Author in context course

Proposal form

 

[Sample completed proposal]

 

Please save the following proposal form to a disk and fill in your responses.  Download and print your responses, and submit as your proposal.   Since the course must be writing-intensive, please explain in the appropriate spaces below the kinds of informal and formal writing you will use, the numbers of pages of formal prose, the kinds of revisions you will require, and your techniques for providing substantive comments for revision before students submit the final drafts that you will grade.  See "Guidelines for Writing-Intensive Course" for specific requirements. 

 

Course:               Engl.  460 (WI):  Author in Context

 

Author:               Toni Morrison            

 

Instructor:          Moira P. Baker

 

  1. List titles of required primary texts by the author.

 

Required primary texts will be selected from among the following:

Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Knopf, 1987.

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

---. Conversations with Toni Morrison.  Ed.  Danille Taylor-Guthrie.  Jackson, MS:  U of Mississippi P, 1994.

---.  The Dancing Mind.  New York: Knopf, 1996.

---.  Jazz.  New York:  Knopf, 1992

---. The Nobel Prize Lecture in Literature, 1993.  New York: Knopf, 1994.

---. Paradise.  New York: Knopf, 1997.

---.  Playing in the Dark:  Whiteness and the Literary Imagination.  Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1992.

---, ed.  "Introduction."  Race-ing Justice, En-Gendering Power:  Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the Construction of Social Reality.  New York: Pantheon, 1992.

---.  "Rootedness:  The Ancestor as Foundation."  Black Women Writers, 1950-1980.  Ed.  Mari Evans.  New York:  Anchor-Doubleday, 1984.

---. "The Site of Memory." Inventing the Truth:  The Art and Craft of Memoir.  Ed.  William Zinsser.  Boston:  Houghton, 1987.  103-124.

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

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

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

---. "Unspeakable Things Unspoken." Michigan Quarterly Review 28.1 (1984): 1-34.

  1. List titles of required historical, biographical, social, or cultural texts you will read as contexts within which to study the author.

 

Contextual readings (and viewings) will be selected from among the following, all of which will be on reserve for student use:

 

Abrahams, Roger.  African Folktales.  New York:  Pantheon, 1983.

 

Appiah, Kwame Anthony.  In My Father's House:  Africa in the Philosophy of

Culture.  New York:  Oxford UP, 1992.

 

          Bascom, William.  African Dilemma Tales.  The Hague:  Mouton, 1975.

 

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

Penguin, 1984. 

 

Branch, Tyler.  Parting the Waters:  A History of the Civil Rights Movement.

 

DuBois, W.E.B.  The Souls of Black Folk.  New York:  NAL-Penguin, 1969.

 

Eyes on the Prize:  Awakenings (1954-1956). Vol. 1. PBS Home Video, 1987.

 

Eyes on the Prize:  Ain't Scared of Your Jails (1960-1961). Vol. 2.  PBS Home

Video, 1987.

 

Eyes on the Prize:  No Easy Walk (1961-1963). Vol. 2.  PBS Home

Video, 1987.

 

Eyes on the Prize:  The Time Has Come (1964-1966). Vol. 4.  PBS Home

Video, 1987.

 

White, Deborah Gray.  Ar'n't I a Woman?  Female Slaves in the Plantation South.  New York:  Norton, 1985.

 

Jacobs, Harriet.  Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Ed. Jean Yellin. 

Cambridge:  Harvard UP, 1990.

 

McLaurin, Melton A.  Celia:  A Slave.  Athens:  U of Georgia P, 1991.

Morrison, Toni, ed.  The Black Book.  Comp.  Middleton Harris, et al.  New York:  Random, 1974.

Thompson, Robert Farris.  Flashes of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy.  New York: Vintage, 1983.

  1. List literary critical and theoretical texts you will read to suggest the range of ways in which this author has been read.

 

Critical and theoretical readings will include selected chapters from the following, which will be on reserve for student use:

 

The Aesthetics of Toni Morrison's Art of something like that!!

 

Bhabha, Homi.  The Location of Culture.  New York:  Routledge, 1994.

 

Bloom, Harold, ed.  Toni Morrison.  New York:  Chelsea, 1990.

 

Fanon, Frantz.  Black Skin/White Masks.  New York:  Grove, 1967.

 

---.  The Wretched of the Earth.

 

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. and K. A. Appiah, eds.  Toni Morrison:  Critical Perspectives Past and Present.  New York:  Amistad, 1993.

 

Harris, Trudier.  Fiction and Folklore:  The Novels of Toni Morrison.  Knoxville:  U of Tennessee P, 1991.

 

Matus, Jill.  Toni Morrison.  New York:  Manchester UP, 1998.

 

McKay, Nellie Y. and Kathryn Earle.  Approaches to Teaching the Novels of Toni

Morrison.  New York:  MLA, 1997.

 

Peterson, Nancy J.  Toni Morrison:  Critical and Theoretical Approaches.  Baltimore:  Johns Hopkins UP, 1997.

 

Willis, Susan.  Specifying: 

 

  1. Which assignments for the course require formal prose?  Please indicate the required number of pages for each assignment.

 

a)    analytic/interpretive essay focusing on one crucial scene in the Morrison novel the student will study all semester (5 page)

b)    written report on the history of U. S., with special attention to Black Americans and race issues, during the years which constitute the setting for the same novel (5 pages)

c)     annotated bibliography of secondary criticism on the same novel (5 pages)

d)    final essay using historical and critical contexts to analyze and interpret the same novel (8-10 pages)

 

  1. Which of the formal writing assignments require multiple drafts?

 

a)    analytic/interpretive essay

b)    final essay

 

  1. How will you provide substantive comments for revision of drafts on assignments requiring multiple drafts? (For example, you might use individual conferences, written comments, e-mail communications, etc.)

 

For both the analytic essay and final essay, I will read students' drafts and offer written comments for revision before students submit the final graded version.

 

  1. How will you build into the content of the course instruction in writing the formal prose pieces?

 

On class days when I explain the formal written assignments, I will ask students to freewrite to begin choosing or narrowing their topics and to formulate any questions they have about the assignment itself.  When we read assigned contextual materials, I will have students write in class about the implications of such material to the reading of the Morrison text we will also be studying at the same time.  When we read critical texts, I will have students write in class about whether or not they might be able to use a similar approach with the novel they have chosen to study all semester.  As students begin drafting the final essay, I will have one workshop day during which we will look at examples of student work that use historical and cultural contexts as well as criticism in order to interpret a literary text.  We will consider strategies for integrating diverse material into a coherent "reading" of a novel that emphasizes the student's own ideas and voice.  On this day, students will do an extended guided freewrite to clarify their own ideas about the novel, pinpoint their audience and purpose, and consider which contextual and critical works they might include in the essay.

 

  1. What kinds of informal writing will you use in the course? (For example, you might use reading journals or logs, focus questions or discussion topics, short in-class responses to lectures or readings, invention and pre-writing for formal papers.)

 

a)    focus questions.  Each day students will design and bring to class one question on the assigned readings

b)    guided freewriting in preparation for the analytic/interpretive and final essays

c)     invention and pre-writing for the first drafts of these two essays

 

author in context course guidelines

 

author in context course procedure for approval

 

AUTHOR IN CONTEXT COURSE PROPOSAL FORM