Literature of the City

Fall 2006 Syllabus

EN 377.31
Dr. Ellis
Literature of the City    HU 240
T, Th 4:30-5:45
Office Hours: T, Th 2:30-4:30, W 2-4, and by appt.
jellis@loyola.edu

Required Texts:

Chinua Achebe, No Longer at Ease
**Augustine of Hippo, from City of God. New York: Image, 1958.
Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
Sandra Cisneros, House on Mango Street
Edwidge Danticat, Krik? Krak!
Jane Jacobs, Death and Life of Great American Cities
**Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, "The Service of Faith and Promotion of Justice in Jesuit Higher Education"
Laura Lippman, Butchers Hill
** Thomas M. Lucas, S.J., from Landmarking: City, Church and Jesuit Urban Strategy.
Chicag Loyola University Press, 1997.
**Toni Morrison, “City Limits, Village Values: Concepts of the Neighborhood in Black
Fiction.” Literature and the Urban Experience. Eds. Michael C. Jaye and Ann
Chalmers Watts. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1981. 35-43.
Gloria Naylor, Women of Brewster Place
Albert Wendt, Black Rainbow

**Readings placed on library reserve.

Schedule:

Sept. 5   Introduction
         7   Calvino, Invisible Cities
       12   Calvino, Invisible Cities
       14  **Augustine, from City of God
        19  Achebe, No Longer at Ease
       21  Achebe, No Longer at Ease
        26   **Kolvenbach, “Service of Faith and Promotion of Justice”
        28  Danticat, Krik? Krak!
Oct. 3    Danticat, Krik? Krak!
        5    **Lucas, from Landmarking
      10   Mid-Semester Exam
       12   Literature, the City, and Service Colloquium
       17   Wendt, Black Rainbow
       19   Wendt, Black Rainbow
       24   Jane Jacobs, Death and Life of Great American Cities 1
       26   Naylor, Women of Brewster Place
      31   Naylor, Women of Brewster Place
Nov. 2   **Morrison, "City Limits, Village Values"
        7   Lippman, Butchers Hill
        9   Lippman, Butchers Hill
       14  Jane Jacobs, Death and Life of Great American Cities 2
       16  Presentations on service
      21 Presentations on service
       28 Cisneros, House on Mango Street
       30  Cisneros, House on Mango Street
Dec. 5   PAPER DUE; Paper Workshop
       7   REVISED PAPER DUE; Review for Final Exam

       20 Final Exam, 9 am

Course Requirements:

This course examines the city in written literature and in everyday life in Baltimore. The former is a standard component of English courses at Loyola. The latter is something you (and all people who live in Baltimore) help to create.

We pay special attention to what we might term "the literature of everyday life" as you perform twelve hours of service at a community agency or site in Baltimore with which Loyola has an ongoing relationship. Those service experiences allow you to understand life in Baltimore as created by the people you partner with in service. You contribute to that literature of everyday life as you become more aware of your own place, and Loyola's place, in the city. You add to and analyze that literature in the form of entries you make in the weekly course blog, presentations, and ongoing connections we make between the readings and the city.

The geographical cities portrayed in the works we read include Lagos, Port-au-Prince, Auckland, Havana, New York, and Baltimore. We examine how ideas work in the world: that is, we read literature as a powerful social and cultural document, one that shapes the way people understand, imagine, and live in cities. We also read literature as an aesthetic and artistic expression, a creative experience that invites readers to transcend physical geography and material limitations, to create room for the spirit, for justice, for freedom. In order to read literature as both social and artistic expression, we juxtapose the form the literature takes and the form the city takes. That means we pay attention to structures: the language and shape of the writing, the structural poverty and privilege that make the city.

