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Jim Beggs
ENGL 860
Prof. Jim Cahalan

Pedagogical Anxiety in the Introductory College Literature Classroom: Problems and Remedies

Few pedagogical resources that I have encountered in my courses preparing me to teach

literature at the college level have addressed the topic of pedagogical anxiety. Teachers who

already have experience at teaching might have already overcome the anxiety most people feel

when speaking before a large group of strangers. One of the best methods for overcoming

anxieties is desensitization, and my experiences in speech communication courses have made me

more comfortable with public speaking. Teaching a class is a slightly different creature. A

teacher has a number of responsibilities to negotiate. These include, but are not limited to: the

departmental expectations for the instructor's course, the ethical obligation to teach material that

is useful and relevant to students, and the obligation to teach accurate information. I find Bill

Readings' notion of “obligation” useful in thinking about the student and teacher relationship

(158).

The desire to meet these expectations and obligations requires careful planning on the

teacher's part both to foster a classroom environment that will most effectively contribute to

students learning and the selection of material that will hopefully have the most meaning to

students. In certain ways, my guest teaching experience was successful. In other aspects, I see

the many areas where I can improve in the future. In this essay, I will outline how my anxiety

influenced pedagogical decisions I made. I also want to argue for more formal teacher training

apparatus that will make practical teacher training and reflection more meaningful for future

teachers. Finally I will include a syllabus that utilizes the principles that I think are most

effective in creating a classroom environment that students can enjoy and learn within.
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I am grateful that the Indiana University of Pennsylvania's English graduate program

offers a course like English 860, which gives future teachers some intellectual background in

critical pedagogy as well as some practical experience. Some experience is better than none,

which is the most training some departments provide to its future teachers. Having this

opportunity to plan a lesson, teach it, and then reflect on the experience has helped me to grow as

a teacher. However, one of the best experiences of my guest teaching happened outside the

classroom, when I had an informal conference with my host instructor Marlen Harrison after I

guest taught. Marlen has taught for about eight years, and the ability to speak with, ask questions

of, and receive some feedback from a more experienced instructor proved invaluable. Some

instructors might not have the time to meet with a guest teacher afterward, and the guest teacher

will miss out on some important insights. I believe that IUP uses a mentoring system to provide

these opportunities to teaching assistants, but I cannot avail myself of that resource since I am not

a teaching assistant. English departments should have the resources to offer incentives to

experienced teachers to have these interactions with students learning to teach. Departments as a

whole have to work harder at transforming pedagogical education and training to move from

judgmental evaluations to fostering a learning environment where teachers can observe and learn

from another without the fear that exposing themselves to others might make them vulnerable to

negative evaluation.

The criteria of my assignment for my English 860 guest teaching experience reflects this

supportive pedagogical culture. Rather than evaluate my teaching, I receive a grade based on the

analysis contained in this essay, reflecting on my teaching experience. My instructor did not

grade my teaching. That assuaged a good deal of the anxiety I felt over the experience. Still, I

found a number of things to worry about. My attempts to address my worries essentially dictated
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the form for my lesson plan. The biggest fear I had was that the students would resent having a

guest instructor that they did not want, would not be interested in the approach I was taking to the

literature they read and would essentially shut down and decline to participate while I taught.

Fortunately, my fears over students' dispositions toward me turned out to be mostly unfounded

based on the students' eagerness to participate. In order to deal with the possibility that students

would not participate, I planned to have enough material to lecture for the entire time in case

students decided not to participate. Additionally, I worried that I might become derailed during

the course of teaching, possibly due to anxiety and a lack of confidence in my own teaching

abilities. Marlen uses a Twitter-like function of his own web software to allow students to post

comments in real time during class. Many of his students consider themselves “visual learners.”

The needs of the visual learners and my own needs (and anxieties) as a teacher led me to design a

PowerPoint presentation to help guide the process and aid me in time management.

