^{Common Errors in English Usage and More} _{Search Results}

Commonly Made Suggestions

May 16, 2016 Brian Clark

Commonly Made Suggestions

I am getting a tremendous amount of mail about this site. I enjoy the compliments, try to answer the queries, and ignore the occasional insult. (One wit wrote of my site: “I could care less!” Cute.) The volume of correspondence has exceeded my ability to respond to all of it; so please forgive me if you don’t hear back from me. I do read your letters.

Although I am now retired from Washington State University, that doesn’t mean I spend a lot of time doing e-mail. I check it once or twice a day when I am not traveling, but I am not constantly sitting in front of the computer. I also have hand problems that prevent me from typing at long stretches at a time, so if you receive a very short reply to a long note, that’s probably the reason. I’m not trying to be impolite, but I simply can’t engage in lengthy e-mail exchanges.

And although I appreciate good prose (with real capital letters), don’t be afraid I’ll nitpick your letter for writing flaws. I don’t normally critique other people’s writing unless I’m hired to.

I also receive many suggestions for additions. These are usually welcome, and I adopt many of them; but at least half my mail involves points I have already covered in one way or another. If you would be so kind, please go through the following checklist before writing me.

If your first encounter with my site was through a link to the list of errors, please read the Introduction above first. If you are creating a link to my site, please link to this page (https://brians.wsu.edu/common-errors-in-english-usage/); otherwise, users will miss important introductory remarks.
If you think a common error is missing from my list, use this site’s search function (click the magnifying glass).
Other places to look: “More Errors,” “Commonly misspelled words,” and “Non-Errors.”
This is not a general English grammar site, nor am I a grammarian. I am a literature professor interested in English usage, some of which involves grammar. You will find a list of comprehensive English grammar and writing sites at the bottom of my list of errors under “Other Good Resources.” These are the folks to ask for help with your writing.
This is not a site offering a tutorial service for people studying English. In my list of links on the main pages listing errors I include sites which do and which provide resources for the study of English as a second language. Try one of them instead. I am not an ESL specialist and have a full-time job which does not involve online interactive teaching. I hope you find what I have written useful and I do answer occasional questions, but this site does not provide a detailed question-and-answer service.
Before you write to insist that some usage I recommend against is actually standard now, consider that although many dictionaries take it as their task to keep up with popular usage, my guide is meant to alert you to even very popular usage patterns that may get you into trouble with other people you encounter. No matter how many dictionaries say that “I could care less” is now a legitimate variant on the traditional “I couldn’t care less,” my job is to protect you from people who do not agree with this. Some dictionaries’ approach is to tell the traditionalists to get over it. This is not likely to work. A usage guide’s approach is to warn you that this usage may make you appear less well informed than the traditional one. What you do with the information is up to you, but at least you know that if you go with the new form you’re taking a risk.
Please do not write to me asking for a link on my site to yours. This is a university non-profit Web site which does not allow advertising. And the noncommercial links I create are always created at my own initiative, and I am very picky about what I link to.
If you have checked thoroughly and still want to write me, please feel free; but be aware that I do not have time to deal with all my correspondence. “Common Errors” is not my main Web project, and I work on it only sporadically (sometimes not for many months at a stretch). To see what other sorts of things I spend my time on, check out my home page.
If you believe I have not sent you a response you deserve, consider these possibilities before deciding that I am deliberately not answering you: 1) I may be traveling and not doing e-mail, 2) your return address may be incorrect, causing my replies to you to “bounce” (if you rarely get replies to your e-mails, this is a good possibility), or 3) you have erred on the side of caution by blocking all incoming correspondence by people unknown to you.
One more important point: this is a hobby for me, and not my job. I do not have the time to deal with long, complex messages covering a multitude of points. Short, focused messages are most likely to be answered.
Before writing me, check the following list of commonly made suggestions.

Add “would of”

Look under “C” for “could of/should of/would of.”

Add “intensive purposes.”

“For all intensive purposes” is listed under “F.”

You shouldn’t end a sentence with a preposition.

Nonsense. See the second item under “Non-Errors.”

You should say “Write to me” rather than “Write me.”

Some people following the British tradition object to this usage; it’s standard in the US. The expression probably evolved in analogy to expressions like “call me,” “phone me” and “tell me.” In the US, “write me” will do just fine in informal writing such as I use on this site.

The word is “pernickety,” not “persnickety.”

The original Scottish dialect form was indeed “pernickety,” but Americans changed it to “persnickety” a century ago, and “pernickety” is generally unknown in the US. The Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary calls “pernickety” obsolete, but judging from my correspondence, it’s still in wide use across the Atlantic.

Americans have it all wrong, the correct usage is English (Canadian, Australian, etc.).

See the above section, The President’s English. Note that it was titled during the Clinton era, is just a joke referring to the phrase “the Queen’s English,” and has no connection with any particular president. And before writing to tell me that I should not claim that American English is THE international standard, go back and read again what I’ve written; I do not claim that.

A name which ends in an S needs an additional S after the apostrophe when it is made possessive, e.g., “Paul Brians’s Page.”

Some styles call for the extra S, some don’t. I was forced by the publisher of my second book to follow this rule and I swore I would never do it again. I think it’s ugly.

Please add [some particularly obscure word].

This site is concerned with common errors in English, not bizarre or esoteric ones, although I often enjoy reading about them. I admit to discussing some not-so-common errors if I find them amusing enough.

What is the correct spelling of _________?

Please try a dictionary first. In my opinion, the best on-line one is the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

You’ve misspelled the title of an article.

When an item involves misspelling, the misspelled form is the one used for the title of the entry and for the name of the page. This helps people who don’t know the correct spelling to find the entry. Remember this is a list of errors.

I was always taught X but all the authorities I’ve looked in say Y. What’s happening to the English language?

It’s changing—always has changed, and always will. When you reach the point that nobody seems to agree with your standard of usage any more, you may have simply been left behind. There is no ultimate authority in language—certainly not me—nor any measure of absolute “correctness.” The best guide is the usage of literate and careful speakers and writers, and when they differ among themselves one has to make a choice as to which one prefers. My goal is to keep my readers’ writing and speech from being laughed at or groaned over by average literate people.

How can you possibly approve of ___________? Your effrontery in caving in to this ignorant nonsense is appalling [ranting, raving, foaming at the mouth . . .].

It’s odd how some people with high standards of correctness seem to have no notion of manners at all. You and I both know that I am not the most conservative of commentators on usage. If you want to make a logical case for a rule I don’t accept, please do so politely.

You should add more information about this word; it has other meanings than the ones you discuss.

My goal is to keep the entries as compact as possible, focusing only on those aspects of the words discussed which lend themselves to error. The sort of detailed discussion an unabridged dictionary provides is inappropriate here.

It would be easier to read through your site if you put navigational links on each page back to where the reader left off in the list of errors.

This site is designed for purposeful searches (REVISE: use the Google Custom Search engine just above the alphabetical list of errors or just look down the list for the appropriate place in the alphabet) and casual browsing. Few people set out to read their way in order through all the entries. But if you want to do this, there are two methods you can use.

If you want to read the individual entries in order, when you have finished one, instead of clicking the link that says “Return to list of errors” just press alt-left arrow to go back to the spot you left in the list of errors. On a Mac, the equivalent sequence is command-left arrow. Or click the back button in your browser.

If you would like to read straight through the whole body of the site as text on a single page I have provided a separate version which is much more suitable for this purpose and will keep you from having to click through over 1,400 pages. Click on the link called “Click here for the text-only version of this site.” to go to http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.txt.

Because this page is not written in HTML, it lacks special characters like em-dashes and curled apostrophes, but it contains basically the same information as the formatted site.

Please use a different font on your site.

The code for this site specifies no particular font. What you see is the font your individual Web browser uses as its default. You can go into your browser’s settings menu and change the default text font to anything you like, and—while you’re at it—set the font size to something that pleases you as well.

Your site shows ugly gibberish wherever it should display quotation marks and apostrophes.

This site uses special codes to create properly curled quotation marks and apostrophes, and real dashes. Some browsers ignore the code and render the curled marks as straight ones, but other, older ones display the code itself. There are two solutions: 1) upgrade to a more recent version of your favorite browser, or 2) use the all-text version of the site which lacks the problem characters.

Note that with thousands of instances to be changed I had to use automatic global search-and-replace routines to curl these marks, and sometimes they misfired. I’ve tried hard to find the errors that resulted (typically a right quotation mark and a space where an apostrophe should be), but whenever I think I’ve found the last one somebody points out another. Keep ’em coming: I do really want to get all of these fixed.

Why don’t you say when you last updated your site?

You’ll find the latest revision date at the bottom of the all-text version of the site.

You should refer your readers to the on-line versions of Strunk and Fowler.

Well, I just did, didn’t I? But not with enthusiasm. Because of copyright restrictions these are both very early editions (1918 and 1908!). If you’re looking for confirmation of your views you may find solace, but the average reader has no way of knowing whether their advice still makes sense today. Would you use a 1908 dictionary to determine the meaning of a word now?

You left out one of my pet peeves!

I may simply not have gotten around to it yet, but remember to try the Search field before writing.

Still want to write?

My address is paulbrians@gmail.com. Please don’t call me “Brian.” My name is Paul Brians.

Non-errors

May 16, 2016 Brian Clark

Non-errors

Usages people keep telling you are wrong but which are actually standard in English.

Split infinitives

For the hyper-critical, “to boldly go where no man has gone before” should be “to go boldly. . . .” It is good to be aware that inserting one or more words between “to” and a verb is not strictly speaking an error, and is often more expressive and graceful than moving the intervening words elsewhere; but so many people are offended by split infinitives that it is better to avoid them except when the alternatives sound strained and awkward.

Ending a sentence with a preposition

A fine example of an artificial “rule” which ignores standard usage. The famous witticism usually attributed to Winston Churchill makes the point well: “This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.” If you think you know the original version of this saying, click here.

Beginning a sentence with a conjunction

It offends those who wish to confine English usage in a logical straitjacket that writers often begin sentences with “and” or “but.” True, one should be aware that many such sentences would be improved by becoming clauses in compound sentences, but there are many effective and traditional uses for beginning sentences thus. One example is the reply to a previous assertion in a dialogue: “But, my dear Watson, the criminal obviously wore expensive boots or he would not have taken such pains to scrape them clean.” Make it a rule to consider whether your conjunction would repose more naturally within the previous sentence or would lose in useful emphasis by being demoted from its position at the head of a new sentence.

Using “between” for only two, “among” for more

The “-tween” in “between” is clearly linked to the number two, but, as the Oxford English Dictionary notes, “In all senses, between has, from its earliest appearance, been extended to more than two.” We’re talking about Anglo-Saxon here—early. Pedants have labored to enforce “among” when there are three or more objects under discussion, but largely in vain. Very few speakers naturally say, “A treaty has been negotiated among Britain, France, and Germany.”

Over vs. more than.

Some people claim that “over” cannot be used to signify “more than,” as in “Over a thousand baton-twirlers marched in the parade.” “Over,” they insist, always refers to something physically higher: say, the blimp hovering over the parade route. This absurd distinction ignores the role metaphor plays in language. If I write 1 on the blackboard and 10 beside it, 10 is still the “higher” number. “Over” has been used in the sense of “more than” for over a thousand years.

Gender vs. sex

Feminists eager to remove references to sexuality from discussions of females and males not involving mating or reproduction revived an older meaning of “gender,” which had come to refer in modern times chiefly to language, as a synonym for “sex” in phrases such as “Our goal is to achieve gender equality.” Americans, always nervous about sex, eagerly embraced this usage, which is now standard. In some scholarly fields, “sex” is now used to label biologically determined aspects of maleness and femaleness (reproduction, etc.) while “gender” refers to their socially determined aspects (behavior, attitudes, etc.), but in ordinary speech this distinction is not always maintained. It is disingenuous to pretend that people who use “gender” in the new senses are making an error, just as it is disingenuous to maintain that “Ms.” means “manuscript” (that’s “MS”). Nevertheless, I must admit I was startled to discover that the tag on my new trousers describes not only their size and color, but their “gender.”

Using “who” for people, “that” for animals and inanimate objects

In fact there are many instances in which the most conservative usage is to refer to a person using “that”: “All the politicians that were at the party later denied even knowing the host” is actually somewhat more traditional than the more popular “politicians who.” An aversion to “that” referring to human beings as somehow diminishing their humanity may be praiseworthily sensitive, but it cannot claim the authority of tradition. In some sentences, “that” is clearly preferable to “who”: “She is the only person I know of that prefers whipped cream on her granola.” In the following example, to exchange “that” for “who” would be absurd: “Who was it that said, ‘A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle’?”*
*Commonly attributed to Gloria Steinem, but she attributes it to Irina Dunn.

“Since” cannot mean “because.”

“Since” need not always refer to time. Since the 14th century, when it was often spelled “syn,” it has also meant “seeing that” or “because.”

Hopefully

This word has meant “it is to be hoped” for a very long time, and those who insist it can only mean “in a hopeful fashion” display more hopefulness than realism.

Momentarily

“The plane will be landing momentarily” says the flight attendant, and the grumpy grammarian in seat 36B thinks to himself, “So we’re going to touch down for just a moment?” Everyone else thinks, “Just a moment now before we land.” Back in the 1920s when this use of “momentarily” was first spreading on both sides of the Atlantic, one might have been accused of misusing the word, but by now it’s listed without comment as one of the standard definitions in most dictionaries.

Lend vs. loan

“Loan me your hat” was just as correct everywhere as “lend me your ears” until the British made “lend” the preferred verb, relegating “loan” to the thing being lent. However, as in so many cases, Americans kept the older pattern, which in its turn has influenced modern British usage so that those insisting that “loan” can only be a noun are in the minority.

