The Jane Austen Meme
BRIEF SYLLABUS (students, please see D2L for full syllabus)
Expository
Writing (1213/1223)
Spring
2015
03 M/W
1:30-2:45, Bizzell 102
04 M/W
3:00-4:15, Bizzell 102
Dr. Kathryn Steele
email: ksteele@ou.edu
Office:
Bizzell Library, Room 4
Office hours: M/W 4:30-5:00 and by appointment
Office phone: 325-3584
Course Description:
Jane
Austen’s novels remain popular 200 years after their publication, and—intriguingly—continue
to spawn revisions, mash-ups, film versions, online communities, and many other
cultural artifacts and activities. Why does Austen remain so culturally
significant? How do revisions—such as the vlog, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries or the mash-up Pride and Prejudice and Zombies—reveal changing assumptions and
beliefs about gender, family, class, and education? While deepening our
knowledge of Austen and Regency England, we also will practice modes of
comparative analysis, learn to historicize cultural artifacts, and develop
skills of cultural analysis that apply to understanding contemporary culture.
Course Goals:
The goal of this course is to introduce you to
academic writing. By the end of the course you should be able to read and
evaluate complex texts; choose and correctly employ sources in your writing;
understand the processes (and importance) of drafting and revising; identify
and employ a range of rhetorical moves in the service of an argument; and
improve your ability to polish your writing style and correct mechanical
errors.
Unit 1: Pride
and Prejudice and Diets and Diaries and the Undead
In this unit, you will
write an essay about one of the revisions of Pride and Prejudice using a critical essay as a lens text. How do
some recent adaptations line up with Austen’s style? You
will learn to develop a complex, motivated thesis, read sources carefully and
explain them to your audience, and make argumentative claims. Elements: motive,
thesis, keyterms, sources, analysis, close reading, citation.
Unit 2: “By
what means could it have been so long concealed?”
In this unit, you will write an essay that explores
the historical contexts of Austen’s satire of gothic novels. Northanger Abbey. Your essay will
contextualize Austen’s text within eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century
discourses of gender roles, reading, education, and the novel. Elements:
structure, stitching, motive.
Unit 3: Pride
and Prejudice and the World
In this unit you will use Pride and Prejudice as the springboard to more in-depth research.
In a limited research essay, you will investigate, explain, and craft an
argument about a topic that relates in some way to Pride and Prejudice. This is a wide field and will allow for a
variety of individual interests. Elements: research, analysis,
orienting, style.
Unit 4: The Jane Austen Meme
In this final unit,
you will work with a small group to propose an addition to the world of
Austen-inspired artifacts. You will write an individual analysis of your
project explaining its connections to Austen. Elements:
style, motive, review of all.
Required Texts:
Available at the bookstore:
·
Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein, They Say/ I Say, Second
edition or later, Norton, 2007. REQUIRED
·
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, ed. Susan Fraiman,
Norton, 2004. REQUIRED
·
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Broadview, ed.
Robert Irvine, 2002, Broadview. REQUIRED
Please acquire the specified editions if
possible; if you already own an edition, you may use that, but be sure to mark
it carefully so you can find relevant passages. Do not rely on electronic editions of the novels.
Available at King Copy
(119 W Boyd; Boyd and Debarr, across from Carson/Devon, 321-0202):
·
Course Packet. REQUIRED
Available to download:
·
MLA guidelines (REQUIRED)
You can download this to your computer or stop by the Writing Center (Wagner
Hall) and pick up a copy.
http://www.ou.edu/content/writingcenter/Citation_Guides/sub_nav_2.html
Additional
texts may be placed on D2L and/or handed out in class.
Be prepared to
print out copies of your essays and other materials for in-class workshops
and presentations. Please budget for about 5 pages of printed pages per unit.
You should have a college-level dictionary and a thesaurus. I highly recommend
that you supplement on-line dictionaries and thesauri with printed editions.
SPOILER
ALERT: We will be discussing many of Austen’s works and referring to
events and endings, although we will not necessarily read them in class. If you
want to be surprised, start reading on your own!
Course Requirements:
**All major assignments (conference draft and
final draft) must be completed in order for you to pass the class.**
Conferences are mandatory; missing a conference
may count as an absence.
4 Essays (900 points): Each
essay has two components: a conference draft and a final draft (a
significantly revised draft). The conference draft will not be graded, but it
should represent your very best writing and thinking effort. We will meet
individually to discuss the conference draft. You then will have about one week
to further revise the draft. The final
draft will be graded. No final draft will be accepted unless a conference
draft has been turned in.
Essay #1 (4-6 pages, 1200-1600 words): 150 points (due Feb
13)
Essay #2 (5-7 pages, 1500-2100 words): 250 points (due Mar
13)
Essay 3 Annotated Bibliography (1-3 pages,
300-900) 35 points (due Apr 8)
Essay #3 (7-10- pages, 2000-3000 words): 350 points (due Apr 21)
Essay #4 (3-4 pages, 900-1200 words): 115 points (due at Final
Exam Period and Th May 7)
Note Well: Due dates are subject to revision; no essay
will be due before the date listed above.
Word/page requirements:
While you should produce about 30 pages of graded writing over the semester,
page/word requirements are ranges that suggest the scope of the assignment. I won’t arbitrarily grade you down if you
fall a bit short, nor are there upper page/word limits. Very short essays
are often underdeveloped; likewise an essay that substantially exceeds the
page/word requirement may be bloated or highly repetitive. In every case, I
take the essay as a whole into consideration rather than simply assigning value
to the length.
