The
River
English
492/592 or Rural and Regional Studies 432/532
THREE Semester Hour Credits
BA 220, Mondays, 1-4pm
This class uses advanced
instructional technology
Presented
by Delta
State University
Bonnie Horton, Languages
and Literature
Luther Brown, Director, The Delta
Center for Culture and Learning
Assisted by Lee Aylward, Program
Associate for Community Outreach
| The Purpose of the Class | Reading List | Film List | Field Experiences | Schedule of Activities | Graded Assignments | Links |
This site was last updated on
December 1, 2005 . It will be edited repeatedly during the course.
Check it often.
Return to The Delta Center for Culture and
Learning homepage
|
One of the Tow boats owned by Jantran, and based in the port of Rosedale, Mississippi. Our classes have the good fortune of going out on the River on this boat. Thanks Jantran! |
Purpose:
Our goal is to explore the realities, the myths, and the metaphors of The River. Rivers are not simply watery streams. They create, sustain, and destroy land. They carry commerce and promote movement.
They give rise to poetry and song and stimulate philosophers and
theologians as well as writers, painters, and scientists.
This class is a Learning community. Your participation in the class is predicated on your desire to join in a scholarly investigation of the texts and experiences included in the course. Whether you are enrolled in the class for college credit, or simply joining it without enrolling, you must be an active member of the community of learners.
Reading
List:
The following are required texts, each of which
will be read and discussed. Your
participation in this course of study is predicated on your commitment to read
these texts and ability to discuss them intelligently.
Rising Tide
by John Barry
Huckleberry
Finn
by Mark Twain
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Heart of Darkness
by
Joseph Conrad
Uncle Tom’s Children
by Richard Wright
If I Forget Thee
Jerusalem by William Faulkner
Lanterns on the Levee
by William Alexander Percy
When
We Were Colored by Clifton Taulbert
The
Wide Net by Eudora Welty
In addition to these
texts, we will also read and discuss selected poems, song lyrics, web sites, and
other written and graphic materials. These
will be handed out or assigned during the class.
Film list:
We will view and discuss a variety of films during the class.
We expect to include these:
Mississippi
- River of Song, Part 3
Deep
Blues
Building
of Hoover Dam
The
African Queen
Wild River
Life
on the Mississippi
Fatal
Flood – The American Experience Series
Amazon:
Land of the Flooded Forest (National Geographic)
Baby
Doll
Juke
The
Nile: River of Life
Four
short films by the US Army Corps of Engineers:
Challenge of the Mississippi
Chocolate Tide
Stemming the Chocolate Tide
Mississippi River and its Tributaries
 |
Henry Outlaw and Vicky Fioranelli dressed for a day on The River, February 2002. |
We
will experience The River and its environs through several field trips. Make
sure to check your syllabus and be prepared for outside activities on
appropriate days. Trips will
include:
Greenville Levee Board visit FEBRUARY 5
A
Towboat trip from the port of Rosedale up The River
A visit to the Winterville Mounds archeological site and the levee break site from 1927 MARCH 26
A visit to the Tunica RiverPark Museum APRIL 24
| Schedule
of Activities
The 2002 class standing in front of the Jantran dock at the port of Rosedale, Mississippi |
 |
January 15
Email address due to
Luther Brown
January 22
Mainstream, a trip down The River with Roy Blount Jr.
Graduate participants must pick the texts they will lead
discussions on today!
January 29
February 5 Uncle
Tom’s
Cabin
Greenville Levee Board visit
Research paper topic and a defense due (1 page, 5
points)
February 12
Heart of Darkness
An introduction to FrontPage and Word web site
development
February 19
Rising Tide chapters 7-16
Building of Hoover Dam
Deep Blues
Juke
Research paper thesis and a defense due (1 page, 10 points)
February 26
Uncle Tom’s Children
Towboat trip from the Port of Rosedale
March
5
If
I forget Thee Jerusalem
Mid Term In-class Writing (EXAM)
Research paper reference
list with at least 6 REPUTABLE
references due (5 points)
March 12 Spring Break—No Class
March 19 Rising Tide chapters 17-23
Fatal Flood – The American Experience
Short films by The US Army Corps of Engineers
Research paper outline due (several pages, 10 points)
Individual web site projects due
March 26
The
Wide Net,
Rising Tide chapters 24-27
Winterville Mounds/1927 Levee Break site field trip
April 2 When We Were Colored
(click here for study questions)
We will meet in the classroom and then move class to Dockery Farms for a
walk along the Sunflower River and discussion of the texts for the week.
April
9
Rising Tide chapters 28-end
(click here for study questions)
PowerPoint presentation on the Great Flood by Luther Brown
April
16 Lanterns
on the Levee,
Written papers due
April 30
Student presentations
May 7
End of Term In-class Writing (EXAM)
| Participation | Weekly Journal Essays | Web page | Written Paper | Oral Presentation | Exams | And for those taking graduate credits |
Class
Participation: First and
Foremost, you are expected to be an
engaged participant in each class. Class
discussions will only work if you have read the required texts.
You will be given a set of 2-6 questions the week before each discussion,
and these will help you organize your thoughts while reading.
Journal
Entries:
You will write a weekly journal entry, in standard essay format, on one
of the study questions that helps structure your reading.
You can choose the question. Each
entry must be longer than one standard (12 point, normal margins) page.
It must address the study question by presenting evidence from the text
for that week. This means that you
will avoid phrases like “I think that the author meant…” or “In my
opinion…” and rely largely on phrases like “On page 51, the author says
‘….,’ indicating that he wants us to know that…”
In other words, we want you to find out what the author actually says,
not what your opinion about the text is.
The journal entries will
be collected each day at the beginning of class.
