ENGL 884

ENGL 884

INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM IN AMERICA:

STUDIES IN LITERATURE, HISTORY, AND LAW

SPRING 2006

Joan DelFattore                                            Class meetings: W 9:05-11:50, 126 Memorial
062 Memorial Hall                                       Office hours: 10-11:30 Mon., Tues., Fri.
831-2987 (office)                                          E-mail: jdel@udel.edu
737-7124 (home)                                          Homepage: www.english.udel.edu/jdel

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
   of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
   abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right
   of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the
   government for a redress of grievances.

COURSE DESCRIPTION AND GOALS

Participants in this course will:

* analyze the theme of intellectual freedom as it appears in American literarary works of
various periods and genres, taking into consideration the historical and political
context of each work

* consider the centuries-long evolution of ideas about intellectual freedom from which

the principles of contemporary American culture have arisen

* draw conclusions about the content, form, and technique used in the literature’s
treatment of intellectual freedom issues

* examine Supreme Court decisions and scholarly commentary dealing with freedom of
thought and expression from the perspective of constitutional law

* consider the relationships between legal and literary treatments of this theme

* compare and contrast the American material with literary, historical, and legal
documents from other western cultures

* demonstrate and enhance skills in literary criticism, historical research, and legal

analysis by means of short papers and presentations

* undertake an independent research project and present the results orally and in writing

REQUIRED TEXTS

All of these texts are available in paperback. Any edition is acceptable.

Randall P. Bezanson, Speech Stories: How Free Can Speech Be?

Bertolt Brecht, Galileo

Joan DelFattore, What Johnny Shouldn’t Read: Textbook Censorship in America

Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

Harlan Ellison, Repent, Harlequin, Said the Ticktockman

Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Tony Kushner, Angels in America: Millennium Approaches

__________. Angels in America: Perestroika

Arthur Miller, The Crucible

George Orwell, 1984

George Bernard Shaw, St. Joan

Additional short readings will be accessed online and printed out. Even if there is a charge for printing, it will be lower than the cost of additional books would have been.

TECHNOLOGY

Students must have an active UD e-mail account and check it regularly. You will also be required to access information online. Questions about activating e-mail accounts or getting access to the UD library databases from off-campus should be addressed to the computer hotline at 831-6000.

ATTENDANCE

Short Version: If I’m here, you’re here.

Long Version: Students are expected to attend class except in cases of serious illness or family emergencies. Car trouble, the need to catch up on work or sleep, ennui, hangovers, arguments with significant others, appearances on the Jerry Springer Show, and abduction by creatures from another planet are not excused absences. (Students may argue that the last two are redundant.) Please let me know in advance if you plan to be absent in non-emergency situations.

GRADING

Four class presentations @ 5 points each: 20 points

Critical paper 25 points

Class participation: 15 points
Research paper: 40 points

Class Presentations: Four of the weekly assignments for this course include signing up to do online background research on a topic relevant to that week’s reading. Students will present these findings orally and discuss their relevance to the work(s) under discussion. I will talk with you if there is a problem with your presentation; otherwise, you may assume that you have received the full points for it. If you have an unexcused absence on a day when a presentation is due, you will receive a maximum of three points for handing in the assignment in writing. Such make-up assignments should include both the research results and your analysis of their relevance to the works the class is reading.

Critical Paper: Each student will sign up to write a critical analysis of either Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose (due on March 1), Tony Kushner’s Angels in America (due on April 5), or Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (due on April 19). This paper should be approximately five to seven pages in length, double-spaced, twelve-point font. The assignment is to read the work, decide on a focus for your paper (e.g., Eco’s use of mirror imagery, Kushner’s stipulation that certain roles be played by actors of the opposite gender), and incorporate three substantial critical sources into your own analysis of the work. “Substantial” means a book chapter, an essay published in a collection of essays, or a full-length journal article. Students are not expected to read whole books of criticism for this assignment. The most common approach is to use criticism of the work itself, but it is also acceptable to use broader theoretical works. No more than two of the critical sources should be by the same author, and you should be sure to include your own analysis. Documentation should be in MLA format (http://www.docstyles.com/mlacrib.htm). On the day the paper is due, you will be asked to present a five- to seven-minute summary of the most important points of your paper to the class. This summary should be delivered from memory or from notes; do not read a prepared text to the class.

