Robert Matz

The Course	Me:
Dimensions of Writing and Literature (ENGH-305-003) 01:30 PM – 02:45 PM Aquia Building 213	Office Hours: Office Hours: MW 3 – 4 pm, or by appointment Office: Horizon 4111 Email: rmatz@rmatz Personal website: https://robertmatz.com/mason/

Required Texts

Course Policies

Readings

The readings for each class are due on the date listed above. Approach each essay actively by always reading with a pen or pencil in hand. Note words, phrases or sentences or that you have questions about, that interest you, or that seem significant in the context of the work. Jot down in the margins any questions or ideas you have about a particular point or the work as a whole. This practice will help you come prepared to discuss the plays in class and get the most out of class discussion; it will also help you become a more skillful reader of literary texts in general.

Marginalia

Because critical reading involves writing, because this course is designed to sharpen your skills as a reader, I will evaluate the marginalia you produce for each of the three units of the course: poetry, short stories and criticism, and the novel. I will expect you to annotate your text for key words, phrases or ideas, and to raise questions or make connections in the margins of your page.

Once you are finished with formal written work for each of these units, you will turn in the reading for each for me to evaluate your marginalia. We will discuss effective annotation of reading in class, and I will provide more specific criteria for the evaluation of this essay.

Participation and Attendance

While I will sometimes lecture for a portion of a class, we will generally use class time for discussion, to observations about the ideas presented in a text, about its style, its uses of language, its puzzling qualities–whatever grabs our attention. I am interested in your ideas. A portion of your final grade will be based on class participation. If you aren’t in class, you can’t participate in discussion, nor will active but sporadic class participation wholly excuse excessive absences, since participation involves listening as well as responding to dialogue over the full time of the course. Hence your regular attendance will also be part of the participation grade.

Quizzes

We will have occasional quizzes to help ensure that you are reading the essays consistently. These quizzes should be easy if you have done the reading. They will consist of five questions that require a one-word answer, or at most a phrase.

Quizzes cannot be made up, and, since they will be given at the beginning of class, you will miss a quiz if you come late; however, I will drop your lowest quiz grade.

Paper Deadlines

Please hand in papers on time. Late papers will be graded down a half grade for each day late. Additionally, each paper will be due twice: once for a paper exchange for peer review, and then the final due date. I will mark down the final version of these papers a half grade if their first versions due on paper exchange days are not done, not typed or obviously incomplete. The purpose of this policy is to build revision, so necessary for good writing, into your essays.

Papers

Each paper should be typed with standard margins, spacing and type size. It should be carefully proofread and neatly presented. The paper topics will relate to issues we have discussed in class, and you are encouraged to bring to bear class discussion in your writing. You are also encouraged to expand on these discussions and credit will be given for new ideas. While I grade papers two and three on the bases of your final versions only, I would like you to hand in your first versions of these papers along with the final one.

Paper Helps

For the papers feedback will be built into the structure of the course through peer exchanges and, for the paper on the novel, a conference with me. But don’t wait to nearly the end of the semester and for a scheduled conference! You can come see me at my office for your other papers as well, and I encourage you to do so. When we meet, it’s best to have a draft of the paper you are working on. This will give us something more concrete to talk about. There is also writing help available at the Writing Center in the Johnson Center 227E and online.  Writing center staff can provide you with further individual attention to your writing. I encourage you to take advantage of this excellent facility.

I would also suggest that you give yourself plenty of time to work. Writing a paper at one sitting is, for most people, unpleasant, and the results are not likely to be satisfactory. Start early!

Plagiarism and AI

You are not expected or encouraged for this course to consult secondary sources. If you do choose to look at such work, however, you must cite, using a standard citation format, all the articles, books or other sources that your own writing draws on, either directly or indirectly. Such sources include any kind study aid (e.g. SparkNotes, Chegg products, Reddit), or any AI. For more information on the use of AI in this class, click here.

Also note that uncited sources will constitute plagiarism even if they ended up in your work without your conscious knowledge (e.g. you forgot you read the material; you confused your own notes with notes on a source), since part of the scholarly responsibility that comes with using secondary sources is keeping track of which words or ideas were yours and which came from a source. If you do not wish to take on this responsibility then you should not consult secondary sources.

I will take all suspected cases of plagiarism, including uncited uses of AI, to the Honor Committee.

Device-Free Classroom

Our classroom will be free of electronic devices, including laptops, phones, and tablets. Students with an accommodation that requires the use of such a device can be excepted from this policy with documentation of the need from the Office of Disability Services (or you may also speak privately to me to explain why you require an exception).

Although these devices can support learning, a lot of research and anecdotal evidence supports the view that their downsides outweigh their value and decrease student attention in the classroom and academic performance (for this research see, for example, here, here, and here and for an account of how students appreciate time away from electronics see here).

Anyone without an official accommodation using an electronic device in class will be considered as not having participated in class that day (i.e., the equivalent of an absence).

Though I do not foresee any for this course, if there are any particular days when there are special reasons to bring laptops or tablets to class, I will announce in advance. 

Office Hours

My office hours are listed at the top of the syllabus. In addition to getting help on papers, please come see me if you want to discuss any ideas from the class, including anything you do not understand, or if you have any questions about the syllabus or grading. I look forward to having the chance to meet you.

Best wishes for a good semester!

