This course will teach critical thinking and research-based argument through a close analysis of film and works of fiction about the suburbs. You will enjoy this class if you’re one who loves reading a text or watching a film, and then finding meaning in small details. If you don’t enjoy this type of analysis, this class might not be a good fit for you.

Course Information

English 2010, taken after successful completion of English 1010, continues English 1010’s emphasis on critical thinking and research-based argument, while adding a focus on inquiry and analysis. This course reinforces strategies that foster careful reasoning, argumentation, and rhetorical awareness of purpose, audience, and genre. The course emphasizes critically evaluating, effectively integrating, and properly documenting sources. A major researched project is required. Subtopics in English 2010 may vary.

Course Description and Themes

Alcoholics. Domestic workers. Neo-Nazis. Stay-at-home moms. Depressed teens. Such is the cast of characters we’ll discover behind the façade of suburban decorum.

For many Americans, suburbia is where we situate our ambitions for upward mobility and economic security, our ideals of freedom, and our longings for social harmony and spiritual uplift. However, the reality of the suburbs is often quite different: cookie-cutter houses, despotic homeowner associations, keeping up with the Joneses, backbreaking mortgages, and xenophobia. Sadly, the promises and dreams of suburbia are often illusive and unrealized.

Exploring representations of the American suburbs from 1945 to the present, we’ll ask a number of tough questions: Is suburbia a classless place? Are there different types of suburbs? Who’s allowed into the suburbs and who’s kept out? Engaging a novel, a short story, films, and a play, as well as literary criticism and selected historical and sociological studies, we’ll attempt to answer these questions by examining a diverse range of suburban and urban spaces, from the white-collar suburbs of John Cheever’s “The Country Husband,” to the impoverished, cramped housing on Chicago’s South Side in Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, to the changing demographics and turf wars of Venice Beach, California, to the final glowing years of the placid Detroit suburbs in Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides.

Course Objectives

In English 2010, you will join a larger conversation about literature/film and ideas. To that end, we will explore selected critical theories and secondary source material to supplement our engagement with the primary texts. However, as we venture into the realms of history, culture, and literary theory, please remember that close reading will be the foundation of everything we do.

Please purchase these editions of the texts.

• John Cheever, “The Country Husband” (Available on Canvas under “Files”)
• Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun, New York: Vintage, 2004
• Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides, New York: Picador, 2009

Films

You are responsible to view these films. Some are available through the SUU Library. They are also available to rent online.

• Revolutionary Road, Dir. Sam Mendes, 2008
• American Beauty, Dir. Sam Mendes, 1999
• American History X, Dir. Tony Kaye, 1998
• Little Children, Dir. Todd Field, 2006

Written Communication

Construct arguments that demonstrate rhetorical awareness of purpose, audience, and context

• Employ accurate and diverse diction, appropriate tone, and construct sentences varied in structure
• Define the scope of the research question or thesis completely and determine key concepts.
• Design and construct arguments for specific audiences with an emphasis on organizing, sustaining, and maintaining consistency
• Employ standard grammatical usage, including correct punctuation for discipline, and adhere to a specific style guide

Information Literacy

Identify, locate, evaluate, and effectively and responsibly use and share information to achieve an intended purpose.

• Access and document information and relevant sources using a variety of search strategies
• Correctly use primary and secondary sources (including paraphrase, summary, and quotations) in ways that are true to the original text

Inquiry and Analysis

Systematically explore issues through the collection and analysis of evidence that result in informed conclusions and judgments.

• Break complex topics or issues into parts to gain a better understanding of them.
• Arrange and synthesize evidence to reveal insightful patterns, differences, or similarities related to focus

Much of this class is run as a workshop; that is, you will bring sections of your major writing assignments to class for students to read and comment on. These workshops are a substantial part of your grade. If you favor writing papers a day or two before they’re due, rather than constructing them piece by piece well before the due date, then this class might not be a good fit for you.

Formal Written Assignments: This semester, you will be responsible for three full-length critical analysis essays and an annotated bibliography. A critical analysis essay expresses the writer’s opinion and/or evaluation of a text by breaking the text down and studying its parts. Unless otherwise stated, all written assignments should be double-spaced, typed in 12-point Times New Roman font with one-inch margins. You will submit these assignments to Canvas.

Tentative Schedule of Formal Written Assignments:

• A1 (Critical Analysis Essay) — 3-5 pages — Due Week 4
• A2 (Critical Analysis Essay) — 3-5 pages — Due Week 7
• A3 (Annotated Bibliography) — 5-6 pages — Due Week 11
• A4 (Researched Paper) — 8-10 pages — Due Week 15

Participation: Be on time. Be prepared to participate. There is no sitting on the sidelines in this class—everyone needs to be an active member of our community. Speak up for your ideas and try out new ones. Take outrageous positions. Fall on your face. Respectfully challenge and critique each other. Have fun. But please do not text during class. This will reduce your attendance/participation grade.

Response Papers (QUACs): For each course text (beginning Week 2) you will write a 150 to 250 word response. These responses will be part of our discussion when we meet together. You might also find that ideas for your longer assignments grow out of these short responses. We will discuss the format for these responses in class during the first week. All QUACs are to be uploaded to Canvas by the beginning of class or they are late.

