English 511: Pedagogy

Meeting Time 12-1 MON

3 hrs. credit

Description:

This course is designed to introduce graduate students to teaching literature and composition at Rice. The final product will be a syllabus, including reading list, text selection, reading and writing assignments, and course requirements, with each of these discussed weekly in the seminar. I'm interested at the moment in theoretical issues as they relate to teaching (specifically, teaching literature and writing)--the politics of the classroom, authority, disciplinariety, interdisciplinarity, gender and ethnicity, style and civility, and the canon/decanonization in so far as they intersect the teaching of this particular course. Readings are designed to spur dialogue on the specific topic and aid graduate students in coming to terms with that week’s assignment. Final Grade will be based on completion of the syllabus and participation in the weekly seminars.

Syllabus:

• Week 1 Introduction. Teaching Freshman English at Rice University and Beyond

  Policy Statements, Course Description, Requirements, Goals and Purposes

  Introduction: Robert Conners & Cheryl Glenn, ed., The St. Martin’s Guide to Teaching Writing,* ed. 3rd ed. (St. Martin’s, 1995).

• Week 2 Introduction. The University in Ruins and Literary Culture: What We Do and How and Why We Do It

  Paulo Friere, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Continuum Books, 1970), Foreword, Preface, Chapter 2, pp. 9-15, 19-25, 57-118.

  Indira Karamcheti, "Caliban in the Classroom," in Gallop, ed. Pedagogy,* pp. 138-46.

• Week 3 Sample Reading Lists and Syllabuses: Freshman English in the Past (What Works and What Doesn’t). The Canon and the Decanon

  Read Lillian Robinson, "Treason Our Text: Feminist Challenges to the Literary Canon," Gilles DeLeuze and Felix Guattari, "What is a Minor Literature?" and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, from Epistemology of the Closet, in Falling into Theory,* pp. 151-72, 181-6.

• Week 4 The Politics of the Classroom: Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Civility

  Read: Stuart Hall, "Cultural Studies and its Theoretical Legacies," In Cultural Studies, ed. Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula Treichler (Routledge, 1992), pp. 277-94.

  Gayatri Spivak, "Marginality in the Teaching Machine," in Outside in the Teaching Machine (Routledge, 1987), pp. 53-76.

  Assignment: Tentative List of Texts and Ideas

• Week 5 Selecting Reading Assignments and Texts: How Much, How Many, On Reserve, Using the Web, When To Photocopy (How long is an assignment?)

  Read: Stanley Fish, "Is There a Text in this Class?" in Falling into Theory,* pp. 226-37.

  Assignment: Select Books

• Week 6 Constructing Assignments/Discussion Topics

  Linda Flower, Problem-Solving Strategies for Writing, 4th ed. (Ft. Worth: Harcourt Brace, 19 ), chapter 6: "Generating Ideas," and chapter 7, "Organizing Ideas," pp.137-147, 305-321.

  Assignment: Final Reading List and Book Orders Due; Web Page

• Week 7 Teaching Reading and Writing Together

  Patricia A. Sullivan, "Writing in the Graduate Curriculum: Literary Criticism and Composition," in Composition Theory for the Postmodern Classroom, ed. Gary A. Olson and Sidney I. Dobrin (SUNY Press, 1994), 32-46.

  Assignment: Constructing Discussion Topics

• Week 8 Authority, Style, and Civility

  Read Tompkins, "Pedagogy of the Distressed"

  Assignment: Constructing Assignments

• Week 9 Getting a Discussion Started: Class Participation Sample Discussions

  Read Bill Readings, The University in Ruins, "The Scene of Teaching," pp. 150-66.

• Week 10 Lecturing: When and How

  Read Arthur W. Frank, "Lecturing and Transference: The Undercover Work of Pedagogy," in Gallop, ed. Pedagogy,* pp. 28-35.

  Sample Discussions

• Week 11 Evaluation of Writing

  Read Chris Amirault, "The Good Teacher, the Good Student: Identifications of a Student Teacher," in Gallop, ed. Pedagogy,*pp. 64-78.

  Sample Essays

• Week 12 Evaluation of Writing; Grading the Whole

  Sample Essays; Final Grades

• Week 13 What is Good Teaching? Teacher Evaluations Definitions and Sample Evaluations

  Read Tompkins, "Let’s Get Lost"

• Week 14 Conclusions/Beginnings

Final Course Syllabus Due

Reading List

• *Robert Conners & Cheryl Glenn, ed., The St. Martin’s Guide to Teaching Writing, ed. 3rd ed. (St. Martin’s, 1990?).
• Paulo Friere, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Continuum Books, 1970), Foreword, Preface, Chapter 2, pp. 9-15, 19-25, 57-118 (hand-out).
• *Jane Gallop, ed. Pedagogy: The Question of Impersonation (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1995), pp. 28-35, 64-78, 117-46
• *David Richter, ed. Falling into Theory: Conflicting Views on Reading Literature (Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 1994).
• Stuart Hall, "Cultural Studies and its Theoretical Legacies," In Cultural Studies, ed. Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula Treichler (Routledge, 1992), pp. 277-94 (hand-out)
• Gayatri Spivak, "Marginality in the Teaching Machine," in Outside in the Teaching Machine (Routledge, 1987), pp. 53-76 (hand-out)
• Linda Flower, Problem-Solving Strategies for Writing, 4th ed. (Ft. Worth: Harcourt Brace, 19 , chapter 6: "Generating Ideas," and chapter 7, "Organizing Ideas," pp.137-147, 305-321 (hand-out)
• Patricia A. Sullivan, "Writing in the Graduate Curriculum: Literary Criticism and Composition," in Composition Theory for the Postmodern Classroom, ed. Gary A. Olson and Sidney I. Dobrin (SUNY Press, 1994), 32-46 (hand-out)
• Jane Tompkins, "Pedagogy of the Distressed," College English 52 (1990): 653-60 (hand-out)
• Bill Readings, The University in Ruins (Harvard University Press, 1996), chapter 10, The Scene of Teaching, pp. 150-66 (hand-out).
• Jane Tompkins,"Let’s Get Lost," in A Life in School: What the Teacher Learned (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1996), 162-80 (hand-out)

Office Hours:

CONFERENCES: Office Hours 2:30-4 Tuesday and by appointment Office 301 Rayzor Hall Office Phone X2625 Dept. Secty. 527-4840 Fax: 524-3304 e-mail: jchance@rice.edu