Spring 2002 Syllabus   All American Assignments Be Your Best Grades Instructor Objectives P's and Q's Roster Schedule  Jan. 9-25: Colonial Era Jan. 28-Feb. 15: Antebellum Era Feb. 18-March 18: Postbellum Era March 23-April 29: Modern Era Texts  Franklin, Writings Whitman, selected writings Howells, A Modern Instance Crane, Prose and Poetry Sinclair, The Jungle Hemingway, The Complete Stories Hemingway, By-Line Sandburg, selected writings Capote, In Cold Blood Wolfe, The Right Stuff Cooke, "Jimmy's World" Updated April 25, 2002 © Mark Canada, 2002 mark.canada@uncp.edu

Introduction A remarkable number of notable American writers dabbled in both literature and journalism.  Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway worked as reporters before making their names in the world of letters.  Stephen Crane straddled the line between the two fields during much of his career.  Truman Capote and Tom Wolfe even tried to merge the two fields into new genres, which they called the "nonfiction novel" and "New Journalism." The combination should not surprise us.  Literature and journalism, after all, have much in common, as each seeks to capture the human experience in words.  Indeed, it seems quite natural that someone gifted in writing--a Willa Cather, say--should find success in journalism and then parlay this talent into success in literature.  Newspaper staffs are notoriously full of reporters dreaming of writing the Great American Novel.  Still, the connection is also a tricky, even dangerous one.  Writers of novels and short stories are allowed to use both fact and fiction, perhaps finding inspiration in a real person and then massaging the details to make a good story or capture what they see as the "truth."  Reporters, on the other hand, must stick to the facts--whatever the "truth" might be.  At least, that is what readers--and editors--expect of them.  When one crosses the line, as Janet Cooke infamously did in the early 1980s, the repercussions can be devastating.  When such intimately linked and necessarily distinct fields come together, they provoke some fascinating questions, among them: How did journalism shape the literary styles of those American writers who worked in it?  What material did it provide for those writers?  How and why did they make the leap from reporting facts to inventing fiction?  How many other journalists have made the same leap without being detected?  What is a fact?  What is the truth?  And what's the difference?  Such questions, I hope, will generate some stimulating discussions during this seminar as we read literature and journalism written by Benjamin Franklin, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Rebecca Harding Davis, Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Stephen Crane, Ernest Hemingway, Janet Cooke, and Truman Capote.  In true seminar fashion, each student in the course will conduct independent research on a literary journalist of his or her choosing, assign readings to the rest of us, and guide our discussion of that author in class.  Our exploration will not end in the classroom, however.  We also will visit a modern newsroom, talk with some current and former journalists, write some of our own literary journalism, and, if all goes as planned, visit the home of journalist and poet Carl Sandburg in Flat Rock, North Carolina.  You will collect all of your work in a portfolio, which you will have the option of submitting as a printed document or a Web site.

 

Instructor

 

At Work  Professor Mark Canada 118 Dial Building ETL Department UNC-Pembroke mark.canada@uncp.edu (910) 521-6431 Office hours: MWF 9-10 a.m., TR 10:45-11:45 a.m. At Home  Mark Canada The Canadas

Like the lives of the authors we will be studying, my own life includes sojourns in both journalism and literature.  After studying both journalism and English at Indiana University, I went to work for the Johnson County Daily Journal, where I wrote news and feature articles, copy edited reporters' stories, wrote headlines, and designed pages.  Two years later, I went to work as a copy editor for the much larger News-Sentinel in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  In 1992, I left journalism to attend graduate school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  Although I am now an English professor specializing in early American literature and the English language, I still draw extensively on my experience in journalism, employing my skills in writing, editing, and graphic design as I teach writing, write and edit scholarly material, and manage an online publication called All American: Literature, History, and Culture.  My journalism experience has even seeped into my personal life. In another online publication, called simply The Canadas, I regularly try to capture and share some of the special moments I spend with my wife, Lisa, and our two children, 3-year-old daughter Esprit and newborn son Will.