Grading

• Formal Written Assignments (A1, A2, A3, A4) — 60%
• Attendance and Participation — 20%
• QUACs & Other Ancillary Work — 20%

Your grade in English 2010 is based largely on improvement. I am more interested in your steady effort, growth, and achievement throughout the semester than in the letter grade of any individual assignment. Developing your reading and writing skills takes diligence, patience, and dedication. You will be rewarded for steady improvement on your papers. You will also be rewarded for consistent and thoughtful participation in class. Coming to class with missing or incomplete work or coming without having read and reflected on the required texts, will lower your participation grade. I will gladly discuss your progress with you throughout the semester, but I will not forecast your final grade.

As outlined on the course rubric (which we will review in class), I will assign a grade for your essays based on six areas: argument (thesis), support, organization, depth of topic exploration, style, and use of sentence variety, grammar, spelling, and usage. Broadly, an A essay is exceptionally well conceived, developed, organized, and expressed. A B essay offers a consistently strong response to the assignment. A C essay will generally demonstrate the competence expected of college-level writing and reasoning while exhibiting certain shortcomings. A D essay will offer a limited argument/analysis in response to the assignment wherein shortcomings largely outweigh the positive qualities of the writing.

While I will provide comments in these six areas as I evaluate your essays, my grade will be holistic rather than analytic; that is, I will base my grade on an overall impression of your performance in these six areas.

English 2010: Schedule for Assignment 1 (Subject to Change)

English 2010: Schedule for Assignment 2 (Subject to Change)

English 2010: Schedule for Assignments 3 and 4 (Subject to Change)

Late Work: There is a twenty to twenty-five percent penalty for late work. If an assignment is more than a week late, I will not accept it. Also, while I will provide a grade for late work, I will not comment on it. If you’re ill and believe you won’t meet an assignment deadline, you must speak with me before the due date. There are no makeups for in-class workshops and roundtables.

While I will enter the due dates for your major writing assignments in Canvas, I will not do so for your smaller assignments. The due dates for smaller assignments are listed on the course schedule, and it is your responsibility to be aware of those due dates. Generally, you will have a small assignment due each class period.

Course accommodations don’t apply to class workshops and correspondence assignments.

Zoom: There will be no live stream or recordings of classes. All course materials will be posted to Canvas “Files.”

Email: Often, I will send important emails to the class, so make sure your email is set to receive notifications from Canvas.

EMAIL: On weekdays, I will respond to your emails within twenty-four hours. After 4:00 pm on Fridays, I won’t respond to emails until Monday morning.

GRADING RESPONSE TIME: I will return your graded essays about two to three weeks after they are due—enough time for you to apply my comments and suggestions to your next essay.

Attendance: I permit three excused absences per semester (no questions asked—though you cannot makeup in-class workshops and roundtables, and it’s your responsibility to get class notes from another student). Each unexcused absence will reduce your attendance/participation grade by five points. With ten unexcused absences, I will ask you to withdraw from the course. And please come to class on time. Each tardy will be a two-point reduction from your attendance/participation grade.

Please consider any rental costs as part of the course fees.

[In the suburbs], we are all locked in our Tower of Babel…
--Peter Rowe, Making the Middle Landscape

My God, the suburbs! They encircled the city’s boundaries like enemy territory…
--John Cheever, “Moving Out”

Our course readings, films, and classroom discussions will often focus on mature, difficult, and potentially challenging topics such a racism, misogyny, physical violence, sexual violence, and self-harm—topics that, though difficult, are necessary to honestly and thoroughly explore the American suburbs. All the films in this course are R-rated and contain graphic, brutal violence including rape, pervasive racist language, strong sexuality and nudity, drug use, and disturbing content. I urge you to watch the trailers for these films and check their content on Common Sense Media. I will not make special accommodations if you’re uncomfortable with our course texts. If you are at all uncomfortable with the course texts, please consider if this 2010 section is a good fit for you.

Theories, causes, and effects of:

• The male gaze (Mulvey, Devereux)
• The female gaze
• Tribalism
• Hegemonic/toxic masculinity (Terry A. Kupers)
• Gender Order Theory (R.W. Connell)
• Social conflict theory
• Teen suicide
• Racism and generational transmission of racism
• Materialism and happiness
• The American Dream
• Men’s relationship with the domestic (Anna Gavanas, Joyce Y. Lee)
• Midlife crises (Hannah Kiesow)
• Objectification Theory (Barbara Fredrickson)
• Codependency (Gloria Cowan, Darcy Granello)

Other topics:

• Effective and ineffective responses to teen suicide
• Anxiety and depression in the suburbs
• Parenting styles in our texts and their effects on children
• The effects of war on veterans in the suburbs
• Causes of anxiety and depression in the suburbs

Topics/issues in our primary texts that interest you:

As you research a topic that interests you, keep your eye out for a critical lens you might apply to one or two of our primary texts. Or perhaps you’ve encountered a lens or theory in your major or elsewhere that you feel could provide an interesting analysis when applied to our primary texts.

You cannot use Dessner or Tognoli for A4.

If you can’t find a topic or a critical lens, feel free to use the male gaze. I’ve found that it is widely applicable to many of our primary texts. Consult the handout on the male gaze I provided. Note that I provided a couple quotations about the male gaze from two female scholars but no bibliographic information. If you use their ideas, you’ll have to find the bibliographic information for those sources.