Fall 2026 – LIT 102/Approaches to Literature

LIT 102 – 01
1 course unit
no prerequisites
Term: Fall 2026
Time: 3:30-4:50pm TF
Room: Bliss Annex 153		 Prof. Glenn Steinberg
Office: Bliss Hall 216
Office Phone: 771-2106
Office Hours: 2-5pm on Mondays
or by appointment
E-mail: gsteinbe@tcnj.edu

TEXTBOOKS:

      • Lois Tyson, Critical Theory Today, 4th ed. (Routledge, 2023), ISBN 9780367709426
      • Cormac McCarthy, The Road (Vintage, 2006), ISBN 9780307387899
      • Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye (Vintage, 1998), ISBN 9780307278449
      • Jack Zipes, ed. and trans., The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, 3rd ed. (Bantam, 2002), ISBN 9780553382167
      • William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, ed. Grace Ioppolo (W. W. Norton2010), ISBN 9780393931716
      • Edward Albee, The Goat or, Who Is Sylvia? (Dramatists Play Service, 2003), ISBN 9780822219767
      • Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, ed. Johanna M. Smith, 3rd ed. (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016), ISBN 9780312463182

COURSE DESCRIPTION.  The official catalogue description for this course is available in PAWS.

You may have heard a lot about literary theory in the past, and if so, most of what you’ve heard is probably bad:  Literary theorists use obscure jargon and are difficult to understand.  Theory is abstract navel-gazing that has little application in the real world.  The discipline of literary studies is failing in the U.S. because literary theory has politicized and radicalized the study of art and literature, destroying what made literature enjoyable in the past.  Right?

But literary theory is actually none of those things and has done none of those things.  Literary theory is actually about thinking carefully and precisely about language, culture, symbol, and narrative.  It’s about not taking things for granted.  We assume that everything about our language, our culture, our symbols, and our stories is natural, inevitable, easy, and transparent.  But actually that’s far from the truth.  When we look closely at language, culture, symbol, and narrative, we discover all kinds of unexpected, fascinating, mind-blowing, and sometimes even frightening things.

In this course, we explore the terminology used by different schools of theoretical thought in order to understand their terms precisely, accurately, and thoroughly — in order better to understand (and not take for granted) the literary and cultural phenomena that they describe with those terms.  We identify the salient features of various schools of theoretical thought and the intellectual relationships between schools and theorists.  We use literary theory in order to develop sophisticated readings of literary texts by applying specific theoretical approaches and their precise terminology to those texts.  After this course, you should have the tools that you need to do sophisticated readings of literary texts in all your other English courses.

When the College went through a curriculum revision several years ago, the vast majority of undergraduate courses were “transformed” from 3-credit to 4-credit (1-unit) learning experiences.  While most of the classes continued to meet for only 3 academic hours per week, it was understood that the “transformed” courses offered a depth of learning with additional learning tasks unfolding in the equivalent of a fourth hour, including, sometimes, an actual additional hour of class interaction.  As the equivalent of the fourth hour in this course,

F) students are assigned additional learning tasks that make the semester’s learning experience more deeply engaged and rigorous, and no other additional classroom space is needed.

LEARNING ACTIVITIES AND EXPECTATIONS.  The principal learning activities in this course are reading, writing, and discussion.  The readings that I have chosen to assign to you are the foundation of your learning.  If you do not do the readings, you miss out on that foundation, so keeping up with the readings is absolutely essential.

Upon the foundation of the course’s readings, you build by writing response papers, which are more about writing-to-learn than writing-as-assessment.  Response papers are a safe, low-stress space for you to try out ideas, increase your understanding of concepts, and improve your retention of what you’re learning.  By writing, you reinforce and expand the learning that you’re gaining from your reading. But in order for response papers to serve this function (helping you to think through the readings to increase understanding and deepen learning), you need to actually write them yourself.  Using generative AI to write them defeats the purpose.  For this reason, you are not allowed to use generative AI of any kind for any assistance with the writing of your response papers – not for brainstorming, not for the actual writing, not for suggesting improvements, not even for checking grammar and punctuation.  In general, AI just spews out bad writing anyway – full of “hallucinations” (errors concerning the facts, plot, characters, concepts, or words of the assignment) and vague generalities.  Such writing is one of the few ways to fail a response paper, whether you used AI to generate it or wrote it yourself.

