Deborah Burks
Email: burks.29@osu.edu
Office: Galvin 470H
Office Phone: 995-8252
Office Hours: T.B.A.
Home Phone: (419) 222-7652
** I sincerely hope that you will drop by during my office hours to introduce yourself, to ask questions, to seek help in preparing your paper, or simply to be neighborly.
Course Objectives:
1. To gain familiarity with a variety of early modern women's works and a critical understanding of the genres they employed.
2. To understand these works in their cultural contexts by reading them in connection with selected artifacts of early modern culture.
3. To develop analytical skills and research methods currently in use in the field of English studies and to frame our own work in this course as a response to recent scholarship on women writers of the early modern period.
Requirements: There will be frequent reading tests; the dates of these tests will not be announced in advance. Written assignments will include a brief bibliography assignment, a 4-5 page analysis of a text available through the Brown Women Writer's project textbase, and an 8-10 page literary critical paper on one of the major works we are studying. You will also be responsible for two presentations to the class: the first will be a "discussion opener" for which you will become our resident expert on the assigned materials for the day; the second will be a group presentation/performance for our celebration of women writers on the final day of the quarter.
Components of Final Grade:
reading tests: 15%
bibliography 10%
shorter paper: 20%
term paper: 25%
individual presentation: 10%
final day presentation: 10%
attendance/participation: 10%
Attendance Policy: I heartily recommend that you attend every class. Students with more than three unexcused absences risk being dropped from or failing the course. I keep a written record of attendance. There will be no opportunity to make up missed reading tests or presentations.
** All work submitted for this class must be your own. If you have any questions about what constitutes Academic Misconduct, be sure to ask.