 

P's and Q's

 

Objectives Language: We will examine the ways that journalism and literature--in similar and different ways--employ language to capture the human experience. Ideas: As we read work in both fields, we will explore many of the ideas expressed in them and examine how the literary form shapes the meaning. Research: One of the most valuable skills you will develop in graduate school is the ability to gather detailed, reliable information.  In this course, you will become familiar with some standard literary reference works and practice finding, evaluating, and incorporating sources.  Communication: The various writing and speaking projects will provide you with the opportunity to develop your written and oral communication skills. Roster  Robert Bean Crystal Craven Shakima Ellis Jessica Hall Mary Harrington Angela Heck Mike Hemminger Jemn Hershberger Lauren Miller Erin Murner Shanna Powers Mary Williams

In the early days of printing, typesetters had to be careful not to mix up the blocks they used to print letters, particularly the p's and q's.  We still say "Mind your p's and q's" when we want people to mind their manners.  Here are some college p's and q's that can help you succeed in this class and in others.  Preparation Before you can succeed, you need to prepare.  Indeed, preparation is the single most important key to success, not only in this class, but in college and in life.  You already have taken the first step by reading this syllabus.  Take a few minutes every few weeks to review this syllabus, which describes not only the assignments, but also my criteria for grading them.  An equally important form of preparation is reading the lesson plan that accompanies each unit.  Several days before coming to class each week, come here to the syllabus and click on the link to that week's unit.  Read the lesson plan carefully, preparing yourself to meet the objectives and to learn the terms described there.  Read any other assignments, as well, and take notes on everything.  Come to class ready to learn.  Finally, review the lesson plan at the end of the week to make sure you have met the objectives and learned the terms.  Participation Once you are prepared to learn, you also need to show up for class and to participate in class exercises and discussions.  Although I do not require attendance in this course, I urge you to attend class regularly and to participate actively in class activities.  Indeed, research shows that active participation dramatically increases the amount a person learns.  If you are shy, take some steps toward becoming more vocal.  During class, volunteer to report on group activities and try to make at least one comment or ask one question during class.  Physical Health Your mind is part of your body.  It should come as no surprise, then, that good physical health can improve your learning and your grades.  Studies have suggested that eating breakfast can improve test performance, that protein can boost alertness, and that exercise can help a person think effectively.  I suggest drinking 8-10 glasses of water each day, avoiding junk food and caffeine, exercising at least a half-hour each day, and maintaining a consistent schedule of seven to nine hours of sleep every night.  Politeness Your grades depend primarily on your performance.  Nevertheless, being polite is good practice for life after college and can help you establish a good rapport with your professors.  Show up for class and conferences on time and wait until class has ended before packing up your books.  Turn in assignments when they are due and avoid making excuses for absences or poor work.  Quality Nothing impresses a teacher or an employer more than work that shines not only in content, but in form.  Invest the time and energy into submitting assignments of which you can be proud. For starters, read each assignment carefully and try to provide exactly what the professor requests.  In addition to researching, writing, revising, and proofreading your work carefully, follow instructions on format, such as use of correct bibliographic citations.  Questions When you need information or help, ask. For example, if you have problems coming to class, keeping up with assignments, or using the computer, see me immediately.  The following statement comes from Disability Support Services: "Any student with a documented disability needing academic adjustments is requested to speak directly to Disability Support Services and the instructor, as early in the semester (preferably within the first class week) as possible.  All discussions will remain confidential."