Building on your reading and writing, discussion is also very important for your learning in this class.  In general, my approach to class discussion is to begin by posing a question or problem or theme, then to have us brainstorm lots of ideas together in response to the opening question/problem/theme, then to move to evaluating the ideas that we’ve brainstormed, and finally to come to a consensus, as a class, about the best answers/solutions to the opening question/problem/theme.  Your input to the discussion is absolutely critical.  Even though I have taught the materials in this class many, many, many times before, no two classes have ever had exactly the same discussion about them.  Different classes come up with different ideas, different solutions, different approaches.  As the professor, I’m not looking for one idea or one solution or one approach in particular.  I want us to think things through together – to throw out as many ideas as possible, to test and evaluate those ideas against the evidence of the text in front of us, and to draw the best conclusions that we can.  We all learn so much by working together in a free and open discussion to answer a question, solve a problem, or explore a theme.  I learn so much from your fresh perspectives, and you learn so much from each other.  But this means that our class discussions always depend on your preparedness (how thoroughly and thoughtfully you’ve done the assigned reading) and on your courage (how willing you are to take risks, brainstorm, and share ideas – even when your ideas are only half-baked).  I can’t make a good discussion happen.  Only you all can do that.  I can work to create a classroom space that feels safe, and I can pose provocative questions for us to discuss, but a good discussion – along with the incredible learning that comes from it – only happens if you all come to class prepared and willing to join in.

GOALS.  In this course, I want you

      1. to grow ever more responsible for and independent in your own learning,
      2. to improve cognitive endurance in order to be better able to complete readings of considerable length and complexity,
      3. to be more aware of, question, and enrich your basic assumptions about language, culture, and literature,
      4. to appreciate that literary theory can help us to see and interpret texts more richly,
      5. to know the fundamentals of various literary theories and schools of thought,
      6. to apply literary theories and schools of thought to literary texts independently,
      7. to read literary criticism,
      8. to write interesting, original, persuasive literary analysis, and
      9. to demonstrate greater facility with critical practices in the field of English.

This course also contributes to the following Middle States goals for the School of Humanities & Social Sciences, the Core Curriculum, and the English Department::

#1 Written Communication
#5 Critical Analysis and Reasoning:  Ability to critique the arguments of others in the discipline and the construction of one’s own arguments in the discipline, using data/evidence as a focus of instruction and/or the ability to analyze linguistic and cultural patterns
#6 Information Literacy:  Evaluating the validity and/or reliability of a source
#7 Interpret Language and Symbol
#12 Students will be able to demonstrate familiarity with a range of critical, generic, and literary traditions (including recent theoretical approaches) that shape – and are shaped by – literary discourses and texts of particular periods or movements
#15 Students will be able to read a literary work and characterize its main aesthetic, structural, and rhetorical strategies in an argumentative, thesis-driven essay or in a writing workshop
#17 Analyze how creative texts, artworks, or performances reflect, shape, exalt, or challenge the values of a culture

REQUIREMENTS.  For this course, you must complete the following graded assignments:

      1. six two-page response papers (worth 10% of your final grade, all together),
      2. a documentation exercise (5% of your final grade),
      3. attendance at two English Department events (1% each),
      4. PAPER 1 (10%),
      5. PAPER 2 (15%),
      6. PAPER 3 (15%),
      7. PAPER 4 (15%),
      8. a midterm exam (10%), and
      9. a cumulative, comprehensive final exam (18%).

