In case anyone is interested, here’s what I am teaching this term. I made a number of changes from last year’s syllabus. I can’t seem to help doing that, even though I know there are good reasons not to make frequent changes to a course. If you are interested in assignments, or have any questions about what I am trying to accomplish, just ask.
Ethics and Fiction (PHI 351/ENG 419)
Books:
Stephen K. George, Editor, Ethics, Literature, & Theory: An Introductory Reader
Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych
Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Jennifer Crusie, Bet Me
8/30 Introduction to Course
9/1 John Gardner, “Premises on Art and Morality” (George); Abraham B. Yehoshua, “The Moral Connections of Literary Texts” (George)
9/6 Wayne Booth, “Why Ethical Criticism Can Never Be Simple” (George); Marshall Gregory, “Ethical Criticism: What It Is and Why It Matters” (George)
9/8 Marianne Jennings, “The Absence of Stories: Filling the Void in Ethics” (George); Nina Rosenstand, “Stories and Morals” (George); Ursula Leguin, “The Ones Who Walked Away From Omelas”
9/13 Cunningham, “Reading For Life” (George); Nussbaum, “The ‘Ancient Quarrel’: Literature and Moral Philosophy” (George); Tobias Wolf, “The Chain”, “The Night In Question” (PDF)
9/15 Plato, Republic (360 B.C.E.) (selections) PDF; Leo Tolstoy, “What is Art?”
9/20 Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich
9/22 (cont.)
9/27 Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy (selections) (PDF)
9/29 Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf
10/4 Hesse (cont.)
10/6 Richard A. Posner, “Against Ethical Criticism” (George); Yoko Ogawa, “Pregnancy Diary”
10/13 Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (through Ch 10)
10/18 Wilde, Ch 11-20
10/20 Huckleberry Finn (read Chapter 2); John H. Wallace, “The Case against Huck Finn” (George); Dudley Barlow, “Why We Still Need Huckleberry Finn” (George); Toni Morrison, “Huckleberry Finn: An Amazing, Troubling Book” (George); New Edition of Huck Finn Censors the N Word
10/25 Wayne C. Booth, “Who Is Responsible In Ethical Criticism?” (George); “I Got somebody in Staunton,” William Henry Lewis
10/27 Peter Rabinowitz, “On Teaching the Story of O: Lateral Ethics and the Conditions of Reading” (PDF); Claudia Mills, “Appropriating Others’ Stories: Some Questions about the Ethics of Writing Fiction” (PDF)
11/1 Jean-Paul Sartre, “Why Write?” from What is Literature? (PDF); Sartre, “Existentialism is a Humanism”
11/3 Sartre, No Exit
11/8 No Exit (cont)
11/10 Class cancelled – professor at conference
11/15 Jack Harrell, “What Violence in Literature Must Teach Us” (George); Orson Scott Card, “The Problem of Evil in Fiction” (George); “Sunshine”, Lynn Freed; Recommended: Guts, Chuck Palahniuk (FYI: extremely graphic and disturbing)
11/17 Borges, Ficciones (“Pierre Menard: Author of the Quixote”, “Borges and I”)
11/22 William Irwin, “Philosophy and the Philosophical” (PDF)
11/29 “Is High Art Superior?” Ch. 2 of What Good are the Arts? By John Carey
12/1 “Reading Romance Fiction”, Ch. 4 of Feminism, Femininity and Popular Culture, by Joanne Hollows (PDF)
12/6 Bet Me, Jennifer Crusie
12/8 Bet Me (cont)
Thanks to everyone on Twitter who gave me suggestions for which romance novel to assign. In the end, I had to clarify what I was assigning it for. I decided I wanted to do two things in this unit: (1) ask whether genre fiction is as worthy a subject of ethical criticism as literary fiction (Wayne Booth explicitly says no, and most other ethical critics implicitly reject this possibility), and (2) introduce feminist critique as a mode of ethical critique. I also wanted something fun, since pretty much everything else I assigned is a real downer. I think Bet Me is a fun book that can work in all of those ways.
The Hollows worked pretty well for me last year, but I am on the fence about it, given my general aversion to textbooky surveys. I may switch to two articles, one a standard feminist critique of romance (say, Ann Barr Snitow), and the second a defense of romance from a feminist perspective (I was re-reading Laura Kinsale from the Krentz book Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women and thought that might work well).
