Below are a number of possible topics for our brief reports and a schedule of dates for reports. You may well not know a thing about the topic you choose; that is the point: to find out about a subject and present it in an entertaining and intelligent manner to the rest of us. We will generate some other topics in class, such as "frame stories."
9/28 Mitzi Weber & Christina Zezzo: Mary Shelley's Life 9/30 Mae Ford, Pam Jankowski: The Gothic Colleen: The Dawn of Science Fiction 10/5 10/7 Ivy Felix & Lauren Miller: Close reading the being's reflection 10/12 Erica Nielson: prometheus myth 10/14 Carolyn Delicce & Kerry Ellenwood: Aestheticism & Decadence 10/19 Marilyn Hine, Christine DeSantis, Kristin Scafuri: Wilde's life & trials 10/21 Page Thompson: Intro to Kate Chopin's life. 10/26 Tricia Golden: The Awakening; Dana M. & Laura M.: Literary Canon 10/28 Jenn DiGennaro & Keri Cullen: Ambiguous & Ambivalent & Endings 11/2 Robert Kalesse: reception, canon; Aimee Marino: Hurston's life 11/4 Lauren Arruda & Daniell Adamiak: Harlem Renaissance 11/9 Alexis Cooper, Colleen Finnegan & Meredith Kaufmann: dialect 11/11 Karen Levitt, Kellie Davison: metaphor, metonymy 11/16 Stacy Kelly & Kelly Ross: Free Indirect Discourse! 11/18 Cindy Gartner, Michelle Peto: what is modernism, what is postmodern? 11/23 Stacey Grieder Alana Delle Donne: stream of consciousness 11/30 Jenny Sopher
Reports should be brief presentations to the class on a subject of interest to the class. Do not read your report or simply quote from an outside source.
Alternatively, you can come up with your own idea for a presentation. (All kinds of relevant, creative, and thoughtful presentations are encouraged.) You might report on modern movie versions of Frankenstein, for instance. You may also pair up to do a report.
Recommended reference book for literary terms: M.H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms (available at Morris Library in the reference department, PN41.A184 1993).
ambiguity anti-climax/climax bildungsroman biography/autobiography/memoir/diary character criticism defamiliarization/estrangement denotation/connotation detective fiction dialect dialectical thinking discourse denouement deus ex machina description epigraph epistolary eponymous form/content framing free indirect discourse. gothic hegemony historical novel ideology irony literary canon metaphor unreliable narrators omniscient narrators first-person narrators plot point of view prolepsis/foreshadowing roman Ü clef roman Ü theses speech act stock character stream of consciousness