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UNION COUNTY COLLEGE
ENG 102-017 and 022
Spring 2008
 English Composition II


Click here for WebCT

Dr. Susannah Chewning
Office: H-125 (Cranford Campus)

Office Hours:  MW 11am-12:30pm
TR 1pm-3pm and by appointment

Voice Mail: (908) 709-7182
e-mail: chewning@ucc.edu

Course Description: Second half of a two-semester sequence, which focuses on the continued development of the student’s skill in writing expository prose as well as an introduction to literature.  Prerequisite: ENG 089, if needed; ENG 101.

Course Objectives: by the end of the semester students will

Required Texts:
     

The American Heritage College Dictionary, Fourth Edition

A Writer's Reference With Writing About Literature.
  If you read A Long Way Gone in ENG 101, please purchase In the Land of the Magic Soldiers.   Please purchase one of these two handbooks

Required Texts:

Beah, Ishmael. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. New York: Sarah Crichton Books, 2007.

Schilb, John and John Clifford. Making Literature Matter: An Anthology for Readers and Writers. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2006.

Recommended Texts:

The American Heritage College Dictionary. 4th edition. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2002.

Hacker, Diana. A Writer's Reference with Writing About Literature. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2007.

Course Requirements: Please see policy handout for class policies.

Reading Assignments. Please make sure you read all the assignments from Making Literature Matter on time. You are responsible for turning in responses to at least two of the assigned readings each week, which will include a personal response and an on-line discussion question.

Responses to the readings. Each class you will turn in a one-hundred word response to what you have read.  Responses must be typed and turned in at the beginning of class -- late responses will not be accepted.  Please note that there are some works assigned for which no response is due. You can still turn one in for extra-credit on those dates. 

Papers. Topics will be discussed in greater detail on WebCT. All revisions are due before May 4th. Keep all your papers in a portfolio so we can discuss them together. All papers must conform to the MLA style of documentation and format. Late papers will not be accepted. 

Breakdown of Grades: Participation 25%; Responses and research 25%; Formal Papers 50%.

Grading Scale: 100-92 A; 91-87 B+; 86-82 B; 81-77 C+; 76-72 C; 71-67 D+; 66-62 D; below 62 F.  Please see grading rubric on the online syllabus.  Please note that Union County College does not permit the assignment of minus final grades (such as A-, B-, or C-), so I will try not to give such grades on your work.

How to reach me: on voice mail at (908) 709-7182; by e-mail at chewning@ucc.edu; on WebCT at http://webct.ucc.edu; by regular mail at UCC:

Dr. Susannah Chewning
Union County College
1033 Springfield Avenue
Cranford, NJ   07016

