reactions
to the reading in the form of discussion postings. You must post twenty well-written
discussion contributions over the course of the semester to qualify for an A in the course;
fifteen to qualify for a B. (I factor in the quality of your discussion postings when I assign
final grades.)
These must be both intelligent and intelligible (both insightful and literate).
I will create discussion questions for you (some of these will be about the assigned chapters in
Outram); but you should feel free to respond to any of my questions with a question of your own,
thereby steering the conversation in a direction that interests you. You should plan on
contributing to discussions about the majority of the many works we are reading; it is not
acceptable to discuss the first two or three texts and then simply drop out of sight. Nor is it
acceptable to drop into sight late in the second (let alone the third) week of the course and think
that you can simply “catch up.”
In your postings, don’t let yourself get overly informal and breezy under the mistaken
assumption that you are writing only to each other. I look at these regularly, make notes about
their quality, and I reply to especially good contributions. Moreover, they must be substantial.
Postings of less than 100 words will not be counted; on the other hand, length does not
necessarily make strength. Do not simply grab opinions from secondary sources and post these
as your contributions (you will not get credit for this); your own opinions are what matters.
Here is the bottom line about discussion postings: try to use discussions for figuring things out
and experimenting with possible positions. And try to respond to others’ ideas as well as
launching your own. We want these discussions to simulate the give-and-take of an actual
graduate seminar.
Course Objectives: The Enlightenment (English 547) will prepare you to grapple with the
following questions about the period and its characteristic features:
1) What was the Enlightenment? How did it occur? Why did it occur when it did?
2) How does Enlightenment thought operate?
3) Does it make more sense to talk of a single, all-encompassing Enlightenment or of
plural Enlightenments (e.g., English, Scottish, German, French, American)?
4) Is there an evident difference between the way male and female Enlightenment
writers think and between the values and goals they promote? If so, why is this?
5) Is the Enlightenment over; do we now live, as some have argued, in a postEnlightenment age?
Grading System:
Each of the seven writing assignments will be graded on a letter grade system, ranging from ‘A’
for impeccably written and superbly insightful work, to ‘B’ and ‘C’ for reasonably intelligent
and professional work, to ‘D’ for haphazard and incoherent work, to ‘F’ for totally perfunctory
or plagiarized work, or for failure to submit any answers at all. Students who regularly score in
the ‘A’ range can confidently expect to make an A in the course (80s=B, 70s=C, 60s=D) as long
as they abide by the requirements for discussion (see above for these requirements).
Course Calendar:
Learning Module 1: What is Enlightenment?: August 15 through September 11 (DRQ due
by Sept. 11)
Learning Module 2: Natural Law, Human Nature, and Society: Sept. 12 through Oct. 9
(DRQ due by Oct. 9)
Learning Module 3: Enlightenment Critiques of Injustice: October 10-October 30 (DRQ
due by Oct. 30)
Learning Module 4: Enlightened Women: Bluestockings and Revolutionaries: Oct. 31-Nov.
13 (DRQ due by Nov. 13)
Learning Module 5: The Invention of Human Rights: November 14-December 4 (DRQ due
by Dec. 4)
Additional General Information:
Academic Integrity Policy:
The following material is taken from the most recent WNMU catalog:
Each student shall observe standards of honesty and integrity in academic work completed at
WNMU. Students may be penalized for violations of the Academic Integrity policy.
Definitions
Violations include any behavior that misrepresents or falsifies a student’s knowledge, skills or
ability with the goal of unjustified or illegitimate evaluation or gain. Such violations include two
broad categories: (1) cheating and (2) plagiarism.
(1) Cheating includes, but is not limited to, using or attempting to use unauthorized materials
such as notes, texts, images, electronic devices, and unauthorized copies of test materials.
Cheating is also understood to mean unauthorized collaboration with others, copying the work of
another, or any action that present the work of others to misrepresent the student’s knowledge,
skills, or ability;
(2) Plagiarism includes, but is not limited to, the intentional or unintentional representation of
another’s work as one’s own without proper acknowledgement of the original author or creator
of the work, failure to quote and/or cite sources, providing or receiving unauthorized assistance
in the preparation of academic work, the fabrication of sources or information, or submitting the
same work for more than one course/instructor without the permission of the current course
instructor. (60-61)
Cheating and/or plagiarism will result in failure of the assignment or in failure of the class,
depending upon the circumstances.
Disability Services at WNMU: Services for students with disabilities are provided through the
Academic Support Center’s Disability Services Office in the Juan Chacon Building, Room 220.
Some examples of the assistance provided are: audio materials for the blind or dyslexic, note
takers, readers, campus guides, audio recorders, a quiet testing area, and undergraduate academic
tutors. In order to qualify for these services, documentation must be provided by qualified
professionals on an annual basis. Disability Services forms are available in the Academic
Support Center. The Disability Services Office, in conjunction with the Academic Support
Center, serves as Western New Mexico University’s liaison for students with disabilities. The
Academic Support Center’s Disability Services Office can be contacted by phone at (575) 5386400 or email at matter@wnmu.edu.