I added the Huck Finn unit, inspired by the New South expurgated edition. I feel uneasy about not actually assigning the whole text, however, and may need to rethink (although I find most students have read it).
I expanded the number of ethical issues addressed by adding the Rabinowitz, which asks professors to reflect carefully on their ethical obligations in choosing textbooks. I know that assigning a more sexually explicit romance was off the table for me, despite the fact that some of the most interesting ethical issues are addressed in erotic romance, and I think it is worth asking why and whether my innate aversion to dealing with such material in a classroom can be defended.
Probably the biggest challenge is knowing how much to assign. I tend to go in cycles, assigning fewer and fewer pages per class every year, and then returning to a more demanding load. The assignments are very demanding this year, but it is easier to remove than add. What often happens is that I remove a few assignments along the way, after I have gotten to know the students.
If you are starting your teaching or learning year, too, may it be a good one!
Related posts:
Ooh, I’m honored you’re going with my first suggestion! Good luck with the course.
I wish I was 17 again.
It’s not romance, but whenever someone starts talking to me about lack of philosophical and/or ethical depth in genre fiction, I point them to a single story by Ursula K. Le Guin: The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. I have yet to meet anyone who doesn’t change their opinion after reading it, except for those who then start arguing that it’s not genre.
@Wendy: Thanks. Appreciated your help!
@Maili: We’ll get you to Skype in any time.
@Milena: That’s why I assigned it. That is one story I have been teaching for many years and my interpretation of it has changed so many times. It is a source of endless fascination for me.
And I love the point about it a great example of genre, “not being genre”. *sigh*
The thing with Le Guin is — at least for me — that almost everything she writes is so fascinating and full of potential… that woman is simply amazing.
And yes, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard the “if it’s good, it can’t possibly be genre” thing. My favourite was the statement by a British media personality who first expressed her disdain for all things sci-fi, then named Nineteen Eighty Four as her favourite book.
Although, when cornered, I have been known to get out Arthur C. Clarke’s Nine Billion Names of God, too. Because it’s even more in-your-face genre than Omelas, and it also offers endless possibilities. Well, at least nine billion of them…
Yup… if it can be considered seriously as literacha, naturally it is not longer science fiction or romance.
Congratulations on a fascinating syllabus. I wish I could take your course… though I confess that, even though I’m more hardened than I used to be, the thought of reading a sexy romance in a class context embarrasses the hell out of me.
Bet Me is a *great* choice, for what looks like a great course!
Bet Me has a story break down. I think done by Lani. I believe Jenny has it on her yahoo group. Wouldn’t be able to use in class without permission I’m sure. But you might consider shooting an email to Jenny and ask for a copy (or perhaps join the group and download it yourself). It’s very interesting read. Not so much on ethics of course, but literary analysis. It’s in table format as I recall so it’s a quick read. Concentrates on point of view, motifs and I think a bit on the story box for given scenes. It’s been years since I read it and my copy is on another “back-up” machine so don’t quote me.
Wouldn’t it be fun to have a forum discussion from an ethical perspective? I hope you will consider doing one before/during/after for the book. I’d be very interested in the differing viewpoint / interpretations of this text.
@Milena: I love that Clarke. I am sure that it was reading a lot of Clarke that put me on my career path actually.
@willaful: As far as sexy romance, yup. It’s funny – there is a short story on the list that has child rape. It is somewhat graphic and very disturbing (Sunshine by Lynn Freed). (as an aside, the story has some elements reminiscent of paranormal romance). Anyway, I’m not as worried about teaching that one as I am about the last scene in Bet Me.
The story breakdown sounds neat. I have emailed Crusie once with no reply. But I guess I can try it again.
I will have a discussion. I don’t have the software to do a “real” one, like on AAR boards or SBTB “chats”, but I’ll manage something.
Jessica, I’ll try to find the document as soon as I get home. But that will be two weeks or so (probably). I think I originally got it from the JenniferCrusieFan yahoo group. Of course, that was a lifetime ago.
Thanks for sharing your syllabus. I love the glimpse into someone else’s mindset about how a class ought to progress. I have my students read a great deal, too, since good readers make better writers.