Along the way, we attend to cities past, present, and future; utopian and dystopian; sacred and profane. In the fourth century, Augustine's City of God introduces terms that continue to haunt imaginings of the city: it is heavenly, a place of sanctity (Jerusalem) and learning (Athens); it is earthly, site of temptation and sin (Sodom and Gomorrah). These terms repeat in varying forms: the city fosters opportunity and confinement, entertainment and fear; the city is the site of pilgrimage and of prison; the city invites enterprise and commerce, but it also threatens to commodify the human.

This examination encompasses architecture, public and private space, social and cultural places. We investigate the way cities are shaped by geography, religion, and language as well as by the more familiar analytical trio of race, class, and gender. We examine the way cities are shaped by colonization, slavery, and violence against people and land. We ask how cities live and die; how individuals form a community; how disparate communities interact. We examine the relationship between the city and country, the city and suburb.

Throughout the course we connect the city in literature to life in everyday Baltimore. A large component of the course reveals why it is particularly appropriate to make this connection at a Jesuit institution. We thus examine the city as site of Jesuit institutions. In this way the course allows us to understand early Jesuit dedication to the materially poor in Barcelona and Rome, as well as the continued Jesuit presence in cities. We focus on the role of Loyola College in the city, allowing us to understand the constitutive role of social justice in Jesuit schools historically and today.

You are expected to read and think about the material before each class, and to present your ideas in class discussions, one fifteen- to twenty-minute oral presentation on the readings (including a typed hand-out containing major points, discussion questions, and sources consulted), one five-minute oral presentation connecting the literature and your service in Baltimore, weekly online discussions on the course blog, and a six-page paper connecting city literature and life (standard fonts and one-inch margins on papers).

I am happy to meet with you during the week prior to your presentations. Additionally, I am available for individual writing conferences (except the day before the abstract or paper is due). An in-class writing workshop will allow you to benefit from others' suggestions as well. Frequent unannounced quizzes on the readings, as well as a mid-semester exam and a final exam, will help ensure that you keep up and allow you to make connections between the readings and the city. I am happy to talk with you at any point about the readings or about your writing. If you cannot make my office hours I would be glad to arrange another appointment.

Attendance and participation are essential and will affect your grade, which will be figured as follows:

Paper 20%
Oral presentations 25%
Weekly contributions to online discussion 10%
Class discussion, attendance, unannounced reading quizzes 25%
Mid-semester and Final Exams 20%

Two absences or fewer will only affect your discussion grade; you are responsible for all material covered and assigned during your absence. You must bring the assigned reading material to class to receive credit for attending class. Your final grade will be dropped as much as a whole letter grade for each absence over two. Do not be late to class. All written assignments must be submitted in both electronic form and paper form, and are due on or before the date indicated. You must email me a file of your presentation, paper proposal, and paper prior to the beginning of class and turn in a hard copy of the work at the beginning of class. Late papers are penalized (one-third of a grade for each day late, for example, from a B to a B-). To receive credit for your presentation, you must give the presentation on the date for which you signed up at the beginning of the semester.

Intellectual Honesty: The English Department regards plagiarism and other forms of cheating as the antithesis of scholarship, learning, collegiality, and responsible citizenship. The department defines plagiarism as any unacknowledged use of another’s words or ideas. This definition applies to non-print media, including the Internet, as well as to books, magazines, journals, newspapers, or other print media.

This course is covered by the Loyola Honor Code. Any students guilty of plagiarizing or cheating on any assignment will fail the course regardless of their grades on other assignments or activities. It is the student’s responsibility to understand what constitutes plagiarism and to avoid it in all assignments. Students should familiarize themselves with the Loyola Undergraduate Catalogue’s statement on “Intellectual Honesty,” as well as with the section “Citing Sources; Avoiding Plagiarism” in Diana Hacker’s A Writer’s Reference, the English Department handbook. Anyone having questions or uncertainties about how to avoid plagiarism should consult the instructor before submitting any assignment. Neither ignorance of the definition of plagiarism nor the lack of intention to deceive constitutes an acceptable defense in matters of scholarly dishonesty.