The Lesson and How it Played Out

I wanted to ensure that the lesson I taught was meaningful to students, and that it engaged

the material they had already read for class. For an undergraduate class, Marlen Harrison's

students read quite a bit of long material. The texts for the class are The Power of Myth,

Awakening the Heroes Within, The Color Purple, Siddhartha, Watership Down, Middlesex, and

The Odyssey. The time frame in which I wanted to do my guest teaching coincided with the class

covering The Color Purple. Throughout the semester, the class applied the Joseph Campbell

monomyth text and Pearson's Awakening the Heroes Within to the literary texts they covered.

They already had a firm grasp of the monomyth, and Marlen suggested I cover either archetypes

or some basic literary elements. After I acquired the Pearson text, I thought the warrior archetype
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would be beneficial for The Color Purple given the arc of the narrative as well as the amount of

physical violence in the novel. To help the students think theoretically about Alice Walker's

novel, I wanted to draw attention to how Pearson's work was a feminist intervention into the

patriarchal discourse of the hero. How could we apply Pearson's rethinking of the warrior

archetype to The Color Purple? As Trudier Harris points out, Walker's own text plays with the

themes and structures of fairy tales and mythic texts (159). The racial elements of the text are

hard to ignore and elicit strong reactions from readers.

While I have some theoretical issues with Joseph Campbell and Pearson's work being

somewhat reductive, both provide excellent opportunities for introducing theory to students as

well as providing opportunities for students to think personally about course material. Even I

could not resist the opportunity to apply the material personally. Given my own fear and anxiety

over guest teaching, I had to draw on the warrior archetype to be willing to expose myself to the

“danger” of guest teaching and “slay the dragon” (95). Without exposure to the things that we

fear most, we fail to grow, according to Pearson. Pearson's work on rethinking the archetypes

and how we think about heroes drew on Campbell's work but also really opened up the

possibilities for who or what we can consider a hero. According to her, we are all heroes that

draw on the various literary and psychological archetypes in order to become more fully human.

The lesson plan I formed was:

1) A quick personal introduction.

2) How I rethought the warrior archetype looking at a figure from my youth, the

professional wrestler the Ultimate Warrior. I quickly reviewed the warrior archetype as

Pearson defined it.

3) I included a five minute writing prompt for students to think about “warriors” from their
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own cultures.

4) I asked students to share with the whole class the warriors they identified.

5) I wanted to apply the archetype to The Color Purple with student's help.

6) I had a final writing prompt for students to think about how they “fight” for things in their

own lives.

One of the biggest initial problems I had in teaching the class was my own energy level.

While I did not consider it much of an issue at the time, Marlen asked me about it after, and on

viewing the videotape, I could see the point. Due to anxiety, the night before my guest teaching I

only slept for about one to two hours, so that impacted my energy level. In addition, my anxiety

held me back in a number of ways. When I get nervous, I usually become flatter in tone as a

defensive mechanism, and this is a chronic issue in presentations and speaking engagements. I

also tend to project less. One of my greatest challenges will be to find a way to enthusiastically

engage material I might be less than enthusiastic about. I am still trying to figure out how to do

this, but I will offer some preliminary thoughts later in this essay.

I set up the videocamera on a tripod in a bad place in the classroom. Even before I began

my guest teaching, a student jostled the tripod and the camera moved. Therefore I could not even

see myself as I taught from the podium. I remained glued to the podium for most of my teaching

experience. Only once, probably about halfway through my teaching did I move from behind the

technology station, in part because I had difficulty hearing students due to groundskeepers using

noisy machinery outside. In retrospect, I think moving around more would have made me a more

interesting teacher. It would have closed the physical gap between me and the students and

possibly made them and myself more comfortable talking together in class. The one time that I

did move while listening to a student, I thought my body language made me look a little too
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intense. I wanted students to know that I was interested in what they had to say, so I maintained

eye contact with Female Student 1 while she spoke. In the video tape, combined with my slight

lean forward, I found my posture and staring somewhat intimidating. A more relaxed posture and

active listening style would make myself and students more comfortable, I think.