Class Participation: If students are absent without good reason or habitually unprepared for class, I will speak with you about losing class participation points. No one will lose any of these points without prior discussion. The purpose is simple: students who are repeatedly absent or unprepared, thus failing to contribute their share to the class discussion, should not earn the same grades as students who keep up with the course all semester.

Research Paper: Broad categorical suggestions for research papers will be distributed, but students are encouraged to pursue your own interests. Please talk with me if you’d like to write about something that isn’t among the suggestions. The paper should be approximately fifteen to twenty pages in length, double-spaced, twelve-point font. The two requirements for student-generated topics is that they must involve acquiring new knowledge and applying it to the themes or works studied in the course. Documentation should be in MLA format (http://www.docstyles.com/mlacrib.htm)

ACADEMIC HONESTY

In the extremely unlikely event that any graduate student engages in academic dishonesty
(see http://www.udel.edu/stuguide/03-04/code.html#honesty), said miscreant will be referred to the Graduate Judicial System.

SCHEDULE

Feb. 8: Introduction
Overview of the course
Discussion of the concept of intellectual freedom
Introduction to the readings for next week

Assignment for next week:

1. Read George Bernard Shaw, Saint Joan, including Shaw’s introduction

2. Do the assignment for which you signed up:

a. Go to the English translation of the real-life trial of Joan of Arc (1431) at
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/joanofarc-trial.html WARNING: This
is excessively long, and you will read only a short excerpt; DO NOT
PRINT THE WHOLE THING. Scroll down the table of contents and choose one section to read -- whatever looks interesting to you. Then scroll down to the relevant page number and read the material, taking notes for a class presentation. If you wish to print out the material, it may be necessary to do it one page at a time. The entire document is hundreds of pages long, so you definitely want to make sure that you're not printing the whole thing. Be prepared to give a succinct report on that material to the class and to discuss its bearing on the play.

b. Go to the English translation of the Malleus Maleficarum (c. 1486) at http://www.malleusmaleficarum.org/part_III/mm03_toc.html. Scroll down the table of contents and choose one section to read -- whatever looks interesting to you. Then scroll down to the relevant page number and read the material, taking notes for a class presentation. If you wish to print out the material, it may be necessary to do it one page at a time. The entire document is hundreds of pages long, so you definitely want to make sure that you're not printing the whole thing. Be prepared to give a succinct report on that material to the class and to discuss its bearing on the play.

Feb. 15: Discussion of Saint Joan

Reports on the trial of Joan and on the Malleus Maleficarum

Discussion of the 15^th-century European concept of intellectual freedom,

particularly with respect to the association between religious faith and

secular law

Assignment for next week:

1. Read the biographical sketch of Galileo Galilei at

http://galileo.imss.firenze.it/museo/b/egalilg.html;
within that site, also click on “sentence condemning”

Read the text of the indictment against Galileo at

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1630galileo.html

Read the letter of Galileo to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany at
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/galileo-tuscany.html

2. Do the assignment for which you signed up.

a. Go to the English translation of the real-life trial of Galileo by the Roman Inquisition at (http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/galileo/galileo.html). Look at the links provided on that site and choose one section to read -- whatever looks interesting to you -- and take notes for a class presentation. The entire document is hundreds of pages long, so don’t try to print it. Be prepared to give a succinct report on that material to the class and to discuss its bearing on the play.

b. Do online or paper research into Berthold Brecht’s Marxism both as a literary approach and as a political view. This is a broad topic, and this assignment isn’t meant to be an exhaustive research project. Just find a couple of meaty and interesting sources and take notes for your presentation. Among other things, please include reference to Brecht’s testimony before the House Unamerican Activities Committee. Be prepared to report your findings to the class and to explain their relevance to the play.

3. Read Berthold Brecht, Galileo, including the introduction and appendices. Pay

particular attention to the differences between the two versions of Galileo.