Near miss

It is futile to protest that “near miss” should be “near collision.” This expression is a condensed version of something like “a miss that came very near to being a collision” and is similar to “narrow escape.” Everyone knows what is meant by it and almost everyone uses it. It should be noted that the expression can also be used in the sense of almost succeeding in striking a desired target: “His Cointreau soufflé was a near miss.”

“None” singular vs. plural

Some people insist that since “none” is derived from “no one” it should always be singular: “none of us is having dessert.” However, in standard usage, the word is most often treated as a plural. “None of us are having dessert” will do just fine.

Scan vs. skim.

Those who insist that “scan” can never be a synonym of “skim” have lost the battle. It is true that the word originally meant “to scrutinize,” but it has now evolved into one of those unfortunate words with two opposite meanings: to examine closely (now rare) and to glance at quickly (much more common). It would be difficult to say which of these two meanings is more prominent in the computer-related usage, to “scan a document.”

That said, it’s more appropriate to use “scan” to label a search for specific information in a text, and “skim” to label a hasty reading aimed at getting the general gist of a text.

Off of

For most Americans, the natural thing to say is “Climb down off of [pronounced “offa”] that horse, Tex, with your hands in the air”; but many UK authorities urge that the “of” should be omitted as redundant. Where British English reigns you may want to omit the “of” as superfluous, but common usage in the US has rendered “off of” so standard as to generally pass unnoticed, though some American authorities also discourage it in formal writing. But if “onto” makes sense, so does “off of.” However, “off of” meaning “from” in phrases like “borrow five dollars off of Clarice” is definitely nonstandard.

Till vs. ’til.

Since it looks like an abbreviation for “until,” some people argue that this word should always be spelled “’til” (though not all insist on the apostrophe). However, “till” has regularly occurred as a spelling of this word for over 800 years and it’s actually older than “until.” It is perfectly good English.

Teenage vs. teenaged.

Some people object that the word should be “teenaged,” but unlike the still nonstandard “ice tea,” “scramble eggs,” and “stain glass,” “teenage” is almost universally accepted now.

Don’t use “reference” to mean “cite.”

Nouns are often turned into verbs in English, and “reference” in the sense “to provide references or citations” has become so widespread that it’s generally acceptable, though some teachers and editors still object.

Feeling bad

“I feel bad” is standard English, as in “This t-shirt smells bad” (not “badly”). “I feel badly” is an incorrect hyper-correction by people who think they know better than the masses. People who are happy can correctly say they feel good, but if they say they feel well, we know they mean to say they’re healthy.

Unquote vs. endquote.

Some people get upset at the common pattern by which speakers frame a quotation by saying “quote . . . unquote,” insisting that the latter word should logically be “endquote”; but illogical as it may be, “unquote” has been used in this way for about a century, and “endquote” is nonstandard.

Persuade vs. convince.

Some people like to distinguish between these two words by insisting that you persuade people until you have convinced them, but “persuade” as a synonym for “convince” goes back at least to the 16th century. It can mean both to attempt to convince and to succeed. It is no longer common to say things like “I am persuaded that you are an illiterate fool,” but even this usage is not in itself wrong.

Normalcy vs. normality.

The word “normalcy” had been around for more than half a century when President Warren G. Harding was assailed in the newspapers for having used it in a 1921 speech. Some folks are still upset, but in the US “normalcy” is a perfectly normal—if uncommon—synonym for “normality.”

Aggravate vs. irritate.

Some people claim that “aggravate” can only mean “make worse” and should not be used to mean “irritate,” but the latter has been a valid use of the word for four centuries, and “aggravation” means almost exclusively “irritation.”

You shouldn’t pronounce the “e” in “not my forte.”

Some people insist that it’s an error to pronounce the word “forte” in the expression “not my forte” as if French-derived “forte” were the same as the Italian musical term for “loud”: “for-tay.” But the original French expression is pas mon fort, which not only has no “e” on the end to pronounce—it has a silent “t” as well. It’s too bad that when we imported this phrase we mangled it so badly, but it’s too late to do anything about it now. If you go around saying what sounds like “that’s not my fort,” people won’t understand what you mean.

However, those who use the phrase to mean “not to my taste” (“Wagnerian opera is not my forte”) are definitely mistaken. Your forte is what you’re good at, not just stuff you like.

“Preventive” is the adjective, “preventative” the noun.

I must say I like the sound of this distinction, but in fact the two are interchangeable as both nouns and adjective, though many prefer “preventive” as being shorter and simpler. “Preventative” used as an adjective dates back to the 17th century, as does “preventive” as a noun.

People should say a book is titled such-and-such rather than entitled.

No less a writer than Chaucer is cited by the Oxford English Dictionary as having used “entitled” in this sense, the very first meaning of the word listed by the OED. It may be a touch pretentious, but it’s not wrong.

People are healthy; vegetables are healthful.

Logic and tradition are on the side of those who make this distinction, but I’m afraid phrases like “part of a healthy breakfast” have become so widespread that they are rarely perceived as erroneous except by the hyper-correct. On a related though slightly different subject, it is interesting to note that in English adjectives connected to sensations in the perceiver of an object or event are often transferred to the object or event itself. In the 19th century it was not uncommon to refer, for instance, to a “grateful shower of rain,” and we still say “a gloomy landscape,” “a cheerful sight” and “a happy coincidence.”

Dinner is done; people are finished.

I pronounce this an antiquated distinction rarely observed in modern speech. Nobody really supposes the speaker is saying he or she has been roasted to a turn. In older usage people said, “I have done” to indicate they had completed an action. “I am done” is not really so very different.

Crops are raised; children are reared.

Old-fashioned writers insist that you raise crops and rear children, but in modern American English children are usually “raised.”

“You’ve got mail” should be “you have mail.”

The “have” contracted in phrases like this is merely an auxiliary verb, not an expression of possession. It is not a redundancy. Compare: “You’ve sent the mail.”

It’s “cut the muster,” not “cut the mustard.”

This etymology seems plausible at first. Its proponents often trace it to the American Civil War. We do have the analogous expression “to pass muster,” which probably first suggested this alternative; but although the origins of “cut the mustard” are somewhat obscure, the latter is definitely the form used in all sorts of writing throughout the twentieth century. Common sense would suggest that a person cutting a muster is not someone being selected as fit, but someone eliminating the unfit.

Here is the article on “cut the mustard” from the FAQ of the UseNet newsgroup alt.usage.english:

This expression meaning “to achieve the required standard” is first recorded in an O. Henry story of 1902: “So I looked around and found a proposition [a woman] that exactly cut the mustard.”

It may come from a cowboy expression, “the proper mustard”, meaning “the genuine thing”, and a resulting use of “mustard” to denote the best of anything. O. Henry in Cabbages and Kings (1894) called mustard “the main attraction”: “I’m not headlined in the bills, but I’m the mustard in the salad dressing, just the same.” Figurative use of “mustard” as a positive superlative dates from 1659 in the phrase “keen as mustard”, and use of “cut” to denote rank (as in “a cut above” ) dates from the 18th century.

Other theories are that it is a corruption of the military phrase “to pass muster” (“muster”, from Latin _monstrare_=”to show”, means “to assemble (troops), as for inspection” ); that it refers to the practice of adding vinegar to ground-up mustard seed to “cut” the bitter taste; that it literally means “cut mustard” as an example of a difficult task, mustard being a relatively tough crop that grows close to the ground; and that it literally means “cut mustard” as an example of an easy task (via the negative expression “can’t even cut the mustard” ), mustard being easier to cut at the table than butter.

The more-or-less synonymous expression “cut it” (as in “” sorry” doesn’t cut it” ) seems to be more recent and may derive from “cut the mustard”.

It’s “carrot on a stick,” not “carrot or stick.”

Authoritative dictionaries agree, the original expression refers to offering to reward a stubborn mule or donkey with a carrot or threatening to beat it with a stick and not to a carrot being dangled from a stick. Further discussion. This and other popular etymologies fit under the heading aptly called by the English “too clever by half.”

“Spitting image” should be “spit and image.”

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the earlier form was “spitten image,” which may indeed have evolved from “spit and image.” It’s a crude figure of speech: someone else is enough like you to have been spat out by you, made of the very stuff of your body. In the early 20th century the spelling and pronunciation gradually shifted to the less logical “spitting image,” which is now standard. It’s too late to go back. There is no historical basis for the claim sometimes made that the original expression was “spirit and image.”

“Lion’s share” means all of something, not the larger part of something.

Even though the original meaning of this phrase reflected the idea that the lion can take whatever he wants—typically all of the slaughtered game, leaving nothing for anyone else—in modern usage the meaning has shifted to “the largest share.” This makes great sense if you consider the way hyenas and vultures swarm over the leftovers from a typical lion’s kill.

“Connoisseur” should be spelled “connaisseur.”

When we borrowed this word from the French in the 18th century, it was spelled “connoisseur.” Is it our fault the French later decided to shift the spelling of many OI words to the more phonetically accurate AI? Of those Francophone purists who insist we should follow their example I say, let ’em eat bifteck.

Hear Paul Brians discuss non-errors on his Common Errors in English Usage Podcast.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

More Errors (Eggcorns)

May 16, 2016 Brian Clark

More Errors

People send me quite a few word confusions which don’t seem worth writing up but which are nevertheless entertaining or interesting. I simply list a number of these below for your amusement. Many of them are discussed on the Eggcorn Database site.

Note: if you don’t find what you’re looking for below, please be aware that this is only a supplementary page to a much more extensive site that begins here.