 

Assignments

 

Antebellum America Philip Freneau William Cullen Bryant (Mary W.) A.B. Longstreet Margaret Fuller Postbellum America Mark Twain (Crystal) Joel Chandler Harris (Robert) Charlotte Perkins Gilman William Sidney Porter (Lauren) Theodore Dreiser (Mary H.) Jack London (Jessica) Modern America Willa Cather (Shanna) John Dos Passos Eugene O'Neill(Mike) Eudora Welty (Erin) Joan Didion Norman Mailer (Jemn) Hunter Thompson Steven Glass (Shakima)

There exists no substantial anthology of works by America's literary journalists.  That's bad news for professors and students seeking a convenient means of studying them.  It is, however, very good news for researchers looking to carve out a niche.  For this course, we will be researchers.  Our mission is to compile an anthology of American literary journalism.  Like anthologies you may have encountered in other courses, this anthology will feature an introduction, a headnote and a bibliography for each historical period, a headnote and a bibliography for each author, access to some of each writer's work, and information about the contributors (you!).  It also will contain some contemporary examples of literary journalism, which you will write.  Descriptions of the components you will create appear below.  Author Headnote and Presentation Choose an author from the list at the left.  In an essay of about 2,000 words, summarize this author's life and work, focusing on his or her literature and journalism.  Specifically, state and develop a claim about the ways literature and journalism come together in the author's writing.  Here are some questions to consider: How did journalism shape the content or style of the writer's literary work?  Why did the writer turn from journalism to literature or from literature to journalism?  How did the writer manage facts, fiction, and "truth"?  Was the writer primarily a journalist, a novelist, or a poet at heart?  Support your claim with evidence from the writer's work, as well as relevant findings from other researchers.  Specifically, the list of works cited should include the titles of at least two primary sources and at least 10 secondary sources.  Include a sidebar listing the writer's major literary works, as well as important details about his or her family, homes, and occupations; if possible, link the titles in this sidebar to online texts at credible Internet sites.  This sidebar also must contain a chronology of the writer's life and an annotated bibliography of at least two credible, thorough secondary sources on the writer.  Finally, create a small study guide to one of the writer's major literary works; this study guide should include publication information about the work, a brief note on its genre, and at least five study questions designed to help readers understand the work's style, themes, and journalistic qualities.  Draft Due: On the day when we are scheduled to discuss your author, you should have posted a substantial draft of your project.  You then will be responsible for leading our discussion of this writer in class.  You may use your study guide, along with group activities, discussion prompts, visual or audio aids, or anything else that you think will help us to explore this writer's literary journalism.Finally, you should be prepared to answer questions from your classmates and me not only about this writer, but also about how he or she fits in the tradition of America’s literary journalists.For guidance, you may want to visit the pages on Truman Capote and Benjamin Franklin.  Creative Project and Presentation Choose a meaningful event, such as a family vacation, a church event, a birthday party for one of your children, or an event in your community.  Using material gathered from interviews, observations, and published sources, write a 1,000-word article or story that recreates this event for a general audience.  Use what you have learned about the techniques of the various literary journalists we have studied in this course. Draft due: On a prearranged day, you will give a presentation to the class on your work.  You may use your group activities, discussion prompts, visual or audio aids, or anything else that you think will help us to explore the process of creating a piece of literary journalism.  Overview In an essay of about 500 words, define literary journalism.  Drawing on our class discussions, as well as your own discoveries while analyzing or writing literary journalism, discuss the ways these two fields intersect.  Over the course of the semester, we will combine our observations to create an introduction to our anthology.  Draft due: April 8, 2001.  Contributor's Note Many readers of our anthology will want to know something about the people who conducted the research and wrote the articles.  For this reason, you will write a brief professional profile of yourself.Draft due: April 8, 2001.  After you have submitted a draft of each of these assignments, you will have the opportunity to revise it as much as you wish before the final deadline, which is 8 a.m. April 22, 2002.

