Principles for Retooling Courses

Creating and Recreating Courses
LTC Discussion
Cathy Yandell
17 February 1999
Introduction to the Literature of the French Renaissance (French 351)

· "Sixteenth-Century Literature" (my thesis advisor, Leonard Johnson, Berkeley, 1975); highlights: French Literature of the Renaissance (anthology); lecture format; sample assignment title: "Louise Labe, the Liberated Woman"

· "Literature of the French Renaissance" (C.Y., Carleton, 1984): highlights: Anthologie de la poesie firancaise. .(anthology); French and Italian art slides, poetry set to music; research paper; creative project; sample assignment title: "Art and Aesthetics in the Renaissance "

· "Identity and Gender in Early Modem France" (1992) (cross-listed with Women's Studies)

· "Cultural and Sexual Identity in Early Modem France" (1994)

highlights: still maintaining the sine qua non works of Ronsard, Montaigne and Rabelais but with more attention to women writers; also, readings of such critical historical texts as Natalie Zemon Davis's Fiction in the Archives; sample assignment title: "Stories and Popular Culture" (reading Marguerite de Navarre's canonical Heptameron)

· "Love, War and Monsters in Early Modem France" (1998)

highlights: readings include canonic texts as well as excerpts of a l6th-century medical treatise on "monsters" and Marguerite de Valois's Memoirs; art slides on CD rom; sample assignment title: "The Religious Wars: What is at Stake"

CONSTANTS: introduction to the period's major writers (Montaigne, Ronsard, Louise Labe, Marguerite de Navarre, and Rabelais) and to literary and historical phenomena that shaped these texts (the religious wars, the social importance of the printing press, the birth of the bourgeoisie, the role of the monarchy in literary production, humanism); major assignments include a 10-12 page critical research paper and a creative project.

VARIABLES: organization and "vision" of the course: degree of emphasis on secondary readings and paraliterary sources, extent of interdisiplinarity, centrality of student participation, incorporation of current developments in the field.

NATURE OF THE EVOLUTION:

· from a more narrowly "literary" methodology to a more multi-disciplinary approach, including more use of contemporaneous social history, art and music

· from a highly formalized class format of lecture followed by guided discussion to a more fluid organization of mini-lectures and discussions (sometimes led by students)

· from a "great books" survey to a more integrated thematic course (which nonetheless still incorporates "great books")

Working Principles for Recreating Courses

· First of all, are the syllabus, readings and projects of the course consistent with what seem to me to be the most important and the most interesting aspects of the period? If not, how can I bring the theory and the practice closer together?

· In the process of rethinking the course, which comments from previous student evaluations could be helpful? Which comments, although I may strongly disagree with them, could be useful as I try to articulate more clearly the reasoning behind certain assignments or readings?

· Without compromising either the literature or the field, how might I present the texts in ways that make them more accessible to students?

· How is it possible to preserve the historical "otherness" of the period [or, in other courses, the difficult theoretical baggage necessary to observe something from the perspective of a literary critic, an anthropologist or an art historian] and at the same time create points of connection with the students' current preoccupations?

· How could vibrant current developments in the field -- particularly controversial ones -- be incorporated into the course?

· How can I translate the excitement of my own research (in terms of both topos and process) in a course for undergraduates?

· While acknowledging the risk of becoming too Jane Tompkinsesque, how can I as a professor best enter into the course? How should the class be structured to be more engaging both for the students and for me?

· Finally, I inevitably find that pedagogical discussions with colleagues, both at Carleton and elsewhere, enrich my sense of what is possible in the classroom.