What was said	What was meant
a stigmatism	astigmatism
abolishment	abolition
abraded	upbraided
acrosst	across
ad homonym	ad hominem
aerobic numbers	Arabic numbers
affidavid	affidavit
alphabeticalize	alphabetize
alsome, allsome	awesome
altercations	alterations
alterior	ulterior
anachronism	acronym
ambliance	ambulance
anticlimatic	anticlimactic
anchors away	anchors aweigh
ancy	antsy
aperpo	à propos
apples and organs	apples and oranges
arm’s way	harm’s way
artical	article
as a pose to	as opposed to
ashfault	asphalt
assessible	accessible
assumably	presumably
at leased	at least
authoritarian source	authoritative source
back round	background
balling out	bawling out
based around	based on
batter an eyelid	bat an eyelid
bear the blunt	bear the brunt
beautify a saint	beatify a saint
beckon call	beck and call
begs belief	beggars belief
besiege	beseech
beyond approach	beyond reproach
bids well	bids fair, bodes well
binded	bound
Bladerunner (film title)	Blade Runner
bled like a stuffed pig	bled like a stuck pig
blessing in the sky	blessing in disguise
blindsighted	blindsided
blow a casket	blow a gasket
a board of director	a member of a board of directors
boom to the economy	boon to the economy
bonafied	bona fide
bored of	bored with
bottles the mind	boggles the mind
bowl in a china shop	bull in a china shop
bran new	brand new
built off of	built on or upon
BVD player	DVD player
by in large or enlarge	by and large
Cadillac converter	catalytic converter
card shark	cardsharp
carport tunnel	carpal tunnel
case and point	case in point
cease and decease	cease and desist
cease the day	seize the day
chalked full	chock-full
cheap at half the price	cheap at twice the price
chester drawers	chest of drawers
chicken pops	chicken pox
chomp at the bit	champ at the bit
chow	ciao
circus sized	circumcised
clearified	clarified
cohabitate	cohabit
collaborating evidence	corroborating evidence
component	opponent
conversate	converse
conservative effort	concerted effort
copywrite	copyright
copywritten	copyrighted
coronated	crowned
coronet	cornet
cortage	cortege
coruscating	excoriating
a couple guys	a couple of guys
coup de gras	coup de grace
cream de mint	creme de menthe
crimp my style	cramp my style
crossified	crucified
the crutch of the matter	the crux of the matter
culvert sack	cul de sac
cumberbun	cummerbund
cursing through his veins	coursing through his veins
cut to the chaff	cut to the chase
dappled in	dabbled in
darkest before the storm	darkest before the dawn
dead wringer	dead ringer
debockle	debacle
decidated	dedicated
deformation of character	defamation of character
deja vous	deja vu
Samuel R. Delaney	Samuel R. Delany
detrius	detritus
diabolically opposed	diametrically opposed
dialate	dilate
differ payment	defer payment
die heart	diehard
diswraught	distraught
do diligence	due diligence
do to	due to
documentated	documented
doggy dog world	dog-eat-dog world
dottering	doddering
down the pipe	down the pike
dresser draw	dresser drawer
drownded	drowned
drownding	drowning
drudged up	dredged up
dry reach	dry retch
electorial college	electoral college
end justifies the meaning	end justifies the means
enervate	energize
Episcopalian church	Episcopal church
escape goat	scapegoat
esculate	escalate
exasperated	exacerbated
excape	escape
exhilarator	accelerator
expecially	especially
expeculation	speculation
expediate	expedite
exuberant price	exorbitant price
exulted status	exalted status
eyesaw, eye soar	eyesore
face the piper	face the music, pay the piper
fair to midland	fair to middling
far and few between	few and far between
fathom a guess	hazard a guess
fast majority	vast majority
fate accompli	fait accompli
Federal Drug Administration	Food and Drug Administration
final throws	final throes
first come, first serve	first come, first served
flamingo dancer	flamenco dancer
flustrated	frustrated
focus like a razor	focus like a laser
foilage	foliage
foul swoop	fell swoop
four-stair heating	forced-air heating
Franklin Delanor Roosevelt	Franklin Delano Roosevelt
frentic	frantic or frenetic
front in center	front and center
full ball	full bore
garner wages	garnish wages
gave me slack	gave me flak
gentile manners	genteel manners
gentlelady	gentlewoman
genuses	genera
glaucomole	glaucoma
glaze over	gloss over
gleam	glean
godforsaken right	God-given right
gone array	gone awry
gorilla warfare	guerilla warfare
got my dandruff up	got my dander up
grant it	granted
greatfruit	grapefruit
harbringer	harbinger
heared	heard
harps back	harks back
hearst	hearse
heart-rendering	heart-rending
Heineken remover	Heimlich maneuver
here on end	here on in
hewn cry	hue and cry
High Iraqi	hierarchy
hobbiest	hobbyist
hold down the fort	hold the fort
hurtles to overcome	hurdles to overcome
howsomever	however
I seen	I saw or I’ve seen
ice tea	iced tea
imbedded	embedded
flaw in the ointment	fly in the ointment
hare’s breath	hair’s breadth
high dungeon	high dudgeon
hit a high bar	clear a high bar
ideallic	ideal or idyllic
immaculate degeneration	macular degeneration
impaling doom	impending doom
imput	input
in another words	in other words
in lieu of	in light of
in loo of	in lieu of
in mass	en masse
if I don’t say so myself	if I do say so myself
in sink	in synch
in the same vane or vain	in the same vein
incredulous	incredible
indiscrepancy	discrepancy
insinnuendo	insinuation or innuendo
insuremountable	insurmountable
in tact	intact
interduce	introduce
internally grateful	eternally grateful
International Workers of the World	Industrial Workers of the World
intragul	integral
Issac	Isaac
it’s beggars belief	it beggars belief
ivy tower	ivory tower
jack of all traits	jack of all trades
jaundra	genre
just assume	just as soon
key fab	key fob
kindly	kind of
kit gloves	kid gloves
klu klux klan	ku klux klan
lacksadaisical	lackadaisical
lamblasted, landblasted	lambasted
land up	end up, land
landlover	landlubber
lapse into a comma	lapse into a coma
larnyx	larynx
laxidaisical	lackadaisical
lively hood	livelihood
love nuts	lug nuts
love one and other	love one another
low and behold	lo and behold
ludicrust	ludicrous
Lex Luther	Lex Luthor
Martin Luthor King	Martin Luther King
Lykert scale	Likert scale
magnate school	magnet school
make ends meat	make ends meet
make head or tale	make head or tail
marquis	marquee
masonary	masonry
mean time	meantime
memorized	mesmerized
menestrate	menstruate
meter out justice	mete out justice
misconscrew	misconstrue
Mississippi Marsala	Mississippi Masala
mister meaner	misdemeanor
mix words	mince words
momento	memento
muncho man	macho man
muriel	mural
myocardial infraction	myocardial infarction
new leash on life	new lease on life
neck in neck	neck and neck
needles to say	needless to say
nitch	niche
no holes barred, no bars held	no holds barred
Nobel lariat	Nobel laureate
notary republic	notary public
notch it up a bit	take it up a notch
odiferous	odoriferous
odviously	obviously
oject d’art	objet d’art
off my own back	off my own bat
off the deep edge	off the deep end, over the edge
on mass	en masse
on the same hand	on the other hand, by the same token
once and a while	once in a while
one pony-trick	one-trick pony
orthoscopic	arthroscopic
overhauls	overalls
overjealous	overzealous
pacific	specific
paddle lock	padlock
pain-staking	painstaking
pair of parenthesis	pair of parentheses
palatable feeling	palpable feeling
pantent	patent
parody of virtue	paragon of virtue
part in parcel	part and parcel
partying gift	parting gift
pastorial	pastoral
patriarticle	patriarchal
permiscuous	promiscuous
peacemeal	piecemeal
peak of health	pink of health
pedastool	pedestal
pension	penchant
pentacle of his career	pinnacle of his career
peon of praise	paean
periphial	peripheral
perk up its ears	prick up its ears
perscription	prescription
Peruvian interest	prurient interest
perverbial	proverbial
phantom	fathom
pick fun	poke fun or pick on
piece of mind	peace of mind
pigment of his imagination	figment of his imagination
pillow to post	pillar to post
pin a finger	pin the blame on, point a finger at
plain around	playing around
play it by year	play it by ear
plentitude	plenitude
plural pneumonia	double pneumonia, pleural pneumonia
poison ivory	poison ivy
portentious	portentous
poseable thumbs	opposable thumbs
pot-bellied politics	pork-barrel politics
poultrygeist	poltergeist
predominately	predominantly
pratfall	pitfall
present company accepted	present company excepted
prevaricate	procrastinate
prevert	pervert
prolong the inevitable	delay the inevitable
protagonist	proponent
punkin, pumkin	pumpkin
radical chick	radical chic
radioactive increase	retroactive increase
ramsack	ransack
ranking file	rank and file
readdress the balance	redress the balance
rebel rouser	rabble rouser
recluse	recuse
recreate the wheel	reinvent the wheel
repel	rappel
repungent	repugnant
roiling boil	rolling boil
rotating rumors	circulating rumors
rubble rousing	rabble rousing
rockweiler	rottweiler
ruffled grouse	ruffed grouse
run rapid	run rampant
schrap metal	scrap metal or shrapnel
screed door	screen door
seizure salad	Caesar salad
self-defacing	self-effacing
sense of false security	false sense of security
sequences	sequins
set a president	set a precedent
shock ways	shockwaves
short sided	shortsighted
should’ve went	should’ve gone
shutter to think	shudder to think
side by each	side by side
similiar or simular	similar
six and a half of one, a dozen of the other	six of one, half a dozen of the other
skewer the results	skew the results
skiddish	skittish
skun your knee	skinned your knee
sleep acnea	sleep apnea
slither of cake	sliver of cake
smack dad	smack dab
smashed potatoes	mashed potatoes
smoking mirrors	smoke and mirrors
smothered onions	smothered with onions
soak and wet	soaking wet
something or rather	something or other
somulent	somnolent
sorted past or story	sordid past or story
St. John’s wart	St. John’s wort
stain glass	stained glass
stainless teal	stainless steel
stolled	stole
strident	stringent
strum up support	drum up support
subsiding on	subsisting on
substantative	substantive
sufficive to say	it suffices to say
supremist	supremacist
tactile squad	tactical squad
terminity	temerity
thankyou	thank you
techknowledgy	technology
Theolonius Monk	Thelonious Monk
time and memorial	time immemorial
time and time and again	time and time again
thread a fine line	tread a fine line
Tiajuana	Tijuana
tie me over	tide me over
times the number	multiply the number
tittering on the brink	teetering on the brink
to eaches own	to each his own
took it for granite	took it for granted
tooth and tong	tooth and nail, hammer and tongs
trader to the cause	traitor to the cause
turpentime	turpentine
two sense worth	two cents’ worth
tyrannical yolk	tyrannical yoke
unchartered territory	uncharted territory
ungangly	ungainly
unloosen	loosen
udderly	utterly
underlying contest	underlying context
up and adam	up and at ’em
upgraded	upbraided
valevictorian	valedictorian
Valentimes	Valentines
vaulted	vaunted
verbage	verbiage
very close veins	varicose veins
viadock	viaduct
visa versa	vice versa
vocal chords	vocal cords
voiceterous	boisterous
vunerable	vulnerable
wait ago	way to go
weary	wary
wetted to the idea	wedded to the idea
wheedle down	whittle down
whelp	welt
Wimbleton	Wimbledon
wideth	width
windshield factor	wind chill factor
witch	which
without further adieu	without further ado
wither in agony	writhe in agony
withering around	writhing around
world-renown	world-renowned
worldwind	whirlwind
working progress	work in progress
worse case scenario	worst-case scenario
worth its weight in salt	worth its salt or worth its weight in gold
worth wild	worthwhile

Syllabus for Humanities 303

April 18, 2017 elizabeth.wasson

Spring 2007

Instructor: Paul Brians

All of the study guides and other materials for this class are available in WebCT on the Web at https://webct.wsu.edu/ As soon as possible, you should go to this page and log in using your campus network ID and password and begin your work. Browse through the individual links to individual online readings, and other materials. Note that the dates for off-campus students sometimes differ slightly from on-campus students. The “Assignments” listed in WebCT are arranged to work with the off-campus students. On-campus students need to use the on-campus syllabus to determine when each assignment is due; you cannot rely on the each assignment matching a week of class. Be careful to read ahead in the syllabus so you see what assignments are coming up. Don’t wait until the night before class.

Please be aware that although WebCT is not open to the world at large, access is being provided to a few support personnel in the library and Student Computing Services. This warning is required by privacy regulations.

Note that if you work only from a printed-out version of this syllabus, you will lack many important hyperlinks. Always check the online syllabus when doing your assignments.

You will need to use a computer connected to the Web to read and print out these materials. You can use the various student labs on campus for short periods by paying an hourly fee, but you will be doing so much Web work in this class that it may be worth getting a semester pass. The cheapest access to a lab on campus is the 1-credit pass/fail course, English 300. If you have a wireless laptop, it can be used in several classroom buildings on campus to access the Web, including the library; but you will need to download the VPN software which will allow you to use the campus system.

Students are responsible for reading assignments and for preparing answers to the related on-line study questions before coming to class on the dates noted. Written assignments marked with an asterisk (*) are due on the date next to or above the asterisk. Besides the short papers noted here, you must also attend and report on a cultural event relating to the European 18^th and 19^th centuries. A list of acceptable events will be provided in class.

There will be many students taking this class remotely through the Distance Degree Program. On-campus and off-campus students will read and respond to each other’s work. On-campus students have work due twice a week. Because Pullman students do more assignments and take part in class discussion, less lengthy contributions for some assignments are required for them. Some of the off-campus assignments differ from the on-campus ones.

January

9: Introduction

Before class next time log into WebCT and write a brief description of yourself in the discussion titled “Introductions.” Videotape: The Art of the Western World, 5: Realms of Light—The Baroque [12395] (The Baroque: Bernini, Cortona, Caravaggio, Borromini, Fischer von Erlach,Velázquez, Vermeer, Rubens, Rembrandt, etc.). View tape in class, take notes, do assigned reading for the next class in WebCT before coming to class.

11: Read the “Course Introduction” Online.

Music: Pachelbel, Vivaldi, Handel. Take notes in class, do assigned writing in WebCT under Week 3: “Baroque Music.”

Read “The Enlightenment” and write at least 50 words about some aspect of the Enlightenment discussed there in the WebCT threaded discussion for this assignment in Week 1.

16: Do this assignment only after having read “The Enlightenment” and done the assigned online writing. Using the on-line Study Guide, then read Voltaire: Philosophical Dictionary: have the following articles read and notes taken about them to turn in at the beginning of class, at least 50 words covering more than one or two articles: Abbé, Ame, Amour-propre, Athée, athéisme, Beau, beauté, Bien (tout est, Bornes de l’esprit humaine, Catéchisme chinois, Certain, certitude, Chaîne des évenements, Credo). Before next time, do the assigned on-line writing for Voltaire Reading Assignment #1 in WebCT (in Week 2), and try to answer as many of the study questions in the Study Guide as you can as you go along.

18: Film: Knowledge or Certainty [1617] Before coming to class, read the online study guide; during the film, take notes; after class, do the assigned online writing in WebCT (in Week 2).

23: Music Lecture Videotape #2 [r472]: Bach. Do a second writing assignment in the threaded discussion called “Baroque Music_” in WebCT in Week 3, this time about the music by Bach you’ve heard.

25: Voltaire: Philosophical Dictionary: have the following articles read and notes taken about them to turn in at the beginning of class, at least 50 words: Éagalité, Enthousiasme, État, gouvernements, Fanatisime, Foi, Guerre, Liberté de pensée, Préjugés, Secte, Théiste, Tolérance, Tyrannie. Before next time, do the assigned on-line writing for Voltaire Assignment #2 in WebCT in Week 3, and try to answer as many of the study questions in the Study Guide as you can as you go along.

30: Library session, introduction to the research paper.

February

Sign up for library research topics. Be sure to attend. This is not a general library orientation, but a specialized presentation on sources you will need to use for doing this assignment. Look at “Suggested Research Topics for Humanities 303” online before coming to class and tentatively identify two or three topics you would like to work on. You may make up your own topic with my permission. See me first.

Although it is aimed primarily at off-campus students, you will also find much useful information in the Web page “Research Paper Assignment.”

First paper due, on Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary, 600 words. Be sure to read “Helpful Hints for Writing Papers” before beginning this assignment. Design your own topic or choose one of the following, using details from Voltaire which demonstrate your understand of his writings: freedom, free will and determinism, religion, tolerance, government, relativism. You may argue with him, but only if you present fully all relevant evidence on both sides. You must use material from two or more articles. If you have trouble choosing a topic or are uncertain whether your topic is acceptable, ask for help!

1: Read the introduction to Romanticism and do the assigned writing in WebCT in Week 4.

Using the Faust Study Guide, read Job: Chapters 1 & 2; Goethe: Faust: Introduction, Prologue in Heaven. Write notes to turn in, do online writing for Goethe Assignment #1 in WebCT in Week 4.

6: Videotape: The Art of the Western World, 6: An Age of Reason, An Age of Passion [12396] (Antoine Watteau: Departure from Cythera,Robert Adams, François Boucher, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Jean-Baptiste Chardin, Nicolas Poussin, Jacques Lemercier: Palais-Royal, Charles Perrault: Colonnade of the Louvre, Germain Soufflot: Panthéon, Giambattista Piranesi: drawings of Paestum, Jacques-Louis David: Death of Marat & The Sabine Women, Vignon: La Madeleine, Dominique Ingres: Odalisque, Jean-Antoine Gros, Francisco de Goya: The Horrors of War, Géricault, Eugène Delacroix: Liberty Leading the People, Théodore Géricault: The Raft of the Medusa) Take notes during videotape, do online writing in In WebCT in Week 5.