Schedule of Assignments: All assignments are in Making Literature Matter (aka Schilb and Clifford) unless otherwise indicated. In addition to these assignments, there will be homework given in class. Some of these assignments will be posted electronically. However, if you miss a class and miss the homework, you should speak to a classmate to get the assignment--don't count on me to give you assignments. Please also look at http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/virtualit/default.asp?uid=0&rau=0 and at the book companion site http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/makinglitmatter/ for more information.  Also please check the online version of this syllabus if you miss class to be sure you have not missed any changes to the syllabus.
Day Date Assignment
Th 1/24 Introduction to class; writing sample
T 1/29 Making Literature Matter, pp. 3-37.  Response due on two of the four texts on these pages: Franz Wright's "Flight," James Wright's "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota," Daniel Orozco's "Orientation," or Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl."
Th 1/31 "Mothers and Daughters: Stories," pp. 339-362 -- response should be on two of the three stories.
T 2/5 Handout, "Night of the Iguana" by Tennessee Williams.
Th 2/7 Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, scenes 1-5. Response due.
T 2/12 Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, scenes 6 and 7. Response due.
Th 2/14 Read Chapter 5, "Writing About Poems." Response due.  Rough draft of paper 1 due. 
T 2/19 Tuesday and Wednesday, no class: rough draft conferences.
Th 2/21 "True Love," pp. 618-628.  Paper 1 due.
T 2/26 "Love as a Haven?," pp. 898-905. Response due.
Th 2/28 "Relating Birth and Death," pp. 1380-1386. Response due.
T 3/4 Spring Break, no classes.
Th 3/8 Spring Break, no classes.
T 3/11 Mid-term examination in class.
Th 3/13 "My Mother, the Crazy African" and "You in America" by Amanda Ngozie Adichi; "Toward the End" by Sefi Atta; "An African Elegy," by Ben Okri.
T 3/18 Visit the Ishmael Beah link for background information. Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, chapters 1-11. Response due. Anyone who read A Long Way Gone in ENG 101 should complete approximately 100 pages of Bergner's In the Land of the Magic Soldiers.
Th 3/20 Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, chapters 11-17. Response due.  Alternate assignment: pp. 100-160 in Bergner.
T 3/25 Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, chapters 18-21. Response due.  Alternate assignment: complete Bergner.
Th 3/27 The poetry of Langston Hughes, pp. 1094-1104.  Film: Voices and Visions: Langston Hughes.  Paper 2 due.
T 4/1 "Romantic Dreams," pp. 628-646 and "The Appearance of Love," pp. 682-695.  Response due. Sec. 017 CCSSE Survey in class.
Th 4/3 Read background information on Sylvia Plath's life and the poems of Sylvia Plath (see this link). Response due.
T 4/8 Read "Critical Commentaries on Sylvia Plath." Response due.  Film: Voices and Visions: Sylvia Plath.
Th 4/10 Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Young Goodman Brown"and Toni Cade Bambara, "The Lesson." ENG 102-022 at 3:30pm: no class; email your response to me by 4:50pm.
T 4/15 Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "The Yellow Wallpaper" and "Confined for Her Own Good," pp. 930-941.  Response due.
Th 4/17 Further discussion of "The Yellow Wallpaper" and paper 3.
T 4/22 Flannery O'Connor, "A Good Man is Hard to Find" and "The River" (handout on WebCT). "Misfit Justice: Critical Commentaries on a Story," pp. 1317-1328. Response due.  Paper 3 due.
Th 4/24 "The Things They Carried," Tim O'Brien. Handouts: Poetry about war.  Response due.
T 4/29 William Faulkner, "A Rose for Emily."  Response due.
Th 5/1 "Hills Like White Elephants," by Ernest Hemingway and "Pagan Night" by Kate Braverman. Response due.
T 5/6 "The Gilded Six-Bits," by Zora Neale Hurston. Response is optional. All revisions and extra-credit due by this date.
Th 5/8  No class.  Conferences to discuss rough drafts of the final research paper.
T

T

 5/13

5/13

 ENG 102-017: Final Examination, 9:30am-12:00pm.  Final paper due.

ENG 102-022: Final Examination, 3:30pm-6:00pm.  Final paper due.

 

ENG 102 English II                                                                                                                                         Paper Topics

Please note that all papers must be typed and must conform in format to the MLA System of Documentation and Style.  Late papers will not be accepted.  I also cannot accept faxed or e-mailed papers.  There is a computer lab in the library; if your computer or printer at home stops working, you can always print it there. 

Paper 1, due February 21:  Write a paper discussing your response to a theme, issue, topic, or character in Tennessee Williams' play, The Glass Menagerie.  The paper should be based on an idea or interest you have in the play and how that idea is expressed or addressed in the play.  Do not summarize the plot or give me a first-person review -- you should take a section of the play or an idea and interpret and explain it in detail, quoting extensively from the text.  You do not have to include secondary research in the paper, but you can if you would like to -- just be careful to cite all sources and include a Works Cited page.

Paper 2, due March 27:  A Long Way Gone: Please choose one of the following topics and write a paper of at least three pages (750 words). You must use two secondary sources from newspapers, electronic databases, or books: no websites. There is a list of library sources following the list of questions. Please follow the MLA Style (which means documenting your sources correctly and including a list of Works Cited).  Topics are listed on WebCT and at this link.

Paper 3, due April 17:  Write a comparison/contrast (minimum of 750 words) of two works—two stories, two poems, or one of each—that we have read so far.  We will discuss the format online. Please read "Writing a Comparative Paper" and the sample paper on pp. 87-95.

Paper 4, due May 13:  Research paper, a minimum of 1,200 words. This will be an author biography in which you discuss how the author’s life affected his or her work (we will discuss the organization of this paper in class — see handout on web board).  You must use at least four secondary sources (EBSCO, Literature Resource Center, Project Muse, Lexis-Nexis, actual books, journals, films and CD-ROMs). If you use a website, it must be in addition to these other resources.  Only use websites that end with .edu, .gov, or.org.  A sample author biography will be distributed in class and is available on my webpage.