English 421: Renaissance Maker Spaces

Course information

Course Introduction
Cook: Were you ever a cook?
Poet: A cook, no surely.
Cook Then you can be no good poet, for a good poet differs nothing at all from a master cook. Either’s art is the wisdom of the mind.
–from Ben Jonson, Neptune’s Triumph

What does literary making have to do, if anything, with other kinds of making–such as making a dinner? What about making an electronic device or a computer program? We might be inclined to say “not much.” In the Renaissance, however, kinds of making could be conceived much more closely together, as the quote above from one of Ben Jonson’s masques suggests. In this course we’ll look at Renaissance English literature and other Renaissance texts to discern the relationships among kinds of making, and think about how those understandings of the relationship compare to today’s.

We will also expand the notion of making in your final project, which will likely involve some writing but mainly feature other kinds of objects. For this project, you’ll work in teams over an extended period of time (your writing assignments will also be completed in pairs or small groups). You will need to be able to work both independently and in collaboration with others, as you throw yourself into a high-risk enterprise. If you’re not sure about whether this kind of course is right for you, please come talk to me before the add/drop period, so we can discuss further. If project-based assignments sound fun and interesting to you, then you’re in the right place.

Required Text
Broadview Anthology of British Literature: Renaissance and Seventeenth Century, Third Edition
Other texts made available via this site through links in the course reading and events schedule.

Course Policies:
Readings:
Readings for each class are due on the date listed above. Approach each assignment actively by always reading with a pen or pencil in hand. This habit will help you come prepared to discuss the readings 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. If a text is available online, I expect you to print it out and bring the printed copied to class, with your mark ups. The only exception to this policy is if you are able to digitally mark up your texts.

Participation and Attendance:
Though on occasion I will lecture in order to synthesize ideas or present background contexts, the class will generally be conducted as a seminar, and will depend on everyone’s active engagement, both with the class as a whole, and with team members. For this reason there will be a participation grade. I’ll take into account both the quantity and the quality of your engagement. Of course, if you aren’t in class, you can’t engage. Nor will very active engagement offset regular absences, since participation is not just speech, but speech in relation to an ongoing class conversation. If you’re regularly absent, your speech cannot be part of the conversation.

Essays:
There will be three essays in this course. Because we will be getting ready to work together in teams for our final project, the first two essays for this class will be co-authored. One you will write with a partner, and the second with a team of three. As with the final project, the grade on these essays will combine an individual and team grade. The final essay, a reflection on the course project, will be written individually.

Final Project:
You will spend a considerable amount of time in this course working as teams on a set of final projects. These projects should make something that may include writing, but that also produces something other than a written essay. The project should be ambitious, and it will be done in stages. There is course time allotted for you to work on your project, but that course time is for group meetings and discussions with the class or me about the projects. You will need to do a considerable amount of work outside the class on these projects. Expect to work ten hours per week on your project, only two and a half hours of that time in class. That means for a group of five over four weeks, this project should be the product of two hundred hours’ worth of work (ten hours per week, five people, four weeks = 10*5*4 = 200). These projects will be evaluated with the assumption that two hundred hours have gone into them–that is, I expect them to be considerable in scope and of high quality.

The final project should reflect research in and your knowledge of English Renaissance literature and culture. Your grade for the project, as with the first two essays, will be a combination of an individual and a team grade.

There will also be an opportunity to reflect on the relationship between writing as making and the making of the final project in a final reflection. This essay will be completed individually. Team leaders, who submitted project proposals, will not be required to write this essay; instead, the proposal will count for this grade.

Paper Standards:
Essays should be typed with standard margins, spacing and type size. They should have page numbers, and its pages fastened with a staple or paper clip (origami does not count!). They should be carefully proofread and neatly presented.

Late essay and projects:
Final versions of essays or projects handed in after the due date will be graded down a half grade for each day late.

Essay Helps:
I encourage you and/or your entire team to come see me at my office hours or to make an appointment to see me. When we meet, try to have a draft of the essay you are working on. This will give us something more concrete to talk about. There is also available a Writing Center at Robinson A114 that 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, since collaboration requires time to share ideas and writing back and forth. And whether you’re writing alone or in a group, writing a paper at one sitting is, for most people, unpleasant, and the results are not likely to be satisfactory. Start early!

Plagiarism:
Any secondary sources used must be cited, 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 (but are not limited to) introductions to editions of the texts we’re reading and any kind study aid.

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.

For the projects, we can discuss how you will present your sources; in general, the essays will not require secondary sources, but if you choose to use them, you must cite as detailed above.

I will take all suspected cases of plagiarism to the Honor Committee.

Grading:
The final grade will be derived as follows:

Students with Disabilities:
If you are a student with a disability and you need academic accommodations, please see me and contact the Office of Disability Resources at 703.993.2474. All academic accommodations must be arranged through that office.

Please come see me if you have any questions about grading, the syllabus or the class. I look forward to having the chance to meet you. Best wishes for a good semester!

Schedule of Readings and Events

Scholarly Inquiry Course
This class is identified as a Students as Scholars Scholarly Inquiry course, where students learn about the recursive process of scholarly inquiry either through studying previous scholarship or as preparation for participating in an original scholarly project. In this course you’ll create projects related to early modern literature and culture. In addition to researching the kind of and means to complete these projects, you will conduct independent research on the early modern content expressed through those projects. You might, for example, find yourself studying unfamiliar words, phrases or references as part of creating an edition of an early modern book, or you might learn about early modern iconography or clothing as part of a project that brings together texts and images.

In all Scholarly Inquiry courses, students will:

• Articulate a question, problem, or challenge that is generally relevant and appropriate in scope.
• Identify some relevant ethical issues; demonstrates some attention to ethical principles at some stages of the inquiry process.
• Communicate knowledge from a scholarly or creative project through writing, presenting, or performing, employing some conventions appropriate to the audience and context.

Students as Scholars is Mason’s initiative to give students the opportunity to conduct undergraduate research. Check out oscar.gmu.edu or stop by the Office of Student Scholarship, Creative Activities, and Research to learn about the many other programs they offer students.