Your final grade will be based on the following scale:  A = 93%-100%, A- = 90%-92%, B+ = 87%-89%, B = 83%-86%, B- = 80%-82%, C+ = 77%-79%, C = 73%-76%, C- = 70%-72%, D+ = 67%-69%, D = 60%-66%, and F = below 60%.  This scale is absolute.  Because the response papers are in a sense a form of extra credit built into this course from the start, I do not give extra credit at the end of the semester to help students raise their grade even a whisker.  So, even if, at the end of the semester, you are just .001 points away from an A-, your final grade will be a B+.

RESPONSE PAPERS.  In the course of the term, you are required to submit six short, informal papers (about 2 pages each) on the literary reading assignments for class.  You may choose for which days you want to write a response paper, as long as you have completed six response papers by the end of the term.  You must, however, submit at least two response papers before the midterm exam.  If you have not submitted at least two response papers by then, you will receive a zero that you cannot make up as two of your six response paper grades (bringing the highest total response paper grade that you can receive for the semester down to 67% or D).

For each response paper, apply one of the literary theories that we have learned about in class up to that point in the semester to the literary reading assigned for the day.  Keep in mind that some theories are more relevant to some readings than others.  Don’t choose to focus on a theory for a reading for which that theory is not very relevant.

You should submit each response paper by “sharing” it with me as a Google Doc before class on the assigned day.  Be sure to grant me “editing” or “commenting” status when you share the Google Doc with me (so that I can comment directly on the paper).  Please note that, when you do a response paper, you are writing about the reading assigned for the day on which you’re submitting the paper. So, you’re writing about the reading assignment before we discuss it in class and submitting your response paper before the class meeting for which that reading is assigned. You may not submit a response paper about a past day’s reading assignment.

Response papers are graded Pass/Fail, so they need not be a perfect, polished product.  Rather, response papers should be just what their name says – a response.  Think about one of the topics that I have asked you to consider above; then write a response.  Don’t worry about typos or comma splices or organization.  Don’t worry about answering every question I ask under a particular topic.  In fact, focus on the one question that seems most interesting to you, and be as specific as you can, getting down as much as you can, as quickly as you can.  Treat response papers more like a journal entry than like a formal paper.  I don’t want a five-paragraph theme.  Rather, I want an exploration – as detailed and specific as possible – of the assigned reading for the day.  But don’t focus too narrowly on just one passage from the assigned reading.  Try to generalize about the reading and then look at several specific examples and passages to support your generalization.

Normally, as long as you submit a response paper of suitable length, detail, and thoughtfulness (and as long as you submit it before class on the assigned day), you will receive all the points that the response paper is worth.  You may submit more than six response papers in the course of the semester (to make up for any response papers that do not pass), but no matter how many extra response papers you turn in, you will not receive credit for more than six total (and if you do not submit at least two response papers before the midterm exam, you will receive zeros that you cannot make up for two of your six response paper grades).  You may not submit more than one response paper for a single day’s reading assignment, nor may you submit a response paper for a day that you are absent from class.  But you may submit more than one response paper on the same book if there are multiple reading assignments spread over multiple days from that book.  The response papers should then each be on the specific reading assignment for each specific day.  NOTE: You may not submit a response paper for a day without a specific reading assignment for class from a literary text (e.g., exam days, the days that papers are due, or a day with only scholarly articles for the assigned reading), and you may not write response papers about non-literary texts (e.g., scholarly articles).

The purpose of the response papers is

      1. to help you in your preparation for class discussion,
      2. to allow you to try out new and different ideas in a safe, low-stress space,
      3. to help me see where you’re struggling with the concepts in class,
      4. to help you reinforce and expand on what you’re learning in class, and
      5. to help you develop your intellectual independence and confidence.

