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West Chester University
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Home Course Syllabi and Announcements Notebook for Topics in Literature: Imaginary Worlds (Spring 2008) Notebook for Topics in Literature: Rites of Passage (Spring 2006) Notebook for Effective Writing I (Spring 2006) Go Exploring Notebook for Topics in Literature: Imaginary Worlds (Fall 2005) Notebook for Effective Writing I (Fall 2005) Go Exploring
LIT 165 Syllabus
LIT 165 Announcements and Assignments
WRT 120 Syllabus
WRT 120 Announcements and Assignments
A Reading of THE TEMPEST
Goals of the Course
Fundamental Questions about Literature
Valuing Literature
Critical Thinking and Reading Literature
Critical Approaches to Literature
Literature as ART
Ambiguity
Approaching the Art of Fiction
Defining the Short Story
Evaluating Short Fiction
Craft of Fiction: PLOT
Craft of Fiction: CHARACTER
Small Group Exercise
ARABY by James Joyce
WHERE ARE YOU GOING, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? by Joyce Carol Oates
Our RITES OF PASSAGE Theme
A note about GIRL
POE and the art of STORY OF A HOUR
THE YELLOW WALLPAPER
YOUNG MAN ON SIXTH AVENUE
Notes on Innovative Fiction
Assignment Sheet for Paper #1
Fiction and Ambiguity - Your Questions
Writing Workshop - Short Fiction
Poetry Journal Project Assignment Sheet
LITERARY SYNTHESIS PROJECT
Defining Poetry
Reading Poetry
The Craft of Poetry
Drama and Tragedy
Study Questions: DEATH OF A SALESMAN
Paper #4 Assignment Sheet
Critical Thinking and Commentary
Casebook: Evaluating Sources Worksheet
Selecting Information
Evaluating Arguments
CASEBOOK PROJECT Assignment Sheet
Approaching Persuasive Writing
Topic Development - Profile Essay
Generating Ideas for the Profile Essay
Paper #2 Assignment Sheet
Profile Exercise
Analyzing THE FIVE BEDROOM, SIX FIGURE ROOTLESS LIFE
Objective Writing: Selected Readings
Writing Workshop: Paper #1
Expressive Writing in the NYTimes
Writing Effective Introductions and Conclusions
Paper #1: IDENTITY
Expressive Writing
Open Letter Exercise and Examples
EMERSON on Individuality vs. Conformity
Literature related to IDENTITY
Understanding the 'Rhetorical Situation'
Weblog for WRT 120
Writing Assistance on the Web
Blackboard at WCU
WCU Homepage
WCU's Francis Harvey Green Library
One Last Look at Imaginary Worlds
Franz Kafka's BEFORE THE LAW
Analyzing WAITING FOR GODOT
Approaching WAITING FOR GODOT
Paper #3: Assignment Sheet
Paper #4: Independent Project
The Problem of Stability in BRAVE NEW WORLD
UTOPIA/DYSTOPIA Links
Analyzing Huxley's BRAVE NEW WORLD
Defining Utopia
Embarking on Huxley's BRAVE NEW WORLD
A Reading of Shakespeare's THE TEMPEST
From today's news (11/3/05)
Assignment Sheet for Paper #2
Goodbye to Dante's Imaginary World
Stepping Through Dante's Inferno: Cantos 10-34
Stepping Through Dante's Inferno: Cantos 1-10
INFERNO: Questions/Analysis: Cantos 32-34
INFERNO: Questions/Analysis: Cantos 18-31
INFERNO: Questions for Analysis: Cantos 12-17
INFERNO: Structure
INFERNO: Questions for Analysis: Cantos 1-5
INFERNO: Analyzing Canto 1
Relating to Dante's Inferno
Approaching Dante's DIVINE COMEDY
A Little Help with Dante's INFERNO
Assignment Sheet for Paper #1
Notes on LEAF BY NIGGLE
Responses to LEAF BY NIGGLE
ON FAIRY STORIES: An Essay by Tolkien
Notes on Axolotl
Reading Ovid's Tales
From Myth to Literature: Approaching Ovid's Tales
Notes on THE EYE OF THE GIANT
Functions of the Genesis Tales
Analyzing Mythic Tales
Defining Mythology
Filtering the Introduction to FANTASTIC WORLDS
Commentary on LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI by Keats
Commentary on DARKNESS by Byron
Handout: Imagination Poems Set
What is Imagination?
