Resources for Instructors
Suggested Themes for the Course:
*Texts not included in this book. For links to these texts, see Additional Readings, below.
Negotiating Personal Relationships
The Sun Also Rises* or The Awakening*
Trifles
The Tempest
“My Papa’s Waltz”
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130
“Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”*
“Those Winter Sundays”*
“Annabel Lee”
“The Story of an Hour”
“Old Lady Down the Hall”*
The Individual vs. Society
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn*
A Room with a View* or The Awakening*
Trifles
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130
“The Weary Blues”*
“Still I Rise”*
“Frederick Douglass”
“The Story of an Hour”
“The Passing of Grandison”
“How to Tame a Wild Tongue”*
“Why I Write”*
Determining an Ethical Code
The Sea-Wolf *
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn*
The Scarlet Letter*
The Sun Also Rises*
A Room with a View* or Frankenstein*
Trifles
The Tempest
“The Gettysburg Address”
“Dover Beach”
“Annabel Lee”
“Frederick Douglass”
“Those Winter Sundays”*
“The Hunting of the Hare”
“Young Goodman Brown”*
“The Open Boat”
“The Passing of Grandison”
“The Value of Science”*
“Why I Write”*
“Design”*
“Of Luddites, Learning, and Life”*
“How I Got My D.I.Y. Degree”*
Science: Friend or Foe?
Frankenstein*
“Dover Beach”
“The Value of Science”*
“Of Luddites, Learning, and Life”*
From the Margins
The House Behind the Cedars*
The Scarlet Letter*
Frankenstein* or The Awakening*
“The Weary Blues”*
“Still I Rise”*
“Frederick Douglass”
“Those Winter Sundays”*
“The Story of an Hour”
“The Passing of Grandison”
Trifles
The Tempest
“How to Tame a Wild Tongue”*
The Power of Nature
Frankenstein* or The Sea-Wolf*
“I Heard a Fly Buzz—When I Died”
“The Open Boat”
“The Death of the Moth”*
“The Value of Science”*
“Design”*
The Function of Art
The Awakening*
The Tempest
“Ode on a Grecian Urn”
“The Weary Blues”*
“Poetry”*
“Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”*
“Blackberry Eating”*
“Annabel Lee”
“Frederick Douglass”
“The Open Boat”
“Why I Write”*
“Design”*
“How to Tame a Wild Tongue”*
From Naïveté to Experience
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn*
The House Behind the Cedars*
The Awakening* or Frankenstein*
Trifles
“My Papa’s Waltz”
“Those Winter Sundays”*
“The Story of an Hour”
“The Death of the Moth”*
“Goodbye to All That”*
“Why I Write”*
“Young Goodman Brown”*
“Design”*
“How I Got My D.I.Y. Degree”*
Additional Readings
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain
Novel
Project Gutenberg
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/76/76-h/76-h.htm
The Awakening
Kate Chopin
Novel
Project Gutenberg
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/160?msg=welcome_stranger
“Design”
Robert Frost
Poem
Poets.org
http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/design
“The Five Orange Pips”
Arthur Conan Doyle
Short story
Project Gutenberg
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1661/1661-h/1661-h.htm#5
Frankenstein
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Novel
Project Gutenberg
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/84
The House Behind the Cedars
Charles W. Chesnutt
Novel
Project Gutenberg
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/472
“How I Got My D.I.Y. Degree”
William Upski Wimsatt
Essay
Self Education Foundation.
Originally published in Utne Reader (May/June 1998).
http://selfeducationfoundation.wordpress.com/sef-history/diy-degree/
“How to Tame a Wild Tongue”
Gloria Anzaldua
Essay
Borderlands/La Frontera
https://www.sfu.ca/iirp/documents/Anzaldua%201999.pdf
“Of Luddites, Learning, and Life”
Neil Postman
Essay
Technos Quarterly 2.4 (1993).
http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/users/f/felwell/www/Theorists/Postman/Articles/ TECHNOS_NET.htm
“Old Lady Down the Hall”
David Sedaris
Essay
Esquire.com. 1 October, 2000.
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a498/old-lady-hall-sedaris-1000/
A Room with a View
E.M. Forster
Novel
Project Gutenberg
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2641
The Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Novel
Project Gutenberg
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33
The Sea-Wolf
Jack London
Novel
Project Gutenberg
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1074
The Sun Also Rises
Ernest Hemingway
Novel
Internet Archive
https://archive.org/details/sunalsorises030276mbp
“Young Goodman Brown”
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Short story
Project Gutenberg
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/512/512-h/512-h.htm#goodman
Assignment Ideas
Article Critique Assignment
This assignment offers students experience in reading and evaluating a scholarly article, requiring them to practice their rhetorical analysis skills. It can be an effective scaffolding exercise as you build toward the research paper. Please, feel free to modify this assignment to address a peer-reviewed article more pertinent to your class’s theme or focus.
Jacob Michael Leland. “‘Yes, That is a Roll of Bills in My Pocket’: The Economy of Masculinity in The Sun Also Rises.” The Hemingway Review 23.2 (2004): 37.
