Course Calendar
I. What's In Your Attic?: Secrets and Stowaways
Week One:T: Course Introduction
"Keepsake" Free Write and Activity
Victorian Keepsake Scavenger Hunt
In-Class Reading: Robert Browning, "Memorabilia" (1855)
Th: Brontë, Jane Eyre, Ch. 1-10
Mini-Lecture: Intro to Jane Eyre and Charlotte Brontë
Discussion
Week Two
T: Jane Eyre, Ch. 11-21
Discussion
Assign “Victorian Pack Rat” Project
Th: Jane Eyre, Ch. 22-32
Mini-Lecture: The Madwoman in the Attic, Feminism, and Victorian Literature
Discussion
Week Three
T: Research Workshop: Victorian Pack Rat Project
Th: Jane Eyre, Ch. 33-End
Jane Eyre wrap up and discussion
II. Brain Storage: Learning and Memory
Week FourT: Hughes, K.,“Reader, I Married Him,” Chapter 1 in The Victorian Governess
Mini-lecture and Discussion: Education, Class, and Gender in Jane Eyre
Assign “Reading Victorian Readers” Mini Assignment
Th: Reading Victorian Readers Assignment
Lecture: “Victorian Education and the Victorian Schoolroom”
Syllabus Comparison Activity
Victorian Pack Rat Project due Friday at 5:00 pm.
Week Five
T: Hughes, T. Tom Brown’s Schooldays, Ch. 1-4
Discussion
Assign: Close Reading Paper
Th: Tom Brown’s Schooldays, Ch. 5-7
Discussion
Close Reading Exercise
Week Six
T: Tom Brown’s Schooldays, Ch. 8-9, “On Learning by Heart” from Royal Reader Series
Tom Brown wrap-up
“What do I have memorized?” Activity
Mini-Lecture, Discussion, and Activities: Memorization in the Victorian schoolroom
III. Cultural Preservation: Antiquarianism and Dialect Poetry
Th: Robert Burns, “A Red, Red Rose,” “Tam o’ Shanter”Mini-Lecture: Burns, Scots, and Antiquarianism
Close Reading Paper Rough Draft Workshop
Week Seven
T: “The Oldham Weaver,” Hollingworth, Introduction to Songs of the People, Edwin Waugh, “Come whoam to thi childer an’ me,” “Eawr Folk”
Mini-Lecture: Lancashire Dialect Poetry
Th: Ben Brierley, “The Lancashire Dialect,” Samuel Laycock, “Homely Advice to the Unemployed”
Discussion and activities: Class, representation, and appropriation
Week Eight
T: Close Reading Paper Final Draft Workshop
Lecture and Activities: Victorian Antiquarianism: Building preservation, museums, song and ballad collecting, etc.
Th: Clegg, “Th’ Owd Lanky,” Joseph Ramsbottom, “Gooin’ to scoo,” Janet Hamilton, “Oor Location”
Dialect and/in education
Close Reading Paper due on Friday at 5:00 pm
IV. Photograph, Phonograph, Typewriter: Storing Sound and Image
Week NineT: Edison, “The Future of the Phonograph,” Rudd, “Public Faces: Photography as Social Media in the Nineteenth-Century
Mini-Lecture, Discussion, and Activities: Phonographic wax cylinders and cartes de visite
Free write and activity: 21st-century technologies of storage
Th: Stoker, Dracula Ch. 1-7
Intro to Dracula
Advertisement and Label Scavenger Hunt
“Track a Storage Technology” Challenge
Week Ten
T: Dracula, Ch. 8-14
Discussion and Activities
Assign: Final Research Paper
Th: Dracula, Ch. 15-18, Keep, “Blinded by the Type: Gender and Information Technology at the Turn of the Century”
Discussion
Lecture/Activities: Anatomy of a Critical Article
Week Eleven
T: Dracula, Ch. 19-23
½ Discussion
½ Research workshop and paper conferences
Th: Dracula, Ch. 24-End
½ Discussion
½ Research workshop and paper conferences
V. Corporeal Conservation: Post-Mortem Preservation
Week TwelveT: Sterne, “A Resonant Tomb,” Ch. 6 of The Audible Past
Lecture and activities: Victorian death culture, post-mortem photography, death masks, etc.
Th: Tennyson, “The Lady of Shalott,” Swinburne, “The Leper”
The Corpse in Victorian Poetics
Week Thirteen
Thanksgiving Break
Week Fourteen:
T: Rossetti, “When I am dead, my dearest,” “After Death,” “Dream Land”
Imagining Death
Th: Final Draft Workshop: Research Paper
Week Fifteen
T: Final Research Paper Due
Presentations
Th: Oliphant, “Old Lady Mary,” Conan Doyle, “The Story of the Japanned Box”
Victorian Ghost Stories: Where are the spirits of the dead stored?
Week Sixteen
Final Exam Review and Preparation
Final Examination Date, Time, and Place TBA
