This course offers students the opportunity to study a single figure in depth, but a figure who is so richly various that "depth" does not preclude "breadth." Background and critical works will be assigned or recommended as appropriate, but the main focus of the course is simply the experience of reading a major author's oeuvre as a whole.
Requirements:
1) (30%) Teach a 50-minute class on one of the novels.
2) (30% each)Write two relatively short papers,
dealing with at least two other Dickens novels, of the type you might present
at a scholarly conference. Creative writers, think of these as articles
for something like the Atlantic Monthly or one of the quarterlies.
These papers should be correctly documented, but your focus should be on
making a discrete (though possibly indiscreet) point comprehensible
to an audience familiar with Dickens but not necessarily as familiar with
the texts you are dealing with as you are. These papers should take
about fifteen minutes to deliver, that is, probably they should be 6-8
pages long . There are ways to make such a short paper a seed
for a scholarly article; we'll talk about that.
3) (10%) Read the books, take part in the
class discussion of them except when illness or disaster dogs you with
truly Victorian force, and collect your thoughts beforehand in the form
of a short response to the class e-list. If you fall behind on some
book, a) come to class anyway and b) catch up later: go ahead and read
the next one. These are long books.
READING AND TEACHING SCHEDULE
Note: Teaching assignments may be changed, but consider
yourself responsible for the book listed. In other words, you can
arrange a swap, but don't abandon your book to its fate. Anyone who
has not yet selected a book to teach should negotiate a team-teaching arrangement
with someone else. A team-taught class will be considered
to be an hour and a half, not fifty minutes.
Tom Bragg Not Forgetting Barnaby Rudge Jessica Espinosa Community and Communities in Hard Times Dombey and Son Randi Smith The House of Dombey: When Business Defines Family Sarah Bleakney The Experience of Travel in Dombey and Son Old Curiosity Shop Sandy Weems Annihilation and Transcendence: Little Nell and Cordelia Jessica Espinosa The Past and Future of Daniel Quilp: a Vice for a New City Arthur McMaster Depreciatory Humor in Dickens' Early Novels Amy Robinson Courtship Confusion in The Pickwick Papers Trena Houp Reading the Illustrations of Martin Chuzzlewit Kate Rice TBA