8: Goethe: Faust: Night, Before the City Gate, both scenes titled “Study.” Write notes to turn in, do online writing for Goethe Assignment #2 in WebCT in Week 5.

13: Music Lecture Videotape #3 [r485]: Mozart, Beethoven. Take notes during presentation, do online writing before next class in In WebCT in Week 5.

Research paper proposal and annotated bibliography due: a paragraph outlining the topic and a list of sources to be used, with comments for each explaining why the sources will be useful to you. Be sure to include all three elements: the proposal itself, the list of sources, and the comments. If you have not already done so, read “The Research Paper.”

15: Goethe: Faust: Witch’s Kitchen, Street, Evening, Promenade, The Neighbor’s House, Street, Garden, A Garden Bower, Wood and Cave, Gretchen’s Room, Martha’s Garden. Write notes to turn in, do online writing for Goethe Assignment #3 in In WebCT in Week 6.

20: Videotape: “The Artist Was a Woman” [VHS 18321]. Take notes during class, do online writing in the “Women Artists__” threaded discussion in In WebCT in Week 6.

22: Goethe: Faust: At the Well, City Wall, Night: Street in Front of Gretchen’s Door, Cathedral, Walpurgis Night, Dismal Day, Night, Open Field. Write notes to turn in, do online writing for Goethe Assignment #4 in WebCT in Week 7.

27: Note: during the next week and a half, you have little homework other than to write your paper on Faust. This is the time that you are expected to use to also read Zola’s Germinal. Because it is a long book, you may want to start reading ahead now and not put it off until the week when it is due.

Goethe: Faust: Dungeon, Charming Landscape, Open Country, Palace, Deep Night, Midnight, Large Outer Court of the Palace, Entombment, Mountain Gorges: Forest, Rock and Desert. Write notes to turn in, do online writing for Goethe Assignment #5 in WebCT in Week 8.

Music Presentation Online on Women Composers. Listen to the music and read the notes on Women Composers on reserve in Griffin for Hum 303 using RealAudio, take notes, and do the assigned online writing in WebCT in Week 10. Have this assignment completed by next time (Oct. 16).

March

1: Before class, read the Study Guide for La Traviata.

Music Lecture Videotape #5 [r521]: Romanticism: Berlioz, DVD: Verdi: La Traviata (beginning). Take notes during presentation, do online writing before next class in WebCT in Weeks 7 & 8.

6: Verdi: La Traviata (conclusion) [11765], beginning.

Women composers presentation. Take notes during presentation, do online writing before next class in WebCT in Week 8.

Second paper due, on Goethe’s Faust, 1200 words. Counts 20 points. Design your own topic or choose one of the following:, remembering that you will be expected to define your topic further, since most of these are very broad: Faust and Mephistopheles , Faust and Gretchen, Thought vs. Action, Religion, Humor, Music, Magic, Classical Mythology. Again, if you have trouble choosing or defing a topic, ask for help.

8: Read “Realism and Naturalism” and do online writing in WebCT in Week 7. Zola: Germinal: Parts 1-3. Use Study Guide and take notes to turn in, do online writing for Zola Assignment #1 in WebCT in Week 8.

20: Zola: Germinal: Parts 4-5. Use Study Guide and take notes to turn in, do online writing for Zola Assignment #2 in WebCT in Week 10.

22: Zola: Germinal: Part 6-7. Use Study Guide and take notes to turn in, do online writing for Zola Assignment #3 in WebCT in Week 11.

27: Read “19^th Century Russian Literature” and do online writing in WebCT in Week 12. Dostoyevsky: Notes from Underground: Afterword, pp. 90-123. Take notes using Study Guide, do online writing in the Dostoyevsky threaded discussion in In WebCT in Week 12.

29: Dostoyevsky: Notes from Underground: pp. 123-203. Take notes using Study Guide, do online writing, do a second online in the Dostoyevsky threaded discussion n WebCT in Week 12.

April

3: Videotape: The Art of the Western World, 7: A Fresh View: Impressionism and Post-Impressionism [12397] (Courbet, Degas, Manet, Monet, Renoir, Whistler, Pissarro, Sargent, Cassatt, Gauguin, Seurat, Van Gogh, Signac, Bernard, Toulouse-Lautrec, Valadon, Cézanne), Impressionist art slides. Do the assigned writing in In WebCT in Week 13. Research paper due; 1200 words minimum. Re-read “The Research Paper” online and “Helpful HInts for Writing Class Papers,” particularly checking to make sure you are following proper procedures for citing sources and quoting. Remember, you must cite sources for all facts and ideas, not just words quoted. 20 points; required revised version due May 4.

5 Read “The Influence of Nietzsche,” taking notes, do online writing in In WebCT in Week 13. Nietzsche: Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Translator’s Preface, pp. 9- 28. Take notes using Study Guide, do online writing for Nietzsche Assignment #1 in In WebCT in week 13.

10: Nietzsche: Thus Spoke Zarathustra: pp. 28-54. Take notes using Study Guide, do second online writing for Nietzsche Assignment #1 in In WebCT in Week 13.

12: Nietzsche: Thus Spoke Zarathustra: pp. 54-79. Take notes using Study Guide, do online writing for Nietzsche Assignment #2 in In WebCT, Week

Music Videotape Lecture 6 [r559]: Impressionist Music: Debussy & Ravel. Take notes during presentation, do online writing in In WebCT in Week 13.

19: Read Misconceptions, Confusions, and Conflicts Concerning Socialism, Communism, and Capitalism. Take notes, do online writing in In WebCT in Week 15. Read Introduction to 19^th-Century Socialism. Take notes, do online writing in In WebCT in Week 15. Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels: The Communist Manifesto: Prologue, Section 1 . Using Study Guide, take notes, do online writing in In WebCT in Week 15.

24: Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels: The Communist Manifesto: Sections 2 & 4. Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels: The Communist Manifesto: Section 2. Using Study Guide, take notes, do a second online writing in In WebCT in Week 15.

26: Music Lecture 7 [r569]: Early 20^th Century music, Course evaluation. Write about music in In WebCT in Week 14.

May

2 Third paper due, on Zola, Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, or Marx, 600 words minimum. Counts 10 points. If you wrote on one of these authors for your research paper, choose a different one to write on for this assignment. Sample topics on Germinal: Women, Changes in the Miners, Sexuality and Nature, The Mine as Monster. Sample topics on Dostoyevsky: The UM’s Assault on the Enlightenment, The Concept of Freedom, Self-Hatred, Fear of Love. Sample topics on Nietzsche (be sure to use more than one passage from the book): Relativism, Freedom, Principal Characteristics of the Overman, Nietzsche and Christianity, Romantic and Enlightenment Aspects. Sample topics on Marx: The Nature of Class Struggle, The Role of the Bourgeoisie in Transforming History, Marx’s Answers to his Critics, Advantages and Disadvantages of Communism as Described in the Manifesto.

Final date for cultural event.

All revised papers due, including revised research paper. You must attach the graded first draft to your research paper when you turn it in.

Textbooks for this course (please do not substitute other editions or translations):

If your financial aid is delayed, borrow money if you must to buy the textbooks. You cannot begin the course without the Voltaire in hand; and other books will be unavailable late in the semester. Buy them all as early as possible. If the Bookie is out, try Crimson and Gray on Bishop Boulevard. Do not substitute other translations for these.

Voltaire: Philosophical Dictionary, translated by Theodore Besterman

Goethe’s Faust, translated by Walter Kaufmann

Zola, Germinal, trans. Pearson. Penguin.

Dostoyevsky: Notes from Underground, translated by Andrew R. MacAndrew

Nietzsche: Thus Spoke Zarathustra, translated by Walter Kaufmann. (Note Penguin also publishes other translations that are not as good_ be sure to get the Kaufmann. DO NOT USE the 1892 public-domain translation by Thomas Common.)

Marx & Engels: The Communist Manifesto (International Publishers)

Paul Brians’ Policies Spring 2007

Please read this material carefully and save it.

Office: 202H Avery Hall

Direct phone: 509 335-5689, English Dept. phone: 509 335-2581, FAX: 509 335-2582, email: paulbrians@gmail.com

Home Page: https://brians.wsu.edu/

Common Errors in English: https://brians.wsu.edu/common-errors-in-english-usage/

If I am not in, the phone may be answered by the automated voice mailbox service. Please leave a message including your name and phone number (speaking s-l-o-w-l-y, please).

Study questions:

For each of the reading assignments, the study guide in WebCT contains a series of study questions which I want you to think about. It is your assignment to answer as many of these questions as you can while you read, and to write the assigned amount on each week’s reading in WebCT Cover more than a couple of questions, and make sure you can discuss all parts of that week’s assignment—not just the beginning. Show that you are thinking seriously about these questions. Typically you are asked to write something of your own, then respond to at least one other person. These WebCT assignments are graded pass/fail (I will let you know quickly if you have done an inadequate one). The idea is to promote class discussion online. This is where you will be interacting with off-campus distance-learning students as well. When other members of the class ask questions, try to reply to them. You are welcome to keep up the discussions we start here as long as you want, but please remember to be polite. Not everyone has the same views and assumptions. You must miss or fail no more than five of these Speakeasy discussion assignments to pass the course.

Papers:

For this course you will be required to write a series of brief papers. Note the length specified by your course syllabus, which does not include notes or list of sources. Minimum paper lengths are so extremely short in this class that anyone desiring a high grade would be advised to write a somewhat longer one. Any paper shorter than the minimum assigned will receive a 0 for an incomplete assignment. Except for meeting the very low minimum number of words, don’t concentrate on length, but try to make your papers as detailed, well-organized, and interesting as possible. All papers must be typed on a computer and printed out. If you have trouble with your printer, you may bring in the paper on a disk or send it to me by e-mail attachment. Printer problems are never an excuse for not getting a paper in on time. If you use a typing service, please proofread its work carefully; you are responsible for all errors. The regular papers are not necessarily research papers, and it is possible to receive maximum points on a paper without doing research for it, although papers incorporating good library work will normally receive higher grades. Suggested topics are listed on your syllabus. You should choose a topic you are particularly interested in, not try to guess what I want you to write. When I can learn something new from a paper, I am pleased. If you have trouble thinking of a topic, ask me for help. I am also happy to look over rough drafts and answer questions about proposed topics. In addition, one paper per semester will be a required library research paper incorporating information gathered from scholarly books and articles (not just Web pages and reference books like dictionaries and encyclopedias). For more details on how to write papers for this class, see “Helpful Hints for Writing Class Papers.” For details on how to write the research paper for this class, see the page entitled “Research Paper Assignment. Papers are due at the beginning of class on the day specified in the syllabus. Do not cut class to finish a paper. Papers may always be submitted before the due date if you wish. There is no midterm or final examination in this class.

The following elements are taken into consideration when I grade your papers: 1) You must convince me that you have read and understood the book or story. 2) You must have something interesting to say about it. 3) Originality counts—easy, common topics tend to earn lower grades than difficult ones done well. 4) Significant writing (spelling, punctuation, usage) errors will be marked on each paper before it is returned to you. If there are more than a few you must identify the errors and correct them (by hand, on the same paper, without retyping it) and hand the paper back in before a grade will be recorded for you. 5) I look for unified essays on a well-defined topic with a clear title and coherent structure. 6) I expect you to support your arguments with references to the text, often including quotations appropriately introduced and analyzed (but quote only to make points about the material quoted, not simply for its own sake). 7) You must do more than merely summarize the plot of the works you have read. See my “Helpful Hints” online for more information.

Research papers are especially graded on proper use of sources and coherence. Research papers when first handed in must be the complete product: minimum length, notes, bibliography, etc. If you want to have me look at an incomplete rough draft before the due date, I will be happy to do so. Your research should be complete before the due date for the first draft.

Late Papers:

If you think you have a valid excuse (medical, etc.) for not getting a paper in on time, let me know in advance (phone) if you can. Choosing to work on other classes rather than this one is never an acceptable excuse for handing in a paper late. Because of my make-up policy (see below), it almost always makes more sense to send in even a poorly-done, rushed paper than none at all. Papers sent in late with no excuse will not receive a passing grade. To pass the course you must hand in all assigned papers. Do not assume you will be allowed to hand in work late. Pay careful attention to due dates on the syllabus.

Revised papers:

You may not make up a paper which you have failed to hand in. However, if you do hand in a paper and are dissatisfied with your grade, after consulting with me, you may revise your paper and have your grade raised if it is significantly improved. You are required to revise the research paper at least once. Other revisions will be handled on an individual basis, and limits will be set as to the number of revisions allowed and the time allowed to hand them in. Simply substituting phrases that I have suggested to improve your writing does not result in an improved grade. You have to make the sort of substantial changes I suggest in the note I make on your paper.

Grading Policy:

Again, to pass the course you must complete all papers. The research paper and its revision especially are not optional. Note that you will not receive a letter grade on your research paper until after it has been revised in response to my initial comments on it, especially the final comments written at the bottom of your paper.

Grading of WebCT participation.

Attendance and participation in the course are measured by the contributions you make to in WebCT plus the notes you turn in at the beginning of class. Together the written contributions count as 20% of your grade. Contributions are graded on a pass-fail basis. Assume they have been counted unless I make a response to what you have written saying it is inadequate.