In order to accomplish these goals, you really need to write your response papers yourself without the help of AI, so you are not allowed to use AI of any kind for any assistance with the writing of response papers – not for brainstorming, not for the actual writing, not to suggest improvements, not even for checking grammar and punctuation.  In general, AI just spews out bad writing anyway – full of “hallucinations” (errors concerning facts, plot, characters, concepts, and words) and vague generalities.  Such writing is one of the few ways to fail a response paper, whether you used AI to generate it or wrote it yourself.

You also may not work together with classmates on your response papers.  Just as using AI defeats the purpose of writing the response papers, getting ideas from a classmate or imitating what they write does not help you to deepen your learning or to try out and practice new ideas.

EXAMS. The exams in this course are an assessment of how well you are learning, understanding, and retaining the material in class.  The exams ask you to identify quotations that were important in our class discussions and to explain the reason(s) that they were important (i.e., what concepts, themes, or meanings we discussed in relation to them).  The quotations are usually ones that we discuss at length together, although some quotations may be less discussed in class but still central to the plot and themes we discussed in relation to the work from which they come (and therefore reasonable passages for you to be able to identify and relate to our class discussions).  In addition, the exams assess your retention of important character names, settings, critical terms, and concepts by asking you to identify and describe them in a couple sentences or bullet points.  Finally, the exams offer you the opportunity to draw together the different strands of what you’ve been learning in class in an essay that asks you to look broadly at overarching themes and ideas.  The exams will be open-note but NOT open-book.  The midterm exam is mostly a sort of trial run for the final exam – to give you an experience, partway through the semester, of what the final exam will be like (so that you can better see what will be expected of you on the final).

ATTENDANCE AT ENGLISH DEPARTMENT EVENTS.  Attend two English Department events before the end of the semester (listed at https://english.tcnj.edu/events/fall-2026-events/).  Take a selfie of yourself at the event (or have a friend take a photo of you) and upload the picture in Canvas.  Include in Canvas a couple sentences about what you learned at the event (as a caption to the picture or in a separate file).  Each event is worth either 100% (completed) or 0% (not completed).

DOCUMENTATION EXERCISE.  Below is an exercise that asks you to create in-text citations and bibliographic entries in MLA format for various kinds of sources.  You are to submit the completed exercise by “sharing” it with me as a Google Doc.  Be sure to grant me “editing” or “commenting” status when you share the Google Doc with me (so that I can comment directly on it).  If your submission is not 100% correct, I will ask you to revise it – without any explanation of what you got wrong.  If your revision is not 100% correct, I will ask you to revise again.  You will continue to revise the exercise and resubmit it (re-sharing it with me each time) until it is 100% correct – as many times as it takes.  It is your responsibility to submit the assignment in a timely fashion and to revise and resubmit it as necessary.  Once you have succeeded in getting the exercise 100% correct, you will receive all the credit that the assignment is worth (100% or A+ for 5% of your final grade).  If you do not succeed in getting the exercise 100% correct by the last day of class (that is, BEFORE the reading days and final exams start), you will receive a zero for 5% of your final grade.  On your first attempt, you must work on your responses to the exercise alone, but on any and all subsequent attempts, you may work with your classmates to figure out and correct the mistakes that you made.

Here is the exercise that you must complete:

TASK 1:  Examine the three situations described below.  For each situation, retype the sentence exactly as it should appear in a paper, complete with the parenthetical citation appropriate to the situation (if a citation is needed).  You should use the MLA Formatting and Style Guide.

        • The following sentence appears in a paper:
          Again, a study performed by Grennan, concentrating on male and female police officers’ confrontations with citizens, revealed that the inborn or socialized nurturing ability possessed by female police workers makes them “just as productive as male officers in the handling of a violent confrontation.”

Do you need a parenthetical citation in this sentence?  The quotation comes from page 84 of an article published in Journal of Police Science and Administration in 1987 and written by Samuel Grennan.  The article appeared on pages 78-84 of the first issue of volume 15 of the journal.  The article’s full title was “Findings on the Role of Officer Gender in Violent Encounters with Citizens.”