Beyond the two writing prompts, I had difficulty thinking of ways to incorporate student

participation. I had no idea which portions of my presentation students would find the most

interesting. I thought my first writing and discussion prompt was good because it served as a

kind of “ice breaker” where students could share their ideas without having to do any

complicated theoretical interpretations of the text. Due to the layout of Marlen's class and the

fact that they do group work in every single class, on the spot I changed my writing prompt into a

group discussion prompt. The desks were in about six small clusters, with all the desks turned

into each small cluster so the groups could do their daily work, as the classroom diagram will

show. They seemed to have no real problems in discussing the questions I posed to them. I

allowed five minutes for group discussion, but Marlen suggested I end the discussion time after

about four minutes, as the students were starting to get off topic.
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Most of the students sat in the back and left sides of the room, with the front row being

mostly unoccupied, and some students moving from the right side of the room in order to join

groups in other areas of the room. I did not really consider the classroom layout of primary

importance in my lesson plan, and I did not want to take up precious time moving thirty students

and their desks into a semi-circular shape. When the time came for the writing prompt, since they

were already in their groups from the group work that Marlen has them complete every class, I

thought it made more sense to change it to a group discussion prompt. If I am lucky enough to

teach my own class in the future, I will probably use the individual writing prompt to prepare

students for group discussion, but in the interest of time and adapting myself to the class, I used

the group discussion prompt. If I am committed to the writing prompt, I probably should change

the classroom layout next time.

Related to the issue of my own energy level while teaching, I need to work on the

dynamics of how I interact with students in the classroom in order to move further away from
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what Freire calls the “banking model,” in order to encourage students to draw on their own

experiences and learn more on their own (72). For instance, I missed a good opportunity for

students to participate when I covered the warrior archetype. I covered some basics from

Pearson's text and read a paragraph from her text. I was extremely dissatisfied with this

afterward, at least partly because I read the wrong the paragraph. The paragraph I selected nicely

states the main aspects of the warrior archetype and reading the wrong paragraph did not help

anything. Instead, I could have asked the students what the characteristics of the warrior

archetype were. I hesitated from doing this because I wanted the lesson to head in the specific

direction that I had “charted” in my lesson plan. From my experience in classrooms, however, I

think it is possible to do both. I have had instructors who ask general questions of students, then

redirect the discussion with additional questions or comments. Instead of making students sit

through my monologue, I think it would be more meaningful to have the dialogue of student and

teacher ideas in the classroom, to at least offer them the opportunity to synthesize information

rather than “bank” it.

Additionally, I missed the opportunity to have students interact within the classroom in

ways other than group work. In relation to the ideas that I presented in class, I could have asked

“What do you all think? Do you disagree with this point of view?” Asking students if they

agreed or disagreed with their comments also could have taken some pressure off myself and

given significance to other students' comments. These are effective techniques for classroom

dialogue that I have seen other teachers use. The anxiety that I felt unfortunately had serious

negative effects on how I interacted with the students in the classroom.

Eye contact with my audience is not always an issue for me, but often is with audiences I

am unfamiliar or uncomfortable with. I had never met this group of students before, so I was
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looking at my notes, the walls, the ceiling, and anywhere else a student was not. I consider eye

contact absolutely crucial as a listener, and I often lose interest in speakers who will not at least

occasionally offer a brief moment of eye contact. Additionally, I confused a student when I

called on her and looked elsewhere, because I was worried that I might miss another student that

volunteered to speak. As students spoke, I had some difficulty concentrating on their remarks due

to noise, worrying about time, and feeling inadequate to address their responses. Female student

1 offered an interesting insight: “One of the big concerns that I have between Condoleezza Rice

and President Obama is that I feel, though, for all the people who are, like, pro black people—I

feel as though it's kind of wrong that they don't support Condoleezza Rice because she's African

American, too.” I tried to relate her comments back to my lesson plan, but I wish I had spent

more time with her comments, perhaps asking other people in the class what they thought.

