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Howard Sklar, PhD |
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Department of Modern Languages (English Philology) University of Helsinki |
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Course Syllabus: Fiction, Ethics and the Significance of Reading (Updated on 30.1.2011 — see Session 3) |
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Fiction, Ethics and the Significance of Reading Course Syllabus (subject to change) (Updated on 30.1.2011 — see Session 3) Howard Sklar, PhD howard.sklar@helsinki.fi Course Website: http://www.mv.helsinki.fi/home/sklar Course Weblog: http://fictionethics.wordpress.com Consultation: Fridays, 12:15-13:00, Room 4018, Main Building (new side), or by appointment Course Requirements Regular attendance/active participation in discussions (10%) Assigned readings (evaluated through papers, journals and active participation) Weekly journal, recording own responses to particular topics discussed in the course (10%) One short paper (5-6 pages) on the philosophical dimension of fictional ethics (40%) One short paper (5-6 pages) analyzing a fictional narrative in terms of its ethical content, the ethical questions that it raises, and/or its potential ethical effects on readers (40%) A few clarifications: Unless indicated otherwise, all readings are available in my tray in the Department of Comparative Literature. You may copy the articles contained in the folders there, but please take only one article at a time, and be sure to return the master copy to the appropriate folder 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 folder in the tray. All “supplementary readings” are optional…but highly recommended! They also may be used as materials for the papers. You’ll find these articles in the green folder. Paper assignments are explained on the “Course Assignments” page of my website as well as on the handout “Paper Assignments and Journals,” which will be distributed during the first class session. Stories for the second paper can be found in the black folder. “Journal” assignments are also explained on the “Course Assignments” page and on the paper assignments handout. I have listed the general topics for these journals below. 28.1.2011 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 4.2.2011 Session 2 – Strengths and Weaknesses of Some Theories of Fictional Ethics Required Reading Marshall Gregory: “Ethical Criticism: What It is and Why It Matters” (from the Journal Style; available online here) Richard Posner: "Against Ethical Criticism" (in the journal Philosophy and Literature 21.1 (1997) 1-27; available online here) Journal – Personal Reading: Lasting Effects? Supplementary Reading (not required): J. Hillis Miller: “The ethics of reading” (in Theory Now and Then) Noël Carroll, “Art, narrative, and moral understanding” (in Jerrold Levinson, ed., Aesthetics and Ethics: Essays at the Intersection) Adam Zachary Newton: “Narrative as Ethics” (in Narrative Ethics) 11.2.2011 Session 3 - Addressing Some Objections to Ethical Criticism Required Reading Daniel R. Schwarz, "A Humanistic Ethics of Reading" (in Todd F. Davis and Kenneth Womack, eds. Mapping the Ethical Turn: A Reader in Ethics, Culture and Literary Theory, 2001) J. Hillis Miller, “Is There an Ethics of Reading?” (in James Phelan, ed. Reading Narrative: Form, Ethics, Ideology) Journal – Personal Reading: Ethical Questions Supplementary Reading (not required): Wayne C. Booth, "Why Ethical Criticism Can Never Be Simple" (in Davis and Womack; also from the journal Style; available online here) Martha C. Nussbaum: “Exactly and Responsibly: A Defense of Ethical Criticism” (in Davis and Womack; available online here) Richard Posner: “Against Ethical Criticism: Part Two” (in Philosophy and Literature, 22.2 (1998) 394-412; available online here) James Phelan: “Narrative Discourse, Literary Character, and Ideology” (in James Phelan, ed. Reading Narrative: Form, Ethics, Ideology) Andrew Gibson: “Introduction” (in Postmodernity, Ethics and the Novel: From Leavis to Levinas) 18.2.2011 Session 4 – “Moral Sentiments” in Response to Fiction Required Readings Martha Nussbaum: “Steerforth’s Arm: Love and the Moral Point of View” (in Love’s Knowledge) Journal – Personal Reading: Sympathy (optional this