English 730--Samuel Johnson

Date	Topic (Key reminders and key classes are marked in bold.)	Reading
Mon 3/28	Introduction "On the Death of Dr. Robert Levet"
Mon 4/4	"London" "The Vanity of Human Wishes" Miscellaneous poems Preface to A Dictionary of the English Language Specimen dictionary entries Letter to Chesterfield	Greene xi-xxx, 2-8, 10-21, 31-32, 34-35, 307-28, 329-34, 782-83
Mon 4/11	Life of Savage Boswell's Life of Johnson	Greene 128-64, Boswell 7-154
Mon 4/18	Boswell's Life of Johnson Rambler essays on moral topics Prospectus due	Boswell 155-342, Greene 200-04, Bate 21-27, 44-55, 64-74, 118-23, 134-38, 186-91, 201-03
Wed 4/20	Last day to drop a course without a grade of "W."
Mon 4/25	Adventurer and Idler essays on moral topics Review of Soame Jenyns	Bate 143-45, 176-86, 250-72, 281-87, 290-93, 320-28, 354-55
Mon 5/2	Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler essays on literary criticism Preface to The Plays of William Shakespeare	Greene 175-79, 235-38, Bate 208-12, 273-78, 328-40
Mon 5/9	Rasselas	Greene 335-418
Fri 5/13	Last day to drop a course with the grade of "W."
Mon 5/16	Life of Milton Life of Dryden	Greene 698-724
Mon 5/23	Life of Pope Life of Gray Course evaluations Term paper due	Greene 725-52, 765-69
Mon 5/30	Memorial Day No WSU classes
Mon 6/6	Final exam, 8:00-10:00 PM, 299 Millett (NOTE THE TIME!)

Attendance
Your attendance grade will be based on the following scale: 0 absences, A for attendance; 1 absence, B for attendance; 2 absences, C for attendance; 3 absences, D for attendance; 4 absences, F for the entire course. There are no routine "excused absences" in this course other than the one absence allowed before the attendance grade begins to drop. Each set of two tardy arrivals will count as an additional absence. If you do not like this attendance policy, you may design any attendance policy you wish, but you must submit your attendance policy for my approval by the end of the first week of classes. If you tend to miss class or frequently arrive late, you may prefer to waive this 5% credit. You must do so during the first week of class, and then these points will be distributed across other requirements. After the first week of class, please do not give me any excuses for absences unless you provide documentation such as a subpoena for a court appearance or a funeral notice for a family member with documentation to show your relationship to the deceased. Finally, note that I carefully correct the attendance record at the end of each class period to mark tardy students present, but it is your responsibility to tell me that you arrived during the class period. I will not retroactively correct the attendance record later.

Computing Course Grades
Course grades are computed by multiplying weighted percentages times the numerical value of letter grades, using the following equivalents: A = 4.0, A- = 3.8, B+ = 3.2, and so on.

CLASS POLICIES

1. Papers, at-home exercises, etc. are due at the beginning of the class period on the due dates indicated above. Late term papers will be subject to the following reductions: For papers handed in after the beginning of class but before 9:35 PM, a 5-point reduction (on a scale of 100). For each day or portion of a day after 9:35 PM on the due date, the penalty will be 10 points per day. If you turn in a late paper in the English office, be sure to have a secretary initial it and record the time; otherwise, its submission time will be whenever I pick it up, which could easily be a day later!

2. Papers shorter than the assigned minimum length will receive grade reductions of 5 points for each unit of 100 words by which they fall short.. Please do not try to evade the length requirement by fooling around with large fonts and margins. A page using proper MLA format should have 1" margins on all sides, 1/3" line spacing, 27 lines to the page (unless over-ridden by widow and orphan control), plus a page header. Properly formatted MLA templates are available at
<http://www.wright.edu/~martin.maner/rptemp.htm>.

3. I will not give a make-up final examination unless arrangements have been made before the regularly scheduled examination has been given.

4. Assistance on written work should be limited to the instructor, library reference personnel, and Writing Center personnel. Automatic penalty for any form of plagiarism (defined as passing off the work of someone else as if it were your own): F for the course, written notification of the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and the English Department Chair. Your papers for this course must be exclusively your own and exclusively for this course. You may not submit a previously submitted paper, nor a paper simultaneously submitted for another course.

5. I normally do not grant "I" grades, since they usually cause more problems than they solve. If you miss an assignment, your grade will be computed on the basis of the work you completed, with the missing assignment counted as a zero.

6. Please do not ask me what you missed. You are responsible for making arrangements with a classmate to supply you with information about classes you missed. If questions remain, see me.

7. Mid-course changes in the syllabus (assignments, readings, grading policies) are sometimes necessary, though I will always try to provide sufficient advance notice of such changes.

8. My office is 441 Millett, telephone 775-2639. You may leave messages for me with the department secretaries at 775-3136. Another convenient way to have individual conferences is via e-mail. My e-mail address is listed at the top of the syllabus. I check my account daily. Note, too, that this syllabus is posted on the Web at <http://www.wright.edu/cola/Dept/ENG/maner/MANER.HTM>.

9. Sending a fax copy to meet a deadline is acceptable. The departmental fax number is 775-2707. However, it is your responsibility to follow up the fax transmission by calling 775-3136 to confirm that the fax copy was received. You should always "chase" a fax copy with a regular printed copy as soon as possible, since fax copies are flimsy and often only semi-legible.

10. Since the early weeks of the course are focused mainly on getting started in library research, you will have accumulated only a few percentage points of graded credit by the time the last drop date arrives. Probably the best way to estimate your likely performance in this course is to ask yourself the following questions: a) Have I spent at least 8 to 12 hours of well directed work for this course during the opening weeks? b) Have I become familiar with the essential research tools such as bibliographies, indexes, online resources, and library catalogs? c) Has a diagnostic quiz over English skills indicated that my grade is likely to be limited to C or lower? (Diagnostics are available on request.)

11. Wright State University now requires you to check your e-mail regularly. I may use your WSU e-mail account (not your AOL account or some other e-mail account) for last-minute announcements, changes in schedule, etc.

12. You are responsible for having mastered the MLA format. A substantial portion of the paper grade will be based on MLA mechanics.

Resources

Online Research Tutorial (in two parts):
http://www.wright.edu/~martin.maner/eval01.htm (Finding and Evaluating Sources)
http://www.wright.edu/~martin.maner/act06.htm (Gathering Information Online)

Guide to Essential Tools for Research in English Literature:
http://www.wright.edu/cola/Dept/ENG/maner/701lib.htm

Using Search Engines to Find Web Resources:
http://www.wright.edu/~martin.maner/search_engines.htm

Online Resources for Research Writers:
http://www.wright.edu/~martin.maner/eng344.htm

Links to Resources in Literature and the Humanities:
http://www.wright.edu/cola/Dept/ENG/lit_links.htm

E-Mail Links:
         Martin Maner
         Charlotte Droll (Humanities Reference Librarian)
         Martin Jenkins (Humanities Reference Librarian)

Texts:	Bate, W. J., ed. Selected Essays from the Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler. New Haven: Yale UP, 1968.
	Boswell, James. The Life of Samuel Johnson. Ed. and abr. Christopher Hibbert. London: Penguin, 1979.
	Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 6th ed. New York: MLA, 2003.
	Greene, Donald, ed. Samuel Johnson: The Major Works. Oxford World's Classics. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000.

Evaluation	Participation and attendance	10%
	Prospectus	20%
	Term paper--8 pages minimum, plus bibliography	40%
	Final exam	30%