Feb. 22: Discussion of Galileo

Presentations on the trial of Galileo, Brecht’s Marxism, and their relevance to

the play

Assignment for next week:

1. Read David Burr, “Inquisition: Introduction” http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/inquisition1.html

Read Introduction to the Albigensian Crusade,
http://xenophongroup.com/montjoie/albigens.htm

Read Bernardo Gui, excerpts from The Inquisitor’s Manual,
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/heresy2.html
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/bernardgui-inq.html
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/gui-cathars.html

2. Read Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

3. If you signed up to do your critical paper on The Name of the Rose, finish it for next week.

March 1: Discussion of the historical background materials

Discussion of The Name of the Rose based on students’ summaries of their

critical papers

Further discussion of The Name of the Rose

Assignment for next week:

1. Read the following theoretical material:

Ron King, “An Introduction to Cultural Poetics”

http://www.uta.edu/english/hawk/syllabi/village/culture.html

Jack Lynch, Guide to Literary Terms, “New Historicism”

http://www.english.upenn.edu/~jlynch/Terms/Temp/newhist.html

“Traditions, Transitions and Transmissions: towards a descriptive cultural poetics”

http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Medieval_Studies/Conference/2001/plenary.html

Wikipedia, “New Historicism,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_historicism

2. Read Arthur Miller, The Crucible.

3. Do the assignment for which you signed up:

a. Read Cotton Mather, “Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions,”http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/salem/ASA_MATH.HTM.

Be prepared to summarize this work and relate it to the play.

            b. Go to Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, The Salem Witch Trials  at
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/salem/witchcraft/texts/transcripts.html. This site contains original court transcripts and other material from the Salem trials, which Miller used as a primary source for The Crucible. The material appears in three volumes organized alphabetically by the name of the accused person. Select three people who appear as characters in the play,click on the appropriate volume, and scroll down to the character you selected. Read whatever material appears under that person’s name. In some instances, there may be very short documents that don’t seem to make much sense; feel free to skip those. Some of the materials are fragmentary, and the type of material presented varies with the different characters. Insofar as you can, given the variations in the source material, be prepared to discuss the following issues:
   * Specifically what was the accused person supposed to have done – e.g.,
killed someone’s cow, bewitched their crops, pinched them, or what?
      * What evidence was offered in support of those allegations?
    * What defense or rejoinder (if any) did the accused offer?
* As far as you can ascertain from your answers to the first three questions,
what was the nature of truth as defined by the witchcraft court? To put it
another way, what was the standard of evidence needed for conviction?
* What use did Miller make of his source material in writing The Crucible?
What did he retain, what did he condense or adapt, what did he change
outright? Why? What does his use of his real-life source material suggest
about his literary and, perhaps, political aims?

c. Spend at least an hour using a web browser googling Senator Joseph McCarthy or the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Note that McCarthy was in the Senate, not in the House; his anti-communist activities complemented the work of HUAC, but they were two separate things. Make notes on the information you find and be prepared to discuss its relevance to the play.

d. Read Introduction to the trial of Anne Hutchinson, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/kids/civilrights/features_hutchison.html and Trial of Anne Hutchinson, http://personal.pitnet.net/primarysources/hutchinson.html. Be prepared to summarize the material, reading excerpts aloud as appropriate, and explain how it relates to The Crucible.

March 8: Discussion of The Crucible

Presentations on Anne Hutchinson, Cotton Mather, and the real-life Salem

trials

Presentations on McCarthy

Videotape: Edward R. Murrow, Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy
Mini-lecture on the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses and on the Equal

Access principle

Assignment for next week:

1. Google the Supreme Court case for which you signed up and read the decision. Don’t worry about legal technicalities such as whether a plaintiff has standing to sue or whether documents were filed on time. Just concentrate on the main arguments addressing the government’s involvement with free expression as it relates to religion.

* Marsh v. Chambers (May Congress and state legislatures appoint and pay chaplains

to pray before legislative sessions?)

* Alleghany County v. ACLU (May the government permit a religious group to

display a Nativity scene inside a government building?)