The number of points for each paper is indicated on the syllabus with the paper assignment. For a 10-point paper, 9.5 or above=A, 9.0-9.4=A, 8.8-8.9=B+, 8.3-8.7=B, 8.0-8.2=B-, 7.8-7.9=C+, 7.3-7.7=C, 7.0-7.2=C, 6.5-6.9=D, anything below 6.5=F. Double these numbers to get the appropriate scale for a 20-point assignment.

Voltaire paper: 10 points
Faust paper: 20 points
Third paper: 20 points
Research paper: 20 points
Cultural event report: 10 points
Speakeasy contributions: 20 points
Total: 100 points.

Standards for grading papers:

All assigned papers must be turned in to pass the course.

A Topics are challenging, often original; papers are well organized, filled with detail, and demonstrate a thorough knowledge of the topic. Examples are chosen from several portions of the work. Opinion papers are carefully argued, with detailed attention being paid to opposing arguments and evidence. Papers receiving an “A” are usually somewhat longer than the minimum assigned, typically a page or so longer, though this all depends on the compactness of your writing style—a paper which is long and diffuse does not result in a higher grade and a very compact, exceptionally well-written paper will occasionally receive an “A.” The writing should be exceptionally clear and generally free of mechanical errors. An “A” is given for exceptional, outstanding work.

B Topics are acceptable, papers well organized, containg some supporting detail, and demonstrate an above-average knowledge of the topic. Examples are chosen from several portions of the work. Papers are at least the minimum length assigned. Opinion papers are carefully argued, with some attention being paid to opposing argument and evidence. Writing is above average, containg only occasional mechanical errors. A “B” is given for above-average work.

C Topics are acceptable, but simple. Paper are poorly organized, containg inadequate detail, demonstrating only partial knowledge of the topic (focusing only on one short passage from a work or some minor aspect of it). Papers are at least the minimum length assigned. Opinion papers contain unsupported assertions and ignore opposing arguments and evidence. Writing is average or below, and mechanical errors are numerous. Paper does not appear to have been proofread carefully. A “C” is given for average work.

D Inappropriately chosen topic does not demonstrate more than a minimal comprehension of the topic. Papers are at least the minimum length assigned. Opinion papers contain unsupported assertions and ignore opposing arguments and evidence. Writing is poor, filled with mechanical errors. Paper does not appear to have been proofread. A “D” is given for barely acceptable work.

F Paper is shorter than the minimum length required. Topic is unacceptable because it does not cover more than an incidental (or unassigned) portion of the work or does not reveal a satisfactory level of knowledge . Generalizations are unsupported with evidence and opinion papers contain unsupported assertions and ignore opposing arguments and evidence. Writing is not of acceptable college-level quality. Paper does not appear to have been proofread. An “F” is given for unsatisfactory work.

Plagiarism:

Plagiarism is: 1) submitting someone else’s work as your own, 2) copying something from another source without putting it in quotation marks or citing a source (note: you must do both), 3) using an idea from a source without citing the source, even when you do not use the exact words of the source. Any time you use a book, article, or reference tool to get information or ideas which you use in a paper, you must cite it by providing a note stating where you got the information or idea, using MLA parenthetical annotation. No footnotes are used in papers for this class. You do not need to cite material from classroom lectures or discussions. If you are not certain whether you need to cite a source, check with me in advance. See “Helpful Hints” and Barnet (pp. 73-86) for details on how to cite sources. Anyone caught plagiarizing will receive an “F” for the entire course (not just the paper concerned) and be reported to Student Affairs. If you feel you have been unjustly accused of plagiarism, you may appeal to me; and if dissatisfied, to the departmental chair.

Cultural Event Assignment:

Humanities 303 students will attend a cultural event relating to the 18^th or 19^th centuries and report on it in a 600-word paper which will be graded like the other papers in the course (worth 10 points). Announcements of qualifying events will be posted in The Birdge. Substitutions may be arranged for students not living near a site where qualifying cultural events are taking place. Let me know as soon as possible what you have decided to do for your cultural event.

Disability Statement

Reasonable accommodations are available for students who have a documented disability. Please notify the instructor during the first week of class of any accommodations needed for the course. Late notification may cause the requested accommodations to be unavailable. All accommodations must be approved through the Disability Resource Center (DRC) in Administration Annex 206, 335-3417.

E-mail

I will be sending out occasional class announcements via e-mail using the WSU system. However, this means that you must have a valid e-mail address that you actually use in the WSU directory, though much important official mail, like library fine notices, is sent out using this system. To make sure you are listed in the directory go to http://www.wsu.edu/ and click “Find People,” and search for your name (last name first, no comma).

Then click on “ADDRESS & E-MAIL_” on the left-hand side of the page and click on either “Change your email destination address.” If you want a free WSU e-mail account, create an address in myWSU.

Version of January 2, 2007

All assigned papers (including the research paper—both first and revised drafts) must be completed to pass the course.

Paul Brians’ Home Page

March 21, 2017 elizabeth.wasson

Paul Brians in profile

Paul Brians (1942-) earned his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Indiana University and joined the Department of English at Washington State University in 1968. He taught literature, interdisciplinary humanities, and world civilizations courses. He retired in 2008 and now lives on Bainbridge Island.

This is the new website featuring Brians’ Common Errors in English Usage, photography, and various study guides and other helpful resources.

Books by Paul Brians | Paul Brians Vita | “Politics & Me”: 2008 Retirement address | Illustrated History of WSU Student Activism in the 60s | Paul Brians’ Weekly Podcast

Paul Brians’ e-mail: paulbrians@gmail.com

Common Errors in English Usage

What is an error in English?

The concept of language errors is a fuzzy one. I’ll leave to linguists the technical definitions. Here we’re concerned only with deviations from the standard use of English as judged by sophisticated users such as professional writers, editors, teachers, and literate executives and personnel officers. The aim of this site is to help you avoid low grades, lost employment opportunities, lost business, and titters of amusement at the way you write or speak.

Go to list of errors.

Books by Paul Brians

Common Errors in English Usage (3rd Edition, November 2013)
Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction 1895-1984 (1987)
Reading About the World, Vols. 1 & 2, 3rd edition (1999)
Modern South Asian Literature in English (2003)
Four Seasons on Bainbridge Island, 2010
Bawdy Tales from the Courts of Medieval France (1975)

Most recent updates

Retirement address

March 10, 2017 elizabeth.wasson

KEYNOTE SPEECH FOR ENGLISH DEPT. AWARDS CEREMONY, APRIL 15, 2008

TEACHING, POLITICS, & ME

Paul Brians

I’ve been asked to look back over my career in this highly political season, and I’ve decided to share with you some thoughts about my work in English and its relationship to politics. I think in many ways my career has been quite typical of many English professors, but some of our ideals and practices have been the target of criticism from some colleagues who have different ideas about the proper relationship of politics to English studies, and that’s the subject I want to explore.

I’ll begin with a well-known quotation from Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest: “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”

As a young teenager who loved books I was fascinated by Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy. What a concept! Bookish scholars not only understand the course of history, they can secretly shape it. Talk about being the “unaknowledged legislators of the world”! I read it a half-dozen times.

But then I read Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot, which scrambled my brain and rendered me an unfit reader for Asimov’s simplistic fantasy. The complexity and vividness with which the Russian author conveyed the contradictions, tensions, convolutions of human experience blew open a window that gave me new idea of what fiction could do.

As a Comparative Literature Ph.D. student at Indiana University in the 60s, I learned not only how to read literature across national, linguistic, and temporal boundaries, but also how to relate literature to music, art, and philosophy. My interests gradually shifted to the history of ideas as reflected in the arts, and that is the course I have pursued ever since, in a variety of ways.

Part of situating literature in history is situating it politically, and my MA thesis was a exploration of the unique achievement of Emile Zola’s Germinal in exploring the complexities of the labor movements and various radical philosophies fermenting in the late 19th century. During this time, the Vietnam War was heating up, and when I arrived in Pullman in 1968, I plunged headfirst into the anti-war movement, writing an anti-ballistic missile poem, radical critiques of conservative religious thought for a small activist group, and numerous letters to the editor. I was
the only really active faculty member of the local Students for a Democratic Society chapter, and wound up as a delegate at the disastrous 1969 Chicago SDS convention where the organization tore itself apart as the University of Wisconsin chapter sprang to its feet waving Mao’s little red book at every opportunity and the national leadership unveiled the manifesto of what was to become the terrorist cell known as the Weather Underground.

It was routine in that period to speak of liberals with scorn, and to escalate the ideal status from dissenter to radical to revolutionary—although these terms were seldom clearly defined. For a while I was influenced in the same direction, but my basic political beliefs and instincts have always remained essentially liberal. I’m just not ashamed to say so any more. Years of close study of Marx and Marxism and visits to the Soviet Union and China convinced me that although Marxist analysis can provide useful insights into problems and issues, Marxist solutions are usually worse than the problems they purport to solve.

As certain voices in the movement grew more and more extreme and irrational, they progressively shed their following, until the group optimistically shouting “the people united shall never be defeated” were a pathetic remnant speaking for almost no one. My own political activities shifted to support for the nascent women’s movement (I was an officer in the Pullman NOW chapter for several years), and I began a long career of exploring and teaching about women writers, composers, and artists which has continued to the present.

All during this period, while introducing Zola, Marx, Lenin, and other radical texts into my teaching, and offering courses on utopian topics, I continued to revel in the opportunity to share with my students the complexities and nuances of writers whose concerns were very different: Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, and Virginia Woolf, to name just a few.

It became common among activist teachers in the 70s and 80s to argue that since absolute neutrality was impossible, students deserved an overt statement of the teacher’s political stance. But although in politics outside the classroom I strove to define my position and articulate it forcefully, in the study of literature I wanted my students to be able to immerse themselves in the widest possible range of experiences and ideas. One thing I most value about literature is precisely that it challenges our certainties, makes us think more complexly about ideas and
issues. When I first read Nietzsche he horrified and repelled me, but when I revisited him years later I realized that although I would always resist much of what he had to say, he opened up new ways of understanding life as an adventure in the creation of values as a human enterprise. He also undermined any attraction that finding an ultimate universal truth might have had for me.

I also was convinced that overtly activist teaching can deteriorate very quickly into preaching to the choir on the one hand and alienating students who differ on the other. I respected my students enough to think that they could arrive at their own positions in much the same way I had, not by becoming my disciple, but by exploring a wide range of ideas and experiences and applying their minds and personal experiences to them. I am proud of the fact that students were often unable to figure out where I stood on issues I spoke about even as I articulated with some passion arguments that could be made from various perspectives. I think that sort of traditionally humanist/liberal approach provides a stronger basis for students to deal with political issues once they leave the academy, building up and keeping their intellectual muscles and tendons flexible.

I discovered as time passed that many of those whose thought had been shaped in the sixties took a rather different path. For them, the classroom was an extension of—or even replacement for—their activism. Arguing that neutrality is impossible and that students deserved to know honestly the positions they held, they became open advocates of defined political positions and shaped their curricula to channel young minds in the political paths they advocated.

Huge bodies of politically oriented criticism and theory grew up to eventually dominate literary studies in the eighties and later. The only “serious” ways to regard literature were political: once you had figured out who was being oppressed, who caricatured, who silenced in a text, you knew all that was really significant. I contributed my own bit when I reacted to the Reagan revival of the Cold War by launching into a ten-year study of the vast corpus of nuclear war fiction. It led to some very interesting opportunities for me, and I think the work was worth while; but in some ways I regret having polluted my head with so many wretched post-nuclear holocaust fantasies. The canon wars of the 70s and 80s were essentially an attempt to rank authors by their degree of alignment with the political concerns of the teachers. I was glad to help widen the curriculum to include previously unheard voices by women and writers of color; but the widespread insistence on discussing only issues of power and oppression rendered much of the result simplistic and mind-numbing. Those aspects of literature reflecting less than “progressive” values were called “problematic” and teachers who still emphasized esthetic and formal concerns were often disdained.

I have always thought this was a mistake, for several reasons.

First of all, this sort of overtly politicized teaching expressed a basic distrust in the ability of students to sort through the complex maze of human ideas and arrive at their own conclusions. Few of us deserve disciples, and the kind of teaching I admire most resembles more that of Nietzsche in Thus Spake Zarathustra in which he dismisses his listeners and tells them to resist him if they can, and find their own paths.

Second, a convert to a view argued one-sidedly is acutely vulnerable to disillusionment and apostasy: better to seriously engage the most powerful and intelligent arguments of your opponents. I learned a lot studying Plato: mostly how to resist him. If I had been taught to resist Plato I might well have been more eager to see value in his ideas.

Third, when we sort out writers according to how well they match our political agendas, we deprive ourselves of some of the richest experiences literature has to offer. There is greatness in the forthright angry eloquence of a Claude McKay or a Malcolm X, but there is also greatness in the fiercely complex ideas of a Derek Walcott or a Samuel R. Delany.

Two of the authors I was instrumental in bringing to this campus illustrate this point. The late Octavia Butler wrote powerfully—even fiercely—about matters of race and oppression; but often in ways that made readers on all sides acutely uncomfortable. She identified not only tensions generated by inequalities, but by profound flaws in the individual characters of all races and classes. Wole Soyinka disappointed the “post-colonial” crowd and orthodox Marxists by refusing to make the evils of colonialism his subject, instead preferring to focus on the nightmare into which Nigeria and other African nations descended during his lifetime. The fact that he preferred not to spend his time analyzing how all of this disarray was partly the legacy of the British in West Africa did not signify that he held them guiltless: after all, he wrote a book advocating reparations for slavery. But his body of work might well bear a label common to many Anglophone writers from non-Western nations: “This story is not about you.” To many writers from some nations, “postcolonial” studies is another way of Europeans introducing themselves into the center of the picture. It is remarkable how very distant most fiction from India, Nigeria, Jamaica, and other countries is from the agendas of postcolonial scholars, even those from the same countries. All too often, the scholarly agenda is reduced to the level of carping and complaining about insufficiently political authors in tediously repetitive critiques.