Additionally, I feel my response to her comments were mostly useless. In addressing a

racial issue, I was afraid of even appearing as slightly racist. I think this is a totally unfounded

fear, and I will have to more plainly state what I mean in classes to become an engaging teacher.

My response to Female Student 1 was: “It's part of the complexity of politics um . . . that for

some reason, some people can see Condolleezza Rice as somebody who is less than a person

because she holds conservative political beliefs.” This is a token response. What I really wanted

to say was that race and racial identity are contested territories in American society. Part of the

political violence of discourses are to deny people their racial identity by considering them “less

black” or maybe an “oreo cookie,” black on the outside but white on the inside. I think my

unease in teaching was evident in how I was for most part glued to the technology station, the

excessive “uhs” and “you knows” that peppered my speech, and the sometimes long pauses as I

measured my words. In and of themselves, these things are not problems, but they impact
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student's own comfort levels with the class. For the most part, teachers need skill at speaking

extemporaneously, or what I prefer to think of as “semi-prepared,” incorporating unexpected

student comments and questions. That is the type of speaking that I think I am worst at.

The most successful part of my guest teaching was my time management. I tried to cram

too much material into my teaching time, but I managed to cover it all, some of it very quickly

within the allotted twenty minutes. I only rushed myself and allowed ample time for student's

comments. While I had good reasoning for having a closing writing prompt, I want to discard the

idea for future lesson plans. I suspect I will frequently go over the time limits I set for my lesson

plans, and requiring students to write in the last minute of class when they are ready to leave is

not effective planning. I was surprised the timing of my lesson almost broken evenly between

time that I spent speaking and the time that students spoke. The following pie graph shows the

total time breakdown, with all students getting a share of the classroom time in the group

discussion. I think there is room for allowing students to have more total time. I also hope to

incorporate more students in the future. I believe some of the methods I already mentioned, such

as asking students whether they agree or disagree with me or one another, will help to make these

changes in the future.

Me
Host Instructor
Female student 1
Male student 1
Male student 2
Female student 2
Group work (all
students)
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For future lesson plans, I also want to have the class be more textually centered. An idea I

had for engaging the warrior archetype was looking at the scene in the novel when Celie finally

embodies the warrior archetype. At dinner one night, Shug informed Albert and the rest of the

family that she and Celie were leaving. After a verbal confrontation, Albert moved to hit Celie,

but first she stabbed him in the hand with a knife. The scene contrasts with the Celie of the

earlier novel who took abuse without any real protest. I wanted to ask students what the weapons

that Celie used in her fight were. The knife was one thing, but removing herself from Albert's

home was an important step in her growth. Also, Celie's reconnecting with her sister and her

children helped to give her the courage to leave Albert. I believe I could ask questions to help

students pull these elements out. I rejected the idea due to my fear over students either not

understanding the points or not wanting to participate. The only time the students had difficulty

participating was when I asked about whether we could consider how Alice Walker embodies the

warrior archetype. As undergraduate non-majors, I think they lacked the historical and critical

background to make connections with other texts that Walker responded to with her novel.

Other than that one instance, the students demonstrated a sophisticated understanding of

the novel. Female student 2 had the courage to disagree that Walker's portraits of men were not

entirely negative because male characters such as Harpo had positive characteristics as well as

negative ones. Referring to Trudier Harris's article, the student states“People had problems with

that she made African American males look bad, but she also had that um, her sister, the guy that

she lived with and married—he was a good guy, so I thought she was showing both sides.” The

total number of questions that I asked was low as well as the total number of students who

participated—four. Given the time constraints that I worked with, I think that result was
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acceptable, but I think I will have to be deliberate in allowing more opportunities for other

students to participate, especially students who are reluctant to participate. As a student who is

often reluctant to participate, I often have a difficult time getting my fair share of the class time,

and I appreciate instructors who provide those opportunities. Having experienced marginalization

in the classroom due to introversion, I have the strength of knowing what it is like and how I can

provide more opportunities for all students to participate.

