Stephan Flores

Interdisciplinary Studies Honors 499.01, 1 cr. (pass-fail) Spring 2001

Recovering the Past: Novels of Community, Commitment, and Restoration

4:00-5:00 p.m. Tues. UCC 333

Office: 315 Commons

Course Description:

We will explore the ways that these much acclaimed, prize-winning novels represent historical and cultural legacies and traumas, and how these affect relations among families, friends, and lovers in these works, as well as commitments to broader communities and to the state. These novels by turns include quite comic episodes embedded within narratives that present compelling conflicts and contradictions, tragedy, and renewal. The coursework includes four focused journal entries (250 words each), four critical responses (450-500 words each), and good attendance/participation in discussion.

Required texts:

Hoban, Russell. Riddley Walker. Expanded Edition (Indiana University Press, 1998). You may also use the Washington Square Press edition; it lacks the afterword and brief notes of this more recent edition.

Irving, John. A Prayer for Owen Meany (Ballantine, 1989)&emdash;bookstore may carry more recent edition.

Proulx, E. Annie. The Shipping News (Scribners, 1993

Schlink, Bernhard. The Reader (Vintage, 1998)

Requirements:

1. Four focused journal entries, one on each novel (200 words, single-spaced, titled)&emdash;select a passage or issue (character, relationship, problem) and begin to explore its importance/significance and your sense of the effects of your reading and interpretation.

2. Four critical responses (one on each novel, each response 450 words, single-spaced, titled, on one page) that prompt you to identify and to address interpretive and critical issues that these texts present. Your observations and analyses should be succinct and sharply focused, with potential for substantial further development. On days that these are due, please bring an extra copy to class, one for me and one to read aloud.

3. Participation in class discussion (including informal weekly writing). Please take advantage of the opportunity our small class provides to discuss your reactions, share your insights and research, and to listen and reply to others' ideas. I shall call regularly upon individuals to facilitate class discussion, with each person leading off discussion (10 minutes) on specific texts in rotation over the semester. On these days I expect the person scheduled for that day to be prepared to lead off our discussion by presenting his or her position on the material (with some brief summary, focus on key points in the reading, perhaps some incorporation of secondary criticism or historical research), and by suggesting further issues the class might consider. I hope this strategy will enable you to move the class in directions you find most useful, give you opportunities to develop critical skills through collaboration, and help to establish a mutual responsibility to engage productively with the class texts and with one another while also enabling me to share my perspectives with you.

4. Due dates: All required work is due at the beginning of class on the due date. Work more than a week late will not be accepted. I will grant short extensions for medical and family emergencies--but talk with me as soon as possible to request an extension. ALWAYS KEEP EXTRA COPIES OF YOUR WORK.

5. Attendance is required--your participation is a crucial part of a collective learning experience. Because we meet once a week, your ability to pass the class will be jeopardized if you miss more than two class meetings. Almost all absences will be counted--excused or not--if something extraordinary occurs, talk to me.

6. Office hours. I encourage you to confer with me--especially before assignments are due--to talk about your interests, intentions, and writing strategies. If you cannot make my regular hours (check with Cheryl in the honors center), we can usually arrange another time. I also welcome communicating with you by e-mail (sflores@uidaho.edu).

SYLLABUS

1/16 Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

1/23 A Prayer for Owen Meany (Chs. 2-3); Journal entry due

1/30 A Prayer for Owen Meany (Chs. 4-5)

2/06 A Prayer for Owen Meany (Chs. 6-7); Critical Response due

2/13 A Prayer for Owen Meany (Chs. 8-9)

2/20 Hoban, Riddley Walker; Journal entry due

2/27 Riddley Walker;

3/06 Riddley Walker; Critical Response due

3/13 Proulx, The Shipping News

3/27 The Shipping News; Journal entry due

4/03 The Shipping News; Critical Response due

4/10 The Shipping News;

4/17 Schlink, The Reader; Journal entry due

4/24 The Reader

5/01 The Reader; Critical Response due

5/08 The Reader

Writing Assignment: Critical Responses

Length/format: Typed or word-processed, single-spaced, approximately 450 words (one full page with 1 inch margins). Remember to title the response, but do not use a title page or enclose the response in a folder.

I suggest that you consider some of the problems, premises, and questions posed during our discussions and readings as a guide in helping you to develop a specific focus and issue to address in the response. You might think of the response as a scaled down, succinct, and sharply focused critical essay, or conversely, as an underdeveloped yet selectively supported kernel of a hypothesis and topic that might serve as the cornerstone, the shaping idea for a longer essay.

It will be important for you to quote, summarize, or paraphrase, though quite briefly, to provide a context and some support for the topic you are exploring. Assume your audience (me/peers) is familiar with your main text(s), but take care to explain your understanding and interpretation of the material under consideration. Also keep in mind that responses should supplement or build upon our reading and discussion; in short, don't simply repeat an argument we have already substantially discussed unless you were engaged substantially in that discussion.

Some writers, for example, use the first paragraph to describe an interpretative problem that arises in a specific passage or in understanding a character (and the relations of that character to others or to a particular cultural context), or in explaining a conflict of ideas/ideologies--or you might analyze the text's rhetorical use of figurative language or other stylistic and literary strategies. You might link your approach with some specific critical concern (social, economic, gender relations, etc.) or thematic focus that you explain briefly then test or illustrate in relation to another.

Here are several general suggestions though you may devise your own topic.

In what ways, for example, does the novel represent a particular cultural (social, political, economic, class, religion, gender) perspective that may be peculiar to its historical context?

What kinds of solutions does the novel offer to the problems it articulates, and why?

Is there something about your own cultural/personal position and history that you want to explore in relation to your response (a perspective or experience that shapes your reading, your interpretation and evaluation of the novel at hand, the difficulties of determining meanings, resolving issues, the satisfactions of discoveries, endings)? Keep your analysis focused on specific aspects of the text in relation to how your values and experience structure your response and understanding of what the text represents and achieves.