This course meets on Thursday nights from 6-9 in LL 60. Readings are listed below on the syllabus. In addition to completing the weekly reading, submitting the writing assignments, and attending class regularly and participating in discussion, you are required to participate in asynchronous Blackboard discussions every week. .

Victorian culture generated a variety of different and often conflicting models of "manliness."  These models played increasingly important roles in a wide variety of important social and cultural movements over the course of the century, from the emergence of a middle class patriarchy to the development of feminist consciousness to the creation of the Aestheticist movement. Moreover, manliness was more often than not defined by the Victorians in opposition to such concepts as “woman,” “female desire,” “unmanly men,” and so on. In this course, we will be reading a number of different types of texts – poetry, prose, and novels; some written by men, some by women – and will attempt to survey this topic in as much of its variety as we can. The focus will be on critical reading and writing. Readings will be drawn from the work of Carlyle, Dickens, Emily Brontë, Eliot, Kingsley, Newman, Stevenson, Pater, Wilde, Kipling, and Symonds. Supplemental readings will be drawn primarily from the work of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler.

*You have the option to revise and resubmit this critical paper for an additional grade. If you choose to do so, your first draft grade will count for 10% of your final grade and the revision grade will count for 10%. Revisions are due in the digital drop box on the final day of class, May 4.

The first two papers should be 3-5 pages in length. Topics can be found on Blackboard by following the "Writing Assignments" link. These papers are to be submitted to the digital drop box in Blackboard no later than 11:59.59 pm on the due date. Papers will be reduced a grade for every day they are late. Use MLA Format for citations.

A note on getting started: It is crucial that you find a thesis to argue and cite evidence from the text(s) to support your claims. Effective note-taking on the novels is very important, because you will need to use your notes to find the evidence to support your claims. An effective literary thesis should assert something about the meaning of the work that is not obvious to everyone who has read it. To get started with formulating your thesis, I usually invite students to identify a topic first and then find an issue which is worth arguing about. If you can formulate that issue as a question, your general answer to that question can be your thesis. You may email me a thesis paragraph in advance if you wish some feedback before you actually complete the paper. You are allowed to pick up and develop points made in class discussion on your papers provided they are related to the topic you have chosen. See the topics on Blackboard for further instructions. Please note that Dan Bivona will be holding synchronous office hours on Wednesdays, 2-5 pm and will be glad to address any questions you might have then. Kimber Knutson's office hours are Thursdays, 4-6 (kimber.knutson@asu.edu). If you cannot meet during office hours, please let us know and we will schedule a more convenient time to meet.

The final paper, a critical research paper, should be 10-12 pages in length. You should use at least three secondary sources. Again, topics will be found on the course Blackboard in the "Writing Assignments" area.

Weekly contributions to online class discussion: These are mandatory in this class. Everyone is required to pose at least 6 questions to the group online over the course of the 16-week term. In addition, every student is required to respond at least once per week to other students' or my questions. You will be graded both on the frequency of your contributions and on the quality of them. The best strategy is to post at least 3 or 4 thoughtful responses and/or questions per week. Please be sure to make them thoughtful, paragraph-long responses, not quick, two-word responses, and be sure to observe the conventions of civil online discourse (no flaming or personal remarks about other students in the class). Questions may deal with the previous week's reading or with the upcoming week's reading. You may ask questions or make responses that relate current material to material introduced earlier in the course, but please do not pose questions about a novel that the rest of the class will not have read for two more weeks. Questions and responses should be posted no later than midnight MST on Wednesday of each week to be counted for that week.

Please note that all work done for this course must be your original work. If you make use of the insights of other writers, you must cite them in your papers using MLA citation format. Punishments for plagiarism can be very severe and may include a permanent grade of "failure with academic dishonesty" or suspension from the University. If you have any questions about what constitutes plagiarism, please ask me.

These books are currently available at the ASU Bookstore.