Dr. Annette Wannamaker
603L Pray Harrold Office Hours: MW 12 – 1 p.m.
awannamak@emich.edu
Students studying children’s literature, who will go on to graduate programs or to jobs as teachers or librarians or writers, will need to know how to actively and thoughtfully engage in current discussions in the field of children’s literature. ENGL 450W is designed to provide students with the reading and writing skills needed to pursue further study or to stay current in the field as a professional. Scaffolded reading and writing assignments will illustrate for students several different ways that reading and writing skills work together to help students and professionals to both understand and formulate arguments.
ENGL450W is an upper-level writing-intensive course in which students will
Completea series of reading and writing assignments, which are scaffolded so that the skills students learn as they progress throughout the term build upon one another and culminate in a final writing project and presentation. We will work through several different writing/reading tasks together as a group, and then, at the end of the term, students will apply what they have learned to a researched writing project that is conducted independently and that demonstrates a fluency in the terminology and the discursive conventions used in the field.
Students will do several different writing assignments, each applying a different critical stance to the reading, comprehension, and interpretation of a text or body of texts. Because familiarity with the discourse used in one’s field is important, a significant portion of the course is devoted to reading and writing about examples of literary criticism specific to the field of children’s literature. The papers that students will write in the second half of the term will be evaluated based partially on the student’s ability to use the terminology in the field effectively and correctly and to thoughtfully participate in current critical dialogues.
Students also will be evaluated on their participation in in-class writing workshops, on their adherence to MLA guidelines, on their comprehension and application of current critical theory and terminology, and on the quality of their writing. The quality of writing will be evaluated based on audience awareness, organization, correctness, and on the effective use of evidence to build a convincing argument or interpretation.
Cormier, Robert. The Chocolate War. New York: Pantheon, 1974.
Tatar, Maria, Ed. The Classic Fairy Tales: A Norton Critical Edition. New York: Norton, 1999.
White, E.B. Charlotte’s Web. Any edition will be fine.
All others on e-reserves at the EMU Halle Library
May 7:
Introduction to Course.
May 9:
Read Nodelman, Perry and Mavis Reimer. “How to Read Children’s Literature” in The Pleasures of Children’s Literature. Third Edition. On e-reserve.
300-word summary and 1-page response due.
May 14:
Hollindale, Peter. “Ideology and the Children’s Book.” Signal 55 (1988) 3-22. On e-reserve.
300-word summary and 1-page response due.
Writing Assignments:
Students will write short summaries and responses to each chapter we read. These two assignments are designed to help students to see the usefulness of writing as a tool readers can use to comprehend difficult or theoretical texts. For each essay, students will write a 300-word summary and then a 1-page response to the reading, which includes questions and analysis. The responses are due at the beginning of class May 9 and 14.
We will use Charlotte’s Web as a model for future assignments. In class, we will practice, as a group, identifying literary terms and literary devices, various forms of literary analysis and literary criticism, and we will work together to construct a written interpretation using textual evidence. This in-class practice will serve as a foundation we will use as we begin to work through more complex reading and writing assignments as the term progresses.
May 16 and 21: Read Charlotte’s Web
Students will use in-class discussions of a text and criticism written about it in order to discuss applications of literary theory to a text. Students will then practice applying literary criticism to a written interpretation of a text.
May 23: Read The Chocolate War
May 28: Memorial Day. No class.
May 30: Read the following essays (on e-reserve):
Coats, Karen. “Abjection and Adolescent Fiction.” Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society, 5.2 (Fall 2000) 290-306.
Junko, Yoshida. “The Quest for masculinity in The Chocolate War: Changing conceptions of masculinity in the 1970s.” Children’s Literature 26 (1998) 105-122.
Keeling, Kara. “’The Misfortune of a Man Like Ourselves’: Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War as Aristotelian Tragedy.” The ALAN Review 26.2 (Winter 1999) 9-12.
Morgan, Linda O. “Insight through Suffering: Cruelty in Adolescent Fiction about Boys.” The English Journal 69.9 (December 1980) 56-59.
Writing Assignment:
Students will write a 4-5 page analysis of The Chocolate War, which synthesizes their interpretation of the text with ideas from one or more of the critical essays read for class..
Draft of essay on The Chocolate War due for workshop.
June 6:
June 11:
Writing Assignment:
Students will write a 4-5 page textual analysis of a folktale or folktales, which synthesizes their interpretation of the text(s) with ideas from one or more critical essays.
June 13: No class. Dr. Wannamaker out of town for a conference.
Students will apply writing and reading skills learned throughout the term to a final researched writing project.
Writing Assignments:
Students will write an 8-10 page paper that uses literary theory and research they have conducted in order to advance an interpretation of a children’s text or texts.
Students will prepare a brief, organized oral presentation of their research, which they will share with their classmates at the end of the term.
June 18:
Class meets at the Halle Library (room tba)
Folktale essay due.
One-page proposal for final project due at the beginning of class.
June 20 through 25:
Individual 1-hour conferences with professor. No class meetings.
Draft of research project is due at the time of the conference.
Students will each give a 7-minute presentation of their Research Project for the class. These presentations will be timed, and will end promptly at 7 minutes.
The final research project is due at the beginning of class.
Summary and Response (50 x 2) 100
Chocolate War Essay 200
Fairytale Essay 200
One-page proposal 50
Oral Presentation 100
Research Paper 350
Total Points 1000
Grading Scale: 900-1000 = A; 800-899 = B; 700-799 = C; 600-699 = D; <600 = E
Attendance: Because this is a 400-level writing-intensive course, and a course some graduate students may take for credit, students are expected to attend every day. Furthermore, since this is the Spring term and each class period is equal to an entire week of class, students cannot expect to do well in the course if they miss more than one day of class. I will take attendance each day, and will expect students to attend unless there is an emergency. If a student misses more than one day, for whatever reason, I will advise that student to drop the course.
Politeness Policies: Part of my job as a professor is to create a learning environment where students feel safe, respected, and able to get the most out of their learning experiences. I promise to treat all students with respect, but also must work to maintain a structured learning environment. I’m assuming that the following statements will seem obvious to most of you, but 15 years of teaching college students has taught me that there will be some students who need these rules of classroom etiquette spelled out in an obvious way:
Be on time. When you come to class late, it is disruptive to everyone around you. If you cannot make it to my class on time (9 a.m., not 9:02 or even 9:01) please drop the course.
Turn off your cell phone. It is not okay for your cell phone to ring in any classroom, ever. If you are expecting a very important call (your wife is about to have a baby, for instance) you can talk to me before class to let me know that your cell phone will be on. Otherwise, turn it off.
Be respectful of the instructor and your fellow students.
These are examples of behaviors that are not respectful. When students exhibit the following behaviors, I assume they do not want to be in class and will ask if they prefer to leave.
These are examples of behaviors that are okay:
Plagiarism Policy:
Plagiarism is a complicated thing: sometimes students plagiarize material because they simply do not know they are doing so (forgetting to cite paraphrased ideas, for example). Other times, students consciously plagiarize by downloading an entire paper from the Internet, “borrowing” a paper from a friend, or by copying from a book or cutting and pasting text from the Internet. Plagiarism will be handled on a case-by-case basis. I can usually tell if it is accidental or purposeful. If it is an accident, the student will be allowed to rewrite the paper, if it is done on purpose, the student will receive a 0 on the plagiarized assignment and may fail the course. We will go over this issue in detail in class when we discuss writing assignments.