        • The following sentence appears in a paper:
          In a 1987 study, almost 75% of male police officers felt that women were not strong enough to handle the demands of patrol duties, and 42% felt women lacked the needed assertiveness to enforce the law vigorously.

Do you need a parenthetical citation in this sentence?  Matthew Vega and Immanuel Silverman wrote the article from which the data here came.  Their article is called “Female Police Officers as Viewed by Their Male Counterparts.”  It was published in the first issue of volume 5 of Police Studies in 1987 on pages 31-39, and the percentages in the sentence above appear on page 32.  Police Studies is published in Chicago.

        • The following sentence appears in a paper:
          Who returns a questionnaire can affect results, as happened, for example, with one study in which “78% of the former students in the top percentile of their class returned the questionnaire, while only 28% from the bottom percentile returned the questionnaire.”

Do you need a parenthetical citation in this sentence?  This quotation came from a 1999 article by R. L. Griffey, called “The Personalization of Questionnaires” with the subtitle, “A Longitudinal Study.”  The article appeared on pages 83-93 of volume 14, issue number 2, of the Journal of Survey Techniques.  The quotation is from page 83.

TASK 2:  A paper uses the following sources, plus the three sources in TASK 1 above:

        • our textbook for The Road,
        • our textbook for The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, and
        • the psychoanalytic essay by David Collings in our textbook for Frankenstein.

Create the appropriate “Works Cited” page exactly as it should appear at the end of the paper (with all six sources).  You should use the MLA Formatting and Style Guide.

PAPERS 1, 2, 3, and 4.  The specific assignment for each paper is detailed below, but there are a couple things that are true for all four papers.

First, you need not use any sources for your papers other than the literary text assigned for each paper.  In fact, I would encourage you not to use other sources (because I’d rather hear what you think than what some published scholar, online blogger, or AI thinks).  But if you do use any other sources (whether scholarly, online, or AI) for ANYTHING (an idea, a piece of background information, an overall perspective, a phrase or wording, a suggestion for improvement, a grammar check), be sure to cite and document the source(s) appropriately in MLA format.  If you use AI to assist you in any way, explain how you used it IN DETAIL in a note at the end of your paper, and check out the MLA’s “How do I cite generative AI in MLA style” for guidelines on how to cite AI properly.  If you fail to cite sources or AI that you use, you are violating the College’s academic integrity policy.  Even if you use no other sources, you should have a “Works Cited” page at the end of your essay for the literary text assigned for the paper, and you should cite the literary text parenthetically as appropriate in your paper itself.

Second, I encourage you, about a week before each paper is due, to submit a thesis paragraph (a draft of the first paragraph of your paper or just a paragraph that describes what you plan to write about) by “sharing” it with me as a Google Doc (making sure to give me “editing” or “commenting” status, so that I can comment directly on your paragraph).  If you do so by the date noted in the course schedule below, I will give you feedback on your proposed thesis.  If you submit a thesis paragraph later than the date noted in the schedule, I will try to get you feedback as quickly as possible, but I cannot guarantee that I’ll be able to get you the feedback fast enough to be of use to you before the essay itself is due.

Finally, your papers will all be evaluated according to the following grading criteria:

      1. Does the paper have a clear, specific thesis?  Does the thesis offer an interesting perspective or “hook” that is provocative without being gimmicky or offensive?  Does the paper’s thesis incorporate appropriate literary theory?  Is the paper’s use of theory appropriate and sufficiently sophisticated?
      2. Does the paper’s analysis progress logically? Does the paper have a clear and consistent overall organization that relates all the ideas of the paper together in support of the thesis (rather than simply a list of random ideas without relation to one another or to the thesis)? Does the paper have appropriate transitions to aid the reader in following the paper’s logic (rather than weak transitions like “The first…,” “Another…,” and “…also…”)?
      3. Are the paper’s paragraphs properly developed – neither too long and wandering nor too short and deficient? Are the topics of individual paragraphs suitably narrow and focused on a single claim rather than vague and focused on a broad theme? Once a paragraph gets specific about anything, does it stay focused on that specific topic to the end?
      4. Does the paper provide relevant, concrete evidence and logically persuasive reasons for every assertion?
      5. Does the paper exhibit confidence and insight when analyzing literary works not discussed in class?
      6. Does the introduction to the paper offer an interesting, helpful preview of the content, logic, and organization of the paper?
      7. Is factual information in the paper accurate?
      8. Is the writing in the paper clear, effective, and appropriate to an academic setting?

