Course syllabus

 

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ENGLISH 361

Reinventing Ireland

SEMESTER 1, 2019

15 points

 

Lecture times: Tuesdays 12-1pm

                          Thursdays 12-1pm

                          (please consult SSO for room allocations)

 

Tutorial times: Please consult SSO for details

 

Convenor:  Dr Jan Cronin, room 605, Arts 1.

Office hour: by appointment. 

Email: j.cronin@auckland.ac.nz

 

Lecturers:      Dr Jan Cronin

Assoc. Prof Malcolm Campbell (1 guest lecture)

email: m.campbell@auckland.ac.nz

 

Tutor:             Dr Jan Cronin

Well-being always comes first

We all go through tough times during the semester, or see our friends struggling. There is lots of help out there - for more information, look at this Canvas page, which has links to various support services in the University and the wider community.

 

Course delivery format

This course is taught via two lectures per week (weeks 1-12) and one tutorial per week for ten weeks (weeks 2-11 inclusive). 

 Course Description:              

‘Reinventing Ireland’ provides an opportunity to explore globally relevant issues of memory, identity and the burden of the past through the study of Irish literature and cultural experience.

Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, Ireland serially reinvented its social and political realities. Unsurprisingly, cultural narratives of ‘Irishness’ remain in a perpetual state of revision and reconfiguration. This course combines historical and theoretical frameworks to explore reinventions of Ireland and ‘Irishness’ through a range of novels, plays, short stories and poetry.

Between the early 1990s and the present, Ireland has seen an unprecedented acceleration of social and cultural change. Our focus is the retrospective negotiations of Irish history and identity that characterise Irish literature of the 1990s and the 2000s and the treatment of contemporary Ireland in Irish literature since 2000.

Our explorations are based around two nodes, which reflect the dynamics of reinvention: ‘Retrospective Negotiations’ and ‘The New Ireland (?)’. ‘Retrospective negotiations’ initially pairs early 20th century literary imaginings of Ireland with contemporary literary reinventions of late 19th and early 20th century Ireland and Irishness. We explore contemporary reworkings of mid-late twentieth century Ireland and the emergence of Ireland as a postcolonial nation. ‘The New Ireland (?)’ reflects on Ireland’s rapidly changing identity since the millennium. We examine the collision between alternatively imagined communities, and the relationship between postcoloniality and multiculturalism in contemporary Irish literature.

 

Course objectives

  • To introduce students to Irish literature and Irish historical and cultural contexts
  • To enhance students’ close reading, analytical and communication skills
  • To develop students’ ability to think critically about their own cultural inheritance through study of Irish literature

 

Expected learning outcomes

  • Advanced close reading skills in relation to multiple genres
  • Ability to think critically about texts and culture
  • Ability to engage with theoretical concepts of global relevance from the field of Irish studies
  • Ability to construct and effectively express reasoned arguments and interpretations using appropriate evidence

 

Prescribed Texts:

Sebastian Barry, The Steward of Christendom [play -  contained in the Methuen Drama Anthology of Irish Plays (2008)]
Elizabeth Bowen, The Last September [novel]
Seamus Deane, Reading in the Dark [novel]
Roddy Doyle, The Deportees [short stories]

Claire Keegan, Walk the Blue Fields [short stories]

Brian Friel, The Home Place [play]
Patrick McCabe, Winterwood [novel]
Martin McDonagh, The Cripple of Inishmaan [play - contained in the Methuen Drama Anthology of Irish Plays (2008)]
Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, The Fifty Minute Mermaid [poetry]
Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, The Dancers Dancing [novel]
JM Synge, The Playboy Of The Western World [play - e-text through library database]

Selected poetry of W.B Yeats available through 'Reading Lists'

 

Recommended Texts:

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (revised edition 2006)

Terence Brown, Ireland: A Social and Cultural History 1922-2002 (2004)

Claire Connolly (ed), Theorizing Ireland (2002)

Marianne Elliott, When God Took Sides: Religion and Identity in Ireland (2009)

Diarmaid Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland (2005)

Eoin Flannery, ‘Fanon’s one big idea: revising postcolonial studies and Irish studies, in Ireland and Postcolonial Studies (2009), pp. 182-232.

