Carleton University Winter 2013 Department of English
ENGL 4601A: Studies in Contemporary Poetry Thurs. 2:30-5:30 (Please confirm location on Carleton Central) Prerequisite: Fourth-year standing in Honours English or permission of the Department Instructor: Brenda Vellino Office Phone: 520-2600 ext. 2321 Email: [email protected] Office: 1815 Dunton Tower Office Hours: Wednesday: 1-3 or by appointment
TWENTIETH-CENTURY POETRY OF WITNESS: WRITING HUMAN RIGHTS
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course is situated within the emerging interdiscipline of human rights humanities scholarship. Our readings offer encounters with a wide range of world poetry situated in the political, historical, and human rights contexts to and from which they speak. Poets have been both primary and secondary witnesses to the traumas of contemporary history; thus poetry may act as a powerful testimonial form and as a form of countermemory. This course will investigate the ways in which twentieth and twenty-first century poets have responded to state-inflicted political repression, genocide, crimes against humanity, forced exile, torture, illegal detention and disappearance, counterinsurgency campaigns, and suspension of civil rights. It will also consider how they have participated in human rights and transitional justice movements, which seek to record, recognize, remedy, and redress major violations. The course will be divided into three sections: I. Genocides (Armenian, Jewish), II. State Repression: Russia, China, and Chile; and III. Apartheids, Occupations, and Neo-Imperialisms: South Africa, Israel-Palestine, Aboriginal Canada, and the War on Terror. Carolyn Forche makes strong claims for poetry of witness when she writes in her introduction to the course anthology, Against Forgetting: "These poems will not permit us complacency. They come to us with claims that have yet to be filled, as attempts to mark us as they have themselves been marked." We will consider whether and how poetry is an effective medium for witnessing pressing human rights issues by attention to the historical, social, and political contexts to and from which they respond. We will also explore the relationship between poetry and trauma, poetry and witness subjectivity, poetry and the body, poetry and public memory, poetry and history, and poetry and human rights law.
COURSE READING LIST: All books will be at Haven Books, 43 Seneca St. at Sunnyside Ave.
*Carolyn Forche, ed. Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness. New York: Norton, l993. *Brand, Dionne. Inventory. McClelland & Stewart, 2006.
*Armstrong, Jeanette and Lally Grauer, eds. Native Poetry in Canada. Broadview, 2001.
Course Reserve Articles: Chapters and/or articles will be taken from books that I have placed on reserve in the Carleton library.
COURSE ASSIGNMENTS
*Poetry Annotation, worksheet, and summary: due Jan. 17th: 10%
*Two Reader Responses (1 - 2 pages): 5 marks each: 10%
*1 Short Seminar: 25%
*Essay Proposal: due March 22 by email: 5%
*Research Essay (12-14 pages): April 11: 40%
*Seminar Attendance and Participation: 10%
COURSE CALENDAR
Jan. 10: Paradoxes of Human Rights
**Download and read the UN declaration. Underline and circle key words and bring to class, ready to discuss.
Create your own notes toward a Canadian human rights time-line and bring to class for discussion.
*Readings from Library Books on Reserve:
*Alexandra Schulteiss Moore and Elizabeth Goldberg. “Introduction.” Theoretical Perspectives on Human Rights and Literature. Routledge, 2012: 3-18.
*Arthur Kleinman and Joan Kleinman, “Cultural Appropriations of Suffering in Our Time” from Social Suffering, pp. 1-9.
*Cohen and Brau, “Knowing Enough to Feel Too Much.” Truth Claims: Representation and Human Rights.
*Please photocopy these, read, underline, and bring to class for discussion
Jan. 17: Witness Poetics & Witness Positions
*Carolyn Forche, “Introduction,” Against Forgetting
*On Reserve: Shoshanna Felman and Dori Laub, Excerpts from Chapter One: “Education and Crisis”(pages 1-6; pages 25-37): Excerpt from Chapter Two: “Bearing Witness” (pages 67-82) in Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History.
*Stanley Cohen, Excerpts from Chapter One on “Bystanders” (pages 15-20) and from Chapter Three (pages 68-75) in States of Denial: Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering.
*Lacquer, Thomas. “The Dead Body and Human Rights.” The Body, pp. 75-93
**Poetry Worksheet Due in Class for discussion and submission: pick one of the two Margaret Atwood Poems (“Notes Toward a Poem that Can not Be Written” and “Footnote to the Amnesty Report on Torture”).
