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Sabina Grogan's EWRT 1BRoom MQ-4, 7:45 - 12:20 Sabina Grogan
Winter 2007 sabinajay@earthlink.net
English Writing 1B
Texts/Required Class Materials:
St. Martin’s Guide to Writing, 7th Ed.
King Lear, Shakespeare (Folger Shakespeare Library ed.)
Notebook, portable dictionary, mac-compatible diskette
Description of Course Readings, Films and Objectives:
In this section of English 1B we will be examining the idea of transformation, and in the process transforming ourselves into more powerful writers. To start, we’ll be reading an excerpt from Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces to look at the larger pattern that heroic stories follow throughout world cultures, and the reasons why this pattern remains important. George Lucas, in writing the Star Wars films, drew on the universal myth idea he had been introduced to through Campbell’s work. We will watch portions of the first of these films to see how the central myth is incorporated, and we will write about another such fairy tale or mythological story. Next, we will read the story of a Greek mythological hero, Orpheus, and and will watch Marcel Camus’ Black Orpheus, a Brazilian film from 1958 that reinterprets the ancient Orpheus and Euridice story.
Orpheus and Euridice and the other Greek and Roman myths have influenced many of the west’s major writers and thinkers. Shakespeare took some of his plots from these stories, many western fairy tales have their origin here, and even Freud and Jung used stories from Greek and Roman mythology when they were inventing the art of psychiatry. Transformation, or metamorphosis, is at the root of our ideas of spiritual, psychological, and physical change.
In the second part of the quarter we will be more closely reading and interpreting another story that follows the pattern of the heroic journey, that of Shakespeare’s King Lear. Lear has a different sort of transformation: a movement towards self knowledge. We will be reading the play, and bringing it to life, by acting out a shortened form in class. And to carry through this idea of patterns of influence and transformation, we will also by watching Ran, a film by Akira Kurosawa that was inspired in part by Shakespeare’s King Lear.
Writing Assignments and Grading: Grades will be based on both your level of effort and on the quality of your work in the following areas.
Journals: 20% a reading and response journal where ideas are developed for the longer essays. The journals are not summaries of the reading, they are considered, detailed responses to specific questions given in the class assignment listings.
Oral component: 5% participation in a King Lear scene: (you can participate as actor, director, or designer)
Attendance and participation in discussion and group work: 10% As this class meets only once a week, attendance is very important. There are only ten class meetings in addition to the final. For this reason, you may only have one unexcused absence in this class. More than this will adversely effect your grade. (Please let me know by e-mail if you will miss a class, so I can send you any missed assignments or hand-outs.)
Reading quizzes: 10% A quiz will be given after every reading assignment, to make sure you are keeping up. The quiz questions will be fairly easy if you have done the reading. Note: it will be given right at the start of class, you need to be here when class begins to take the quiz.
Essays: 55% There will be four essays in this class. Three of these will be quite short, approximately three to five pages. One of those short essays will be written in class. These short essays are each worth 10% of your grade. The fourth essay will be an 8-10-page research paper, with a weight of 25% of the final grade.
Revisions: Any of the three essays written out of class can be revised in response to my comments, for full credit up to a grade of “B,” provided you have received a grade of “B-” or lower on the first attempt. Such revisions must be turned in no later than one week after the graded essay is received. You are always welcome to show me a draft for my comments before the essay is due, or to e-mail me with questions during the drafting process.
First Homework Assignment: For this week: first, buy the books! Then, send me an e-mail from your home computer or the computer e-mail address you use. (You get a reward for doing this, and you will be helping me to create a listserv for the class. The reward: I’ll send you back the question for next week’s reading quiz, and further, more detailed information on your first essay.) You will have a short reading assignment right off, and a writing assignment. Read the pages in the hand-out from Campbell. Read it carefully, looking up any unfamiliar words in a dictionary, and also review your notes on the stages of the hero’s journey from our class discussion. Then, decide what myth, story, or historical hero (i.e., Malcolm X) you would like to write about. A 2-4 page draft discussing how the hero story or real person’s journey fits within the myth pattern framework is due next Friday. You will need to bring four typed, double spaced copies to class on that day. Alternate creative assignment: you can write a myth or fairy tale about such a heroic journey.
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