 

Grades

 

A  A student who earns an A has excelled in both skills and knowledge.  In content, clarity, readability, and format, the student's work fully or almost fully meets my criteria.  In short, the student has mastered the material and is likely to succeed in future challenges. B  A student who earns a B has demonstrated many of the same qualities shown by the student who earns an A, but is deficient a few minor areas.  The student has generally mastered the material and is likely to succeed in future challenges. C  A student who earns a C has demonstrated some of the same qualities shown by the student who earns an A or a B.  Although the work is adequate, it suffers from several minor deficiencies.  Nevertheless, the work suggests that the student is competent and is ready to take on future challenges, though he or she may need to shore up some of these deficiencies to succeed. D  A student who earns a D is deficient in at least one major area or many minor areas, but has demonstrated adequate knowledge and skills to merit a passing grade.  The student who earns a D probably will struggle when confronting future challenges. F A student will earn an F for one of the following reasons: The student's work contains a glaring example of plagiarism. The student's work does not meet the requirements of the assignment, such as number of sources or deadline. The student's work contains glaring deficiencies, indicating that the student is unprepared to meet future challenges.

I will evaluate your portfolio twice: once before midterm and once at the end of the course.  Each time, I will assign you a letter grade based on the quality of your portfolio.  Your final grade in the course, however, will depend only on your final portfolio and final interview.  Thus, even if you earn a D on the first evaluation, you may revise your portfolio, use what you have learned to improve on future work, and earn a better grade--perhaps even an A--in the course.  The purpose of this system is to give you an opportunity to continue learning and improving over the duration of the course.  Each time I evaluate your work, I will use the criteria below.  Content The portfolio must contain all the assignments described on this syllabus.  Each individual project in the portfolio should thoroughly and insightfully address its subject with accurate, credible, timely, and relevant information.  Oral remarks made during the presentation, furthermore, should be accurate.  Argumentative essays should state clear, substantive, contestable, and precise claims early and support these claims with appropriate evidence.  Clarity Each written project in the portfolio, as well as oral remarks made during the presentation, should present information in a clear, logical fashion. In general, each paragraph in the written projects generally should begin with a precise topic sentence, followed by clear, well-organized sentences that support the topic sentence. Transitional words and phrases should effectively guide the audience through the information.  Style All work should engage the audience with lively, concise writing or oral presentation and should generally lack lapses in tone, register, punctuation, mechanics, spelling, word choice, and grammar.  Each project should effectively incorporate source material with proper use of attribution, paraphrases, and quotations.  Longer projects should begin with engaging introductions and include satisfying conclusions.  Both written and oral projects should be functional and attractive, conforming to all appropriate professional standards.  In particular, all parenthetical citations and lists of works cited in the written projects should conform to MLA style.  Integrity Each project must be your own work.  That is, except for properly cited quotations, every sentence and phrase must be in your own words.  All interpretations, except for those properly cited, also must be your own.  If you turn in someone else's work, use a source's exact words without placing these words in quotation marks, or use an interpretation you found in a source without giving credit to the source, you are guilty of plagiarism and may fail this course.  You must be prepared to prove that you have done all your own work by showing me your sources and discussing the details of your project with me in conference.

 
 

Schedule

 

