ENGL 635:

The Bloomsbury Group

Spring, 2005; U, 7: 05 p.m.

 

Schedule of Classes | Web Resources | Bulletin Board

Schedule for Presentations/Class Discussions

Professor Karin Westman

106 English/CS Building

Office: 532-2171; Office Hours: T, U 8-9 a.m. and by app't.

Email: westmank@ksu.edu

Required Texts

E.M. Forster, Howards End (1910) (Vintage International)

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (1927) (Harcourt Brace)

Virginia Woolf, The Waves (1931) (Harcourt Brace)

Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts (1941)

Michael Cunningham, The Hours (1998)

Class Pack (CPI = selections from Rosenbaum, The Bloomsbury Group; CPII = selected short stories, non-fiction prose, and critical essays; Class Pack available at A&S Copy Center in Eisenhower Hall)

 

Course Description

During the next few months, we'll be exploring the art, literature, and culture of early twentieth-century England through the works of The Bloomsbury Group. We will examine the relationships among the literary works of Bloomsbury authors such as Lytton Strachey, E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, and T.S. Eliot, focusing our attention on their perspectives on English society and personal experience. We will also consider their work in light of their 19th century predecessors (Matthew Arnold, Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, G.E. Moore) and in light of the post-impressionist visual artists and art theorists of the Group (Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell, Clive Bell, Roger Fry).

 

Course Objectives

• To become familiar with a particular period of British literary history
• To develop and apply critical skills for reading, thinking, and writing about several literary genres
• To use relevant cultural and historical information when interpreting literary texts
• To develop skills related to various technologies for research in and discussion of English literature

 

Requirements and General Expectations

Class Participation and Attendance: Class participation is, of course, required. To participate, you must complete the reading assigned for each class session and think carefully about what you have read. Your attendance is therefore important. You will not be penalized for your first absence; thereafter, further absences will jeopardize your final course grade. Excessive absences (three or more) may result in failure of the course. While I appreciate your offering explanations for absences, the only way to excuse an absence is to provide me with an official letter from your dean or an official notice of illness from the Health Center or your doctor.

 

 

Presentation/Leading Class Discussion: Students will sign up individually or in pairs to present some background material for one of our class sessions OR sign up to initiate class discussion for one of our class sessions. Presentations (10 minutes in length) should provide information which can in turn encourage us to explore the connections between the secondary readings and our assigned primary reading. Questions for class discussion (4-5 in number) should highlight issues or themes or queries you think we should address in our class discussion of the reading assigned for that day. In most cases presentation/leading class discussion topics are provided below. Students should contact me in advance to confirm the focus of their presentation, and students leading class discussions should email me their questions by 8 pm the night before.

 

 

Papers and Response Papers: All students will write one shorter paper (4-5 pages in length); undergraduates will also write a longer paper (7-8 pages in length), while graduate students will also write a longer paper with secondary sources (8-10 pages in length) and an essay review of four articles or a book-length study about one of our authors or about the Group. You will have a choice of two topics for Paper #1, and you will have a choice of text for Paper #2. Both papers should follow the general rules of composition and be typed or word-processed with standard double-spacing, 1-inch margins, and either 10- or 12-point typeface. Title pages and cover sheets are unnecessary. Pages should be numbered, stapled together, and spell-checked. Papers are due by the date and time on the syllabus; late papers will be penalized one grade (i.e.: A to B) for each day late.

You will also write five response papers (2 pp in length) in response to our readings. Response papers are designed to ready you for class discussion and to explore ideas you could develop further in your longer papers. They are due the day indicated on the syllabus. In your response paper, you should not repeat previous class discussions or provide a mere summary of the reading. Instead, your response should begin to analyze the reading assigned for that class session, selecting an issue or theme or question you feel to be significant. I recommend that you select a word, phrase, or short quotation from the reading to initiate your response. (See sample response distributed in class.) Responses will be graded on a 1-5 scale: 5=A, 4=B, 3=C, 2=D, 1=F. I do not accept late response papers.

 

 

Electronic Bulletin Board: To offer another venue for discussion, we'll start using an electronic bulletin board. Each student should post at least one a week to the bulletin board, responding to an existing thread of the conversation or initiating another; weekly postings will count for 10% of your class participation grade. The weekly bulletin board will run from Friday to Thursday, to encourage you to post right after as well as right before our weekly class discussions. I'll monitor these conversations, and may also participate, but I see the bulletin board primarily as a way for you to raise issues we haven't addressed -- or addressed fully or to your satisfaction -- during our regular class meetings. Though extra postings to the bulletin board will not automatically replace participation in our class discussions, regular contributions above and beyond your weekly posting can certainly improve your class participation grade.

Online, Video, and Reserve Resources: Along with some required viewing (the Channel 4 t.v. show "The 1940s House"), I will refer you to resources available online or on video to complement our readings and discussions. A "Web Resources" link from our course homepage will take you to a page of links devoted to the Group's authors, their work, and the times in which they lived. A range of books are on reserve at Hale Library as well, including the volumes of Woolf's letters and diaries, drafts of her novels, and reference guides to her work and to the Bloomsbury Group.

 

Grading:

Undergraduate Students: The two papers will count for 40% of your final grade (15% and 25% respectively); the response papers will count for 20% of your final grade. Class participation (20%) and a final exam (20%) complete the requirements.

Graduate Students: The shorter paper will count for 10%, the essay review will count for 10%, and the longer paper will count for 25% of your final grade. The response papers will count for 20% of your final grade. Class participation (20%) and a final exam (15%) complete the requirements.