If class discussion lags, we will turn to the entries, and have members
of the class read them aloud to stimulate further discussion.
Journal entries are worth
10 points each, for a total of 120 points
Research Project:
The independent research project will
allow you to explore a River topic that especially interests you.
Treat this as a scholarly exploration that will make you an expert on the
topic of interest. We encourage you
to do original research, and to base your exploration on your own field trips or
visits to River sites. Please make
sure your topic is approved before spending too much time on it though. Your project will be presented to the class in three forms.
Electronic
Presentation:
You will create a web site dealing with your project.
This can be done very simply by using “save as HTML” in Microsoft
Word, or you can use Front Page, or another web authoring tool.
You are not required to publish your site to the web- we will do that for
you if you submit your page on a floppy disk.
You are required to have a
minimum of three pages of text, two images, and at least three hyperlinks, one
of which leads to your own email address. Make
sure that you create a site that is informative and attractive, using a
background, various fonts, pictures, etc. Also make sure that you give all credit where credit is due
and abide by copyright laws.
The web site is due on
March 19. Your web site will be attached to this class web page after you
submit it. The electronic presentation is worth a total of 50 points.
The
Written Paper:
This will be a 10 page (minimum) research paper that is typed and
includes references, and is written in standard format.
We expect you to continue the same investigation that you presented in
your web site, but to do so in greater depth.
The papers will be graded for content and for format.
This written paper is due
on April 16, but notice that there are several pre-completion due dates for
specific parts of the paper (see the schedule of daily activities, above). The written presentation is worth a total of 50
points, in addition to the points ( 30 in all) assigned to each pre-completion
component.
The
Oral Presentation:
You will present an oral
version of your research project to the class at the end of the term.
Your talk should last between 10 and 15 minutes, and include visual or
musical aids if appropriate. You
will have an LCD projector and laptop available if you want to use Power Point
slides. You should include about 3
minutes for questions. Talks will
be graded on their content and the presentation itself.
Oral presentations will be
given on April 30. EVERYONE
must be
prepared on the 30th, and there will be no alternative or backup date.
The oral presentation is worth a total of
50 points.
Exams: We will have a written midterm and final exam. These will be essay format, although they may also require definition or explanation of geographical terms. These exams will require understanding of both the geography and the literature components of the class, and they may ask you to draw comparisons between the texts we read. The weekly study questions should provide a good guide to the kinds of questions on the exams.
The midterm is worth 50 points. The final exam is worth 100 points.
Graduate Credit: In addition to all the graded work described above, those enrolled for graduate credit will also be required to lead the discussion of at LEAST two of the books we read. This means you will need to prepare questions to stimulate the class, and potentially provide a summary of the work or otherwise engage the class during the discussion.
This teaching activity will be graded with regard to both presentation and content. You may want to bring in critical readings, refer to web resources, or suggest videos that participants might watch after the discussion. Feel free to be creative, but remember to focus on the text and stimulate the class to do so as well. You are specifically referred to the web resources linked to each of the texts, since in some cases, enormous amounts of discussion material are already available to you.
A
Special Note on Plagiarism
In our country, thoughts and ideas are
freely exchanged, but words and images can be copyrighted.
A copyright means that “no part of this text can be reproduced in any
form without the express written permission of the owner of the copyright.”
It is not just bad form to use someone else’s words, it is ILLEGAL to
use copyrighted words or images without the owner’s permission.
In this class, you are expected to abide by the laws of the United
States. Give credit where it is
due. Avoid plagiarism.
Use your own words and images. Please visit this excellent plagiarism
site at Indian University before preparing any work in this class.
And about
disabilities:
If you have documentation of a diagnosed disability, the University will attempt
to make reasonable accommodations for you. For assistance, contact Dr.
Richard Houston, Reily Health Center, phone 662-846-4690.
Links
Here are some of the web resources that we will
explore during the course.
This set of pages is about commercial navigation
on the Mississippi River system. http://members.aol.com/RandiWard/river.htm#boats
Welcome to the Mississippi River Home Page http://www.greatriver.com/
The Mississippi River and Tributaries Project http://www.mvn.usace.army.mil/pao/bro/misstrib.htm
The Mississippi Delta poses a particular challenge to designers in the face of its tumultuous history of inundation, reclamation, and discrimination. http://www.upenn.edu/gsfa/landscape/student/mississippi/index.htm
General Mississippi River Links to government, museums, historic sites, colonial plantations, military issues, army corps, etc. http://home.earthlink.net/~edwinlyon/RiverLinks.htm
The Mississippi River in History. A history class at Tulane University. http://home.earthlink.net/~edwinlyon/riversyllabus.htm
FLUVIAL LANDFORMS http://daac.gsfc.nasa.gov/DAAC_DOCS/geomorphology/GEO_4/GEO_CHAPTER_4.HTML
The Mississippi River of Song http://www.pbs.org/riverofsong/
The River represents Pare Lorentz' greatest achievement as a filmmaker. http://xroads.virginia.edu/g/1930s/FILM/lorentz/river.html
Streams and Drainage Systems http://www.tulane.edu/~sanelson/geol111/streams.htm
The LMRCC’s mission is to promote the protection, restoration, enforcement, understanding, awareness and wise use of the natural resources of the Lower Mississippi River http://www.lmrcc.org/
Doc Watson's Deep River Blues http://sniff.numachi.com/~rickheit/dtrad/lookup.cgi?ti=DEEPRIVR
Let a Smile be Your Umbrella http://home.istar.ca/~townsend/pop_standards/let_a_smile_be_your_umbrella.htm
Bessie Smith's Back Water Blues http://sniff.numachi.com/~rickheit/dtrad/lookup.cgi?ti=BACKWATR&tt=BACKWATR
The RiverWeb http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/RiverWeb/History/home.html