The Romantic Novel
This course got hijacked by Trinity's COVID closure, and the second half happened exclusively on Slack. It was a bummer; I generally hate teaching night classes but this was a great group and I was learning a lot.
This was my first time discarding the research paper as the final assignment in an upper-level research-intensive class. Instead, I designed a kind of un-essay assignment, which I called "advocacy dossier" (see "written work" below). The assignment emphasized the skills that I think a research paper should develop--independent research, creative connection-making, focusing focusing focusing, developing a debatable argument--but widened the audience for the final project, and encouraged students to connect what they learned in our class to their pre-existing interests and bodies of knowledge.
I also assigned discussion questions. This always goes super well, if you do a little bit of modeling and feedback at the start of the semester. We would start each class with a mini-lecture from me, and then we would chat about the discussion questions we most want to discuss, and then we would discuss them for the rest of class. I mean, look at this question about The Woman of Colour:
This was my first time discarding the research paper as the final assignment in an upper-level research-intensive class. Instead, I designed a kind of un-essay assignment, which I called "advocacy dossier" (see "written work" below). The assignment emphasized the skills that I think a research paper should develop--independent research, creative connection-making, focusing focusing focusing, developing a debatable argument--but widened the audience for the final project, and encouraged students to connect what they learned in our class to their pre-existing interests and bodies of knowledge.
I also assigned discussion questions. This always goes super well, if you do a little bit of modeling and feedback at the start of the semester. We would start each class with a mini-lecture from me, and then we would chat about the discussion questions we most want to discuss, and then we would discuss them for the rest of class. I mean, look at this question about The Woman of Colour:
The character Dido (if my memory is correct) is the only character in the novel to speak in dialect which seems to create a false characterization of her in the context of her agency, understanding, and religious beliefs. She comes across as bright, lucid, and pious (traits held similarly in high regard by most of the other characters in the novel). I couldn't help but wonder how the reader's opinion of Dido might change had she been given the same diction and dialect as the rest of the characters in the novel. In what ways is Dido defined by the way she speaks? How exactly would she change in the view of the audience as well as the view of the characters around her had her voice been written in a similar manner to those characters?
The other new thing I tried this semester was a little round-up at the end of class. With ten minutes left, I would create a new page in moodle called "stuff we want to remember about [novel]," and we'd go around the room and each share the insight that most excited us and I'd type it all up. These pages most obviously served as a memory-aid when it came time to work on final projects, but they also solidified the knowledge-making we were doing as a group, and gave us insight into how others in the class were understanding our investigations.
British Romanticism is best known for its poetry. But beloved novelists like Jane Austen and Mary Shelley were also Romantic writers, and their novels only get better when we read them in the strange and exciting context of other Romantic novels written by women (such as Maria Edgeworth’s Harrington, about an anti-Semite who discovers he’s a terrible person and spends the rest of the book trying to be less terrible).
Taken together, the novels in this course are concerned with female sexuality and interracial desire, slavery and biracial identity, male authority and the family, class politics and the changing dynamics of labor: topics that were crucially important to women and thus the proper sphere for women’s writing, as these novels implicitly argue. Moreover, these topics are as relevant now as they were two centuries ago. Therefore, this class centers on women who wrote novels concerned with what we now call social justice: novels whose realism seeks to critique social problems and the condition of the nation.
REQUIRED TEXTS
Anonymous, The Woman of Colour
Jane Austen, Persuasion
Maria Edgeworth, Harrington
Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton
Mary Hays, Memoirs of Emma Courtney
Mary Shelley, Mathilda
Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria; or, The Wrongs of Woman
WRITTEN WORK
Discussion questions
For six of our class meetings, you will post a discussion question to moodle. These questions should be 100-200 words and should begin with an observation or a quote. A really effective question then reframes some of the problems of the text and then tries to get at internal logical problems and paradoxes, or to think through the novel’s consequences, implications and applications. Questions are due at midnight before class. Read your classmates’ questions before class begins.
I will grade your questions and offer brief suggestions for improvement, but you will receive an A for writing them thoughtfully and on time. April 7 is the last day you can write a discussion question; at that point we’ll shift gears to your final project.
Final project scaffolding
Hitting deadlines (3/31, 4/14, 4/21) with work that shows thought and effort.
Final research project
Which book from the syllabus do you think demands a wider readership right now? Who should read it? Why? In order to answer these questions, you will produce an advocacy dossier for your chosen novel. That dossier will include:
If you prefer, you may write a more traditional argument-driven research essay. Your deadlines will be the same. Graduate students would write an essay of around 20 pages; undergraduates around 15.
