ASSIGNMENT DETAILS: WEBLOG RESPONSES
Victorian Literature and Globalization, Section 2
From the syllabus:
Four blog posts. (c. 250 words). These are informal but intellectually substantial engagements with our reading for the day. They can take any form you like, and I encourage you to exploit the affordances, or specific capabilities, of the blog format. Summaries will use strategic citation and paraphrase to convey an overview of a given text’s argument as you understand it. Provocations will work more critically, taking a passage and performing a close reading of it to unlock some particular complexity in the writing. You might compare one work with another we’re read. Or you might pose questions about some knotty element in the reading – a contradiction, a dilemma-- while taking time to thicken it with thoughtful reflections from other areas of the course. The key is to workshop an idea, a hunch, an argument. You don’t need to believe it yet. Protocols and schedules to be determined.
Additional instructions:
These are individual assignments, but you’ve been broken into groups to ensure coverage of the syllabus. Each student is required to make FOUR posts over the course of the term. Each group is scheduled to respond on THREE specific days over the course of the term; please make a note of your scheduled days. You have ONE unscheduled post, which you are free to make at any time during the term, on a reading that especially interests you. For these poses, you should feel free to respond to another posting, engaging another students’ idea(s) directly – but always in the spirit of generosity. For each post, you are required to upload your text by midnight the night before the relevant class period. Groups have been named for a particular Victorian commodity, for no particular reason. But it would be fun to know where your commodity came from, wouldn’t it? Why not look it up?
GROUP 1: MUSLIN
Achille, Justine M.
Adoga, Anebi X.
Begin, Kelsey E.
Bonadurer, Jennifer L.
GROUP 2: TOBACCO
Brehm, Matthew N.
Bui, Khanh N.
Corcoran, Kayla M.
Debow, Thomas J.
GROUP 3: PLATE GLASS
Duggan, Kelly A.
Ewing, Anne T.
Frenzilli, Anna K.
Hall, Amelia L.
GROUP 4: DIAMONDS
Hexner, Allison L.
Iannolo, Lauren M.
Lachhonna, Tiffany D.
Landegger, Montana B.
GROUP 5: TEA
Manasseri, Alexandra N.
Moraghan, Timothy P.
Neave, Alice A.
Roeder, Lyell E.
GROUP 6: LAUDANUM
Strmecki, Grace S.
Tonnessen, Laura K.
Viator, Margaret A.
White, Bernadette N.
BLOG SCHEDULE:
Thursday January 24: Karl Marx, “The Fetish of the Commodity and Its Secret”; K. Marx and F. Engels, “The Communist Manifesto,”* GROUP 1
Tuesday January 29: Fredric Jameson, from Postmodernism; the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism;* Immanuel Wallerstein, from The Modern World System; Edward Said, “Narrative and Social Space,” from Culture and Imperialism* CLOSE READING EXERCISE DUE
Thursday January 31: Collins, The Moonstone. GROUP 2
Tuesday February 4: Collins, The Moonstone. GROUP 3
Thursday February 7: Collins, The Moonstone. GROUP 4
Tuesday February 12: Collins, The Moonstone. GROUP 5
Thursday February 14: Collins, The Moonstone. GROUP 6
Tuesday February 19: Collins, The Moonstone, concluded. Assorted Mutiny Ballads and Felice Beato Photography.* ESSAY 1 DUE
Thursday February 21: Sex and Democracy I: Objects and Subjects. John Stuart Mill, from On Liberty (1859) and The Subjection of Women (1869)*; Robert Browning, “Porphyria’s Lover,” “My Last Duchess,” “Fra Lippo Lippi”; Emily Bronte, “I’m happiest when most away,” “No coward soul is mine.”* GROUP 1
Tuesday February 26: Sex and Democracy II: On Beauty. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, “The Blessed Damozel,” “Soul’s Beauty,” “Body’s Beauty”*; Christina Rossetti, “In an Artist’s Studio,” “After Death”*; Barringer et al., “Pre-Raphaelites: A Victorian Avant Garde.”* GROUP 2
Thursday February 28: Sex and Democracy III: Doing As One Likes. Matthew Arnold, from Culture and Anarchy*; C.H. Hazlewood, Lady Audley’s Secret. CLOSE VIEWING EXERCISE DUE BEFORE SPRING BREAK; NO BLOGS
Tuesday March 5: SPRING BREAK
Thursday March 8: SPRING BREAK
Tuesday March 12: George Eliot, Middlemarch. GROUP 3
Thursday March 14: George Eliot, Middlemarch. GROUP 4
Tuesday March 19: George Eliot, Middlemarch. GROUP 5
Thursday March 21: George Eliot, Middlemarch. GROUP 6
Tuesday March 26: George Eliot, Middlemarch. Laura Otis, “The Webs of Middlemarch”* GROUP 1
Thursday March 28: EASTER BREAK
Tuesday April 2: George Eliot, Middlemarch. GROUP 2
Thursday April 4: Victorian Networks. G.H. Lewes, from Physiology of Common Life;* Herbert Spencer, from Social Statics*; Gordon Haight, from George Eliot: A Life.* Telegraphic fiction TBD.* GROUP 3
Tuesday April 9: H. Rider Haggard, She. ESSAY 2 DUE; NO BLOGS
Thursday April 11: H. Rider Haggard, She. GROUP 4
Tuesday April 16: H. Rider Haggard, She. GROUP 5
Thursday April 18: H. Rider Haggard, She. GROUP 6
Tuesday April 23: Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Sign of the Four.”* OPEN DAY: OPTIONAL BLOGS ONLY
Thursday April 25: “Small wars” and the Diamond Jubilee: Final Reflections. NO BLOGS