|
Spring 2000 |
Kate Thomas |
|
ENGLISH 222 |
Rice 28 |
|
King 327
|
Office hours: M&W 3:00-4:15 |
Texts:
Course description:
Victorian Britain witnessed an explosion of technological "progress" that writers and politicians aligned with both social evolution and dystopic decline. Using a wide range of fiction and non-fictional prose, this course will examine how the Machine functioned within the Victorian cultural imagination as agent, symbol and product of change. The steam engines that drove trains, the new technology of telegraphy and the previously unimaginable capacities for mass production were both inspirational and terrifying, as were the more abstract notion of machine culture: speed, systematization and order. We will study the language of mechanization and analyze the relationship of industrialization to change in the structure and performance of gender, class and race, as well as the ordering of national and colonial geographies.
Assignments:
Papers must be typed, double-spaced and with one-inch margins.
Written assignments are due at the beginning of the class for which they are assigned. Late work will drop one third of a grade per day (e.g. from B to B-), unless you have met with me in advance of the due date and we have made a special arrangement. Please note that final papers are due on the last day of class.
Prep papers are intended to prepare you for class discussion. These will consist of a few questions about the text or topic to be discussed in the next class. I will require you to produce a couple of sides of writing in response to these questions. The writing may be relaxed in style, but your ideas must be critical and focused. I will take the papers at the end of the class in which they are due. Individually, prep papers will receive comments and a simple check, check plus/minus grade. Cumulatively, they will form part of your overall grade as outlined below.
Attendance & Participation:
Class discussion is an essential part of this course. Attendance and class participation are therefore required. I expect you to have completed the assigned reading for that class and to be prepared to make thoughtful contributions to discussion. Three or more unexcused absences will adversely affect your grade and five unexcused absences will constitute grounds for a "No Entry." If you are ill and infectious, don't drag yourself to class, just email or call me to let me know.
Discussion Groups:
During the first two weeks of the course, I will divide the class up into small groups that will meet inside and outside of class throughout the semester in order to work on responses to reading and ideas for individual paper projects. Each group will have the responsibility of presenting their ideas and opening class discussion once or twice during the semester.
Grading:
Schedule:
Revolutions: Industrial and Otherwise
|
Monday Feb 7 |
Introduction |
|
Wednesday Feb 9 |
discussion of extract from Capital |
|
Friday Feb 11 |
Hard Times chapters 1:1 to1:11 inclusive |
|
Monday Feb 14 |
Hard Times chapters 1:11 to 2:7 PREP-PAPER #1 DUE. IN-CLASS GROUP WORK |
|
Wednesday Feb 16 |
Hard Times chapters 2:7 to end. |
|
Friday Feb 18 |
Bentham: Introduction to Principles of Morals and Legislation [in reader] PRESENTATION: GROUP 1 |
|
Monday Feb 21 |
Utilitarianism [in reader] |
|
Wednesday Feb 23 |
extract from Plans for the Government and Liberal Instruction of Boys in Large Numbers [in reader] |
|
Friday Feb 25 |
"The Signs of the Times" [in reader] |
|
Monday Feb 28 |
The Communist Manifesto PRESENTATION: GROUP 2 |
Going Off the Rails: Trains and Social Disorder
|
Wednesday March 1 |
Lady Audley's Secret Volume 1 |
|
Friday March 3 |
Lady Audley's Secret Volume 2 |
|
Monday March 6 |
Lady Audley's Secret Volume 3 |
|
Wednesday March 8 |
Conan Doyle railway stories [in reader] |
|
Friday March 10 |
Conan Doyle railway stories [in reader] |
|
Monday March 13 |
extract from Degeneration [in reader] |
|
Wednesday March 15 |
Cousin Phillis Parts 1&2 inclusive |
|
Friday March 17 |
Cousin Phillis Part 3 to end |
Art and the Machine Age
|
Monday March 20 |
extract from News from Nowhere [in reader] PRESENTATION: GROUP 3 |
|
Wednesday March 22 |
"The Work of Iron in Nature, Art, and Policy" [in reader] |
|
Friday March 24 |
"Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" [in reader] |
|
Monday March 27 |
SPRING BREAK |
|
Wednesday March 29 |
SPRING BREAK |
|
Friday March 31 |
SPRING BREAK |
Machines, Utopias and the Racial Order
|
Monday April 3 |
"On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and Its History" and extract from Darwin's Origin of Species [in reader] |
|
Wednesday April 5 |
Samuel Butler essays [in reader] PRESENTATION: GROUP 4 on Evolutionary theory |
|
Friday April 7 |
Erewhon |
|
Monday April 10 |
Erewhon |
|
Wednesday April 12 |
"Lord of the Dynamos" [in reader] PRESENTATION: GROUP 5 on H.G.Wells |
|
Friday April 14 |
The Time Machine chapter 1-4 |
|
Monday April 17 |
The Time Machine chapter 5-end |
Vampires, Imperialists and Anarchists
|
Wednesday April 19 |
Dracula chapters 1-10 inclusive400 |
|
Friday April 21 |
Dracula chapters 10-20 inclusive |
|
Monday April 24 |
Dracula chapters 20-end |
|
Wednesday April 26 |
Dracula final discussion |
|
Friday April 28 |
The Secret Agent chapters 1-4 inclusive |
|
Monday May 1 |
The Secret Agent chapters 4-9 inclusive |
|
Wednesday May 3 |
The Secret Agent chapters 9-end |
The Romance of the Wire: Women and Telegraphy
|
Friday May 5 |
In the Cage |
|
Monday May 8 |
In the Cage |
Looking Back from the Future
|
Wednesday May 10 |
The Difference Engine |
|
Friday May 12 |
FINAL PAPERS DUE IN CLASS |