I also spent five years intensively studying Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, which occupies a territory deeply troubling to committed literary activists. He fiercely attacks the tendency of the white majority to demonize all foreigners and view them as interchangeable, but he also fiercely attacks Iranian fundamentalism and Sikh terrorism. And he mocks Trotskyites and other activists. The temptation of some is to dismiss him as a reactionary; but there is much more to Rushdie’s novel than he’s often given credit for, and he literally—if unintentionally—put his life on the line when he wrote it.

Fourth, formal esthetic qualities are, of course, the very qualities that attract most readers to literature; and denigrating them alienates a great many students. The 90’s revival of the old Stalinist term “formalism” to denigrate esthetic considerations repelled me. For most students literature which is not alluring or engrossing in some sense is not worth talking about. Social and political concerns can be far more effectively discussed directly using sociology, political science, psychology and other disciplines rather than literary criticism.

Finally, if political activity has any justification, it is the hope of creating a better life. The puritanical tendency of some teacher-activists to scorn the sheer pleasure that literature can bring evinces a certain insensitivity to the richness of life’s possibilities. Literature which puzzles, exhilarates, frightens, excites, and amuses is worth exploring and celebrating. If we choose only literature which forwards our pet agendas we are little better than the worst sort of Victorian critic who disdained any writing judged not properly edifying. “Problematic” is the new “improper.”

One of the greatest gifts the reading of literature can convey is surprise: the opening of our minds and hearts to ideas and feelings we had never previously experienced. If we approach each text always already knowing what we shall find, we are not only bad readers, but impoverished human beings. All too much modern literary scholarship teaches us nothing new, but circles around the same familiar set of ideas. Often the more complex the language and theory involved, the more simplistic the conclusions being made.

Fortunately younger faculty and students alike are interested in a much wider range of approaches to literature than the last generation; and I see more adventurous, independent thought among my colleagues and students these days than I have for a long, long time.

I want to conclude by making a few remarks about the work that I’m best known for outside the university, my website Common Errors in English and the various publications derived from it. A standard objection to this sort of thing is that correctness in English usage is a social construction, and that the proper role of the professionals should be confined to tracking changing usage and celebrating diversity. Yet English professors are not the gatekeepers of usage, and their permission to stray from traditional usage goes unheard by the general public.
Instead, people want to know how they can make themselves clear, impress their readers, communicate effectively.

It is precisely because language usage is an artificial social construction that one needs a lot of information to navigate the dangerous waters of modern English to avoid embarrassment and disdain. We can tell bosses that they should ignore the tendency of their job applicants to write “for all intensive purposes” and “one in the same.” They are not listening. The pronunciation by eastern newscasters of our neighbor state’s name as “Oregawn” alienates listeners. The tendency to call a slash a “backslash” confuses computer users. Mistakes are essentially social, but that does not make them unreal: we need to know the social reality which our words encounter when others read or hear them. Some English teachers are happy to critique the obfuscatory jargon and and cliches of bureaucrats but not to address the verbal gaffes of the downtrodden: but who needs more help? Who is more endangered by linguistic patterns that arouse contempt?

My attitude is not to smugly announce what is right and wrong, but to provide information: speaking of “tradegy” will not impress your English professor, “oriental” offends a lot of Asians, but using “decimate” to mean “utterly destroy” probably offends only truly picky people you can safely ignore. This is information: social information.

So how do I reconcile my praise of ambiguity and complexity in literary studies and my praise of clarity and consistency in language usage?

First, literature is often at its best when it’s ambiguous and puzzling; ordinary communication is not.

Second, the complexities and surprises of literature are intentional and lead us to admire the writers when we understand them whereas verbal and written stumbles are mostly unintentional and tend to make people look foolish or poorly educated. Knowing standard usage lets you make a conscious choice of whether to say “penultimate” when you mean “last” or “exalt” when you mean “exult.”

Third, the drive to prune the canon and throw open the doors of English usage flowed from similar impulses: to reject the irreducible complexity of both literature and social interaction in the service a political ideal.

Finally, my experience of trying to explain language matters to a broad public using simple language and humorous illustrations seems to have found a large audience hungry for such material. Millions of visitors to my site and thousands of e-mails reinforce every day the notion that people find guidance on language matters just plain useful.

I’m happy to have worked in a department where there is a lively variety of approaches to both language and literature, where students can encounter both challenging complexity and helpful clarification, and where my wildly varied and sometimes unorthodox approaches to scholarship and teaching have been more than tolerated—they’ve even been rewarded, sometimes by the very people who disapproved of them.

The sort of narrow politicization of English studies I’ve focused on is looking increasingly dated nationally, and certainly does not characterize the majority of younger scholars I’ve encountered here. Though we are constantly pressured to mold ourselves in the service of mission statements and benchmarks, I am content that English at Washington State University will remain gloriously unorganized and varied. Today’s students are fortunate to be able to plunge into the rich, messy stew that is English studies at WSU.

Of related interest:

Illustrated History of WSU Student Activism in the 60s

Paul Brians Vita

March 10, 2017 elizabeth.wasson

Paul Brians’ Vita

Education (Institutions, degrees, dates)

Ph.D., Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 1968
M.A., Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, 1966
B.A., Pacific University, Forest Grove, Oregon, 1964
Santa Rosa Junior College, Santa Rosa, California 1960-62

Experience (Positions and Dates)

Assistant Professor of English, 1968-1977
Associate Professor of English, 1977-1988
Professor of English, 1988- 2008
Retired 2008-present

Professional Recognition and Honors

Inducted into The Quarter Century Club of WSU, 1993.
Burlington Northern Award for excellence in teaching, 1992.
“Inquiring Mind” speaker, 1990-92.
Faculty Library Award, 1988.
Member, faculty of World Civilizations 110/111 (a group of twenty faculty members selected from ninety applicants to be trained as teachers for a new world civilizations course).
“Nuclear War in Fiction,” invited address for History Honorary annual banquet, 1984.
“The New Censorship,” invited address for Holland Library Faculty Recognition Award talk, Spring, 1983
“Pornography and the Arts,” invited address for the Art Department Enrichment Series, WSU, March 23, 1971.

Publications

Books

Modern South Asian Literature in English. Greenwood Press, 2003.
Common Errors in English Usage. William, James, 2003. Second Edition, 2008.
Reading About the World, Vols. 1 & 2 (ed.). Third Edition, Harcourt Brace Custom Publishing, 1999.
Reading About the World, Vols. 1 & 2 (ed.). Second edition, American Heritage Custom Publishing, 1996. Contributed translations of the following selections: Anna Comnena: The Alexiad, Emile Zola: Germinal, Sigmund Freud: The Interpretation of Dreams, Ren/(c) Descartes: The Discourse on Method, Montaigne: Essay on Cannibals, Francois Rabelais: Letter from Gargantua to his son Pantagruel; adapted translations of the following: Angelo Poliziano: Quis Dabit Capiti Meo Aquam (Lament on the Death of Lorenzo di Medici), Marcus Aurelius: Meditations, The Young Woman and Her Five Lovers, from Tales from the Thousand and One Nights.
Reading About the World, Vols. 1 & 2. (ed.) HarperCollins Custom Publishing, 1994.
Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction, 1895-1984. Kent State University Press, 1987. [Refereed]
Bawdy Tales from the Courts of Medieval France (trans. & ed.), Harper & Row, 1975. [Refereed]

Other Publications

Common Errors in English Usage Daily Boxed Calendar. Wilsonville, OR: William, James, 2008.
Common Errors in English Usage Daily Boxed Calendar. Wilsonville, OR: William, James, 2007.
Common Errors in English Usage Daily Boxed Calendar. Wilsonville, OR: William, James, 2006
Common Errors in English Usage Daily Boxed Calendar. Wilsonville, OR: William, James, 2005.

E-Publications

Nuclear Texts & Contexts (1998-1995) created and made available “here“
Study Guide for Ursula LeGuin: The Dispossessed, as a supplement to the e-book version of the novel in the following formats: Acrobat eBook Reader, Microsoft Reader, and Palm Reader, March, 2002.

Web-Based

Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction. Greatly expanded and revised edition of my 1987 book, mounted 2003. Slightly revised and expanded, 2004.
Nuke/Pop (mounted Fall, 1999)
Common Errors in English (first mounted March 1997, extensively revised December 1998, December 1999, minor revisions in 2000, major revisions 2001, major revisions in 2005 and later.)
Annotations for Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, August, 1996. Completed December, 1997, revised 2000.

Newsletter

Nuclear Texts & Contexts, issue #1, Fall, 1988 (edited and wrote most of the issue), issue #2, Spring 1989 (edited and wrote much of the issue), issue #3, Fall, 1989 (became sole editor with this issue, wrote several articles), issue #4, Spring 1990, issue #5, Fall 1990, issue #6, Spring 1991, issue #7, Fall 1991, issue #8, Fall 1992. Resigned editorship with Fall 1992 issue. Published on Web site at http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/ntc/ (2003).

Articles

“Let’s Clear Something Up,” columns on language usage for Blueprint magazine May-June 2007 (p. 16), June-July 2007 (p.22), and January-February, 2008 (p. 18).
Entries on “Nuclear War,” “Post-Holocaust Societies,” and “The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia by Ursula K. Lee Guin (1974)” in The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy, ed. Gary Westfahl. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005.
“Good Words Gone Bad,” by Candace Murphy, Oakland Tribune, October 25, 2005, was based largely on a phone interview with me.
“Multimedia Made Simple, The Hard Way,” World History Connected, Vol. 1, no. 2 (May 2004); an online journal for world history teachers. http://worldhistoryconnected.press.uiuc.edu/1.2/brians.html[Commissioned article with interactive online multimedia examples]
“Classical Turkey,” Washington State Magazine (Fall 2003): 18-19. [Commissioned article with photographs by myself.]
“Annotating The Satanic Verses: An Example of Internet Research and Publication,” Computers and the Humanities 33 (December 1999): 247-264. [Refereed]
“Study Guide for Walter M. Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz,” SFRA Review no. 242 (October 1999), pp. 6-19.
“Writing English by Ear,” The Editorial Eye, 21:6 (June 1998) pp. 1-4. Solicited by the editor of this newsletter for professional editors and revised by her while I was in Japan. About 60% of the article is as I wrote it. Paid contribution.
“Nuclear Family/Nuclear War,” in Nancy Anisfield, ed. The Nightmare Considered: Critical Essays on Nuclear War Literature. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Press, 1991. (A slightly revised version of the paper originally published in Essays in Language and Literature (Spring 1990).
“Nuclear War Fiction for Young Readers: A Commentary and Annotated Bibliography,” in Philip John Davies, ed. Science Fiction, Social Conflict and War. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990. [An earlier, abridged version of this article, without most of the notes and without any of the annotated bibliography, was published as “Nuclear Fiction for Children” in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1988; but I consider this the definitive version of the article.
“Nuclear Family/Nuclear War,” Papers on Language and Literature, 26 (1990): pp. 134-142.
“Atomic Bomb Day” (pp. 32-33) and “Hiroshima Day (pp. 309-311) in Read More About It: An Encyclopedia of Information Sources on Historical Figures and Events. Vol. 3. Ann Arbor: The Pierian Press, 1989 (commissioned).
with Vladimir Gakov: “Nuclear-War Themes in Soviet Science Fiction: An Annotated Bibliography.” Science-Fiction Studies 16(1989): 67-84. (In this collaborative effort, the research was primarily Gakov’s responsibility; but I extensively revised and edited his first draft, and helped shape and write the introduction.) [Refereed]
“Nuclear Fiction for Children,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, July/August 1988, pp. 24-27[Commissioned]
“And That Was the Future . . . The World Will End Tomorrow,” Futures, August 1988, pp. 424-433 [Commissioned]
“Red Holocaust: The Atomic Conquest of the West,” Extrapolation, 28 (1987), pp. 319-329.
“SF Summit in Moscow.” Locus, October, 1987. [Refereed]
“Revival of Learning: Science After the Nuclear Holocaust in Science Fiction,” Phoenix from the Ashes: The Literature of the Remade World, ed. Carl Yoke. Greenwood Press, 1987. [Refereed]
“Nuclear War/Post-Nuclear Fiction,” Columbiana (Winter 1987), pp. 31-33
“Nuclear War Fiction Collection at Washington State University, The,” College & Research Libraries News, 48 (March, 1987), pp.115-18.
Resources for the Study of Nuclear War in Fiction,” Science-Fiction Studies, July 1986, 5 pp. [Refereed]
“Nuclear War in Science Fiction, 1945-1959,” Science-Fiction Studies, vol. 11, part 3 (1984), pp. 253-263. [Refereed]
“Americans Learn to Love the Bomb,” New York Times, July 17, 1985 (reprinted in the U.S. and abroad through the Times News Service. This article plus two interviews provided the basis for Konrad Ege’s article, “La culture populaire flirte avec la bombe,” Le Monde diplomatique, June 1986.
“The Day They Tested the Rec Room,” (short story) CoEvolution Quarterly (Summer 1981), pp. 116-1234.
“Sexuality and the Opposite Sex: Variations on a Theme by Théophile Gautier and Anais Nin,” Essays in Literature (Spring 1977), pp. 122-137. Edited version printed in Philip K. Jason. The Critical Response to Anis Nin.Westport: Connecticut, 1996. [Refereed]
“Versions of Immortality,” New Venture, 4 (Summer 1976), 1 p.
“Paul Aebischer and the OEGab d’Oliver,’” Romance Notes, Winter 1974, pp. 1-8. [Refereed]

Translations

Anna Comnena: Alexiad (selection on the Crusaders originally published in Reading About the World), reprinted in Brummett, Edgar, Hackett, Jewsbury, Taylor, Bailkey, Lewis, Wallbank, Silverberg: Civilization Past and Present,10^th Edition, Addison Wesley Longman, 2002. Reprinted in the 11^th edition, 2004.
Rene Descartes: selection from Discourse on Method (originally published in Reading About the World), published on a Web site supporting the Houghton Mifflin textbook, Mosaic: Perspectives on Western Civilization, 2001.
Leo Africanus: selection from Description of Africa (originally published in Reading About the World) reprinted in Middle Ages Reference Library (Farmington Hills, Minn.: Gale Research, 2000) in both hard covers and on CD-ROM. Also reprinted in a book containing materials for students to practice advance placement essay writing, published by Social Studies School Service, 2004. Adopted as an Internet History Sourcebook by the Aga Khan Humanities Project, Tajikistan, 2005. Reprinted in High School United States History for the 11^th Grade Level (Pearson Prentice Hall), a set of teaching materials in paper and electronic forms, 2006. Reprinted in The Making of the Modern World (University of Houston, 2006).