*See Poetry Annotation and Poetry Worksheet Templates on Web-CT
Wed., Jan. 23, 4-6 p.m.: Poetry Recitathon Gala Fundraiser for PEN Canada: Get 2 extra credit points added to your overall grade for participating! Bring your friends, foes, and family!
I. Genocide Studies: Aftermath and Countermemory
Jan. 24: The Armenian Genocide: The Anti-Elegy as Countermemorial
* “UN Convention on the Prevention & Punishment of the Crime of Genocide”
*Readings On Reserve: Adam Jones, “The Armenian Genocide,” Genocide, pp. 101- 119
*Ramazani, Jehan. “Introduction.” The Poetry of Mourning, 1-31.
*Poems from Against Forgetting: Siamanto and Tekeyan
*from Peter Balakian's June Tree: “In Armenia, 1987,”“The Oriental Rug,” “The History Of Armenia,” ”The Claim” (handout).
Reader Response Due: A Group
Jan. 31: The Shoah/Jewish Holocaust:
*On Reserve: Adam Jones, “The Jewish Holocaust.” Genocide, pp. 147-184. *Young, James E. “Introduction.” At Memory’s Edge” pp. 1-11.
*Poems from Against Forgetting: Nelly Sachs, Miklos Radnoti, Primo Levi, Paul Celan.
*Reader Response Due: B Group
II. Totalitarianism and State Terror:
Feb. 7: Stalin Terror Years:
*On Reserve: Adam Jones, “Stalin's Terror,” Genocide, pp. 124-46.
*Russian Poets: Akhmatova, Pasternak, Mandelstam, Serge (in Against Forgetting)
*Reader Response Due: A Group
Feb. 14: Democracy Struggle in China and Tibet:
*Charter 08 for Reform and Democracy in China: http://www.charter08.eu/2.html
*On Reserve: Adam Jones, “Tibet under Chinese Rule.” Genocide, “ 94-98.
Chinese and Tibetan Poets: Bei Dao in Against Forgetting.
*Tibetan Poet Tenzen Tsundue, Kora: on-line publication: http://www.friendsoftibet.org/download/kora.pdf
Reader Response Due: B Group
Winter Break: Feb. 21-25
Feb. 28: Counterinsurgency Wars in Latin America
*International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, 1993
*On Reserve: “Death Squads” and “Disappearance,” from Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know.
*Chile: Pablo Neruda, Ariel Dorfman; Nicanor Parra, Against Forgetting.
*El Salvador: Claribel Alegria, Against Forgetting; Carolyn Forche “The Colonel” (HO)
March 7: Witness to the War on Terror
*On Reserve: Judith Butler, “Violence, Mourning, Poltics,” Precarious Life, 19-49. *Poetry: Dionne Brand, Inventory
III. Apartheid, Occupation, and Settler-Colonialism:
Mar. 14: Apartheid/South African Poets:
*UN “Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid,” 1973: on-line
*Focus on Black South African Poets Mphahlele and Sepamla (in Against Forgetting);
*TRC poems from Ingrid De Kolk Seasonal Fires (Hand Out)
ESSAY PROPOSAL DUE: March 20th by email.
Mar. 21: Occupied Territory or Holy Land?
*On Reserve: Jeff Halper, “The Key to Peace: Dismantling the Matrix of Control.” The Other Israel, pp. 20-40.
*Yehudi Amichai, Mahmoud Darwish (in Against Forgetting); See also Amichai’s “Yom Kippur” and Darwish’s “Identity Card” (handouts)
*from Rachel Tzevia Back “On the Ruins of Palestine” (Handout)
Mar. 28: Our Home and Native Land? Native Poetry Class One
*UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 2007: online
*On Reserve: Adam Young, “Genocides of Indigenous Peoples.” Genocide, pp. 67-77, 81-89.
*Native Canadian Poets: Rita Joe, Marie Anneheart Baker, Jeanette Armstrong, Wayne Keon: from Lally Grauer and Jeanette Armstrong, Native Poetry in Canada.
*Jeanette Armstrong, “Introduction: Four Decades” (pages xv-xx); Lally Grauer “Introduction: Tuning In, Tuning Up” (pages xxi-xxviii) in Native Poetry.