PAPER 1.  In a paper of 4-6 pages, argue a clear, specific, and interesting thesis that takes a Marxist, feminist/gender, or deconstructive approach to The Goat:  Or, Who Is Sylvia?

PAPER 2.  In a paper of 4-6 pages, argue a clear, specific, and interesting thesis that takes a psychoanalytic or structuralist approach to EITHER The Goat:  Or, Who Is Sylvia? OR Frankenstein.

PAPER 3.  In a paper of 4-6 pages, argue a clear, specific, and interesting thesis that takes an ecocritical or reader-response approach to EITHER The Goat:  Or, Who Is Sylvia? OR a fairy tale of the Brothers Grimm that was assigned for class but that we did not have time to discuss in class together (and if you’re in doubt about whether a fairy tale qualifies as “not discussed in class,” ask me about it.)

PAPER 4.  Choose one of your previous papers for this class and revise the paper significantly.  This revision will be graded independently of the original paper, and the grade on the revision will in no way affect the original paper’s grade, which will remain as it was.  However you choose to revise the paper, you must make substantive changes – not just superficial, cosmetic improvements.  Failure to make substantive changes may result in a lower grade on this paper than on the original version.  You should address my specific comments on the original paper’s weaknesses, but you must go beyond just fixing minor problems.  You might, for example, rethink your thesis and incorporate a second theoretical approach into it.  Alternatively, you might keep your thesis the same and rethink your argument for your thesis, incorporating different evidence and reasoning.  Make big, sweeping changes rather than just focus on correcting punctuation and improving wording.  Take care of any punctuation or wording issues, but don’t stop there.

LANGUAGES ACROSS THE CURRICULUM.  A quarter-unit (one-credit) Languages Across the Curriculum independent study may be added to this course for students who have intermediate level proficiency in another language and who wish to complement the work in this course by utilizing their language skills. Students should complete this google form (https://forms.gle/67mtZBYhqmJ33EPFA) by Tuesday, September 1, to request to be enrolled in the LAC independent study. Please contact LAC Program Director Dr. Holly Didi-Ogren (holly.didi-ogren@tcnj.edu) with any questions.

PROFESSOR’S AVAILABILITY.  My office is Bliss Hall 216.  My in-person office hours this term are 2-5pm on Mondays.  If you have questions about class (or just want to talk about stuff), feel free to stop by my office during these hours (no appointment necessary).  I can also meet over Zoom during my office hours if that’s more convenient for you; just let me know, and I’ll send you a Zoom invitation.  If you cannot meet during my regularly scheduled office hours, talk to me about meeting at another time, and we can set up an appointment.  Outside of class, you may contact me by email (gsteinbe@tcnj.edu) or by calling my office phone (609-771-2106) and leaving a message (if I do not answer), but email is usually the best way to get in touch with me.  You may also leave a written message for me in my box at the English Department offices in Bliss Hall 124.

ATTENDANCE.  Regular attendance is a virtual necessity for successful completion of this class.  Class discussion constitutes important, useful preparation for your graded work.  If you miss a class, you will essentially lose out on that day’s contribution to your preparation, since it is never really possible to reproduce or recapture the dynamics and flow of information for a missed class meeting (even if you get notes from someone).  If, however, you positively must miss a class, I expect you to find out from a classmate what you missed and to come fully prepared – without excuses – to the next class meeting.  If you must miss an in-class, graded assignment due to a religious holiday, let me know ahead of time, and we will arrange a way for you to make up the assignment.

