ENG 606a: Shel Silverstein:
Joseph T. Thomas, Jr.
email: jtthomas@mail.sdsu.edu
Class Meetings: Thurs, 4:00-6:40PM; SH-244A
Office: AL-255
Contact: jtthomas@mail.sdsu.edu
Office Hours: Wednesday: 10:00-12:00 ; 2:00-3:00 (& by appointment)
!!!! IMPORTANT: Online Schedule !!!!
This course is a seminar, and as such, its success depends on you, the students, so I expect you to attend every class session and participate. As the leader of this seminar, I have four principal duties: 1) planning and convening of the course; 2) archiving material, that is, bringing together various texts and pointing you to sources important to our subject; 3) critically engaging and productively critiquing your ideas; and 4) evaluating your intellectual work. Your work will involve the careful reading and analysis of our primary texts, self-directed historical and theoretical research, in-class discussion based on that research, weekly online responses, and a final, capstone paper. A course in textual analysis and both literary and cultural history, Shel Silverstein: American Iconoclast (ENGL 528) concerns the life and work of the seemingly contradictory, ever iconoclastic Renaissance man, Shel Silverstein. We will read from his poetry, cartoons, short plays, fairy tales, parables, and travel writing, watch his screen plays, and listen to his music, all the while thinking seriously about his relation to our dominant cultural values and ideology. Considering Shel's children's books alongside his work for Playboy, we will investigate the tensions inherent in one producing such varied cultural work, letting his often bawdy work for adults inform our understanding of his sometimes cloying, sometimes rebellious, literature for children.
***Important: Because Shel Silverstein wrote for Playboy and produced comics, plays, poetry, and songs intended for an adult audience, please enroll in this course ONLY if you're willing and able to engage works that some may consider pornographic in nature. In addition to works authored by Shel, we will engage, as a means of better contextualizing and understanding his life and work, Playboy magazine, including pictorials. Again, if exploring work explicitly designed to titilate, please consider withdrawing. The amount of work in this latter category is small, but it will be present.*** |
REQUIRED TEXTS
Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book: A Primer for Adults Only (Paperback)
Shel Silverstein
$13.00
Publisher: Fireside (September 9, 1985)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 067121148X
ISBN-13: 978-0671211486Silverstein and Me (Paperback)
Marv Gold
Publisher: Red Hen Press (June 1, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1597091510
ISBN-13: 978-1597091510An Adult Evening of Shel Silverstein
$7.50
Publisher: Dramatist's Play Service (March 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0822218739
ISBN-13: 978-0822218739Shel's Shorts
$7.50
Publisher: Dramatist's Play Service (March 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0822218976
ISBN-13: 978-0822218975A Boy Named Shel: The Life and Times of Shel Silverstein
Lisa Rogak
$14.95
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; Second Edition edition (March 31, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0312539312
ISBN-13: 978-0312539313Different Dances (Hardcover)
$29.95
# Publisher: HarperCollins; 25 Anv edition (October 12, 2004)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0060554304
# ISBN-13: 978-0060554309Playboy's Silverstein Around the World
$24.00
# Publisher: Fireside (May 22, 2007)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0743290240
# ISBN-13: 978-0743290241Where the Sidewalk Ends 30th Anniversary Edition: Poems and Drawings
Shel Silverstein
$18.99
# Publisher: HarperCollins; 30 Anv edition (January 20, 2004)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0060572345
# ISBN-13: 978-0060572341
PDF Articles on Blackboard
* Werner Aspenstrom, "A Short Discourse on Short Plays"
* X.J. Kennedy, "Strict and Loose Nonsense: Two Worlds of Children's Verse"
* Jean F. Mercier, "Publisher's Weekly Interviews Shel Silverstein"
* Richard Michell, "Simple Pleasures: The Ten-Minute Play, Overnight Theatre, and the Decline of the Art of Storytelling"
* Perry Nodelman, from Words About Pictures
* Steve Pond, "The Magical World of Shel Silverstein" (from Playboy)
* Shel Silverstein, "The Devil and Billy Markham"
* Shel Silverstein, "Lafcadio the Lion Who Shot Back" (1963 Playboy version)
* Shel Silverstein, "New St. Nick" (from Playboy)
* Shel Silverstein, "Silverstein's Zoo" (from Playboy)
* Anita Tarr, "Nonsense Now"
* Joseph T. Thomas, Jr., "Child Poets and the Poetry of the Playground"
* Joseph T. Thomas, Jr., from Poetry's Playground, Chapter Four: "Street Cries: Mother Goose, Urchin Poetry, and Contemporary U.S. Children's Poetry"
* Joseph T. Thomas, Jr., "Reappraising Uncle Shelby"
Late Work:
Work will be turned in on the date due or not at all. We all have schedules, and it is imperative that we keep to them. However, I am not completely draconian. In extreme cases I may accept late work, but don't count on it.
Plagiarism:
Plagiarism is taking someone else's words, idea, or argument and claiming it as your own. Don't do it unless you have a interesting and rigorous intellectual or aesthetical reason. Cite all your sources unless you discuss your appropriation with me first. Instances of plagiarism designed to avoid intellectual work will earn you an "F" for the course, and, in egregious cases, may result in expulsion from the university. Please familiarize yourself with SDSU plagiarism policies, discussed in your handbook. Throughout the syllabus and my links page are links to many useful web sources. Do not take the words or ideas from any of these sources without providing the appropriate citations unless, again, you discuss your aims with me first.
Assignments/Grade Distribution:
25%: Participation
10% (x2): Critical Questions
25%: Mid-term Paper
30%: Final Paper
Participation: (25%)
I expect you to come to class with something to say. In addition to researching the authors we encounter, think about when the books & essays were published, reacquaint yourself with historical context that surrounds the work, its reception, etc. Make connections between the content of this course and others you have taken, and apply whatever theoretical, philosophical, or pedagogical rubrics you feel are appropriate (check out the children's literature, poetry, and theory links on my webpage. And use print sources as well. Again, the library is a wonderful place).
Critical Question (20% - 10% each)
Your critical questions will engage the week's readings, framing them in the context of and in connection to previous readings. Your questions will be about a paragraph or two long (somewhere around 200 to 250 words), and facilitate the discussion of an idea or problem or claim found in the readings. They are always due (via email) on or before the day preceding the class meeting in which we discuss the readings inspiring your question.
Mid-term Paper: (25%)
The mid-term paper is a short, five to six page essay (1,250-1,500 words) discussing thematic or formal connections between two of Silverstein's works of different genre. That is, you may focus on a song and a poem, for instance; or a cartoon and a short play. Your paper may be informed by biographical information, but what I'm primarily looking for is a thematic/formal analysis, paying close attention to language and technique. I will stagger the due dates for the mid-term papers, collecting them in two groups, the first on Oct 27th, and the second on Nov 3rd.
Final Project: (30%)
Your final project will probably involve an extended, researched exploration of some issue related to our seminar topic, broadly conceived, but focusing, of course, on good ol' Uncle Shelby. Any sort of analysis or investigation appropriate to the subject of our course is acceptable. Final papers in this fashion should be thesis-driven, and around ten to fifteen pages (2,500 to 3,750 words).
I also allow students the flexibility to craft their own final projects. If so, you need to prepare a written proposal, explaining the academic and creative worth of the project and how it relates to the subject matter we've been exploring over the semester.
Final projects are due during exam week, at a time to be announced. They must be handed into me personally, although I have been know to make other arrangements on a case by case basis.