Fall 2004

E 379S • Literature, Architecture, and Art

Course Description

“Larger universities must find ways to find ways to create a sense of place. . . .” Carnegie’s Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America’s Research Universities (http://notes.cc.sunysb.edu/Pres/boyer.nsf)

We will explore our senses of place and space, with special emphasis on the 19th c. concepts of “Truth to Nature” and “Gothic.” The basic method of the course is discovery learning, learning by doing (http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~bump/discovery.html). Therefore, some class meetings will be outside, devoted to observing, drawing, and writing about buildings and works of art, while those in the classroom will focus on the literature which encouraged them and, via the internet, the European buildings that inspired them.

Grading Policy

Two multimedia projects (15% for each first draft -- 150 points each, 10% for each revision -- 100 points each) 50% total
Portfolio (140 points) 14%
Informal writing (300 points) 30%
Class participation (60 points) 6 %
900 points (out of 1,000) are required for an A-; 800 for a B-; 700 for a C-; 600 for a D-. Students will receive exactly the grade recorded in the online gradebook in Blackboard, even if it is one point short of the next higher grade.

Projects will be devoted to “a virtual semester abroad.” We will create two multimedia writing projects on paper or on the web, of at least five to seven pages each, which can be combined to make a longer project. Class participation consists of showing up in class on time, having read the material assigned for that day, and being prepared to talk about it.

Texts

Writing Skills Handbook, Charles Bazerman
The Illustrated Zuleika Dobson, Max Beerbohm (Yale)
Carroll’s The Annotated Alice (W. W. Norton)
The Norton Critical Edition of Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure.

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