Ethics - Syllabus

Howard Sklar, PhD

Department of English

University of Helsinki

Course Syllabus

Fiction, Ethics and the Significance of Reading

Course Syllabus (subject to change)

Howard Sklar, PhD

howard.sklar@helsinki.fi

Course Website: http://www.mv.helsinki.fi/home/sklar

Course Weblog: http://fictionethics.wordpress.com

A few clarifications:

Unless indicated otherwise, all readings are available in my pigeonholes in the departments of English and Comparative Literature. You may copy the articles contained in these pigeonholes, but please take only one article at a time, and be sure to return the master copy to the pigeonholes so that the articles will be available for others!

All required readings must be read before the date of the session in which they are listed. You’ll find them in the yellow folders in my pigeonholes.

All “supplementary readings” are optional…but highly recommended! They also may be used as materials for the papers. I have listed these extra readings on the website at the “Supplementary Readings” link. You’ll find these articles in the green folders.

Paper assignments are explained on the “Course Assignments” page of my website as well as on a handout that will be distributed during the first class session.

“Journal” assignments are also explained on the “Course Assignments” page. I have listed the general topics for these journals below.

30.1.09

Session 1 – Introduction: What Does Ethics Have to Do with Fiction?

Reading (distributed in class)

Robert Frost: “Home Burial”

Journal: “Home Burial”

PART I: THEORETICAL VIEWS ON ETHICS AND FICTION

6.2.09

Session 2 – Theories of Fictional Ethics

Required Reading

Marshall Gregory: “Ethical Criticism: What It is and Why It Matters”

(from the journal Style; available online here)

Journal – Personal Reading: Lasting Effects

13.2.09 – Valentine’s Day Special!

Session 3 – Ways of Knowing Characters, Ways of Approaching Texts

Required Reading

Adam Zachary Newton: “Toward a Narrative Ethics” (from Narrative

Ethics)

Journal – Personal Reading: Ethical Questions

HUOM! NO CLASS ON 20.1.09!

27.2.09

Session 4 – “Moral Sentiments” in Response to Fiction

Required Readings

Tanja Vesala-Varttala: “Sympathy and Reading” (from Sympathy and

Joyce’s Dubliners: Ethical Probing of Reading, Narrative, and

Textuality)

Martha Nussbaum: “Steerforth’s Arm: Love and the Moral Point of View”

(from Love’s Knowledge)

Journal – Personal Reading: Sympathy (optional this week)

HUOM! NO CLASS ON 6.3.09! (due to Reading Week/Kontaktiopetukseton viikko)

PART II: TEXTUAL ETHICS: THE ROLE OF NARRATIVE ANALYSIS

13.3.09 – **Paper #1 due**

Session 5 – Using “Narratological” Approaches to Evaluate Ethical Content

Required Readings

Robert Frost: “Home Burial” (reread)

James Phelan: “Rhetorical Literary Ethics and Lyric Narrative:

Robert Frost’s ‘Home Burial’” (from Poetics Today 25:4;

available online here)

Journal – “Hands”: Ethical Evaluation (prior to next session)

20.3.09

Session 6 – The Influence of Perspective on Reader Response

Required Readings

Sherwood Anderson: “Hands” (from Winesburg, Ohio; text for this story

available online here)

Howard Sklar: “Sympathetic ‘Grotesque’: The Dynamics of Feeling in Anderson’s

‘Hands’” (chapter from doctoral dissertation)

Journal – “Recitatif”: Ethical Evaluation (prior to next session)

27.3.09

Session 7 – Ambiguities, Narrative Uncertainty, and Ethical Understanding

Required Readings

Toni Morrison: “Recitatif” (in Hazel Rochman and Darlene McCampbell,

eds. Leaving Home)

David Goldstein-Shirley: “Race/[Gender]: Toni Morrison’s ‘Recitatif’

(from Corinne H. Dale and J. H. E. Paine, eds. Women on the

Edge: Ethnicity and Gender in Short Stories by American Women)

NO JOURNAL

PART III: EMPIRICAL VIEWS ON THE ETHICAL EFFECTS OF READING

3.4.09

Session 8 – Empirical Study of Literature: Theory, Approaches, Ethical Implications

Required Readings

Jèmeljan Hakemulder, “The Moral Laboratory: Experiments Examining

the effects of reading literature on social perception and moral

self-concept” (summary of doctoral dissertation, available online here)

Gerard Steen and Dick Schram, “The empirical study of literature:

Psychology, sociology, and other disciplines” (from Dick Schram

and Gerard Steen, eds. The Psychology and Sociology of

Literature)

Journal – Impressions on the Validity of Empirical Study

HUOM! NO CLASS ON 10.4.09! (Pitkäperjantai)

17.4.09 – **Paper #2 due** (HUOM! New due date!)

Session 9 – Empirical Study of Literature and “Moral Sentiments”

Assigned Readings

Willie van Peer and H. Pander Maat, “Perspectivation and

Sympathy: Effects of Narrative Point of View” (from Kreuz, R and

MacNealy, M. S., eds. Empirical Approaches to Literature and

Aesthetics)

Willie van Peer, “Justice in Perspective” (from New Perspectives on

Narrative Perspective)

Journal – “Snap Analysis” of an Empirical Study Article

PART IV: CONCLUSION TO THE COURSE

24.4.09

Session 10 – PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY VIEW OF

FICTIONAL ETHICS

(There are no new readings for this session, which mainly will be a discussion of earlier readings and discussions, and a chance to raise other questions that have been left untreated during the course.)