English 461/547: Women's Rhetoric and American Slavery

Course Description

Office: LL C-239.
Office Hours: 3:05-5:00 Mon., Tues., Wed., Thurs.
Email: Keith.Miller@asu.edu
Phone: 480.965.7893

Texts:

Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Larry Ceplair, ed., The Public Years of Sarah and Angelina Grimke
Nell Painter, Sojourner Truth
Phillip Foner and Robert Branham, Lift Every Voice: African
American Oratory, 1787-1900
Toni Morrison, Beloved
Octavia Butler, "Kindred" and "Bloodchild" (short story)
bell hooks, Sisters of the Yam

Purpose: Exploring the rhetoric of women pertaining to American slavery, we will investigate different genres--from slave narrative to abolitionist speeches and letters to contemporary nonfiction to contemporary novels and a short story. Primarily, we will examine how women complicate African American male arguments against slavery by intertwining issues of slavery and gender. As a backdrop for this examination, we will also focus on the role of the Declaration of Independence in debates about slavery; Constitutional issues involving slavery; and the roles of the Supreme Court, William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and Abraham Lincoln. We will also consider rhetorical and political dimensions of the time periods in which these texts were written and these speeches were delivered, especially the heyday of abolitionism (1832-1861). We will further investigate nature and effect of various genres--slave autobiography, oratory, letters, a postmodernist novel, and science fiction--in defining issues of white supremacy, patriarchal authority, sexual predation, rape, abolition, and gender equality.

Procedures: You can leave a written message on the box of my office door or in my mailbox in the English office on the 5th floor of the LL Bldg.

You are required to attend all classes, read all assigned materials, and participate intelligently in class discussions. Each of you should participate actively by asking thoughtful questions, offering probing comments, and listening carefully to classmates. Because of the nature of our class discussions, I am keenly aware of each student's success or failure to complete each required reading.

Beginning next week, you will do a weekly entry on an electronic Class Journal (or Class ListServe) that I will set up. You may include any puzzlements, analysis, critiques, braindrizzles, brainstorms, and analyses of any issues raised by your reading or by class discussions. You may also brainstorm about the topic you are contemplating for your term paper while saving your definite, position-taking argument for the paper itself. I grade your journal on your intellectual engagement--not on polish.

You will also write one polished essay of at least 25 pages.
Your essay must make an interesting, well-developed, persuasive argument about a significant topic. You must provide outstanding reasons and evidence for your argument. You must examine the work as a literary or rhetorical text, not simply as a source of revelation about a racial topic. You must read not only the work you choose, but at least three important, substantive works of literary criticism about your topic. You must cite these sources appropriately in your paper. You also need a specific approach, a specific theoretical framework.

Criticism proceeds in large part because critics disagree with each other. If some critic had perfectly analyzed a text, no one would need to keep analyzing it and criticism would die. You must DISAGREE with at least one of your sources. Explaining your disagreement and refuting your source constitutes an important part of the argument that you build. I want to read a FRESH argument that is YOUR argument.

You should begin thinking about the essay early in the term. You need to discuss possible topics with me before beginning work.

You are required to bring in a GOOD draft of the essay to a scheduled, one-to-one Teacher Conference.

Plagiarism is inexcusable and intolerable. Plagiarism in your journal or on your paper will lead to failure in the course. If you have questions about how to cite sources, ask me.

For every student who completes each of these assignments, grades will be assigned as follows:

Overall Class Participation: 20%
Journal: 20%
Essay: 50%
Final Exam: 10%

Graduate Students: You will meet with me once every two weeks for separate discussions. You will complete all assignments as above. You should aim to write a paper that is worthy of being delivered at an appropriate professional conference and that, with further revision, is potentially publishable.