English 8755: Irish Literature (Contemporary Northern Irish Literature)

 

Spring 2016

W 1-3:30

2325 25 Park Place

CRN 17922

 

Prof. Marilynn Richtarik

Office: 2336 25 Park Place

Office Hours: W 3:45-4:45 p.m. and by appointment

Cell phone: (404) 502-2746 (between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m.)

E-mail: mrichtarik@gsu.edu

Please do not text me or leave messages on my office phone. Call me on my cell with urgent concerns, since I don’t check e-mail constantly. E-mail me regarding less urgent matters.

 

PURPOSE:

 

Creative writing in Ireland has long been intimately connected with politics. In Northern Ireland, which stayed in the United Kingdom when the rest of the island acquired self-government in 1922, the political situation became a primary focus for most of the best writers after the outbreak of violence there in the late 1960s between unionists, primarily Protestant, who want Northern Ireland to remain British, and nationalists, chiefly Catholic, who favor the idea of an Irish state consisting of the whole island. As Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney remarked, after sectarian rioting in the summer of 1969 prompted the deployment of British troops to Northern Ireland “the problems of poetry moved from being simply a matter of achieving the satisfactory verbal icon to being a search for images and symbols adequate to our predicament.” These Troubles lasted nearly thirty years and claimed more than 3,500 lives. The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 is usually seen as marking the end of this conflict, although the largest single atrocity of the Troubles took place after the peace negotiations, and the new political arrangements in the North seem perpetually to be hanging by a thread. In a real sense, the peace process that began in the mid-1980s remains an ongoing affair. In this course, we will be reading texts that document contemporary reactions to various phases of the peace process from the perspectives of a number of creative writers from varied backgrounds who have proved themselves to be astute observers of the political scene. Our aim will be to recognize how the recent history of Northern Ireland is reflected in Northern Irish literature of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

 

REQUIRED TEXTS:

 

Brian Friel                                Making History (first produced in 1988)

Seamus Heaney                        The Cure at Troy (first produced in 1990)

Michael Longley          The Ghost Orchid (originally published in 1995)

Deirdre Madden           One by One in the Darkness (originally published in 1996)

Seamus Deane                          Reading in the Dark (originally published in 1996)

Bernard MacLaverty    Grace Notes (originally published in 1997)

David Park                               The Truth Commissioner (originally published in 2008)

 

If you don’t have these books already, please buy them immediately–the GSU bookstore will start returning unsold books early in the semester. You will need blue books for the exam.

 

ASSIGNMENTS AND GRADING:

 

I expect everyone to participate actively in the seminar, and I naturally want you to attend regularly, arrive on time, and complete the reading by the day it is listed on the syllabus. Beginning January 20, you will be required to turn in response papers (1-2 pages, typed, double-spaced) on each week’s reading assignment. These should not be summaries of the reading, but should demonstrate active intellectual engagement with it. In these papers you may articulate questions, note points you wish to raise in the discussion, make connections with other works we have read, apply criticism or history that you have been reading on your own, and float ideas for further research. These papers will be graded on a scale of 1 to 5, and your satisfactory completion of them will be factored into your participation grade. Response papers may not be handed in late, but you will be excused once for failing to turn one in. If you turn in eleven papers, I will count the best ten. If you have to miss class, you may e-mail me your paper by the beginning of the class session to prove that it was completed on time. To receive a grade on it, please bring a hard copy to class the next time we meet (i.e. I will not print out papers for students).

 

Class will often begin with discussion of a scholarly article or book chapter. Each of you will kick off discussion in this way once during the semester. This assignment consists of several parts:

1) finding an appropriate piece to bring to the group’s attention (ideally, something specifically pertaining to that day’s reading and either very good or interestingly bad), 2) summarize the essay for the class, providing a full citation and written outline to go with your oral presentation, 3) discuss some of the author’s rhetorical strategies in the piece and assess their success or failure, and 4) invite class discussion of the author’s argument and supporting points.

 

A major focus of the course will be the research paper due on April 20. This should be a 12 to 15-page paper consisting of original thought and research. As you know even better than I do, a semester is a short time in which to complete scholarly work of any quality. Thus, you will need to start planning your paper almost immediately. Decide as soon as possible which work you think you want to write about. Read the relevant text and then start looking for articles and books on your subject. On March 30, I want each of you to turn in an annotated bibliography with at least five items on it in addition to the primary text you are considering, along with a tentative thesis statement. (You may or may not cite these exact sources in your final paper, but I am looking for evidence of an advanced stage of research three weeks in advance of the due date.) The last two class sessions are reserved for student presentations based on their research papers. These should be no longer than fifteen minutes and prepared with oral presentation in mind, as a conference paper would be. Each presentation will be followed by a brief question and answer session. Late papers will be graded down. Plagiarism, of course, will not be tolerated. If you are not sure what constitutes plagiarism, see the university’s Policy on Academic Honesty (Section 409). Remember that students can visit the Writing Studio (2420 25 Park Place) for feedback on work in progress.

 

The final exam for this course is intended to provide you with practice in the sort of writing students are required to do on comprehensive examinations. It will consist primarily of essay questions that will ask you to synthesize what you have learned over the semester: to make generalizations and support them with concrete examples from the texts we have studied, and to place these texts into appropriate literary, social, theoretical, and historical contexts. There will also be a few identification questions. Make-up exams will be given at my discretion.

 

Grades will be determined as follows: Paper (including annotated bibliography) = 50%, Class Participation (including discussion, response papers, dissection of scholarly article, and the presentation based on research) = 25%, and Final Exam = 25%. (The 25% of your grade that depends on participation will be figured on a 100-point scale, with 50 points coming from response papers, 20 points from discussion, and 15 points each from your presentations on a scholarly article and based on your research paper.) Excessive absences (more than two) will cause your final grade to be lowered.

 

Professors are required to submit annual teaching portfolios documenting their work in the classroom. Please notify me in writing if you have any objection to your graded work being included in my portfolio.

 

GSU syllabi statements: The course syllabus provides a general plan for the course; deviation may be necessary. Your constructive assessment of this course plays an indispensable role in shaping education at Georgia State. Upon completing the course, please take time to fill out the online course evaluation. Students who wish to request accommodation for a disability may do so by registering with the Office of Disability Services. Students may only be accommodated upon issuance by the Office of Disability Services of a signed Accommodation Plan and are responsible for providing a copy of that plan to instructors of all courses in which an accommodation is sought.

 

 

 

                                                           Schedule of Assignments

 

 

W 13 Jan.         introduction to the class

 

W 20 Jan.         Friel

 

W 27 Jan.         Heaney

 

W 3 Feb.          Longley

 

W 10 Feb.        Madden

 

W 17 Feb.        Deane: Parts I and II

 

W 24 Feb.        Deane: Part III

 

T 1 Mar.                      mid-point of the semester: last day to withdraw with a “W”

 

W 2 Mar.         MacLaverty: Part One

 

W 9 Mar.         MacLaverty: Part Two

 

W 16 Mar.       spring break–no class

 

W 23 Mar.       Park: “Beginnings,” “Henry Stanfield,” “Francis Gilroy”

                                    annotated bibliography and tentative thesis statement due

 

W 30 Mar.       Park: “James Fenton” and “Danny”

 

W 6 Apr.          Park: pp. 242-end

 

W 13 Apr.        presentations

 

W 20 Apr.        presentations and review for final

research paper due

 

W 27 Apr.        final exam  10:45 a.m.-1:15 p.m.