Conclusion

I feel more confident as a teacher after my experience of guest teaching a section of

English 121: Introduction to Humanities Literature. I realized that I have some skill at time

management. I managed to form a lesson plan that fit within the theme of my host instructor's

course and helped students to engage the material in interesting ways. The biggest obstacles I

have to overcome are my own anxiety and fear over teaching. Being able to more effectively

cope with the anxiety will improve my teaching. Through continued exposure to teaching

scenarios, I believe my anxiety will lessen over the future. Additionally, there are specific

techniques I can use immediately before teaching that help to relax me. One method I often use

to soothe myself is controlled breathing. It is a basic relaxation technique where I become aware

of my breathing and breathe in deeply through my nose, inflating my diaphragm and breathing

out through my mouth. When I am more relaxed, I can be a more dynamic and interesting

speaker.

Continued observation of teachers will help me to think of additional techniques and

activities that will help me to become a more effective teacher. I believe I can use some strategies

that I have seen other teachers use in order to create more student-centered lesson plans. Marlen
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encouraged me to think about pedagogues that I have admired and the kind of class activities

they have done that I have enjoyed and that have helped me to learn the most. Professor Cheryl

Wilson, a faculty member at IUP, at least once a semester has students actually dance with one

another in class. Actually dancing with other people helps me and other students to realize that

the sometimes boring dance scenes such as those in Jane Austen's novels reveal the social

dimensions of dance—about how they were opportunities to flirt. I have only begun to think

about how I might be able to combine personal interests with my research and pedagogical

interests. For instance, in teaching women's literature, I have begun researching activities that

nineteenth century women have written about in literal and figurative ways. Marx's theories of

classes and their relations to the means of production have helped me to theoretically think about

literature. I want myself and students to consider in-depth what it was like for women to engage

in extremely alienating labor such as sewing or knitting for less or no wages. I myself have

experienced the physical pain of sewing after I hand-quilted a wall hanging as a gift for someone.

In order to be able to make a really small and straight stitch, I could not wear any protection on

the finger on top of the work as the needle point came through the fabric. One or two needle jabs

into the tip of one's finger are not a problem. After a few thousand, the sewer leaves traces of

blood in the fabric even after washing it.

To meaningfully develop a pedagogical application for a sewing or knitting activity will

require the right texts, some more thought, and the courage to finally try out the lesson plan. I

think a failure to develop it meaningfully could lead to student comments such as “I did not sign

up for a home economics class.” Women had a complicated relationship with the work they did.

Edith Wharton showed the life as a seamtress as one of misery, as Lily Bart health declines

dramatically from her poor working conditions in The House of Mirth. However, it had positive
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applications. Caroline Healey Dall, in her diaries, wrote of the therapeutic effects of sewing in

helping her to deal with anxiety and even earn a little money through a sewing circle. The circle

also provided an opportunity to socialize with other ladies. Karl Marx noted the oppressed

position of women in his time, noting the “slavery latent in the family” that permitted the

exploitation of women and children (178). I hope that such an activity would help students to

reflect on this historical reality and realize how alienating much of the labor that they have done

in their lives is. That many of the tasks at their jobs are just as repetitious and thoughtless. In

some ways, even the university has taken on aspects of the assembly line. I cannot get over an

example that Richard Ohmann cited of an instructor who graded over 3,000 themes in an

academic year. The amazing workload occurred in the year 1893 before academics were more

fully liberated from the bondage of themes into the liberty of literature (36).