April 4, 2012: Native Poetry, Class Two
*Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission: http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution
*Nicole Enns Fehr, “Locating Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Global Trends: http://www.beyondintractability.org/case_studies/locating_canadas_trc *Beth Cuthand, Louise Halfe, Marilyn Dumont, and Gregory Scofield: from Lally Grauer and Jeanette Armstrong, Native Poetry in Canada.
Term Essay Due: April 11, 2013 in the English Department drop box, 18th floor Dunton Tower.
Course Assignment Instructions
Poetry Annotation, Worksheet, and Summary: Please chose one of the two Margaret Atwood poems and do a detailed annotation on the poem handout (circling key words and images, noting recurring patterns of words, phrases, space, line-ending, and sound patterning); then using the worksheet guide, fill in the matching sections on your worksheet forms. Finally, do a summary that makes connections between your insights from the worksheet and some aspect of the assigned essay readings for this class. Worksheet instructions and template on are on Web-CT.
Reader Response Papers/Shadow Texts: The aim of this assignment is to provide you with an informal space to respond in-depth to a poem every second week. Roger Simon in The Touch of the Past, suggests that an ethical way of creating a response to testimonial accounts of suffering is to create our own “shadow texts” which engage the unresolved or shadow questions raised by the primary text. Reading Responses should be four to five paragraphs (1-2 pages). One kind of response might be to create a drawing, painting, collage, or poem. Submission of a creative response should be accompanied by a one paragraph explanation of its connection to the poem(s).
*Submission: All response papers are due in class on the day the readings are due. These will be due in alternating weeks depending on whether you are in A or B group.
Short Seminar: each of you will be responsible for giving a brief presentation (20 minutes) based on a focus poem, followed by ten minutes of discussion. Primarily, you are responsible for a strong close reading of your focus poem, followed by a prepared discussion question for the class (which should be written out in your notes). Think of a way to bring the poem alive to your classmates through a good question or some other hook. Please use selected biographical, critical, or historical research to open up your poem. You must indicate your sources to the class orally and in a Works Cited attached to your seminar notes.
Essay Proposal: All students should submit a proposal to me via email by Friday March 22. This proposal should include a working thesis and plan of development that sets forth your preliminary argument. You should include a Preliminary Annotated Bibliography with four sources including the primary source you will be using. Creating an Annotated Bibliography involves giving a three to four sentence description of the resource’s main points and a brief synopsis of its usefulness to your research. Any student needing extra help with conducting research on your topic, should see me in my office hours. Research Essay: Your research essay will focus on a single poet from the course readings. Where available you should consult a complete collection of their work even if this means ordering it from interlibrary loans or getting it from Ottawa U.
*Contextualized Close Reading: The body of your paper should demonstrate an insightful, contextualized close engagement with a major theme or question raised by your chosen poet in three focus poems. Contextualized close reading means giving attention to biographical, historical, social, poetic, and political contexts as these enhance your understanding of the poems under discussion. You may get ideas for themes or questions by going back over course readings on the human rights body, witness, genocide, countermemory, and anti-elegy. Feel free to use course readings as part of your research.
*Interdisciplinary Thinking: Connecting Human Rights and Poetry: This assignment will also require interdisciplinary comparative study of your poem and an alternative memorial project such as an NGO, museum, memorial space, documentary, or website. The last two pages of your essay should be devoted to this interdisciplinary component. How do the poetic project and the activist oriented alternative remembrance project, responding to the same context, differ and converge? The aim of this assignment is to consider the way poetic human rights projects have points of convergence with, divergence from, and contributions to the intersecting field of human rights interventions and practices. Enabling questions students might be encouraged to ask include the following: How do these poetic and other remembrance sites disrupt or reinforce my present knowledge, sense of self, sense of world, sense of cultural or communal inheritances/values? What kind of work are they doing in (counter) public spheres? Do these remembrance practices contest former or current remembrance practices? How do these representations address and/or interrogate the aftermath legacies of human rights violations? Do they operate to contain and bring closure or to open up questions and possibilities of response?
*Acceptable university level research does not include cutting and pasting together critics’ views on your focus poet. Use literary criticism selectively and to enhance your argument. Do not let the critics’ readings undermine or overwhelm your own critical potential and voice.
*When you give examples from the poems, discuss the significance. Use direct quotation, rather than paraphrase from the poems where possible.