Photographs

Photograph from Vejer de la Frontera, Spain, in Seattle Times Sunday travel section, August 10, 2008.
Exhibit of photographs, Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections, Washington State University, Spring 2008.
Two photographs (of a Roman street in Turkey and Tudor cottages near Hever Castle) used in a National Geographic Channel documentary on the history of the toilet in the series Everyday Things, Nov. 7 2006.
Photo of roman toilet from Ephesus, printed in an article on the history of toilets, Environmental Building News, February 2004. Reprinted by HPAC Engineering newsletter, 2004. Used in a History Channel documentary called “Modern Marvels: Sewers,” and in a nonprofit educational video for Sacramento, California wastewater treatment plant tours 2005.
Photo of SCUE cyber café reproduced at About.com for an article about cyber cafes, December 2004.

Review Articles

Carpenter, Charles A. Dramatists and the Bomb: American and British Playwrights Confront the Nuclear Age, 1945-1964. Science-Fiction Studies, Vol. 27, pp. 318-319.
Seed, David, ed. Imagining Apocalypse: Studies in Cultural Crisis. Science-Fiction Studies, vol. 27, pp. 364-365.
Sallis, James. Ash of Stars: On the Writing of Samuel R. Delany, Utopian Studies 9 (1998), 312-314.
Bozzetto, Roger, Max Duperray, Alain Chareye-Mejan, eds. Eros: XI Congr/Aes du Cerli (Actes du XI colloque du Cerli, Aix-en-Provence Janvier 1990), Utopian Studies 3(1992):131-133.
Broderick, Mick. Nuclear Movies: A Critical Analysis and Filmography of International Feature Length Films Dealing with Experimentation, Aliens, Terrorism, Holocaust and Other Disaster Scenarios, 1914-1989, IAFA Newsletter, Summer, 1992, pp. 33-34.
Broderick, Mick. Nuclear Movies: A Critical Analysis and Filmography,” SFRA Review, June 1992, pp. 27-28.
Lenz, Millicent. Nuclear Age Literature for Youth,” SFRA Review, April 1992, pp. 32-34.

Bruce Franklin, War Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination, for Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (May 1989), pp. 48-51.

“Tom Moylan: Demand the Impossible: Science Fiction and the Utopian Imagination.” Extrapolation Fall 1988, pp. 285-288.
“Rambo’s Relatives,” American Book Review, March/April 1986, 2 pp.
Review of six volumes of nuclear war fiction, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (Chicago, IL), March 1986, pp. 50-53.
“Dealing with Nuclear Catastrophe,” Science-Fiction Studies (Montreal, Quebec), July 1986, 2 pp.
Feature review: Newman, John and Michael Unsworth. Future War Novels: An Annotated Bibliography of Works in English Published Since 1946,” Reference Services Review, vol. 13, no. 1 (Ann Arbor, MI), 1985, p. 20.
“The Cretan Glance,” Modernist Studies (June 1982), pp. 245-247.
“Anais Nin: Delta of Venus,” Under the Sign of Pisces: Anais Nin and Her Circle (Columbus, OH) (Winter 1978), 4 pp.
Three books on French surrealism: Yearbook on Comparative and General Literature, 19 (Bloomington, IN, 1970), 4 pp.

Creative Productivity

Poetry Readings

Poetry for Children, 1982.
Contemporary Poetry for Children, 1980.
Sex, Dope, and Cheap Thrills (for an off-campus group), 1978.
Science Fiction Poetry, 1977.
Medieval and Renaissance Women Poets, 1976, repeated 1977.
Excerpts from Nikos Kazantzakis: The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, 1976,
My translation of Jean Tardieu’s play: The Subway Lovers, 1975.
James Dickey, 1972.
Researched, wrote and read a lengthy poem entitled “ABM ABC” as my contribution to a panel discussion of a proposed antiballistic missile system, University of Idaho, 1969.

Other creative activity based on teaching and research

Transferred numerous photo tours to Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections, WSU Library: http://www.wsulibs.wsu.edu/holland/masc/paul_brians/, Fall 2007.
Transferred CD discography to Holland Library and updated it with many new entries, 2006.
Created photo tour of Spain, Summer 2006, mounted on the World Civlizations site,: http://www.wsu.edu/~wldciv/tours/spain/
Original photos donated to the World Civilizations image repository in the library’s Division of Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections, Fall 2006.
Also created 40-minute video accompanied by music based on Spain photos, summer, 2006.
Began process of transferring video series of lectures on classical music to DVD and editing them into new versions, completed Spring 2005.
Created photo tour of Greece, 2005.
Created photo tour of China, completed 2005
Created online tour of Vienna, Prague, and Budapest based on my own photographs and mounted it on the World Civilizations Web site and donated high-resolution copies to Holland Library’s World Civilizations Image Database, 2004.
Donated hundreds of my photos of China and Greece to the World Civilizations Image Database in Holland Library, 2004.
Created a new, greatly expanded edition of Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction, and mounted it on the Web at https://brians.wsu.edu/2016/11/16/nuclear-holocausts-atomic-war-in-fiction/, 2003. Added several entries, 2004.
Created a Web tour of Ireland based on my own photos, focusing on architecture and archaeological sites for the General Education program and mounted it on the World Civilizations site, Summer 2003. Many of the photos have been mounted on a searchable database by Holland Library Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections.
With the aid of a Co-Teach grant, I completed a digitized collection of music from the library’s CDs now being served via streaming mp3 from the library’s audio reserves collection to students in Gen Ed 111, summer 2003. Besides selecting the music, I wrote extensive annotations to help students listen intelligently to the selections.
Scanned and edited my photos from the WSU World Civilizations tour of India and Thailand in 1992-1993, and created a Web site displaying them, and again donated high-resolution copies to the MASC collection.
Converted Humanities 303 from Speakeasy to Bridge format, 2003.
Created and maintain searchable databases on the Web for Anglophone fiction, science fiction, feature films, and compact discs in Holland Library. My filmography has been adopted as the official filmography of the Film Studies Program, linked to their Web site, Fall 2003.
Created a Web tour of Turkey based on my own photos, focussing on architecture and archaeological sites for the General Education program and mounted it on the World Civilizations site, Fall 2002. A larger selection of my photos has been mounted on a searchable database by Holland Library Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections.
Created a history of European classical music 1750-1914, for which I digitized sound samples, researched and annotated them, and mounted the result on the Holland server as streaming audio, Spring 2001.
Created a survey of world music for Gen Ed 110 (World Civilizations to 1500), digitized sound samples, researched and annotated them, and mounted the result on the Holland server as streaming audio, Summer 2001. Created and distributed CD-ROM,Aeos of the source files for use by World Civ faculty.
Selected and annotated the fiction for a display of science fiction in the library atrium during October, 2000.
Wrote a brief essay entitled “‘Postcolonial Literature’: Problems with the Term” and published it on the Web, Fall 1998.
Created a study guide for Arundhati Roy’s novel, The God of Small Things, and published it on the Web, 1998.
Created a Web site concerning ancient Japanese architecture for World Civilizations using my own photographs from a May, 1998 trip, Fall, 1998.
Created numerous on-line resources to teach Humanities 303 as an Extended Degree Programs class, including music and art assignments to be done by distance-learning students, introductions to the Enlightenment, European Romanticism, Realism and Naturalism, 19^th-Century Russian Literature, The Influence of Nietzsche, 19^th-Century Socialism, and “Misconceptions, Confusions, and Conflicts Concerning Socialism, Communism, and Capitalism, ” 1998.
Contributed and annotated several images from my personal photographs in Paris, Greece, Rome, India and Boston to the WSU media collection, 1996.
Created notes for Anglophone Literature course and mounted them on the World Wide Web, 1996.
Created study guides for Love in the Arts and put them on the World Wide Web, 1995.
Converted Hum 303 packet to HTML code and mounted it on the World Wide Web, 1994.
Created detailed study guides to the science fiction taught in English 333, attracting substantial attention from users around the country, 1994.
Created syllabus with linked resources for General Education 110 and mounted it on the Web, 1994-96.
Created supplement to my Nuclear Holocausts bibliography and mounted it on the Web.
Mounted Web version of my article, “Terminator vs. Terminator: Nuclear War as Video Game“.
Electronically published the translations of Lyubov Sirota’s Chernobyl poetry on the Web, adding illustrations from her book and from photographs provided personally by her. Mounted Russian texts of the originals on the Web, (1996).
Conceived of and supervised creation of a multimedia module on the history of writing in the West, 1994.
Created a seven-part series of videotapes tracing the history of European classical music for use in the WHETS version of my Humanities 303 course, Fall 1993.
A multimedia production of Cole Porter’s “You’re the Top,” Fall 1991.
Created incidental music tape for WSU Theatre production of Romeo and Juliet, featuring Renaissance music, Spring 1987, with Paula Elliot.
As a member of the materials subcommittee of the world civilizations planning group, helped create tapes of music to be used in Humanities 110 and 111. Most of the music is from my personal collection.
Created and catalogued collection of Medieval and Renaissance music on compact disc for Humanities courses, 1987.
Reading from The Wind in the Willows, Holland Library, 1985.
Reading of fiction depicting nuclear war, Holland Library, 1985.
Arranged and provided notes for exhibition in Holland Library: “Nuclear Holocausts: Holland Library’s Collection of Fiction Depicting Nuclear War and Its Aftermath,” 1985.
Reading of Joan D. Vinge’s short story “Tin Soldier” at the Gaia Coffeehouse, 1982.
Produced and coordinated series of cable FM broadcasts for English Department, 1982-85.
Produced and coordinated series of cable FM broadcasts for Humanities, 1982.
Organized and moderated program, “The Bomb and the Arts,” for Ground Zero Week, 1982.
Assembled, edited, recorded, and prepared notes for programs of music by women composers and women jazz artists for Women’s Arts Festival.
Assembled and arranged series of science fiction radio tapes for broadcast by library cable FM system.
Designed and created sets of tapes and notes covering the history of music from Gregorian Chant to Stravinsky for use in Humanities courses.

Professional Papers Presented

“Techniques for Mixing Text, Stills, and Clips in Computer-Based Film Lectures,” Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association, October 21, 2005.
“The Roots of Star Wars, or Why Princess Leia Fights Like a Girl,” Science Fiction Research Association, Las Vegas, July 2005.
“The Irrelevance of ‘Postcolonialism’ to South Asian Literature,” South Asian Literature Association, San Diego, December 27, 2003.