As my citation of Caroline Healey Dall indicated, I have a research interest in diaries and

journals. They raise theoretical questions about truth and falsehood, fiction and non-fiction, and

exactly how critics should engage the texts. Should they draw on autobiography criticism? In any

future class I teach, I plan to include an assigned reader-response journal. My two writing

prompts in my guest teaching lesson plan were condensed versions of the reader-response journal

I would like to assign. They provide practice for later essay assignments where I expect students

to offer penetrating analysis of texts. Additionally, it ensures that students will engage with the

material on some level, particularly if they are not comfortable speaking in a class with thirty

other students. The students' own experiences writing in the journal will help them to reflect on

diaries or journals they might read in my class. Professor Veronica Watson, in an autobiography

class, had us write our own autobiographies, which made the difficulties of the genre more

apparent after the experience. Being able to include texts or authors that I find interesting, as well
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as those that I think will be valuable to students, should help me to engage the texts energetically

in the classroom. What I find interesting and what the students find interesting might be different,

but the classroom dialogue helps us to learn from each other.

The opportunity to teach a lesson in a real undergraduate classroom helped me to assess

my own strengths, those of the students, and hopefully to plan better and more meaningful

lessons in the future. I realized that I can manage the time in the classroom effectively. I think I

need to work on my speaking, listening, and interaction with students more. Continued practice

at teaching should help to improve my classroom demeanor and comfort level with the demands

of teaching. I heard Frank McCourt say in an interview that it took about fifteen years for him to

feel comfortable in the classroom. As a result, I see pedagogical training as a long-term process

that defies mastery and constantly invites reflection for improved methods. The inclusion of

personal material that I find interesting in a syllabus will also help me to appear energetic to

students and help them to become interested in the material.

Now that I have talked about my pedagogical philosophy in relation to my guest teaching

experience, I will present a syllabus for a course in which I can more fully realize my own

pedagogical goals. The syllabus conforms to the requirements of an English 121: Introduction to

Humanities Literature course. The course is only taken by non-majors. My own educational

experiences as a student have been influenced by Marxist, feminist, postcolonial, and reader

response theories, and I have tried to integrate these through various means in my syllabus.

Preface to Syllabus

The hypothetical syllabus that I have drafted for English 121 attempts to provide a broad

overview of the history of English literature while allowing some in-depth consideration of
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specific areas. I selected texts partly based on personal expertise, but also what texts I think my

students might find interesting, minority authors, and genre fiction. The course starts with

Chaucer's “The Miller's Tale”mostly in order to have an enjoyable open to the semester. I only

intended for students to read the description of the miller in the “general prologue” in Middle

English to get a “taste” of the language and make them aware that they are reading a problematic

translation (selected mostly for cost). I think many students will be surprised with the story and

Chaucer's language, since students often associate past times with conservative values. I plan to

provide a model for future student “team teaching” in how I present material to address

feudalism and demonstrate how and why Chaucer represented characters from different classes in

different ways.

The main idea of the course is to follow what I see as a basic Marxist methodology: to

think about labor and class struggle through different literary periods. The course moves onto a

poetry unit that allows a consideration of the intimately linked labor of William and Dorothy

Wordsworth. Then the course moves to the tempestuous time in American history surrounding

the civil war. I have included white and African American responses to slavery. My syllabus

underwent numerous revisions in the texts that I selected, trying to make it as multicultural and

include as many perspectives as possible. I emphasized mostly texts that talk about resistance and

rebellion. Resistance makes more sense to us when we are younger, I think, and those are the

texts I usually find the most interesting. However, I find people's arguments in favor of teaching

more conservative writers like Phyllis Wheatley and Zora Neale Hurston very persuasive. I think

they are valuable for showing the contested nature of politics, institutions, and history.

After my intitial presentations on historical context, I plan to mostly turn over the

provision of historical context in the course to the students. It is essentially impossible for me to
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make sense of a text without context, and I am interested in what students can find. The historical

movements that I have provided on the syllabus for the “team teaching” are purposefully broad,

but if students had difficulty with it, I could offer them more specific focuses, such as “John

Brown” for abolitionists. The quizzes are primarily to help students stay motivated for the

reading. I think the Moodle postings are good for supplemental student interaction and getting

students to think about their reading and also why they react in certain ways to texts. The posts

would also help me to think about what issues the students are most interested in, and I could

adjust lesson plans accordingly. A couple times throughout the semester, I hoped to make the

Moodle requirement more flexible, offering students the opportunity to write poems or short

stories in place of the standard analytic response.