R.F.  Foster, The Irish Story: Telling Tales and Making it up in Ireland  (2001)

Luke Gibbons, Transformations in Irish Culture (1996)

Colin Graham, Deconstructing Ireland: Identity, Theory, Culture (2001)

Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland (1995)

---, The Irish Writer and the World (2005)

Peadar Kirby, Luke Gibbons and Michael Cronin (eds) Reinventing Ireland: Culture, Society and the Global Economy, ed. (2002)

Edna Longley and Declan Kiberd, Multi-culturalism: the view from the two Irelands (2001)

Ian McBride (ed), History and Memory in Modern Ireland (2001)

David McWilliams, The Pope’s Children: Ireland’s New Elite (2005)  

Kevin Whelan, ‘The revisionist Debate in Ireland’, Boundary 2 31.1 (2004) 

 

Recommended viewing

* highly recommended viewing for first two weeks of course

The Wind that Shakes the Barley (Ken Loach, 2006)*

Michael Collins (Neil Jordan, 1996)*

Five Minutes of Heaven (Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2009)

The Butcher Boy (Neil Jordan, 1997)

The Commitments (Alan Parker, 1991)

The Quiet Man (John Ford, 1952)

In Bruges (Martin McDonagh, 2008)

Six shooter (Martin McDonagh, 2004)

 

Weekly Schedule

Unless otherwise specified, all lectures are delivered by Jan Cronin

Week 1: March 5 & 7

Lecture 1: Introduction

Lecture 2: ‘Historians Telling Tales’ (Malcolm Campbell)

NO TUTORIALS IN WEEK 1: It is highly recommended that students watch The Wind that Shakes the Barley this week.

NODE 1: RETROSPECTIVE NEGOTIATIONS

 

Week 2: March 12 & 14

Lecture 1: W.B. Yeats

(selected poetry available through 'Reading Lists')                      POETRY

Lecture 2: The Last September (1)                              NOVEL

TUTORIAL Topic: Key ideas [6 page extract from Kevin Whelan, 'Between Filiation and Affiliation: the Politics of Postcolonial Memory’ (see 'Reading Lists')] and Yeats’s ‘Easter 1916’ (See 'Reading Lists')

 

Week 3: March 19 & 21

Lecture 1: The Last September (2)

Lecture 2: The Home Place                                                                PLAY

[In week 3, volunteers will be sought to rehearse scenes from Martin McDonagh’s work to perform in lectures in week 5].

TUTORIAL Topic: Comparative work: The Home Place and The Last September

 

Week 4: March 26 & 29

Critical skills exercise due Monday 25 March @4pm

Lecture 1: The Steward of Christendom                                   PLAY

Lecture 2: The Playboy of the Western World                         PLAY

TUTORIAL Topic: The Steward of Christendom

 

 

Week 5: April 2 & 4

Lectures 1 & 2: The Cripple of Inishmaan                                          PLAY

TUTORIAL Topic: The Cripple of Inishmaan (with reference to The Playboy of the Western World)                                 

 

Week 6: April 9 & 11

Lectures 1 & 2: The Dancers Dancing                                                 NOVEL

TUTORIAL Topic: The Dancers Dancing and Kelly J.S. McGovern “No Right to Be a Child”: Irish Girlhood and Queer Time in Éilís Ní Dhuibhne’s The Dancers Dancing (See ‘Reading Lists’)

MID-SEMESTER Break Mon 15 - Sat 27 April

 

Week 7: 30 April & 2 May

Lecture1 & 2: Reading in the Dark                            NOVEL

TUTORIAL topic: Reading in the Dark

 

FIRST ESSAY DUE FRIDAY 3 MAY @ 4pm

 

NODE TWO: THE NEW IRELAND (?)

Week 8: May 7 & 9

Lectures 1 & 2: Winterwood     NOVEL

TUTORIAL Topic: Winterwood and extract from Shirley Peterson, ‘Homeward Bound: Trauma, Homesickness and Rough Beasts in O’Brien’s In the Forest and McCabe’s Winterwood’ (see 'Reading Lists')

 

Week 9: May 14 & 16                      

Lectures 1 & 2: The Fifty Minute Mermaid                                           POETRY

TUTORIAL Topic: The Fifty Minute Mermaid

 

Week 10: May 21 & 23        

Lectures 1 & 2: Walk the Blue Fields SHORT STORIES

TUTORIAL Topic: Walk the Blue Fields

 

Week 11: May 28 & 30

Lectures 1 & 2: The Deportees and Other Stories                    SHORT STORIES                                                                  

TUTORIAL Topic: The Deportees and Other Stories and extract from Declan Kiberd on Multiculturalism (see ‘Reading Lists’)           

Week 12: June 4 & 6

Lectures 1 & 2: Film Screening The Commitments (the adapted text)

NO TUTORIALS IN WEEK 12

FINAL ESSAY DUE FRIDAY 14 JUNE @ 4PM

 

Workload:

The University of Auckland's expectation for 15-point courses is that students spend 10 hours per week on the course. Students manage their academic workload and other commitments accordingly. Students attend two hours of lectures each week for 12 weeks and participate in a one-hour tutorial each week for ten weeks. This leaves seven hours per week outside the classroom in teaching weeks (and ten in non-teaching weeks) to prepare for tutorials and assignments.

Deadlines and submission of coursework:

Deadlines for coursework are non-negotiable. Extensions will only be granted for compelling reasons, such as illness, or other unforeseen emergencies, and a Doctor’s certificate (or equivalent) must be provided to the convenor.

