Although much of our class time will be spent considering the question of ethics vs. aesthetics, the literature we will study raises many other issues. To provide avenues into some of these additional issues, we will compose ourselves into four virtual (e-mail) discussion groups. Each of you will join one of the following groups: science, religion, gender, or a fourth called literary trends. This fourth group will be interested in tracing the ways in which the ideas of the Romantic period work themselves out in this literature, and perhaps the ways in which the literature of our period prepares the way for (or already participates in) the postmodernist moment.
Your participation in the virtual discussion group is an important part of your overall class participation grade. Your group work will be judged not on the quantity of words you write alone, but on the thoughtfulness and helpfulness of your comments and your questions. You are of course free to discuss the literature in all kinds of different ways within your group, but you are primarily responsible for coming up with ideas about how your topic is dealt with.
On Friday of each week (with exceptions noted on the syllabus), each of the four groups will hold 20- to 30-minute discussions. Afterward, each group will make a digest version of the reports available on e-mail for the other three groups. Within your groups, you should create a plan for equitably sharing the work of writing the reports.
The work you put into these groups will not be wasted; I will be counting on your discussions to help me construct questions for the mid-term and final exams.