The page count of the readings doesn’t seem to change much in my classes. Instead, I worry about whether I should lighten the intensity of the readings every so often. When I’ve tried it, students love the respite, but I cannot say with any certainty that their learning benefits from it. This semester everything is light(ish). I want to prove to myself that they will learn just as well with humor and sweetness punctuated with a couple of dark pieces. (This switch was inspired by last semester’s romance reading assignment. It was a big hit, even with the men who groaned pitiously beforehand.)
p.s., so glad to see that you are not giving up the blog.
@Lynn:
Thanks for sharing your POV on readings, Lynn. I actually had a near disaster when I assigned Gaffney’s To Have and to Hold last year for this course. I am using Bet Me in a conscious effort to “go light”, and to assign a romance that doesn’t *seem* to comport so well with stereotypes non-rom readers may have about the genre (I actually think Bet Me may be worse from a feminist standpoint than THATH but that is a discussion for another day). Do you mind sharing what romance you assigned that worked so well (sorry if you already have in another spot and I missed it).
@aq: Thanks you, and please don’t work too hard for it. I wouldn’t want to actually do the kinds of things a real lit prof might when I teach a novel. That would be craaaaaazy.
Of course I’ll share what we did, but with the caveat that since I don’t plan to repeat this assignment in the same way again, I am writing this without notes and from an overtaxed memory bank. (It was fun, but a bit time-consuming for learning to read and write reviews.)
They chose one of two versions of the assignment:
(1) Read several romance review sites and analyze 30 reviews. They tracked things like the reviewer’s grade, spoiler alert warning, number and length of quotations, sub-genre, mentions of other reviewers’ opinions, mentions of other books by the author. (I know there were a few other things tracked, but spring was a long time ago in my world!) It was something like one-third of the class that chose to read reviews.
(2) Read 3 romance novels and write a review for each. No more than two students could read the same book; no more than two of the books a student read could be by the same author.
After everyone turned in work, we looked at the differences, gross and subtle, between what was included in a NYT review (Super Sad True Love Story), a Guardian.uk review (Love and Summer), and those on the romance sites. I also assigned a discussion board on the class tallies and whether they thought the differences observed on reviewer blogs vs. newspaper review pages mattered to the romance audience.
Perhaps because the class was an online class, I expected a lot of love for the bloggers, but I remember that most of them felt too many liberties were taken with audience’s tolerance of so much inconsistency in reviews. The concensus was that some sort of standardization of what can (but more importantly cannot) be included in a review would make purchase decisions easier for readers.
All that to say, no particular book was assigned. (Perhaps that was why the exercise was fun?)
Although I think I wrote a comment about being inspired by your blog, if I didn’t then I’ll say it now: poking around your posts and the resulting (amazing) comments from your audience was the inspiration behind the assignment, so thanks for that.
@Lynn:
Thanks for sharing. This bit is interesting! I feel like there is remarkable similarity in basic elements of book reviews on line, especially given that nobody is forced to do it in any particular way.
Don’t read too much into my students’ ideas — ten or so students read only 30 reviews each! I suspect any 30 semi-randomly chosen reviews would seem inconsistent to strangers of reviews in general, to romance novels in particular, and re: classifying what they see.
This semester one of the assignments is to read and dissect a romance, western, or mystery novel and analyze it against the opinions of our textbook’s authors for what makes a book “literature.” We’ll see how this one goes since very few in this class admit they read anything longer than a magazine article unless assigned it. Sigh.
@Lynn:
Interesting bit of information. I also echo Jessica’s blockquote:
I, for one, generally don’t base my purchasing decisions on any grade or even a concensus of reviews. In fact, there’s no one factor (as I suspect your students were looking for) that would get me to buy a book that I wasn’t already interested in. That said, the reviews must likely to get me to buy a book are the ones where I feel like I’m at an event and the reviewer is describing the party around them. It may be a great party or a horrible one but the reviewer makes me want to “experience” the “event” myself. That’s how I use reviews on a personal purchasing level.
On the other hand, the personal purchasing level is really on the lower end of the totem for why I read reviews. LOL
Please keep us informed as I’m quite interested in your findings.
[...] == "undefined"){ addthis_share = [];}Last week, my Ethics and Fiction class (syllabus here) read Bet Me. I had prepared students the week before by assigning a chapter of Joanne Hollows [...]