An extension must be requested by email to the convenor in advance of the due date for the assignment, unless there is a genuine cause preventing this, in which case the extension should be sought as soon as is practicable after the due date. Any work handed in late without an extension will not be marked.

Inclusive learning:

Students are urged to discuss privately any impairment-related requirements face-to-face and/or in written form with the course convenor.

Advice on success in this course:

  • Get ahead in the reading for this course! Week 1 is deliberately without prescribed reading. This is to enable you to devote your course time to getting through The Last September by week 2. Please ensure you take advantage of this opportunity.
  • Weeks 1 and 2 are also an ideal opportunity for some contextual viewing. Your grasp of historical contexts will be greatly assisted by watching the two asterisked films [Bear in mind that Jordan’s Michael Collins is a romanticized view of the man! I’ll provide other pointers in class].
  • Be advised that the two lectures on Elizabeth Bowen’s The Last September are devised as one long lecture divided into two. I will be assuming that students are present for both lectures – i.e. you risk being very lost in the second lecture if you have not attended the first! 
  • If you are not familiar with the basic geography of Ireland – the capitals of the Republic and of Northern Ireland, and the names and locations of the four provinces of Ireland – check it out.  
  • If the Irish famine of the 1840s is news to you, get a basic understanding via wikipedia.
  • The wikipedia pages on the Irish famine, on the 1916 Rising, the War of Independence and the Irish Civil War provide a helpful crash course in the main events of 19th and early 20th century Irish history. Beyond those pages, please exercise caution when using wikipedia (especially with regard to pages on the Northern Irish conflict post 1968).
  • All of Jan's power points will be on Canvas later on the day of the lecture. You will notice that power points contain key quotations (and images where appropriate) rather than the substance of lectures. This is in order to develop your active listening skills and your ability to distinguish core material from peripheral information. Your goal should not be to transcribe lectures in their entirety. As you know, it is very difficult to actively engage with the content of a lecture if you are focussed on writing it all down. My advice would be to focus on listening and processing, to record what you might regard as ‘anchor’ points – important contextual information on a text or author that will guide you as you take a deeper turn into the text – and then to summarise briefly individual moves in argument/key questions posed as you go. This will result in shorter, more skeletal lecture notes; but the point of these lectures is that they are jumping off points for your own engagement with the texts. They seek to guide you into texts, and to highlight and profile issues you will explore in the assessment. In the assessment exercises, you are aiming for own arguments, not a regurgitation of lectures.
  • The boundary between nodes 1 and 2 of the course is porous; this is why your second essay potentially crosses nodes (depending on your choice of writers). Think in terms of relations across nodes!

 

Important Information

Academic Integrity

The University of Auckland will not tolerate cheating, or assisting others to cheat, and views cheating in coursework as a serious academic offence.  The work that a student submits for grading must be the student’s own work, reflecting his or her learning.  Where work from other sources is used, it must be properly acknowledged and referenced.  This requirement also applies to sources on the world-wide web.  A student’s assessed work may be reviewed against electronic source material using computerised detection mechanisms. Upon reasonable request, students may be required to provide an electronic version of their work for computerised review.

For further information see:

https://cdn.auckland.ac.nz/assets/ecm/for/current-students/academic-information/pg-policies-guidelines/doctoral/guidelines-conduct-coursework.pdf

 

Complaint procedure

In the first instance, students or the class representative should take any concerns they have with their course delivery or assessment to the lecturer or tutor or convenor concerned. In the event that the matter is not resolved satisfactorily at an informal level, students or the class representative should approach the Head of Department with a formal statement of their complaint.

For more detailed information, see the University guidelines regarding Student Learning and Grievance procedures at:

http://www.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/home/about/teaching-learning/policies-procedures

AUSA also offers advice on grievance and harassment issues. See the AUSA website’s ‘Need Help?’ section for further information.

 

Learning services at the library

Information on Learning services can accessed at https://www.library.auckland.ac.nz/workshops/

Workshops are available on everything from essay writing to computer formatting.

Writing workshops include:

  • Essay Writing
  • Essay Units: The Sentence and the Paragraph
  • Choosing and Analyzing the Question
  • Planning, Structuring and Drafting Your Writing
  • Introductions and Conclusions
  • Constructing an Argument
  • Revising, Editing and Proofing Writing
  • EAL Writing Workshops for English as an Additional Language Students

 

ELE – ENGLISH LANGUAGE ENRICHMENT

https://www.library.auckland.ac.nz/services/student-learning/ele

If you have difficulty with your English, with writing essays, understanding lectures, doing presentations or any other aspect of English, then the English Language Enrichment Centre (ELE) – located on level 1 of the Kate Edgar Information Commons - is the place for you. Have a look at their website for further information.

 

Please contact Dr Jan Cronin with any queries about the course.

Course summary:

Date Details Due