week) Supplementary Readings (not required): Suzanne Keen, “A Theory of Narrative Empathy” (in Narrative 14:3; available online here) Susan Feagin: “Imagining Emotions and Appreciating Fiction” (in Emotion and Literature) Susan Feagin: “Sympathy and Other Responses (in Reading with Feeling: The Aesthetics of Appreciation) Kathleen Lundeen: “Who Has the Right to Feel?: The Ethics of Literary Empathy” (in Davis and Womack; earlier version, from the journal Style, available online here) Tanja Vesala-Varttala: “Sympathy and Reading” (in Sympathy and Joyce’s Dubliners: Ethical Probing of Reading, Narrative, and Textuality) Howard Sklar: “Narrative Structuring of Sympathetic Response: Theoretical and Empirical Approaches to Toni Cade Bambara’s ‘The Hammer Man’ (in Poetics Today 30:3, 561-607, 2009; available online here) HUOM! NO CLASS ON 25.2.2011! PART II: TEXTUAL ETHICS: THE ROLE OF NARRATIVE ANALYSIS 4.3.2011 – **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’” (in Poetics Today 25:4; available online here) Journal – “Recitatif”: Ethical Evaluation (prior to next session) Supplementary Readings (not required): Charles Altieri: “Lyrical Ethics and Literary Experience” (in Davis and Womack; Earlier version, from journal Style, available online here) HUOM! NO CLASS ON 11.3.2011! (due to Reading Week/Kontaktiopetukseton viikko) 18.3.2011 Session 6 – Ambiguities, Narrative Uncertainty, and Ethical Understanding Assigned Readings Toni Morrison: “Recitatif” (in Hazel Rochman and Darlene McCampbell, eds., Leaving Home) Howard Sklar: “‘What the Hell Happened to Maggie?’: Stereotype, Sympathy and Disability in Toni Morrison’s ‘Recitatif’” (forthcoming article in Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies; special issue, “Representing Disability and Emotion”) David Goldstein-Shirley: “Race/[Gender]: Toni Morrison’s ‘Recitatif’ (in Corinne H. Dale and J. H. E. Paine, eds. Women on the Edge: Ethnicity and Gender in Short Stories by American Women) NO JOURNAL (due to paper assignment) Supplementary Readings (not required): Toni Morrison: “Introduction” to Playing in the Dark bell hooks: “Postmodern Blackness” (in Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman, eds., Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader) 25.3.2011 - **Paper #2 due** Session 7 – Wrestling with Conflicting Responses to Complex Characters Required Readings Sherwood Anderson: “Hands” (in Winesburg, Ohio; text for this story available online here) Adam Zachary Newton: “We Die in a Last Word: Conrad’s Lord Jim and Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio”, pages 71-79 and 104-124 (in Narrative Ethics) Supplementary Readings (not required): Howard Sklar: “Sympathetic ‘Grotesque’: The Dynamics of Feeling in Anderson’s ‘Hands’” (chapter from doctoral dissertation, The Art of Sympathy: Forms Of Moral and Emotional Persuasion in Fiction) Wayne Booth: “Doctrinal Questions in Jane Austen, D. H. Lawrence, and Mark Twain” (in The Company We Keep) Martha Nussbaum: “Steerforth’s Arm: Love and the Moral Point of View” (see Session 4) Meir Sternberg: “Order of Presentation, Delayed and Distributed Exposition, and Strategies of Rhetorical Control” (from Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction) Robert Coles, “Finding a Direction” (in The Call of Stories: Teaching and the Moral Imagination) |
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Howard Sklar Homepage |
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Sklar - Research |
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Ethics - Course Description |
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Ethics - Syllabus |
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Ethics - Extra Readings |
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Ethics - Papers |
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Ethics - Lit Texts |
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Emotions - Course Description |
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Emotions - Syllabus |
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Emotions - Papers |
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Disability Studies and Lit |
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Sklar - Bio |
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Sklar - C.V. |