Creative writers often respond to other writers creatively, rather than analytically or

critically, and I think it is unfortunate that students are not always encouraged to respond in the

same way. Institutionally, composition faculty seem the host that the literary faculty have thrived

on. The composition faculty teaches the down and dirty basics of composition while the literature

faculty enjoys the pleasures of teaching great works of art. Only institutional changes ultimately

will fix what I see as this problem, but maybe teachers can help the situation by breaking down

those barriers in their own classrooms.

I envision the exams being a combination of questions that require short responses and

perhaps two short essay responses. The class discussions would largely determine the questions

and prompts of the exam. I decided not to require essays because students will already have done

significant writing for the Moodle postings. The department has no writing requirement for

English 121, and I prefer the more informal Moodle postings. They are evaluated according to

less strict criteria than an essay and admittedly make the workload for me a little easier. As long
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as the students are writing substantial responses to the texts, they will receive the full credit.

Additionally, the essays would dilute the weight of the other factors of the class too much.

Grades are a measure of student's work in a class, but only one specific measure.

The Syllabus

English 121: Introduction to Humanities Literature

“Labor, Resistance and Literature”

Instructor: Jim Beggs

Class time: MWF 1:25-2:15, Keith 137

Office hours: TR, 2:00-4:00, Leonard 201-D

E-mail: fpcp@iup.edu

The purpose of English 121 is to help students to critically engage with and obtain a basic

grasp of a wide range of literary texts. I have selected a number of texts that I hope you will find

stimulating for class discussion, writing, and thought. Through the various assignments in the

course, you will improve your reading, writing, and speaking skills.

To help us understand the various texts, we will focus on labor and literature. We will

think about how labor and laborers are represented in literature and also the labors of literature—

literary production and reproduction. The texts for this course provide a wide selection of cultural

contexts for the consideration of labor. Some of our in-class activities will also encourage

reflection on the current status of labor.

Attendance

You are allowed three unexcused absences per semester. Emergency situations, such as

extreme illness or deaths in the family do not count toward your unexcused absence total,
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however you should let me know when and why you are missing class. You can either email me

or speak to me in person. Students who will miss classes due to athletic or professional

obligations should communicate their needs in the first week of class.

If you have more than three unexcused absences in this class, I will schedule a conference

with you.

Participation

You should come to each class prepared to discuss the readings and assignments for each

day. Each student's input is important for the course. If you are uncomfortable speaking in class,

please see me during office hours so that I am aware of what you are thinking about the work we

are doing in class.

The use of cell phones and other mobile devices during class interferes with your own and

other students' learning. If I see you using one during class, I will silently mark you absent for the

day.

Assignments

Moodle postings: Each week you make three posts to Moodle on a reading assigned for

the week. The fist post is due by Tuesday at midnight. The post should make a substantive

statement about the texts we are reading or watching for that week. If you enjoyed something

about a text or hated something—explain why. At least one other post should be in response to a

post of one your group members. The third post can either be a response to another group

member or another personal reaction to the reading. Each post should be a minimum of 100

words in length.

Quizzes: There will be ten unannounced quizzes throughout the semester

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Midterm exam: The midterm exam will test your knowledge of the concepts and texts that

we have covered in the first part of class. Class discussion will largely determine the content of

the exam, so steady attendance will help you do well on the exam.

Final exam: The final exam will be similar to the midterm, except it will cover the texts

from the second half of the course.

Team teaching: With your group, you will teach a text from the syllabus. The lesson you

plan should present historical context and how you can apply it to the text you are covering. The

methods that you employ are not too important. The more creative your teaching is, the better.

Your group's presentation should take about twenty minutes.