* Reynolds v. United States (May the government compel Mormon

men to have only one wife, despite their religious belief in polygamy?)

* Employment Division v. Smith (May the government prohibit the ritual use of

peyote by Native American religious groups?)

* Rosenberger v. Rector (May a public university exclude student religious

publications from eligibility for funding that is available to other student

publications?)

2. Be prepared to give a presentation addressing the following questions:

* Who sued whom, and why?

* Who won?

* What were the two or three most important issues that led to the decision?

* What did the decision say about each of those issues?

* Do you agree with the Court’s decision? Why or why not?

March 15: Small-group work to prepare presentations on the five church/state cases

Panel presentations

Audiotape: Excerpts from the Supreme Court oral argument in Employment

Division v. Smith

Assignment for next week:

1. Read What Johnny Shouldn’t Read: Textbook Censorship in America

2. In “Textbook Controversies Based on Content, Values, and Viewpoints” at
http://www.english.udel.edu/jdel/textbooks/html, read the material on the Rainbow Curriculum controversy (Heather Has Two Mommies, Daddy’s Roommate) and on the Nappy Hair controversy.

March 22: Discussion of What Johnny Shouldn’t Read

Videotape: Censorship in Our Schools

In-class reading and discussion of Heather Has Two Mommies, Daddy’s

Roommate and Nappy Hair

Discussion of balancing individual rights against majority rule in government-

sponsored speech

Asssignment for next class:

1. Read Tony Kushner, Angels in America: Millennium Approaches and Perestroika

2. If you signed up to do a critical paper on Angels in America, finish it for the next class.

March 29: Spring break

April 5: Discussion of Angels in America in light of critical papers presented by

students

Further discussion of Angels in America

Film clips from DVD of Angels in America

Assignment for next class:

1. In Randall Bezanson, Speech Stories, read the chapters on R.A.V. v. St. Paul and Jenkins v. Georgia.

2. Read Introduction to Hustler Magazine v. Jerry Falwell,

http://www.hfac.uh.edu/comm/media_libel/cases-conflicts/print/hustler.html;
also click on “Jerry Falwell Talks About His First Time.”

3. Read the Supreme Court decision in Hustler v. Falwell.

4. Read the Supreme Court decision in A Book Named John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure v. Massachusetts.

April 12: Discussion of hate speech and censorship of disfavored sexual speech

in R.A.V. v. St. Paul, Hustler v. Falwell, Jenkins v. Georgia, and Memoirs

v. Massachusetts

Audiotape: Excerpts from the Supreme Court oral argument in Jenkins v.

Georgia

Videotape: Damned in the U.S.A.

Assignment for next week:

1. Read Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

2. If you signed up to do a critical paper on One Flew, finish it for the next class.

April 19: Discussion of One Flew in light of the critical papers presented by students

Further discussion of One Flew

Excerpts from the filmed version of One Flew

Analysis of the film clip

Assignment for next week:

1. In Bezanson, Speech Stories, read the chapters on Cohen v. California and Texas v. Johnson.

2. Read e.e. cummings, “i sing of Olaf glad and big” at
http://www.poets.org/poems/poems.cfm?prmID=1190;

Read “next to of course god america i,”
http://www.columbiagrangers.org/pivframe.asp?Contents=sidebar2.htm&Main
Content=simplesearch2.asp

April 26: Discussion of political dissent cases

Audiotape: Excerpts of the Supreme Court oral argument in Texas v. Johnson

Close reading of the two cummings poems

Assignment for next week:

Read George Orwell, 1984

May 3: Discussion of 1984

Discussion of final papers

Assignment for next week:

1. Read Henry David Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience” at
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Literature/Thoreau/CivilDisobedience.html

2. Read Harlan Ellison, Repent, Harlequin, Said the Ticktockman

May 10: Discussion of “Civil Disobedience,” particularly with respect to themes of political dissent

Discussion of Repent, Harlequin
DVD: Anti-war music by Country Joe McDonald and Jimi Hendrix at

Woodstock

May 17: Final papers due

Small-group work to share final papers; peer editing

Final papers handed in

ENGL 884

INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM IN AMERICA:
STUDIES IN LITERATURE, HISTORY AND LAW

SPRING 2004

RESEARCH PAPER

The following four options merely suggest approaches that you may wish to take.
Please feel free to use, adapt, or ignore them. Papers must be typed, double-spaced, in 12-point font, and approximately fifteen to twenty pages in length. Documentation should follow the MLA Style Sheet format ((http://www.docstyles.com/mlacrib.htm).