Grading scheme

With the exception of quiz scores, I grade on a 4.0 scale, as follows:

A+ = 4.3; A = 4.0; A- = 3.7 B+ = 3.3; B = 3.0; B- = 2.7; C+ = 2.3; C = 2.0; C- = 1.7; D+ = 1.3; D = 1.0; D- = 0.7; F = 0. I use this scale rather than a point scale, because the latter too severely penalizes work not done, as opposed to work that is unsatisfactory. (On a 4.0 scale an F and work not handed in both receive the same 0; on a 100-point scale or the like, an F is 59 points (or thereabouts), but a 0 for work not done is 0 points. A 59-point difference!)

Canvas, however, only works with points.  To get Canvas to accommodate a 4.0 grading scheme, I assign points as the product of percent weight * 4.0 scale * 100.  For example, paper 1 is worth 15% of the grade, so its formula for points assigned is .15 * 4 * 100 = 60 points. A letter grade of B received on that paper would earn 45 points (.15 * 3 * 100). Do not turn the point grade back into a letter grade by dividing it by the total number of points on an assignment. If you did in this case, the result would be 45/60, or 75% = C.  But the grade is a B!  Where’s the mistake? That 75% assumes a 100-point scale, but that is not the scale being used. The proper calculation is (45/60)*4 (that is 75% of 4), which is 3, or a B.

When all your grades are in, I will add all the points earned and then divide by 100 to get a number on the 4-point scale (the reason for first multiplying all these numbers by 100 and then dividing at the end is Canvas won’t accept decimal points)

If the final number on the 4.0 scale is exactly or nearly between two grades on the scale above (e.g. 2.86) I will consider a record of progress (e.g. improvement over the course would suggest rounding up to 3.0 = B ; not completing the last assignment rounding down to 2.7 = B-), and/or comparison the full spread of grades between 2.7 and 3.0 (were most Bs solidly 3.0 or even somewhat above or were they mostly below 3.0; if the latter I’d round down, if the former round up).  Finally, because it is increasingly hard to achieve a top average (i.e. there can be variations up or down around 3.0, but much less so around 4.0), I am more likely to round up grades even just a bit above 3.7).

Assignment Weights

Poetry essay	15%
Criticism essay	15%
Novel essay – Proposal	10%
Novel essay – Final version	15%
Novel essay – Critical reflection	5%
Marginalia	15%
Quizzes	10%
Participation	15%

Course Schedule

Date	Literary Readings	Critical Readings	essays	Activities
W, Jan. 21				Course Introduction
M, Jan. 26	Four contemporary poems: “Resignation,” “Self-Portrait in Granulated Sugar,” “now i’m bologna,” “Raucous Prayer”			Which poem(s) do you like the most and why?
W, Jan. 28	Donne: “Canonization”			Paraphrase the poem purposes of literary criticism
M, Feb. 2	Donne: “Canonization”	Cleanth Brooks, “The Language of Paradox; from Marotti, John Donne, Courtier Poet		Close reading Also its critics
W, Feb. 4	Neoclassical poetry: Pope, “Essay on Criticism” (Part 1); Swift, “The Ladies Dressing Room”; Cowper, “Epitaph on a Hare”			Close reading Literature and history
M, Feb. 9	Romantic poetry: Wordsworth, “She Dwelt,”‘ “I Wandered,” “The Simplon Pass,” “The World Is Too Much with Us”; Keats, “When I Have Fears,” “If By Dull Rhymes,”; Coleridge, “Frost at Midnight”; Shelley, “England in 1819”			Close reading Literature and history
W, Feb. 11		Fish, “What Makes an Interpretation Acceptable”?
M, Feb. 16	Modernist poetry: Stevens, “The Snow Man,” H.D., “Sea Rose”; Marianne Moore, “Those Various Scalpels”; Auden, “Musée des Beaux Arts”; Brooks, “kitchenette building,” “my dreams, my works, must wait till after hell”; Rich, “Diving into the Wreck”			Close reading Literature and history
W, Feb. 18		Kramnick, “Literary Method”	poetry essay assigned	The craft of close reading
M, Feb. 23	Poe, “The Purloined Letter”
W, Feb. 25		Johnson, “The Critical Frame”		Critical frame and role of the critic Deconstructive criticism
M, March 2		Poetry essay first version due in class		Peer Review of Essays
W, March 4		Irwin, “Mysteries We Reread”		Critical frame and role of the critic Deconstructive criticism
Sunday March 8			Poetry essay due, 11:59 pm
M, March 9	Spring Break
W, March 11	Spring Break
M, March 16		Urakova, “‘The Purloined Letter’ in the Gift Book”		Historicist Criticism (History of the Book)
W, March 18	Poe, “Murders in the Rue Morgue”
M, March 23		Church, “‘To Make Venus Vanish’”		Historicist Criticism (Gender)
W, March 25		Lemire, “‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’: Amalgamation Discourses” Peterson, “Bestial Traces”	Criticism essay assigned	Historicist Criticism (Race)
M, March 30	Fridlund, “Time Difference”			Setting and character
W, April 1			Criticism essay first version due in class	Peer Review of Essays
M, April 6	Brown, Universality, “A Fool’s Gold”			Reading the novel: principles and practices
W, April 8	Brown, Universality, “Edmonton” and “Waybridge”		Criticism essay due	Reading the novel: principles and practices
M, April 13	Brown, Universality, “Cartmel”			Reading the novel: principles and practices
W, April 15	Brown, Universality, “Showtime”		Novel essay proposal assigned	Reading the novel: principles and practices
M, April 20				Work on novel essay proposal in class
W, April 22			Novel essay proposal due. 11:59 pm	Work on novel essay proposal in class
M, April 27				Conferences
W, April 29				Conferences
M, May 4			First version of novel essay due in class	Peer Review of Essays / Course Evaluations
W, May 6			Final ovel essay and novel essay reflection due by 11:59 pm	No Class (class ends M, May 4)