For the new semester, first things first

I am posting a copy of the syllabus, so there's no excuses not to know what's going on. Also on Thursday of the first week back, you'll have a quick syllabus quiz.

Instructor Contact Information:
George Richard Odum
Rm: 252
Email: George.odum@austinisd.org
Course Website: http://odumgreatideas.wikispaces.com/
Course Blog: odumgreatideasblog.blogspot.com
Office Hours: Tuesday and Wednesday, 3:50-4:50 pm, and by appointment

Great Ideas: A Survey of the Humanities

Course Summary

The Course in Brief:

This course builds on the skills learned in freshman and sophomore year English and social studies classes, and guides students through writing full-length analyses and research papers.

We will consider a variety of works in the fields of literature, philosophy, history, psychology, art, architecture, anthropology, film, theater and music—areas of study known collectively as the humanities. Works will be considered in their historical contexts. However, this class will also connect thematic elements between texts of widely differing time periods and geographic regions in order to examine how peoples throughout history have thought about some of the fundamental experiences of human life.

Most of the works we will consider are “short”—examples include surrealist paintings, essays on Zen Buddhism, and South American short stories—but each unit also involves the intensive study of one longer work.

The course will culminate in a research paper and presentation which each student will complete individually.

Course Goals:

• to gain exposure to a wide variety of materials in all fields of the humanities, making connections and noting differences between these materials

• to practice and improve critical thinking and analysis skills

• to learn research skills, including locating information, incorporating research into papers, citing sources responsibly, and discriminating between reliable and unreliable sources of information

• to bolster essay writing skills, concentrating especially upon organization and thesis writing

Organization of the course:

In introduction to the “humanities” we will be structuring our inquiry into three core questions that have informed our conception of “humanity.” Each unit is intended to both explore a specific question in the humanities as well as provide a beginning position for the student to engage in critical inquiry.
Unit 1: Free Will/Determinism:
Major Work:

The Bacchae/Bakkhai, by Euripedes

Other topics/ artifacts of study to include:

excerpts from Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy

excerpts from Genesis and The Koran

excerpts from the works of Jean Paul Sartre

readings in neuroscience

The Ego, the Id, and the Superego, by Sigmund Freud

the surrealist movement in painting, including the works of Dali
The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx
Mexican muralists Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco

Unit 2: Self/Other:
Major Work:

Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad

Other topics/ artifacts of study to include:

Zen poetry by various authors

“The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” by Ursula LeGuin
Florentine Renaissance art (Da Vinci, Michaelangelo, etc.)
Orientalism, by Edward Said
short stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Julio Cortazar
Pather Panchali (The Little Road), by Satyajit Ray
Graceland, by Paul Simon

Unit 3: Beauty/Virtue:

Major Work:

Due to the brevity of the fall semester, this unit will not feature a major work and will instead concentrate instead upon writing a research paper.

Other topics/ artifactss to include:
The Phaedrus, by Plato
“A Defense of Poetry,” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
romantic poetry, including the works of Wordsworth, Coleridge, etc.
Vertigo, by Alfred Hitchcock
The Marriage of Figaro, by Mozart OR
Tristan und Isolde, by Wagner

Course Information:

Field Trips:

We will take two field trips as a class, both to the University of Texas campus. During the first unit of study, we will explore the Blanton Museum. At the end of our last unit of study, we will receive guided tours and classes at the Perry Castaneda Library, where students will have time to begin researching their final projects.

Final Project:

The final weeks of the semester will be spent working on the research project that takes the place of a final exam for this course. Each student will choose a topic in the humanities that sheds light upon some aspect of our contemporary culture. Students will support their theses with evidence from a variety of disciplines in the humanities. As the culmination of this research, each student will produce a formal paper and, during finals week, explain the findings of this paper in a presentation to the class, accompanied by a visual aid or other example. To give some examples, previous papers have examined video games, popular novels, various genres in film, comic books, advertising, and a wide variety of other subjects.  

You will be given time to begin your research during our field trip to the Perry Castaneda Library, as well as time in class to explore the school library and computer labs for useful information. However, in order to produce an exemplary project, you may need to continue your research in the UT library system or the public library system outside of class time, and will certainly need to devote a great deal of time to the project as a whole. This major project occupies most of the last six weeks of the semester.  

Grading:

Student work will be graded according to English department policy, whereby different types of activities are weighted as follows:

• daily grades: 20%

• quizzes: 20%

• major assignments: 60%

For all major essays, you have the opportunity to work with the teacher in making significant revisions after your original essay has been graded. You will then receive the higher of the two grades. Revisions must, however, show significant effort and improvement in order to earn a higher grade.

Some assignments, such as weekly journals, are best judged as completion grades. Your completion grade begins at an 85, and alters depending upon the quality of your work throughout the six weeks grading period. At the end of the grading period, you will receive a “completion grade” which consists of a double daily grade (the equivalent of two daily grade assignments).

In the English department, discussion is part of the curriculum, and is necessary to the individual student’s learning as well as to the class atmosphere. Periodically, we will have formal graded discussions. However, all students are also expected to speak, take notes, address their peers respectfully, and listen actively during discussion every day, and grades will reflect such participation.

Except in cases of emergency outside of the student’s control, or rare cases in which the project merits such delivery (such as power point presentations), I will not accept electronic copies of assignments.  

When a student has an EXCUSED absence from class on the day an assignment is given (in the case of daily grades), he or she receives a one day extension on this assignment. The student should nevertheless check with the teacher to confirm this extension, and write “absent,” along with the date of absence, on the top of the assignment when he or she turns it in. In the case of long-term assignments that the student receives before his or her absence, the assignment is due the day that the student returns to class.

Late Work Policy:

Assignments are due at the beginning of class on the date specified. Late work will be accepted according to English department policy:

One day late: -10 pts.

Two days late: -20 pts.

Three days late: -30 pts.

After three days, assignments will be accepted only at the teacher’s prerogative. The maximum grade a student can receive in such a case is 50 out of 100. I will not accept late work after the grading period in which it is due has ended.

Important advice: Do not complete your work at the last minute possible, as I cannot accept printer failure (or any other computer-related malfunction) as an excuse. If you know that you will need to turn in work late, try to contact me before the due date. You are likely to turn in the assignment much more rapidly in this case than when maintaining silence about its existence, and potentially forgetting to complete it at all. Keep in mind, though, that nothing hurts your average the way that late work does.