In this 600-800 word essay, you will offer an evaluation of the article cited above. Your introduction should convey in your own words Leland’s central argument, or thesis, as well as your judgment regarding the article’s persuasiveness. Does Leland convince you that his interpretation of The Sun Also Rises is valid?
The body of the essay should develop support for your answer to the question above. If you are not convinced of Leland’s perspective on the novel, what are your reasons? What aspects of Leland’s article weaken his case and keep him from achieving his purpose effectively? If you find Leland’s case convincing, on the other hand, which rhetorical strategies persuaded you? Remember to organize the essay according to the major points you have selected to support your position.
Annotated Bibliography Assignment
Another effective building block, this assignment not only requires students to practice finding, reading, and understanding peer-reviewed sources, but it also helps them achieve substantial progress toward the research paper if that final assignment focuses on the same literary text.
For this assignment, you will gather, cite, and annotate (summarize) five secondary, scholarly sources on a text from our reading assignments (these are not the type of sources you normally find by doing a Google search). Your bibliography will need to cite both articles and books, if possible. Citations must follow current MLA guidelines. Each annotation will provide a summary (between 90 and 110 words) of the source, stating the author’s main argument and key points/evidence supporting that argument.
The entries for your bibliography should be alphabetized by the authors’ last names (or first word of each entry). They should not be numbered.
Be careful that your annotations are summarized and not quoted. Thechallenge of writing these short annotations is in capturing the gist of each text in a summary using your own words. To summarize something, one must understand it! If you have trouble understanding some of the sources you find, you can email me for an appointment to discuss the article or book.
Sample Literary Analysis Paper Topics
In “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” how does Keats employ nature imagery? What is the role of nature, as represented here, in the poem’s assertion about art?
In “The Weary Blues,” how does Langston Hughes incorporate features of blues music into the poem itself? How does this device contribute to the poem’s meaning? (What is the poem’s meaning?)
In “Dover Beach,” how does Matthew Arnold contrast positive images and diction with negative images and diction? What point does the poem make through this contrast?
Is the speaker of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee” reliable? What is the effect of our learning about Annabel Lee only from him?
Compare and contrast Kate Chopin’s The Awakening with Susan Glaspell’s Trifles. What can we learn from this comparison? For your thesis, focus on an important insight that comes from the comparison.
What does Shakespeare’s The Tempest reveal about the potential dangers of power?
Compare and contrast Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” with Richard P. Feynman’s “The Value of Science.” Does Feynman address the problem raised by Arnold?
How does death shape our daily lives? Choose from the following works and explore how the text addresses this question: The Sea- Wolf, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” “Annabel Lee,” “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “I Heard a Fly Buzz—When I Died,” “The Open Boat,” and “The Death of the Moth.”
How does economic class shape people’s everyday lives? Choose from the following works and explore how the text addresses this question: A Room with a View, The Awakening, Trifles, “My Papa’s Waltz,” “Those Winter Sundays,” “Annabel Lee,” “The Passing of Grandison,” “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” “Still I Rise,” and “How I Got My D.I.Y. Degree.”
Revise #9 to focus on race/ethnicity, gender, or “difference.” The latter topic could include Frankenstein, in which the monster suffers and is hardened by the mistreatment he experiences simply because he is different.
Research Paper Assignment(s)
Any of the topics listed for the Literary Analysis Paper could, of course, be modified to require integration of scholarly research.
The comparison/contrast topics might be a bit challenging for first year composition students to transfer into the research context, since formulating an effective thesis for a comparison/contrast paper is sometimes a challenge in itself. However, if used flexibly, any of the topics listed above could open doors to fruitful research projects.
Another possibility for expanding the scope of the research paper is to allow students to take one of the themes generated by their literary readings and transfer it into another discipline of their greater interest. Below is an example of such an assignment:
For this research paper, you will investigate a question associated with The Sun Also Rises. Your topic should be one that will deepen our understanding of Hemingway’s novel, although there is no need to mention the novel in your paper. Remember that a good research paper, in the area of history or sociology, for example, does not just tell facts; it interprets those facts in a logical way that suggests a meaningful perspective on the information (a thesis). If you choose to focus on a literary topic for this paper, you will use MLA style for documentation; if history, Chicago Manual style (CMS); if sociology or psychology, APA style. You will use footnotes to cite your in-text references, and a bibliography page at the end, listing all sources referenced throughout the paper. In addition to the MLA guidelines included in Chapter 9 of this book, you can find helpful information on MLA, CMS, and APA styles at Purdue Owl: https://owl.english. purdue.edu/owl/.
This essay should be 1500-2000 words in length (approximately 5 to 7 pages) and must be typed, double- spaced. You should integrate 6-7 scholarly sources into the discussion.
Sample topics:
How did warfare change during World War I, and how did these changes impact military personnel psychologically?
Why did many feel that World War I did not resolve the world’s political issues satisfactorily?
How did World War I impact the field of medicine?
How did World War I serve as catalyst to evolving women’s roles?
What is PTSD and how has our understanding of this condition improved? What are the most effective treatments for those who suffer from PTSD?
What is the common relationship between alcoholism and personal trauma? What steps can be taken to treat alcoholism in these circumstances?
How are notions of manhood and virility commonly intertwined? What does this relationship tell us about social definitions of masculinity?