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1.0 Suggested Themes for the Course:
*Texts not included in this book. For links to these texts, see 2.0
Additional Readings, below.
Negotiating Personal Relationships
The Sun Also Rises* or The Awakening*
Trifles
The Tempest
“My Papa’s Waltz”
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130
“Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”*
“Those Winter Sundays”*
“Annabel Lee”
“The Story of an Hour”
“Old Lady Down the Hall”*
The Individual vs. Society
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn*
A Room with a View* or The Awakening*
Trifles
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130
“The Weary Blues”*
“Still I Rise”*
“Frederick Douglass”
“The Story of an Hour”
“The Passing of Grandison”
“How to Tame a Wild Tongue”*
“Why I Write”*
Determining an Ethical Code
The Sea-Wolf *
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn*
The Scarlet Letter*
The Sun Also Rises*
A Room with a View* or Frankenstein*
Trifles
The Tempest
“The Gettysburg Address”
“Dover Beach”
“Annabel Lee”
“Frederick Douglass”
“Those Winter Sundays”*
“The Hunting of the Hare”
“Young Goodman Brown”*
“The Open Boat”
“The Passing of Grandison”
“The Value of Science”*
“Why I Write”*
“Design”*
“Of Luddites, Learning, and Life”*
“How I Got My D.I.Y. Degree”*
Science: Friend or Foe?
Frankenstein*
“Dover Beach”
“The Value of Science”*
“Of Luddites, Learning, and Life”*
From the Margins
The House Behind the Cedars*
The Scarlet Letter*
Frankenstein* or The Awakening*
“The Weary Blues”*
“Still I Rise”*
“Frederick Douglass”
“Those Winter Sundays”*
“The Story of an Hour”
“The Passing of Grandison”
Trifles
The Tempest
“How to Tame a Wild Tongue”*
Writing and Literature: Composition as Inquiry, Learning, Thinking, and Communication
The Power of Nature
Frankenstein* or The Sea-Wolf*
“I Heard a Fly Buzz—When I Died”
“The Open Boat”
“The Death of the Moth”*
“The Value of Science”*
“Design”*
The Function of Art
The Awakening*
The Tempest
“Ode on a Grecian Urn”
“The Weary Blues”*
“Poetry”*
“Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”*
“Blackberry Eating”*
“Annabel Lee”
“Frederick Douglass”
“The Open Boat”
“Why I Write”*
“Design”*
“How to Tame a Wild Tongue”*
From Naïveté to Experience
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn*
The House Behind the Cedars*
The Awakening* or Frankenstein*
Trifles
“My Papa’s Waltz”
“Those Winter Sundays”*
“The Story of an Hour”
“The Death of the Moth”*
“Goodbye to All That”*
“Why I Write”*
“Young Goodman Brown”*
“Design”*
“How I Got My D.I.Y. Degree”*
2.0 Additional Readings
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain novel
Project Gutenberg
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/76/76-h/76-h.htm
The Awakening Kate Chopin novel
Project Gutenberg
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/160?...lcome_stranger
“Design” Robert Frost poem
Poets.org
www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/design
“The Five Orange Pips” Arthur Conan Doyle short story
Project Gutenberg
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1661/...h/1661-h.htm#5
Frankenstein Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley novel
Project Gutenberg
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/84
The House Behind the Cedars Charles W. Chesnutt novel
Project Gutenberg
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/472
“How I Got My D.I.Y. Degree” William Upski Wimsatt essay
Self Education Foundation. Originally published in Utne Reader (May/June
1998).
selfeducationfoundation.wordp...ry/diy-degree/
“How to Tame a Wild Tongue” Gloria Anzaldua essay
Borderlands/La Frontera
www.sfu.ca/iirp/documents/Anzaldua%201999.pdf
270
Writing and Literature: Composition as Inquiry, Learning, Thinking, and Communication
“Of Luddites, Learning, and Life” Neil Postman essay
Technos Quarterly 2.4 (1993).
http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/users/f/f...tman/Articles/
TECHNOS_NET.htm
“Old Lady Down the Hall” David Sedaris essay
Esquire.com. 1 October, 2000.
www.esquire.com/news-politics...-sedaris-1000/
A Room with a View E.M. Forster novel
Project Gutenberg
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2641
The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne novel
Project Gutenberg
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33
The Sea-Wolf Jack London novel
Project Gutenberg
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1074
The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway novel
Internet Archive
https://archive.org/details/sunalsorises030276mbp
“Young Goodman Brown” Nathaniel Hawthorne short story
Project Gutenberg
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/512/5...-h.htm#goodman
3.0 Assignment Ideas
Article Critique Assignment
This assignment offers students experience in reading and evaluating
a scholarly article, requiring them to practice their rhetorical analysis
skills. It can be an effective scaffolding exercise as you build toward the
research paper. Please, feel free to modify this assignment to address a
peer-reviewed article more pertinent to your class’s theme or focus.
Jacob Michael Leland. “‘Yes, That is a Roll of Bills in My
Pocket’: The Economy of Masculinity in The Sun Also
Rises.” The Hemingway Review 23.2 (2004): 37.
In this 600-800 word essay, you will offer an
evaluation of the article cited above. Your introduction
should convey in your own words Leland’s central
argument, or thesis, as well as your judgment regarding
the article’s persuasiveness. Does Leland convince you
that his interpretation of The Sun Also Rises is valid?