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY.  Academic dishonesty is any attempt by a student to gain academic advantage through dishonest means, to submit, as your own, work which has not been done by you, or to give improper aid to another student in the completion of an assignment. Such dishonesty would include, but is not limited to, submitting as your own a project, paper, report, test, or speech copied, partially copied, or paraphrased from the work of another (whether AI-generated, in print, on the Internet, or from another student). Credit must always be given for words quoted or paraphrased and for ideas or information taken from somewhere else. The rules apply to any academic dishonesty, whether the work is graded or ungraded, group or individual, written or oral.  Most people who cheat do so out of desperation, because they are struggling to understand an assignment or lack time to do it.  Please, please, please, if you ever need help with an assignment or need an extension on a deadline, let me know rather than resort to cheating.

ACCOMMODATIONS.  The College of New Jersey prohibits discrimination against any student on the basis of physical or mental disability or perceived disability. The College will also provide reasonable and appropriate accommodations to enable students with disabilities to participate in the life of the campus community. If you require such accommodations, I will make every reasonable effort to meet your needs and to create an environment where your special abilities are respected.  Go to the website of the Accessibility Resource Center (ARC) for more information about how to arrange for such accommodations.

DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION. We are all enriched by greater diversity, and we all bring different perspectives to this class. I want to create a learning environment that supports diversity and honors your identities and perspectives (including your race, gender, sexuality, social class, religion, mental and physical health, differing abilities, politics, etc.). If, for example, you go by a name and/or set of pronouns that differ from those that appear in your official records, please let me know. If you feel that your performance in class is being impacted outside of class by a hostile environment related to your identity, please don’t hesitate to talk to me. If something is said or posted in class (by anyone, including me) that you consider hostile or offensive to your identity, please talk to me about it. I will expect our whole class (including me) to strive always to honor every form of diversity.  See also TCNJ’s statement on inclusive excellence at https://inclusion.tcnj.edu/inclusive-excellence-statement/.

SCREENS.  Unless required as an accommodation for a physical or mental disability, you may not use screens (laptops, phones, or ipads) during class meetings for this course.  In the last ten years, there has been a ton of research that shows that screens are bad for learning – that you are less likely to remember what happens in class if you take notes on an electronic device rather than with pen and paper, that you are less likely to comprehend and remember what you read if you read it on a screen rather than in a printed format, and that you are more likely to be distracted and miss things in class if you use an electronic device during class time.  I am not a Luddite (someone who despises all technology); I love my screens and use them a lot.  But I have watched a lot of students, especially over the last ten or so years, perform much worse in my classes than they could (or should) have performed, because they used screens for taking notes and reading.  And my anecdotal experience with students over the last decade is nothing in comparison with the towering tsunami of research that shows just how bad screens are for learning in the classroom.

For that reason, you may not use any electronic devices during our meetings for class. Note that, if we ever need during class to look at a text, document, or assignment that is online, I will display what we need on the large screen at the front of the room.  You will not need your own screen.

CLASSROOM ENVIRONMENT AND COMMITMENT TO STUDENT SUCCESS, SAFETY, AND WELL-BEING.  The TCNJ community is dedicated to the success, safety, and well-being of each student. TCNJ strictly follows key policies that govern all TCNJ community members’ rights and responsibilities in and out of the classroom. In addition, TCNJ has established several student support offices that can provide the support and resources to help students achieve their personal and professional goals and to promote health and well-being. You can find more information about these policies and resources at the “TCNJ Student Support Resources and Classroom Policies” webpage at https://academicaffairs.tcnj.edu/tcnj-syllabus-resources/.