Colonial Era	Antebellum Era	Postbellum Era	Modern Era
Week 1 Jan. 11 Read: Syllabus Week 2  Jan. 14 Read: Colonial American Journalism, Colonial American Literature Meet: Main library Jan. 18 Read: Benjamin Franklin, BOSTON AND LONDON (Silence Dogood Nos. 1, 4, and 8); PHILADELPHIA 1726-1757 (The Busy-Body, Nos. 1 and 4; "One Piles a Fidler"; The Trial and Reprieve of Prouse and Mitchel; A Witch Trial at Mount Holly; Lying Shopkeepers; "A certain St-n-c-tt-r"; The Molasses Bill; "A certain C-n-table"; Death of a Drunk; Counterfeits; The Murder of a Daughter; On Protection of Towns from Fire; The Speech of Miss Polly Baker); 1753 Poor Richard's Almanack (skim); The Autobiography (paragraphs 88-98). Week 3  Jan. 21 Holiday: No class  Jan. 25 Read: Benjamin Franklin (This article is different from the one listed above); Franklin, PHILADELPHIA 1726-1757 (Apology for Printers, Statement of Editorial Policy);  The Autobiography (paragraphs 127-144 on Web/pages 1363-1370 in book) [Because I know you have only so much time for reading, I am requiring you to read only the sections of The Autobiography listed above.  If you can spare more time now or later, however, I hope you will read the entire autobiography--particularly Part I, which provides a fascinating inside view of printing in the 18th century.]	Week 4 Jan. 28 Read: Antebellum Literature, Antebellum Journalism; Walt Whitman, “Life in New York,” “Life in a New York Market,” “The Last of Lively Frank,” “The Late Riots,” “Insult to American Citizenship,” “Americanism,” “The Penny Press,” “The New York Press” (all on reserve in ETL Library)     Feb. 1 Read: Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself” Week 5     Feb. 4 Read: William Cullen Bryant (“Thanatopsis,” “Hymn of the City,” timeline, biographical sketch) Feb. 8 Read: Mark Twain, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” “Journalism in Tennessee” Week 6     Feb. 11 Workshop: Author project, overview		Week 6 Feb. 15 Read: Joel Chandler Harris, “Signs of the Fall,” “The Laughing Place,” “The Wonderful Tar-Baby” (on reserve in the ETL Library) Week 7  Feb. 18 Read: William Dean Howells, A Modern Instance Submit: Draft of portfolio  Feb. 22 Read: Stephen Crane, “Parades and Entertainments,” “The Fire,” “When Man Falls, a Crowd Gathers,” “In the Depths of a Coal Mine,” “Howells Fears the Realists Must Wait,” “Stephen Crane in Texas,” “The Blue Hotel,” “Stephen Crane’s Own Story,” “The Open Boat,” “Stephen Crane Tells of War’s Horrors” Week 8  Feb. 25 Read: Theodore Dreiser, biographical sketch, “Dreiser’s Apprenticeship” (Use the links on the latter page to sample a few of his journalistic writings, such as “Electricity in the Household.”) March 1 Read: Margaret Fuller, dispatches (The reading in the ETL Library is also available in The Norton Anthology of American Literature.See page 728.) Spring Break  Week 9 March 11 Read: Jack London, “To Build a Fire,” “Jack London,” biographical sketch (Optional: “Batard,” “The Faith of Men,” “The Scorn of Women,” and “Koolau the Leper”)  March 15 Read: Upton Sinclair, The Jungle Week 10  March 18 Read: William Sidney Porter, “The Gift of the Magi” and “A Municipal Report” March 22 Read: No class March 23 Read: Sandburg  Visit: Sandburg home in Flat Rock, NC	Week 11  March 25 Read: Eudora Welty, “A Worn Path” and “The Demonstrators”  March 29 Holiday: No class  Week 12  April 1  Read: Cather  April 5 Read: Ernest Hemingway, “Hemingway needs no introduction,” “A Free Shave,” “American Bohemians in Paris,” “Bull Fighting a Tragedy,” “Pamplona in July,” “A Paris Letter,” “Notes on Dangerous Game,” “A New Kind of War,” and “London Fights the Robots” in By-Line: Ernest Hemingway; “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” “Old Man at the Bridge,” “Soldier’s Home,” “Big Two-Hearted River: Part I,” “Hills Like White Elephants,” “The Killers,” “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” Week 13  April 8 Read: Truman Capote, In Cold Blood April 12 Read: Truman Capote, In Cold Blood Week 14:  April 15 Read: Eugene O’Neill, A Moon for the Misbegotten April 19 Read: Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff Week 15  April 22 Read: Norman Mailer, selected writings  April 26 Read: Janet Cooke, excerpt from “Jimmy’s World” Week 16  April 29 Submit: Final portfolio

The following statements come from UNCP Disability Support Services: 

·"Any student with a documented disability needing academic adjustments is requested to speak directly to Disability Support Services and the instructor, as early in the semester (preferably within the first week) as possible.  All discussion will remain confidential." 

·"This publication is available in alternative formats upon request.  Please contact Mary Helen Walker, Disability Support Services, Career Services Center, Room 210, 521-6270."