The body of the essay should develop support for your
answer to the question above. If you are not convinced of
Leland’s perspective on the novel, what are your reasons?
What aspects of Leland’s article weaken his case and
keep him from achieving his purpose effectively? If
you find Leland’s case convincing, on the other hand,
which rhetorical strategies persuaded you? Remember to
organize the essay according to the major points you have
selected to support your position.
Annotated Bibliography Assignment
Another effective building block, this assignment not only requires
students to practice finding, reading, and understanding peer-reviewed
sources, but it also helps them achieve substantial progress toward the
research paper if that final assignment focuses on the same literary text.
For this assignment, you will gather, cite, and annotate
(summarize) five secondary, scholarly sources on a text
from our reading assignments (these are not the type of
sources you normally find by doing a Google search). Your
bibliography will need to cite both articles and books, if
possible. Citations must follow current MLA guidelines.
Each annotation will provide a summary (between 90 and
110 words) of the source, stating the author’s main argument
and key points/evidence supporting that argument.
The entries for your bibliography should be
alphabetized by the authors’ last names (or first word of
each entry). They should not be numbered.
Be careful that your annotations are summarized and
not quoted. The challenge of writing these short annotations
Writing and Literature: Composition as Inquiry, Learning, Thinking, and Communication
is in capturing the gist of each text in a summary using
your own words. To summarize something, one must
understand it! If you have trouble understanding some of
the sources you find, you can email me for an appointment
to discuss the article or book.
Sample Literary Analysis Paper Topics
1. In “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” how does Keats employ nature
imagery? What is the role of nature, as represented here, in the
poem’s assertion about art?
2. In “The Weary Blues,” how does Langston Hughes incorporate
features of blues music into the poem itself? How does this device
contribute to the poem’s meaning? (What is the poem’s meaning?)
3. In “Dover Beach,” how does Matthew Arnold contrast positive
images and diction with negative images and diction? What point
does the poem make through this contrast?
4. Is the speaker of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee” reliable? What
is the effect of our learning about Annabel Lee only from him?
5. Compare and contrast Kate Chopin’s The Awakening with Susan
Glaspell’s Trifles. What can we learn from this comparison? For
your thesis, focus on an important insight that comes from the
comparison.
6. What does Shakespeare’s The Tempest reveal about the potential
dangers of power?
7. Compare and contrast Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” with
Richard P. Feynman’s “The Value of Science.” Does Feynman
address the problem raised by Arnold?
8. How does death shape our daily lives? Choose from the following
works and explore how the text addresses this question: The Sea-
Wolf, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” “Annabel Lee,”
“Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “I Heard a Fly Buzz—When I Died,”
“The Open Boat,” and “The Death of the Moth.”
9. How does economic class shape people’s everyday lives? Choose
from the following works and explore how the text addresses
this question: A Room with a View, The Awakening, Trifles, “My
Papa’s Waltz,” “Those Winter Sundays,” “Annabel Lee,” “The
Passing of Grandison,” “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” “Still I
Rise,” and “How I Got My D.I.Y. Degree.”
10.
Research Paper Assignment(s)
Any of the topics listed for the Literary Analysis Paper could,
of course, be modified to require integration of scholarly research.
The comparison/contrast topics might be a bit challenging for first
year composition students to transfer into the research context, since
formulating an effective thesis for a comparison/contrast paper is
sometimes a challenge in itself. However, if used flexibly, any of the
topics listed above could open doors to fruitful research projects.
Another possibility for expanding the scope of the research paper
is to allow students to take one of the themes generated by their literary
readings and transfer it into another discipline of their greater interest.
Below is an example of such an assignment:
For this research paper, you will investigate a question
associated with The Sun Also Rises. Your topic should be
one that will deepen our understanding of Hemingway’s
novel, although there is no need to mention the novel in
your paper. Remember that a good research paper, in the
area of history or sociology, for example, does not just
tell facts; it interprets those facts in a logical way that
suggests a meaningful perspective on the information
(a thesis). If you choose to focus on a literary topic for
this paper, you will use MLA style for documentation;
if history, Chicago Manual style (CMS); if sociology or
psychology, APA style. You will use footnotes to cite
your in-text references, and a bibliography page at the
end, listing all sources referenced throughout the paper.
In addition to the MLA guidelines included in Chapter 9
of this book, you can find helpful information on MLA,
CMS, and APA styles at Purdue Owl: owl.english.
purdue.edu/owl/.
This essay should be 1500-2000 words in length
(approximately 5 to 7 pages) and must be typed, doublespaced.
You should integrate 6-7 scholarly sources into
the discussion.
Writing and Literature: Composition as Inquiry, Learning, Thinking, and Communication
Sample topics:
1. How did warfare change during World War I, and how did
these changes impact military personnel psychologically?
2. Why did many feel that World War I did not resolve the
world’s political issues satisfactorily?
3. How did World War I impact the field of medicine?
4. How did World War I serve as catalyst to evolving women’s
roles?
5. What is PTSD and how has our understanding of this condition
improved? What are the most effective treatments for those
who suffer from PTSD?
6. What is the common relationship between alcoholism and
personal trauma? What steps can be taken to treat alcoholism
in these circumstances?
7. How are notions of manhood and virility commonly
intertwined? What does this relationship tell us about social
definitions of masculinity?
