Critical appreciation

I found DFW's syllabus for an English literature class he taught at Pomona College. I don't know if you've ever written a syllabus before, but this one is a work of art. If one of your jobs as a grad student has been or is to grade these sorts of papers (your salary is pennies per paper, but you are oh so grateful for the financial assist), you'll appreciate his hard-ass approach to the English language and what constitutes a "done" paper. Here are some of the highlights:

BASIC COURSE SPIEL: The goals of this section of E67 are to survey certain important forms of modern literature - short stories, novels, poems- and to introduce you to some techniques for achieving a critical appreciation of literary art. "Critical appreciation" means having smart, sophisticated reasons for liking whatever literature you like, and being able to articulate those reasons for other people, especially in writing. Vital for critical appreciation is the ability to "interpret" a piece of literature, which basically means coming up with a cogent, interesting account of what a piece of lit means, what to do to/for the reader, what technical choices the author's made in order to try to achieve the effect she wants, and so on.* As you can probably anticipate, the whole thing gets very complicated and abstract and hard, which is one reason why entire college departments are devoted to studying and interpreting literature.

CLASS FORMAT: English 67 is seminar. By way of elucidation, please look at the following gloss from Prof. David Foster Wallace's E67 syllabus for Fall '05: "This is a discussion-based course; it is not a lecture course. What we learn will be driven primarily by the questions, comments, ideas, and energies that you bring to our discussions. In other words we will learn about texts by actively engaging them and each other in our regular meetings."

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*Here's a somewhat sexier riff on "interpretation" from Professor David Foster Wallace's syllabus for one of his past E67s:

We will also, of course, pay great attention to our own acts of interpretation. Are we decrypting, translating, or paraphrasing the texts we read? Demystifying them? Remystifying them? Are we trailing them as literary detectives, or trying them in a readerly court? Are we bathing them in acids to reduce them to their constituent parts? What is at stake for us in reading works of imaginative literature, and what social- and solitary functions does it perform?

(end of page 1)

COURSE RULES & PROCEDURES pps 2 & 3

(2) You are required to do every last iota of the reading and writing assigned, exactly in the format requested, and it needs to be totally done by the time class starts. There is no such thing as "falling a little behind" in the course reading; either you've done your homework or you haven't. Chronic lack of preparation (which is easy to spot) will lower your grade by one whole number.

(3) Even in a seminar course, it seems a little silly to require participation. Some students who are cripplingly shy, or who can't always formulate their best thoughts and questions in the rapid back-and-forth of a group discussion, are nevertheless good, serious students. On the other hand, as Prof. (DFW) has pointed out supra, our class can't really function if there isn't student participation -- it will become just me giving a half-assed, ad-lib lecture for 90 minutes, which (trust me) will be horrible in all kinds of ways.

(7) Part of your grade for written work will have to do with your document's presentation. "Presentation" has to do with evidence of care, of adult competence in written English, and of compassion for your reader.

(end of pps 2 -3)

English 67, Section 02, Spring '05

Caveat Emptor Page

(4) Your instructor has high standards for the written work you turn in. Take another look at Course Rules and Procedures Items 4 and 7 on page 3 of the syllabus. I know that many professors say this kind of hard-ass stuff at the beginning of the term but don't actually mean it or enforce it as the course wears on. I, however, do mean it, and I will enforce it--feel free to verify this with students who've taken other classes with me. If you want to improve your academic writing and are willing to put extra time and effort into it, I am a good teacher to have. But if you're used to whipping off papers the night before they're due, running them quickly through the computer's Spellchecker, handing them in full of high-school errors and sentences that make no sense, and having the professor accept them "because the ideas are good" or something, please be informed that I draw no distinction between the quality of one's ideas and the quality of those ideas' verbal expression, and that I will not accept sloppy, rough-draftish, or semiliterate college writing. Again, I am absolutely not kidding. If you won't or can't devote significant time and attention to your written work, I urge you to drop E67-02 and save us both a lot of grief.