Grade Breakdown

Attendance and participation: 10%

Quizzes: 10%

Moodle postings: 35%

Mid-term exam: 10%

Team teaching: 15%

Final exam: 20%

To find your grade at any point, multiply your current score in each category by its

weighted percentage, and add them together: 90-100% = A, 80-89.9% = B, 70-79.9% = C, 60-

69.9% = D

Required texts:

Selected Canterbury Tales. By Geoffrey Chaucer. Dover Thrift Edition. ISBN: 0486282414

Copies Plus Packet.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. By Harriet Jacobs ISBN: 158049336X

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The Iron Heel. By Jack London. ISBN:0143039717

Kindred. By Octavia Butler. ISBN: 0807083100

The Communist Manifesto. By Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: ISBN: 1599869950

Pocho. By Jose Antonio Villareal. ISBN: 0385061188

Class Schedule

Week 1 - Feudalism

January 20 – Course overview and introductions.

January 22 – The Miller in “The General Prologue” in your course packet. The Prologue to the

Miller's Tale.

Week 2

January 25 – “The Miller's Tale.”

January 27 – The Miller's Tale

January 29 – The Miller's Tale

Week 3 - 18th & 19 century

February 1 – William Wordsworth “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.” “Daffodils.” “The Leech

Gatherer.” Excerpts from Grasmere Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth. All in course packet.

February 3 – Phyllis Wheatley, “A Hymn to Humanity,” “On Being Brought from Africa to

America,” “To S. M., a Young African Painter” course packet. Walt Whitman, “O Captain, My

Captain!”

February 5 – Sarah Piatt “The Palace Burner.” John Greenleaf Whitter, “Brown of

Ossawatomie.” Emily Dickinson:1461, 1479. – Group 1 – American periodicals

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Week 4 – Antebellum America

February 8 – Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.

February 10 – Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.

February 12 – Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Week 5

February 15 – Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

February 17 – Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Group 2 – Abolitionists

February 19 – Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Week 6

February 22 – Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

February 24 – Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Group 3 – The civil war

February 26 – The Communist Manifesto (skip the prefaces)

Week 7

March 1 – The Communist Manifesto

Match 3 – Review

March 5 – Midterm exam

Week 8

March 8 – Spring break, start reading The Iron Heel

March 10 – Spring break

March 12 – Spring break

Week 9

March 15 – The Iron Heel

March 17 – The Iron Heel

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March 19 – The Iron Heel

Week 10

March 22 – The Iron Heel

March 24 – The Iron Heel Group 4 – Socialist movements

March 26 – The Iron Heel

Week 11

March 29 – The Iron Heel

March 31 – The Iron Heel Group 5 – Anarchist Movements

April 2 – The Iron Heel

Week 12

April 5 – Barton Fink Group 6 – Cesar Chavez

April 7 – Barton Fink

April 9 – Barton Fink

Week 13

April 12 – Pocho

April 14 – Pocho Group 7 – Civil rights movement

April 16 – Pocho

Week 14

April 19 – Pocho

April 21 – Kindred Group 8 – The end of history?

April 23 – Kindred

Week 15

April 26 – Kindred
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April 28 – Kindred

April 30 – Kindred

Week 16

May 3 - Review
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Works Cited

Adams, Richard. Watership Down. New York: Scribner, 2005.

Campbell, Joseph. The Power of Myth. New York: Anchor, 1991.

Dall, Caroline Healey. Daughter of Boston. Boston: Beacon, 2005.

Eugenides, Jeffrey. Middlesex. New York: Picador, 2002.

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York, Continuum, 2005.

Harris, Trudier. “On The Color Purple, Stereotypes, and Silence.” Black American Literature

Forum. 18:4(1984), 155-61.

Hesse, Herman. Siddhartha. New York: Bantam, 1971.

Homer. The Odyssey. New York: Penguin, 2006.

Marx, Karl. Karl Marx: Selected Writings. New York: Oxford UP, 2000.

Ohmann, Richard. The Politics of Letters. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 1987.

Pearson, Carol. Awakening the Heroes Within. New York: HarperCollins, 1991.

Readings, Bill. The University in Ruins. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1999.

Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Harcourt, 2003.

Wharton, Edith. The House of Mirth. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2002.