*Format: All essays should be typed and double-spaced, with one-inch margins at top, bottom, and sides. Please use standard MLA format for parenthetical citation with a Works Cited. See the MLA Handbook, 7th ed. MLA citation formats are available on- line at the Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University.
*Writing Process: All essays should be enclosed in a folder with annotations of your focus poems, pre-writing notes, notes on your research sources or photocopies of cited pages, and at least one hand-edited draft. This is to ensure that you take the writing through the stages of the writing process.
*Essay Submission: You may hand in essays at the English Dept. office window (18th floor Dunton Tower) at the drop box up until midnight of the day they are due. Never hand an essay in by sliding it under my office door. Always keep a copy of any essay you submit
Essay Submission Package Checklist:
*Brainstorming, pre-writing notes, including notes made on secondary sources, and thorough notes on the poems.
*Photocopies of pages from articles that you quote unless they are from the reserve readings.
*Copies of your annotated poems.
*SASE envelope if you want your essay returned with comments.
COURSE POLICIES
Attendance and Participation: Active participation is essential in a seminar class. I define class participation as both physical and mental presence in class, preparedness, engagement in discussion, and willingness to take risks. You may have two allowable absences for sickness, emergencies or appointments. Subsequence absences will negatively affect your participation grade. Students who miss 50% or more or classes will not pass the course. If you must be absent, please let me know that you will be absent and the reason for your absence.
Essay Submission: Never submit an essay by sliding it under my office door and keep a copy of any work you submit.
Late Assignment Policy: Essay extensions must be arranged with me (for difficult circumstances only) in advance of the due date. Essays handed in late without prior arrangement will not receive any comments. Essays handed in more than one week late without prior notification may not be accepted.
Plagiarism: Intellectual honesty is considered the ground rule of any university level course. Plagiarism is defined in the “Academic Regulations of the University: Instructional Offences” section of the Carleton Undergraduate Calendar as “using and passing off as one’s own ideas the work of someone else without expressly giving credit to another.” If you find yourself tempted to use someone else’s work because of stress, anxiety about your own ability, personal crisis, time crisis, or any other issues, I urge you to let me know about these circumstances, so that we can work together to create the space and means for you to do work of the highest integrity. Please ensure that all sources (including biographical and internet) you use in reading responses, seminars, and essays are properly credited. Grey areas of plagiarism sometimes arise from confusion about what counts as putting things in your own words or paraphrase. This would include direct quotation or mostly direct quotation from a source or sources you do document in your essay but do not indicate as direct quotation. If you change a word or two in a critic’s sentence, this is not acceptable paraphrase. Put altered words in brackets and put the whole sentence in quotes. If I suspect that an essay or portion of an essay has been plagiarized, I am required to submit the essay to the Associate Dean of the Faculty. The penalties for plagiarism are very severe, ranging from failure in the course to expulsion from the university. See “How Not to Plagiarize: www.utoronto.ca/writing/plagsep.html
ACADEMIC ACCOMMODATION
For Students with Disabilities: Students with disabilities requiring academic accommodations must contact a co-ordinator at the Paul Menton Centre for Students with Disabilities to complete the necessary Letters of Accommodation. After registering with the PMC, make an appointment to meet and discuss your needs with me in order to make the necessary arrangements as early in the term as possible. See www.carleton.ca/pmc
For Religious Observance: Students requesting academic accommodation on the basis of religious observance should contact their instructors for alternate dates and/or means of satisfying academic requirements. Such requests should be made during the first two weeks of class, or as soon as possible after the need for accommodation is known. Instructors will make accommodations in a way that avoids academic disadvantage to the student.
For Pregnancy: Pregnant students requiring academic accommodations are encouraged to contact an Equity Advisor in Equity Services to complete a letter of accommodation. The student should also meet with the instructor to discuss accommodations required.
STUDENT SERVICES
Writing Tutorial Service: If you know your writing needs improvement, do consider free tutoring with this service. Contact the Centre for Applied Language Studies, 215 Paterson Hall, 613- 520-6632. See www.carleton.ca/wts
Carleton Health and Counselling Services offers confidential consultations with medical doctors, lab testing, and emotional support for difficult times from Monday to Friday, 8:00- 4:00. They are located in the Carleton Technology Building on the east side of campus. Check out their website at www.carleton.ca/health or call to make an appointment at 613-520-6674.