SUGGESTION ONE:

Research a relevant Supreme Court case; a few examples are listed below.

Capitol Square v. Pinette (1995): The Ku Klux Klan of Ohio sued the Capitol
Square Review Board for refusing to allow the Klan to erect a cross in a public
square during the Christmas season.

Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union (1997): The ACLU challenged
provisions of the 1996 Communications Decency Act that restricted minors’
access to Internet sites dealing with sexual or excretory material deemed
"’patently offensive’ as measured by contemporary community standards.”

Playboy Entertainment Group v. United States (2000): Playboy Entertainment
challenged provisions of the 1996 Communications Decency Act that severely
limited its ability to broadcast the Playboy Channel on television at any time other
than late at night. (Note: This case has an unusual number of merely
procedural decisions; the relevant ones are the Delaware District Court decisions
dated November 8, 1996, and December 28, 1998; and the U.S. Supreme
Court decision dated May 22, 2000.)

Board of Regents v. Southworth (2000). The University of Wisconsin used a
mandatory student activity fee to support various student organizations. Students
sued the university, claiming that they should not be forced to support
extracurricular student speech with which they disagreed. (Note: at different
stages, this case was also entitled Fry v. Board of Regents and Southworth v.
Grebe.)

Decisions of lower courts as well as the Supreme Court can be found through the UD Library’s Lexis/Nexis database. Please note that the most detailed explanations of the facts of the case are likely to be found not in the Supreme Court decision but in the lower court decisions, particularly that of the trial court. To find out more about what led to the
lawsuit, you may also wish to use Lexis/Nexis to access news stories, editorials,
and letters to the editor. One research suggestion, in case you have not done
this type of investigation before: it is not a good idea to use the title of the case
as the search keywords, since few newspaper articles mention lawsuits by their
titles. Instead, use the names of the principal parties, the town, or the basic
ideas in the lawsuit – words that you would expect to find in a newspaper
story. Finally, you can use Lexis/Nexis (Legal Research, then Law Reviews)
to access law review articles about the case.

If you are not sure what case you would like to research, you can use the Legal Research function of Lexis/Nexis to search out cases by keywords, such as the titles of books that were challenged in court but did not go to the Supreme Court -- e.g., Lady Chatterley's Lover, Ulysses, and Tropic of Cancer.

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SUGGESTION TWO:
Do further research on an historical event or a current controversy relevant to the course and relate it to the literature we’ve read. Examples include the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts, the McCarthy-era firings of university professors, and disputes surrounding the Patriot Act.

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SUGGESTION THREE:

Select a theoretical work and use it as the basis for analyzing one or more of the
literary works studied in this course. Examples include, but are by no means
limited to:

Stanley Fish, There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech, and It’s a Good Thing, Too
(Oxford University Press, 1994)

Thomas R. Hensley, ed., The Boundaries of Freedom of Expression and Order in
American Democracy (Kent State University Press, 2001)

Nat Hentoff, Free Speech for Me – But Not for Thee (HarperCollins, 1992)

Peggie Hollingsworth, ed., Unfettered Expression: Freedom in American Intellectual
Life (University of Michigan Press, 2000).

Rodney A. Smolla, Free Speech in an Open Society (Knopf, 1992)

Nicholas Wolfson, Hate Speech, Sex Speech, Free Speech (Praeger, 1997).

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If none of these ideas appeals to you, write a paper on any relevant topic that meets
the following criteria:

1. The paper must entail the gathering of new information or the use of a fresh
approach to interpretation; it cannot consist primarily of further traditional analysis or
evaluation of works we have already read and discussed.

2. The paper must show how the new material fits into the larger picture of
intellectual freedom in America as we have discussed it in class.