SCHEDULE
Secondary readings are on moodle
1/21 Introduction
1/28 Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria; or, The Wrongs of Woman
Introduction and all appendices to Maria in the Broadview edition
2/4 Mary Hays, Memoirs of Emma Courtney, volume one
Introduction and all appendices to Memoirs in the Broadview edition
2/11 Memoirs of Emma Courtney, through the end
Brian Michael Norton, “Emma Courtney, Feminist Ethics, and the Problem of Autonomy”
2/18 Mary Shelley, Mathilda
Introduction and all appendices to Mathilda in the Broadview edition
2/25 Anonymous, The Woman of Colour, through p. 104
Introduction and all appendices to The Woman of Colour in the Broadview edition
**If you haven’t written any discussion questions, start now**
3/3 The Woman of Colour, through the end
Brigitte Fielder, “The Woman of Colour and Black Atlantic Movement”
Catherine Hall, review of Children of Uncertain Fortune: Mixed-race Jamaicans in Britain and the Atlantic Family, 1733-1833
3/10 Maria Edgeworth, Harrington, through ch. 9
Introduction and all appendices to Harrington in the Broadview edition
spring break
3/24 Harrington, through the end
Angelina del Balzo, “‘The Feelings of Others’: Sympathy and Anti-Semitism in Maria Edgeworth’s Harrington”
3/31 Jane Austen, Persuasion, volume one
Introduction and all appendices to Persuasion in the Broadview edition
***Preliminary bibliography due***
4/7 Persuasion, through the end
Jason Solinger, “Jane Austen and the Gentrification of Commerce”
***Last day to submit discussion questions***
4/14 Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton, volume one
Introduction and all appendices to Mary Barton in the Broadview edition
***Annotated bibliography due***
4/21 Mary Barton, through the end
Final presentations
***Draft of manifesto due***
Final project due 5/5 at noon in my mailbox
Taken together, the novels in this course are concerned with female sexuality and interracial desire, slavery and biracial identity, male authority and the family, class politics and the changing dynamics of labor: topics that were crucially important to women and thus the proper sphere for women’s writing, as these novels implicitly argue. Moreover, these topics are as relevant now as they were two centuries ago. Therefore, this class centers on women who wrote novels concerned with what we now call social justice: novels whose realism seeks to critique social problems and the condition of the nation.
REQUIRED TEXTS
Anonymous, The Woman of Colour
Jane Austen, Persuasion
Maria Edgeworth, Harrington
Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton
Mary Hays, Memoirs of Emma Courtney
Mary Shelley, Mathilda
Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria; or, The Wrongs of Woman
WRITTEN WORK
Discussion questions
For six of our class meetings, you will post a discussion question to moodle. These questions should be 100-200 words and should begin with an observation or a quote. A really effective question then reframes some of the problems of the text and then tries to get at internal logical problems and paradoxes, or to think through the novel’s consequences, implications and applications. Questions are due at midnight before class. Read your classmates’ questions before class begins.
I will grade your questions and offer brief suggestions for improvement, but you will receive an A for writing them thoughtfully and on time. April 7 is the last day you can write a discussion question; at that point we’ll shift gears to your final project.
Final project scaffolding
Hitting deadlines (3/31, 4/14, 4/21) with work that shows thought and effort.
Final research project
Which book from the syllabus do you think demands a wider readership right now? Who should read it? Why? In order to answer these questions, you will produce an advocacy dossier for your chosen novel. That dossier will include:
- A manifesto that endorses your novel (no more than two pages)
- A list of at least five texts from other artistic traditions that should be viewed, read, or heard alongside your novel, with short prefatory comments for each
- A list of five secondary sources, drawn from your bibliography, that illuminate relevant aspects of your novel, each of which you condense into a 500 word annotation
- A bibliography of at least 15 sources that you consulted as you worked on your dossier
- A concluding letter where you reflect on your research, your process, and your learning
If you prefer, you may write a more traditional argument-driven research essay. Your deadlines will be the same. Graduate students would write an essay of around 20 pages; undergraduates around 15.
SCHEDULE
Secondary readings are on moodle
1/21 Introduction
1/28 Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria; or, The Wrongs of Woman
Introduction and all appendices to Maria in the Broadview edition
2/4 Mary Hays, Memoirs of Emma Courtney, volume one
Introduction and all appendices to Memoirs in the Broadview edition
2/11 Memoirs of Emma Courtney, through the end
Brian Michael Norton, “Emma Courtney, Feminist Ethics, and the Problem of Autonomy”
2/18 Mary Shelley, Mathilda
Introduction and all appendices to Mathilda in the Broadview edition
2/25 Anonymous, The Woman of Colour, through p. 104
Introduction and all appendices to The Woman of Colour in the Broadview edition
**If you haven’t written any discussion questions, start now**
3/3 The Woman of Colour, through the end
Brigitte Fielder, “The Woman of Colour and Black Atlantic Movement”
Catherine Hall, review of Children of Uncertain Fortune: Mixed-race Jamaicans in Britain and the Atlantic Family, 1733-1833
3/10 Maria Edgeworth, Harrington, through ch. 9
Introduction and all appendices to Harrington in the Broadview edition
spring break
3/24 Harrington, through the end
Angelina del Balzo, “‘The Feelings of Others’: Sympathy and Anti-Semitism in Maria Edgeworth’s Harrington”
3/31 Jane Austen, Persuasion, volume one
Introduction and all appendices to Persuasion in the Broadview edition
***Preliminary bibliography due***
4/7 Persuasion, through the end
Jason Solinger, “Jane Austen and the Gentrification of Commerce”
***Last day to submit discussion questions***
4/14 Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton, volume one
Introduction and all appendices to Mary Barton in the Broadview edition
***Annotated bibliography due***
4/21 Mary Barton, through the end
Final presentations
***Draft of manifesto due***
Final project due 5/5 at noon in my mailbox