ENGL 470: Description and Requirements

I" [...] If anything I do, in the way of writing novels (or whatever I write) isn't about the village or the community or about you, then it is not about anything [--] which is to say, yes, the work must be political. [. . .] It seems to me that the best art is political and you ought to be able to make it unquestionably political and irrevocably beautiful at the same time."

Toni Morrison, "Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation"

This course offers an intensive examination of Toni Morrison's "unquestionably political and irrevocably beautiful" work in view of the contexts that shaped it and the critical contexts in which others have read it. Winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize for literature--and arguably one of the most important American literary figures of the twentieth century--Toni Morrison is not only a powerful novelist. She has also written dazzling scholarship and literary criticism, incisive analysis of contemporary U. S. race relations, and pointed commentary upon her own fiction in myriad essays and interviews. This course examines her contributions to each of these important types of literary and cultural work. The course emphasizes the process of examining an individual author's work in view of the literary, biographical, historical and cultural influences that shaped that work. In order to appreciate how "unquestionably political" are Morrison's novels, we will be looking into the specific historical moments that Morrison reimagines in her fiction as well as the historical and cultural events that shaped the creation of each novel as she wrote it. In order to appreciate how "irrevocably beautiful" they are, we will steep ourselves in the close reading of her novels and intense discussion of them in class. To join in the scholarly conversation about the interpretation of Morrison's works, we will read and discuss some of the important critics and scholars writing about Morrison today.

Course Policies

Participation and Attendance:

Regular attendance and thoughtful participation in class discussion are essential not only to your individual performance, but also to the success of this seminar. Our work together relies on collaboration in every phase of the course so that we might form an intellectual community, whose insights and power surpass those of any one of us working on our own. We are all subjects who share the responsibilities of teaching and learning in this class. Each of us has a responsibility to the group and to the learning that goes on in class.

Therefore, more than four absences will adversely affect your final grade. More than seven absences will constitute failure of the course.

Late Work:

I do not accept late work unless you have requested an extension before class time. If you have an emergency and cannot complete your work, call or e-mail me well before class, explaining the circumstances and requesting an extension. If you have always been responsible about getting your work in to that point, and if you have a legitimate reason for requesting an extension, I may grant an extension. But you must request one before the due date. If you cannot attend class when a set of focus questions is due, I will accept it on the day you return to class, but no later. The midterm essay and final essay (both first and final drafts) must be completed by the due date or there will be a grade penalty.

Careful Critical Reading (Sometimes Re-Reading) of Texts Prior to Class Discussion:

This is also essential if we are to succeed as a community of scholars. I want to focus each class on your questions and insights. Please read actively and keep track of your questions and insights about each text. You will almost certainly have to take notes as you read.

Writing-Intensive Component:

This course uses writing extensively to help you explore the readings for the course, engage them actively, and improve your skills as a sophisticated writer of effective, concise, clear and graceful prose. I use writing both to help you deepen your thinking about Morrison and to help me assess your performance in this course. I ask you to do informal writing regularly in the form of brief questions for each class period. For your major midterm and final assignments, I ask you to revise your work, using suggestions for revision from me, before I assign the grade. All your grades in the course are based on this writing, and you have ample opportunity for revision and improvement.

Group Presentations:

Much of the success of this course rests upon the quality of the group presentations. In order to help the whole group become more familiar with the history that so deeply informs Morrison's novels, we need to steep ourselves in that knowledge. I ask each of you to work as hard as you can, for the sake of the whole group, when you prepare your group presentation. Together we can help each other develop the knowledge-base requisite to study of Morrison's fiction. I'm counting on each of you to do your best work for the benefit of the group. See Assignments for a fuller explanation of this activity.

Academic Honesty:

All faculty are requested to distribute the following statement of the University Honor Code:

"By accepting admission to Radford University, each student makes a commitment to understand, support, and abide by the University Honor Code without compromise or exception. Violations of academic integrity will not be tolerated. This class will be conducted in strict observance of the Honor Code. Please refer to your Student Handbook for details."

Plagiarism--including the use of work submitted to another course without the consent of both instructors, the use of work by another person, or the use of someone else's words, ideas or arrangement of ideas without giving proper reference to the author--is a serious violation of the Honor Code. This applies to any materials on the Worldwide Web and electronic sources in the library. Be especially careful, as you complete your papers and group presentation, that you do not use the ideas of others without attributing those ideas to their sources, even if you do not use direct quotations. When you use ANY information, ideas, or wording from sources on the Internet, you MUST give credit to the sources. Even for oral presentations and PowerPoint presentations, you MUST acknowledge your sources; downloading and reading sources from the web as though they were your own ideas and words during an oral presentation constitutes plagiarism. Please see the section on plagiarism in your Student Handbook.

Required Texts

Baker, Moira P., ed. Readings for ENGL 470. Will be available through WebCT. You can

download, read, and print these essays using Acrobat Reader. You will need the 6.0 version if you wish to read the essays online (otherwise you will not be able to rotate the images). I suggest you download all the essays onto one CD so that you can keep them for your research paper.

Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Plume, 1989.

---. The Bluest Eye. New York: Plume, 1994.

---. Jazz. New York: 1993.

---. Paradise. New York: Plume, 1999.

---. Song of Solomon. New York: Plume, 1987.

---. Sula. New York: 1982.

---. Tar Baby. New York: 1982.

---. Taylor-Guthrie, Danielle, ed. Conversations with Toni Morrison. Jackson, MS: U P of

Mississippi, 1994.

Recommended Texts

Bennett, Lerone. Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America. New York: Penguin,

1993.