Reading List, Syllabus and Requirements

English 260.7492: The Novel

 Summer Novel Syllabus

LaGuardia Community College

June 2015

Professor Phyllis Van Slyck

E103N: OFFICE Hours after class

slyckvan@gmail.com

718-482-5660

Purchase from NEKO (basement of B building):

Coursepak: Summer Novel 260/Van Slyck

Purchase from LaGuardia Bookstore:

Louise Erdrich, The Roundhouse

J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace

Blog: English260summernovel2015.blogspot.com

Sequence of Films and Readings

Themes and Assignments

(all subject to adjustment as we go)

Course Assignments and Grading:

1.     500 word essay on Rabbit Proof Fence and/or “Yasmin” 20%

2.     500 word essay on The Roundhouse 20%

3.     500 word final essay on Disgrace 20%

4.     Weekly blog responses, including research 20%

5.     Class participation and presentations 20%

All essays should be typed, double-spaced, quote correctly from text(s) and follow MLA formatting.  1 and 2 may be revised once.  Essay #3 is your final essay and may not be revised.

Week 1

Introduction: What is a novel? Where do novels come from? What’s new in the novel? “Who” is at the center of the story?  Who was the “other” in the 19^th century?  Who is the “other” now?  How is the novel informed by issues of race, gender and class? START READING THE ROUNDHOUSE!!

Screening of Rabbit Proof Fence (film) and introduction to our blog: create a gmail account.  First blog on key themes from the film; research on this story: The Aboriginal Protection Act 1869 and the Child Removal Policy.

Reflections on genres: novel, novella, memoir, docudrama, historical drama, journalism. What is the difference between a novel and a memoir?  Aristotle said that literature (what he called poetry because all literature was once song/poetry) offers a higher truth than history because it speaks not of what did happen but what might happen.  The higher truth for Aristotle is the truth of the imagination.

“Yasmin,” from How Does it Feel to Be a Problem: Being Young and Arab in America, Moustafa Bayoumi.  Blog on your own experience as other, as bicultural, as hybrid, in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Review of terminology relevant to the novel and the postcolonial world—application to readings and film. (In coursepak)

SHORT ESSAY COMPARING RABBIT PROOF FENCE TO “YASMIN”—DETAILS IN HANDOUT

Week 2

“1937” and “Children of the Sea,” Edwidge Danticat

Research for blog on the 1937 Parsley Massacre in the Dominican Republic and, more broadly, racism under Trujillo and conditions in Haiti, historically and today.

Danticat’s style and tone: what knits community together despite horrific acts?  How do Haitians in these stories communicate, but also damage each other and their own communities?  Short story cycle as contemporary form of novel/novella.

Week 3 and 4

The Roundhouse, Louise Erdrich

Research into the Chippewa nation in the Dakotas, the status of the reservation in relation to the law, racism and the incidence of rape in Native American communities.  See especially an article by Erdrich in the NY Times (February 2013) on Native Americans and the Violence Against Women Act and a review of The Roundhouse by Maria Russo, “Disturbing the Spirits” (October 2012).

Dirty Pretty Things (film screening)

Blog on key themes in the film that relate to seeing the “other” as a marketable, usable, commodity; the structure of the film as parallel to a good novel; what would we do to transform this into an actual novel?  What elements are needed?  Blog

SHORT ESSAY ON THE ROUNDHOUSE—end of week 4.

GET A HEAD START ON READING DISGRACE

Week 5 and 6

Disgrace, J.M Coetzee

For blog and research: history of race relations in South Africa: pre- and post- apartheid. FILM SCREENING

FINAL: ESSAY ON DISGRACE and reflection on course themes—end week 6.

“Great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them.” Anais Nin