Spring 2008
New Jersey Institute of Technology
Instructor: Rob Friedman, Humanities Department
Office: 331 Cullimore Hall
Telephone: 973.596.5765
Office Hours: Monday, 10:00 to 11:30 and by appointment
| Syllabus |
We'll be working with weekly reading milestones, with the week beginning on Monday and ending on Sunday. Each week there will be discussion questions entered into Moodle to begin your conversation, and conversation is your responsibility (50% of your grade), along with two response papers (10% each) and one project (30%). Weeks 1 and 2: Contexts - Brodhead Chapter 1; Davey part 1 and part 2 (critical contextual history and early critical reception) Week 3: Melville Chapters 1-25 Week 4: Melville Chapters 26-50 Week 5 Melville Chapters 51- 62 Week 6 Melville Chapters 63-79 Week 7 Melville Chapters 80-92 Week 8 Melville Chapters 93-105 Week 9 Melville Chapters 106-117 Week 8 Melville Chapters 118-128 Week 9 Melville Chapters 129-Epilogue Week 10 Brodhead Chapters 2-4 Week 11 Brodhead Chapters 5-6 Week 12 Davey part 2 (modern criticism) Week 13 Davey Moby-Dick at the Millenium Week 14 Moby-Dick, in motion |
Our texts:
Richard H. Brodhead, editor. New Essays on Moby-Dick (The American Novel) (Paperback)
Cambridge University Press, 1986.
ISBN-10: 0521317886
Michael Davey, Herman Melville's Moby-Dick: A Sourcebook (Routledge Literary Sourcebooks) Routledge; 1 edition, 2003
ISBN-10: 0415247713
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, Second Edition (Norton Critical Editions) Harrison Hayford (Editor), Parker Hershel (Editor) W. W. Norton; 2nd edition, 2001
ISBN-10: 0393972836
Our policies:
Realizing how important grades are to many of you, I offer these suggestions for those of you who are striving for an A.
Weekly conversations in Moodle should consist of individual responses to both the questions posed and your experience reading the assigned texts. Plot summary is not a contribution to a conversation (imagine rehashing the plot lines of your favorite television show to a group of friends who discuss it on a regular basis -- no need for reminders of who the characters are, what their relationships are based in, or what they did in a particular episode, as we've all seen the show). Your postings should not only be on time but should provoke responses, challenges and further commentary from your classmates.
Response papers should tell me about how you experienced a particular part of your reading, not what happened. It should respond to "how" and "why" questions, not "what."
Your project can take form in an analytical essay, a creative work of art that is responsive to the text, or a novel experiment that I know about before you begin.
Plagiarism results in failure for the assignment and a different kind of conversation with the Dean of Students.