Internalization, Response, Intervention": A Sample Syllabus for Undergraduate Studies |
 |
|
Internalization, Response, Intervention": A Sample Syllabus for Undergraduate Studies |
|
|
Course Outline
This course will seek to develop an understanding of American cultures, their impacts in society, and their ability to bring new awareness and create change through controversy. We will begin by pursuing the lineage of multicultural literacy: from silence to rebellion, intervention, and affirmation. Our reading will commence with some notes on this process by African-American theorist Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and a few thoughts from Korean writer Trihn T. Mihn-Ha. We'll also examine poetry by Phillis Wheatley, whose work has marked a controversy between those critics who have dismissed her on the grounds that she was so heavily influenced by the white male tradition in literature, and those who value her work as the first published literary efforts of a young Black slave. Next, we'll consider some elements of the oral tradition among African Americans, Native Americans, Mexican Americans, and Asian Americans, in story-telling, songs, "toasts," and the blues. You will find in the writings of Gates and Mihn-Ha that, for many artists and scholars, the distinctions between oral and written traditions blur or combine. We will spend the first few class meetings discussing the reasons and impact of this interplay. Later in the semester, we will move on to trying to relate these works to the writings from other "sub"cultural groups, whose experiences have traditionally been silenced, and examine their methods of preservation: here we will look at work by contemporary writers of color; gay men and lesbians; prison inmates; and those writers working to unsilence the recently recognized survival issues of our times: violence, substance abuse, and socioeconomic struggle are examples. We will find that there have evolved many different methods and a groundwork of ideas that are often at odds with one another, or with the systems they oppose. This is cultural controversy. A multicultural anthology of required readings, How We Live Now (ed. John Repp; Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1992), will be provided. Short written assignments, in various expository and creative modes, will be required throughout the course. Oral presentations will focus on persuasion and argumentation, for thematic units. In addition, each student will complete a total of two sustained critical papers, 5-7 pages in length. Grades are based 50% on longer manuscripts, including effort and improvement; 25% on completion and quality of all shorter assignments; and 25% on participation, which includes attendance, punctuality, and quality of critiques in workshops. Each absence after 3 will drop your grade by one-half point; that is, if you are earning an A and have 4 absences, your final grade will be no higher than A-. |
||
|
|
||
|
|
|
What Works and How Home Page Education Feature Home Page |
||
|
About Standards |
 |
||