English 406 (Section: TBA)

COURSE SYLLABUS
2010-2011

Teacher: Miss T. Ausman

Room: TBA ; Extra help hours: TBA
Course Days: TBA

Homework Homepage: http://missausmanshomework.blogspot.com

Course Page: http://secondary4english.blogspot.com (there is a link to here from the
homework homepage)

"Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the
human spirit, and where I hope to find not absolute truth, but the truth of the tale, of the
imagination and of the heart." ~ Salman Rushdie

Literature is a conduit into historical and fictive worlds through the imaginative power of
authors willing (and wanting) to comment on society and its discontents, culture and its
transformations, the personal and the private, and life in general.

The Quebec Education Program has three main competencies for our course. You will be reading
and producing texts of the following types: narratives, exposition, explanations, reflections,
reports and plans. We will work with fiction (novels and short-fiction), non-fiction (true-stories,
reports, journals and memoirs), poetry, film, drama (plays and radio plays), and music.

Our competencies are as follows:

1. Uses language/talk to communicate and learn.
2. Reads and listens to written, spoken and media texts.
3. Produces texts for personal and social purposes.

Course Outline:

All Terms: We will be doing two main things throughout all four terms of the year:
- Grammar and Editorial Exercises. For this you will need a dedicated scribbler or
notebook, not a divided section in your binder. I will be taking your work in. In this
notebook, you will also compile a personal glossary of literary terms and conventions
that we will work on together. They will be vital to your success on the final ES.
- Blogging. You will be responding to articles, literature, quotes, questions, film, images,
and music on our course blog. Our course website is above.

Term 1: Our key question will be: “Is a Utopian society possible and/or desirable?”
We will discuss whether the idea of utopia is a dated fantasy or whether we perpetuate a desire
to reach a utopian state (personally or socially). As well, the idea of “utopia” is often linked
more closely with the idea of dystopia (or a utopian state gone totally wrong). We will look at
this pervasive phenomenon through our class novel and then attempt to counter it with a more
optimistic question as to whether a positive utopia could exist or whether it must disintegrate
into oblivion, given the emergence of new conceptions of utopia in fiction of the late 20th
century, including ecotopias, feminist utopias, and religious utopias.
We will examine both historical (non-fiction) and film (stylized) representations of utopias, as
well as look at the persuasive power of media about alternate realities: that they are both
plausible and immediate.

Tentative/Partial reading list in support of a comprehensive LES:

- Animal Farm or Brave New World or 1984
- David Fincher (Director), Fight Club (Hollywood film, 1999)
- Selections from Thomas More, Utopia
- Selections from Henry David Thoreau, Walden
- Shirley Jackson, “The Lottery”
- The writings of H.G. Wells (TBA)
- Orson Welles, War of the Worlds (radio play)
- Trailer from Roland Emmerich, 2012 (Hollywood film, 2009)
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper”
- Non-fiction (historical) accounts of “utopian societies” from the 16th to 21st centuries,
including Marxism, and alternate utopias (ecotopias, feminist utopias, religious utopias,
cults)

Term 2: Our key question in this term will ask, “In what forms, and to what ends, do people
transgress social and cultural boundaries of race and/or identity?”
Building upon our examination of utopia, we will look at the flawed race politics of 20th century
America (ie. that a white society is somehow ideal), reading the works of black authors as well as
white ones – such as John Howard Griffiths who medically turned his skin black to see what it
was like to live as a black person during the 1960s. Our investigation about transgressing
boundaries will take us to an examination of two opposing cultural phenomena: “blackface”
(colouring the skin to appear black for theatre or circus acts) and “passing” (the act of publicly
passing oneself off as a white person despite having some black heritage). We will examine
short fiction, non-fiction, personal memoir, animation, and film from the early 20th century to
the present day. We will arrive by expanding our focus to look at modern short fiction that
reflects other cultures -- Chinese, Indian, Jewish – and to look at migration as not only a form of
literal boundary-crossing but also of cultural migrancy and hybridization.

Tentative/Partial reading list in support of a comprehensive LES:

- Nella Larsen, Passing and/or John Howard Griffiths Black Like Me
- Flannery O’Connor, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”
- Amy Tan, “Two Kinds”
- Jhumpa Lahiri, “Mrs. Sen’s”
- Philip Roth, “The Conversion of the Jews”
- Selections from Frederick Douglass, The Education of Frederick Douglass
- Newspaper accounts of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s from different
perspectives (white and black), and the physical segregation of society
- Selections from National Geographic
- Historical information about Jim Crow theatre, minstrelsy
- Early cartoons enforcing Jim Crow prejudices: “Scrub me Mama with a Boogie Beat”
(1940) and “Little Black Sambo,” (1935), Warner Brothers’ Elmer Fudd in “All this And
Rabbit Stew” and Bugs Bunny’s “Jungle Jitters,”among others
- The music of Fats Waller and others
- Taylor Hackford (Director), Ray (Hollywood film, 2004)
Term 3: Term three will focus primarily on Shakespeare with our reading of Julius Caesar. The
LES and focus question will be announced at the end of term 2.

Term 4: We will read (a) contemporary novel(s) in term four, either independently or in
literature circles. The LES and focus question will be announced during term 2.

Class Procedures:

I have very few explicit rules in my class, except to say that we all must respect one another. My
foremost request is that you do not talk while I am speaking – whether it is during attendance or
when I am at the front of the room speaking to you. It is terribly rude and makes the class long
and difficult if I have to stop and ask everyone to be quiet all the time.

I will ask that you do not listen to iPods in my class; however, I do permit water and a healthy
snack should you bring something small to eat. If my class becomes a mess, I will revoke this
privilege.

Your responsibilities include bringing paper and pencil to class, every class. You need your
English binder, any texts we are studying, and a scribbler for grammar and vocabulary. Most
scribblers are punched with three holes, so you can keep it in your binder. As well, you must
hand in all assignments on time. While I am somewhat flexible about late assignments due to
illness or other excused absences, I expect you to see me the day you return from illness,
whether we have English that day or not, to get your missed work. You need to be caught up at
all times because I will not accept a pile of late assignments at the end of term.

Grading:

All assignments will be graded on the standard QEP rubric of 1 to 5. A rubric will be handed out
for major assignments, and you may approach me at any time for clarification.

GOOD LUCK THIS YEAR! I AM SURE WE WILL HAVE AN ENJOYABLE TIME IN SECONDARY 4
ENGLISH!