Our Course Theme: Imaginary Worlds
LIT 165 Assignments: Fall 2005
LIT 165 Announcements: Fall 2005
Imaginary Worlds: Course Syllabus
Paper #4: Independent Thinking/Reading/Writing
Casebook Preparation Checklist
Casebook Assignment Schedule
Evaluating Sources for the Casebook
Casebook Project Assignment Sheet
Notes on Rational Argument
Argument
Assignment Sheet: Objective Writing
Reviewing Elements of the Profile Essay
Writing the Profile Essay
Readings: Objective Writing
Assignment Sheet: Expressive Writing
Rubric for Evaluation of Writing
About SKIN DEEP
Emerson on Individuality vs. Conformity
Mind-map: Identity
Understanding the 'Rhetorical Situation'
Assignments Page
Announcements Page
WRT 120 Course Syllabus for Fall 2005
Weblog for WRT 120
Writing Assistance on the Web
Blackboard at WCU
WCU Homepage
WCU's Francis Harvey Green Library
Directions: Select any single literary work (poem, short story, novel, drama, or film) related to our “Imaginary Worlds” course theme (suggested works appear below) on which to base your final literary analysis/synthesis essay.
Specific Guidelines
- Provide an expressive introduction: what led you to choose the work and how do you believe it relates to our “Imaginary Worlds” course theme? Do not summarize the literary work.
- Enhance your perspective of the work by extensively comparing/contrasting it with one or more of the works we studied OR by researching information that deepens your understanding of some aspect of the work that you find interesting. Choose one or more of the following suggestions to help you arrive at a synthesis angle for your subject:
- Explore the writer’s biography: find facts relating to the author’s life and relate them to the work
- Explore some detail relating to the subject matter or theme of the work in greater depth or currency
- Explore some aspect of the surrounding social context and relate it to the work
- Compare/contrast the work you chose with another literary work we haven’t studied (i.e., a work by another author or even by the same author that explores a similar theme, form, etc.)
- Apply a theory from another discipline (sociological or psychological analysis, Marxism, feminism, quantum physics, whatever!) to some aspect of the literary work (an interpretation of character, for example).
- Provide an analysis of the text that examines one or more its key features (i.e., its characters, themes, motifs, symbolic or allegorical meanings, etc.)
- Provide an expressive conclusion: what relevance does this work have for contemporary readers? For you? Why do you think readers might be interested in it?
POETRY or MYTHIC TALE
Mythic tale (any culture)
Odysseus’ trip to the underworld in the Odyssey by Homer
Another tale(s) from Ovid’s Metamorphosis
Virgil’s trip to the underworld in Book VI of the Aeneid
An excerpt from Purgatorio or Paradiso by Dante
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner or Cristabel or Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Lady of Shallot by Alfred Lord Tennyson
SHORT FICTION
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka
The Birthmark by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Black Cat by Edgar Allen Poe
The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K. LeGuin
DRAMA
Happy Days by Samuel Beckett
No Exit by Jean Paul Sartre
Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello
The Bald Soprano or Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco
NOVEL
1984 by George Orwell
Alice in Wonderland or Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathon Swift
Grendel by John Gardner
The Time Machine or War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
A Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Paradise by Toni Morrison
A Woman on the Edge of Time by Margaret Atwood
2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis
Any sci-fi novel by Phillip K. Dick
Any sci-fi novel by Ray Bradbury
Any sci-fi novel by Robert A. Heinlein
The Dispossessed or any sci-fi novel by Ursula K. LeGuin
A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter Miller
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
FILM
Big Fish
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Brazil
A Clockwork Orange
The Truman Story
Pleasantville
Planet of the Apes or The Omega Man
BladeRunner
Fahrenheit 451
The Lord of the Flies
The Matrix
Star Wars
The Lord of the Rings