Students who anticipate and/or experience barriers in this course are encouraged to contact the instructor as early in the semester as possible. The Accessibility Resource Center (ARC) is available to facilitate the removal of barriers and to ensure reasonable accommodations. For more information about ARC, please visit https://arc.tcnj.edu/.

COURSE SCHEDULE.  The schedule below is subject to revision at the discretion of the professor.  Changes in the schedule made after the first day of class will be shown in red.

Dates Assignments
T Aug 26 Introductions
F Aug 28 Critical Theory Today, pp. 1-8, 43-69
The Road, pp. 1-48
T Sep 1 Critical Theory Today, pp. 70-120
The Road, pp. 49-93
F Sep 4 Critical Theory Today, pp. 214-241
The Road, pp. 94-167
T Sep 8 NO CLASS (Monday schedule instead)
F Sep 11 The Road, pp. 168-287
T Sep 15 The Bluest Eye, pp. 1-93
F Sep 18 The Bluest Eye, pp. 95-206
Thesis paragraph for PAPER 1 DUE as a shared Google Doc by 11:59pm
T Sep 22 college-level writing
MLA Formatting and Style Guide
F Sep 25 PAPER 1 DUE in Canvas before 11:59pm
T Sep 29 Critical Theory Today, pp. 9-42
The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, #60-#65
F Oct 2 Critical Theory Today, pp. 182-213
The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, #66-#70
T Oct 6 NO CLASS (Fall Break)
F Oct 9 The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, #12, #15, #21, #26, #37, #50, #53, #55
T Oct 13 MIDTERM EXAM
F Oct 16 The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, #4, #17, #20, #22, #29, #33, #42, #71, #87, #93, #99, #101, #108, #136, #189
T Oct 20 The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, #1, #11, #13, #25, #34, #46, #49, #56, #77, #89, #94, #113, #128, #161, #188
Thesis paragraph for PAPER 2 DUE as a shared Google Doc by 11:59pm
F Oct 23 what you’re learning as an English major
T Oct 27 PAPER 2 DUE in Canvas before 11:59pm
last day to withdraw with a W or to request ungraded option
F Oct 30 Critical Theory Today, pp. 410-462
Frankenstein, pp. 19-78
T Nov 3 Critical Theory Today, pp. 149-181
Frankenstein, pp. 78-127, 249-263
F Nov 6 Frankenstein, pp. 128-189
Thesis paragraph for PAPER 3 DUE as a shared Google Doc by 11:59pm
T Nov 10 Sid Simpson, “Frankenstein, the Frankfurt School, and the Domination of Nature,” Philosophy and Literature 45 (2021), 416-434 (available through our library’s website)
Eric B. Song, “Frankenstein, Paradise Lost, and the Fiction of Translation,” Modern Philology 119 (2022), 513-534
(available through our library’s website)
F Nov 13 library (re)search
PAPER 3 DUE in Canvas before 11:59pm
T Nov 17 Critical Theory Today, pp. 242-272
Measure for Measure, Acts 1-2
F Nov 20 Measure for Measure, Acts 3-5
LAST DAY TO SUBMIT A RESPONSE PAPER
T Nov 24 Carolyn Sale, “‘Practis[Ing] Judgment with the Disposition of Natures’: Measure for Measure, the ‘Discoursive’ Common Law, and the ‘Open Court’ of the Theater,” in Shakespeare and Judgment, ed. Kevin Curran (Edinburgh University Press, 2017), pp. 115-138 (available through our library’s website)
Elisa Oh, “The Silences of Elizabeth I and Shakespeare’s Isabella,” English Literary Renaissance 45 (2015), 351-376 (available through JSTOR on our library’s website)
F Nov 27 NO CLASS (Thanksgiving Break)
T Dec 1 Find and read a recent scholarly article on Measure for Measure and come to class prepared to tell your classmates about it.
F Dec 4 PAPER 4 DUE in Canvas before 11:59pm
FINAL EXAM PERIOD FINAL EXAM