ENGL 639: Description & Requirements

Course Description

" [...] 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"

"The Germans were over this house last night and the night before that. Here they are again. [. . . ] Unless we can think peace into existence we--not this one body in this one bed but millions of bodies yet to be born--will lie in the same darkness and hear the same death rattle overhead. Let us think what we can do to create the only efficient air-raid shelter while the guns on the hill go pop pop pop and the searchlights finger the clouds and now and then, sometimes close at hand, sometimes far away, a bomb drops."

Virginia Woolf, "Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid"

As its subtitle suggests, this course hopes to examine how two twentieth-century writers, Toni Morrison and Virginia Woolf, "reach toward the ineffable" in their art. The pairing of these two writers may seem, at first, incongruous, for one is a descendant of American slaves, and the other an heir of the British intellectual aristocracy. Yet both Morrison and Woolf address the most disturbing problems of their own societies in language that is breathtaking in its beauty and power. Morrison and Woolf address issues that shaped the last century and haunt the dawning of this new one--issues concering gender, race, class, and colonialism; they ponder the brutalities of racism, sexism, nationalism, militarism, and war; they contemplate the arrogance of power and the resistance of the powerless. Above all else, they enlighten us with visions of the human capacity to love--to seek connection and community--or the tragic failure to do so. Thus both Woolf and Morrison "reach toward the ineffable" while looking deeply and specifically at the political realities of their societies. This course will attempt to examine simultaneously the aesthetic and the political concerns that shaped the works of Woolf and Morrison, for it is the inextricable weaving of the two that gives their art its unique texture and its power to shake the reader. Like all great art, their fiction is "unquestionably political and irrevocably beautiful at the same time."

Required Texts

Baker, Moira, ed. Readings for ENGL 639. On Reserve and available at Words Plus. Text will be

available on 1/14 at the library and at Words Plus (on Norwood Street in Radford)

Taylor-Guthrie, Danielle. Conversations with Toni Morrison. Jacksonville: U P of Mississippi,

1994.

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

---. The Bluest Eye. New York: Penguin, 1971.

---. Jazz. Penguin, 1982.

---. The Nobel Lecture (1993). Available on-line. Download, print and read.

---. Song of Solomon. New York: Penguin, 1977.

---. Sula. New York: Penguin, 1973.

---. Tar Baby. New York: Penguin, 1981.

Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Own. New York: HBJ, 1957.

---. Between the Acts. New York: HBJ, 1969.

---. Mrs. Dalloway. New York: HBJ, 1953.

---. To the Lighthouse. New York: HBJ, 1955.

---. Three Guineas. New York: HBJ, 1966.

---. The Waves. New York: HBJ, 1959.

Recommended Texts

Bennett, Lerone. Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America. 6th edition. New York:

Penguin, 1988.

Hussey, Mark, ed. Virginia Woolf A to Z. New York: Oxford UP, 1995.

Course Policies

Attendance and Participation:

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 excessive absences will necessarily lower the final grade.

Careful Critical 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. To facilitate our conversations about the literature, scholarship, social history we will be reading, I ask you to prepare what I call "Probes and Insights" each week. To do so, write two substantive questions and one insight each week. Bring your "Probes and Insights" to each class. This, in itself, is something you can do to contribute to our work and to create a seminar atmosphere. See Assignments for a fuller explanation of this activity.

Seminar Presentations:

Much of the success of this course rests upon the quality of the group or individual seminar presentations, for they provide a vehicle for our collaboration in learning about the culture, social history, and ideological conflicts that shaped the texts of the writers we will study. No one of us could possibly master all this material in one semester. Together we can help each other develop the knowledge-base requisite to the study of several women writers whose cultures, experiences, and material conditions are radically divergent. 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 scholarly essay, that you do not use the ideas of others without attributing those ideas to their sources, even if you do not use direct quotations. Please see the section on plagiarism in your Student Handbook.