Published Conference Papers

“Teaching about Nuclear War through Fiction,” Nuclear War Education: A Survey of Different Perspectives and Resources, ed Robert Ehrlich. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1987. [Refereed]
“Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction, 1945-1982,” Literature and War: Reflections and Refractions, ed. Elizabeth W. Trahan. Monterey Institute of International Studies, 1985. Note: the title assigned to this paper by the editor is incorrect. It should have been “Some Distinguishing Characteristics of Nuclear War Fiction.” [Refereed]

Pedagogical papers and talks

“The Roots of Star Wars, or Why Princess Leia Fights Like a Girl,” Department of English Colloquium, 2005.
“Teaching Wole Soyinka,” Conference on Wole Soyinka, Central Florida University, February, 2003.
Presentation on creating and maintaining online audio reserves for the Pacific Northwest Chapter of the Music Library Association annual meeting, in Pullman, May 2001.
Presentation to the Pacific Northwest Chapter of the Music Library Association on music resources on the Internet, Seattle Public Library, Spring 1995. This involved extensive research preparing a printed guide for use by the librarians (a copy is in my file).
Joint talk (with Paula Elliot) on the library research project in the World Civilizations course, invited as presenters at a workshop entitled “Colleagues in Education,” dealing with faculty/librarian collaboration, Whitman College, 1992.
“Multimedia in a World Civilizations Course.” A joint lecture/multimedia demonstration (with Phil Scuderi) for “Computers Across the Curriculum: A Conference on Technology in the Freshman Year,” sponsored by the City University of New York, Office of Academic Computing, New York, 1992.
Slide lecture on “Nuclear Chic: Nuclear War Imagery in the Popular Culture.” This slide lecture was given in various forms to twelve audiences during 1989, including four sections of English 101, T.V. Reed’s Introduction to American Studies class, the Math/English/Honors students (and repeated for that group every year annually through 1993), the Unitarian churches of Moscow and Wenatchee, the Common Ministry at WSU, and Relaxicon (a science fiction convention in Moscow). It was also delivered as an invited address at the University of California-SDavis in June, 1989, and at Seattle University in the fall of 1989. In 1990, it was given at the following conferences, for which it was refereed: The International conference for the Fantastic in the Arts, Fort Lauderdale, FL; The Science Fiction Research Association, San Diego, CA; a Soviet-American conference called “Facing Apocalypse II,” Newport, RI; and the Conference of the Consortium on Peace Research, Education, and Development, Dayton, OH. It was also delivered as part of the Washington Commission for the Humanities Inquiring Mind series at the WCH annual meeting (Tacoma) and for the Beta Omicron Chapter of Epsilon Sigma Alpha (Seattle). In 1991 it was delivered at a region science fiction convention in Spokane, at a meeting of a community group in Sequim, Washington, at Whitman College, and at Yakima Community College. It was given in 1992 at the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference, at Edmonds Public Library, at Eastern Washington University, Cheney, for eight visiting faculty members from Far Eastern State University, Vladivostok. In 1997 I toured three German cities giving the presentation, and in the fall of 1999 made a version of it into a Web site called “Nuke Pop.”
“Learning About Nuclear War Through Fiction,” Arizona Honors Academy, Flagstaff, AZ, June 1988 (invited address).
“Nuclear War/Nuclear Families,” Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Spring 1988. [Refereed]
“Nuclear War/Nuclear Families,” Modern Language Association, Winter, 1988. [Refereed]
“Nuclear War Fiction for Children,” Eaton Conference on War and Science Fiction, University of California, Riverside, Spring 1988.
“Teaching a Pilot Section of a Freshman Course in World Civilizations,” Conference on the First Year Experience, Toronto, Fall 1988. [Refereed]
with Paula Elliot: “A Library Biography Project for a World Civilizations Class,” Conference on Faculty-Librarian collaboration, Evergreen State College, Fall 1988. (About 2/3 of this paper was written by Ms. Elliot.)
“Nuclear War Fiction for Young Readers,” International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, Houston, 1987. [Refereed]
“The Russians and the Nuclear Threat: Teaching About Attitudes Toward Nuclear War Using Recent Fiction,” George Mason University Conference on Nuclear War and Peace Education, 1987. [Refereed]
“Science Fiction and Nuclear Reality,” Seventh World Congress of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War,” Moscow, USSR, 1987.
“The Nuclear War Fiction Collection at Washington State University,” Northwestern Popular Culture Association, Tacoma, WA, 1987 (invited).
“Red Holocaust: The Atomic Conquest of the United States in Fiction,” Science Fiction Research Association, San Diego, CA, 1986.
“Women Authors of Nuclear War Fiction,” jointly authored with Jane Winston-Dolan, InterFace ’85, Marietta, GA, 1985. [Refereed]
“The Revival of Learning: Science After the Nuclear Holocaust in Science Fiction,” Fifth International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Boca Raton, FL, 1984. [Refereed]
“Samuel R. Delany’s Triton as a Psychological Satire,” Fifth International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Boca Raton, FL, 1984. [Refereed]
“Nuclear War in Science Fiction, 1945-1959,” League of Women Voters, Moscow, ID, 1984.
“Nuclear War in Fiction: Some Defining Characteristics,” Pullman Unitarian Fellowship, 1984 (invited). Also for Lewiston-Clarkson Ground Zero, 1984.
“Surrealism and Rock,” WSU English Department, 1976.
“Technique in Erotic Fiction,” WSU English Department, 1974.

Professional Service Outside of WSU (consulting, services on boards and panels, editing journals, etc., with year)

Placed “Four Seasons in the Palouse” video on YouTube, Fall 2006, viewed by 129 people by 2/3/07, featured as streaming video on the official WSU video site, Experience WSU, Summer 2006.
Reviewed article for possible publication in Ariel: A Review of International Literature, 2006.
Reviewed article for possible publication in Borderlands, 2006
Paid reviewer of a book manuscript for Houghton Mifflin, 2006.
Paid reviewer of a book manuscript for Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Referee for a proposal for a conference proposal for the Rockefeller Foundation’s Study and Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy, February 2004.
Paid reviewer for Foresight: Modern British Science Fiction, Wesleyan University Press, 2004.
Reviewed manuscript for Mosaic, June 2004.
Paid reviewer of World History Texts: Patterns of World History, for Longman Publishers, August 2004.
Paid reviewer of Understanding the Bible by Stephen Harris, 6^th edtion, for McGraw-Hill, October 2004.
Paid reviewer for John P. McKay, et al.: A History of World Societies, Sixth Edition, 2003.
Paid reviewer for a proposed science fiction reader for St. Martin, Aeos Press, Fall, 2002.
Paid reviewer for proposed postcolonial reader from Houghton-Mifflin, April 2002.
Paid reviewer for From Outer Space to Innerspace, McGraw-Hill, October 1995.
Paid reviewer of Stephen Harris, Understanding the Bible, Mayfield Press, July 1995.
Evaluated manuscript on science fiction and politics for University of Georgia Press, Fall 1994.
Outside tenure reviewer for Joseph Dewey, University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, 1992.
Paid reviewer of sixth edition of Sylvan Barnet’s A Short Guide to Writing About Literature, HarperCollins, 1991.
Editor, Nuclear Texts & Contexts, 1988-1992.
Editor, Membership Directory, International Society for the Study of Nuclear Texts and Contexts, 1989-1991.
Edited and published Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Bomb: A Bibliography of Literature and the Arts by James R. Bennett and Karen Clark
Consultant to grant proposal on military research, 1987.
Contributed to “Nuclear War: A Teaching Guide, Humanities,” by Philip N. Gilbertson, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, December, 1984.
Sent course syllabi and information about nuclear war research to many professors across the country responding to the Bulletin article, 1985-86.
WCH-funded Symposium on “Liberation Theology,” 1984.
Proposal to WCH, “What the Women’s Movement Means to Ethnic Women: A Current and Historical Perspective,” Consulting Humanist, 1983.
Proposal to Idaho Commission on the Humanities on Early Childhood Education, 1980.
NEH-funded grant for a WSU production of Chinese opera, 1978.
WCH-funded series on teaching religion in the public schools for the WSU Religious Studies Program, 1977.
YWCA-sponsored “Early Childhood Education,” 1976-77.
NEH-funded program on sex education for KSPS TV , 1974.

Committee or Administrative Service at WSU (Committee memberships, offices, with dates)

Faculty Status Committee, 2005-2007.
University Advisory Committee on Computing and Telecommunications, 2006-2007.
Chair, Faculty Senate Academic Integrity Task Force, 2005. Submitted final report 2005.
Represented Graduate School at a doctoral dissertation defense, Department of Economics, 2003.
Participant in the Critical Thinking Project, Summer & Fall, 2003.
Represented Graduate School at a doctoral dissertation defense, Department of Psychology, 2002.
Film Studies Steering Committee, 2001-2008.
Chair, Technology Subcommittee, Film Studies Program, 2001-2008.
Student Publications Board, 2000-2002.
Library Advisory Committee, 1999-2001.
Represented Graduate School at a doctoral dissertation defense, College of Education, 1998.
African Studies Committee, 1992-96.
Coordinating committee to plan events for observing the quincentennial of Columbus’ voyage to the New World, 1992.
CIR subcommittee to establish video standards for the campus network, 1992-1993.
Multimedia Planning Group, 1991-1993.
Nominations committee for Faculty Senate officers, 1990-1992.
Chair, Academic Steering Committee on Computing and Telecommunications, 1989-91.
Member, Academic Steering Committee on Computing and Telecommunications, 1988-89.
Planning Committee of the World Civilizations faculty, 1989-90.
Faculty Senate, 1987-90.
Committee to review applications for summer support for graduate students, for the Associate Vice Provost for Research, 1988.
Helped design and produce a brochure for the Humanities Core Curriculum Project, with Jo Hockenhull and Paula Elliot, Summer 1987.
Selected as teacher of pilot section of Humanities/World Civilizations 110: The New Stone Age to 1500, Fall 1987 and 1988.
Curriculum Committee of the World Civilizations faculty, Spring 1987-1990.
Materials Committee of the World Civilizations faculty, Spring 1987-1990.
NEH Faculty Group (Planning Committee for new NEH-funded World Civilizations courses), 1987.
NEH World Civilizations Advisory Committee, Fall, 1986-88.
Reinstatement Committee, 1984.
Academic Advising Subcommittee (Academic Affairs Committee), 1983-86; Chair, 1984-85.
President, WSU Chapter of AAUP, 1982-83.
Vice-President, WSU Chapter of AAUP, 1981-82
Peace Studies Committee, 1981-1985
Member, Religious Studies Faculty, 1980?-1990.
New Student Orientation, 1970-75.
Freshman-Faculty Weekend, 1968-74.
Coordinator, ASWSU Draft Counseling Center, 1972.
EPC Subcommittee on ROTC, 1969-70.
Coordinator, Humanities courses, 1972-present.

College or Division

Reviewer of Birgitta Ingemanson for promotion in Foreign Languages, 2007.
Reviewer of Prof. Zhin-Min Dong for promotion in Foreign Languages, 2004.
Chair, Committee to review candidates for the Sahlin Excellence in Service Award, 2000 -2002.
Committee to do initial planning for symposium on “Liberal Arts in the New Millennium.”
Represented the College at one meeting of the Pullman Chamber of Commerce committee to plan Millennium observances.
Division Library Committee, 1989-1993.
Committee to review candidates for the Mullen Award, for the Dean of the College of Sciences and Arts, 1988.
Evaluation of Transfer credits for Humanities courses, 1981-present.
Examining students in Summer Honors Reading Program.

Department

Director of Undergraduate Studies, 2004-2008.
Member, Committee on Curriculum and Planning, 2003-2005.
Coordinator, Humanities courses, 1970-2008.
English Department Library Liaison, 2001-2004.
Search committee, Modern British Literature search, Fall 2001-Spring 2002.
Committee to revise departmental evaluation forms, 2000-2001.
MA Exam committee 1999-2000
Mock job interviews with graduate students, Fall 1998.
Chair, search committee for creative writing position, 1998.
*Undergraduate Studies Committee, 1998-present.
Chair, Teaching and Technology Committee, 1996-present.
Member, Teaching and Technology Committee, 2001.
Chair’s Advisory Committee, Spring 1996.
Chair, MA Exam Committee, Fall 1992-Spring 1993.
MA Exam Committee, 1991.
Search committee, Tri-Cities position, 1989.
Editor, English News and Notes, 1989-1992.
Search committee for director of Avery Microcomputer Laboratory.
Undergraduate Studies Committee, 1992.
Library Committee, 1970-?, 1988-1993.
Temporary member of Graduate Studies Committee (replacing Louise Schleiner), Spring, 1988.
Avery Microcomputer Laboratory Policy Committee, 1988-1989.
Graduate Faculty member, 1988-2008.
Chair, Graduate Foreign Language Competency Examination Committee, 1987-2001.
*Preparation and distribution of publicity about the Humanities program, mostly aimed at new students, 1980-present.
Scholarship Committee, 1986-1992.
Committee to Design a New Faculty Evaluation Form, Spring 1975.
Freshman Composition Exemption Examination Committee, 1974-1984.
Committee to review requirements for English majors, 1972.
Committee to form a Chairman’s Advisory Committee.

Other Service at WSU

Public Lectures on Campus on Scholarly Topics

“The Roots of Star Wars, or Why Princess Leia Fights Like a Girl,” several times for recruiting events 2007-2008.
“Art of the Counter-Culture in the 1960s,” an invited illustrated address associated with the Museum of Art’s exhibition, “Art & Context: the 50s and 60s,” Nov. 2, 2006.
Showing of video based on my photos of Spain, Holland Library, Nov. 6, 2006.
Panel on Wole Soyinka with the author participating, February 3, 2005. Also introduced Soyinka’s poetry reading the same day.
“The Roots of Star Wars, or Why Princess Leia Fights Like a Girl,” Departmental Colloquium, repeated for Art à la Carte, 2005.
Talk on My Fair Lady and English usage after a performance of the musical at Portland Center Stage, February 27, 2005.
”Architecture from China,” Art a la carte presentation with Trevor Bond, based on my photographs now in the Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections World Civilizations database, 2004.
“Research at a Distance,” presentation for Critical Thinking Project series on English 567 course offered via distance learning. February 5, 2004.
Presentation of multimedia samples from my “Love in the Arts” class for WSU Preview, Spring 2000, 2001 & 2002.
“Three Indian Authors: Tagore, Narayan, and Desai” English Department Graduate Program Colloquium, November 28, 2001.
Invited presentation to the Foreign Languages Department on Internet publication and teaching (paid), April 14, 2001.
“Krishna, the Lover, in Art,” Art a la Carte presentation, February, 2001.
Organized and ran Indian film series Fall 2000, with Azfar Hussain. I helped to choose the films, secured them, scheduled them, wrote and distributed almost all of the publicity and trained Azfar in the use of the equipment to show DVDs and VHS tapes.
Three presentations of multimedia samples from my “Love in the Arts” class for New Student Programs, Spring, Summer, and Fall, 1999.
“The Chutneyfication of Literature,” readings from and remarks about recent South Asian literature, Art /* la carte series, Fall 1998.
“Annotating The Satanic Verses: An Example of Internet Research and Publication,” English Department colloquium, Spring 1997.
“Medieval Songs” multimedia presentation with Paula Elliot, for the WSU Foundation Silver Associates, March, 1997.
“Classic American Love Songs,” for the Math-English Honors Competition program, 1996-1997.
“World Civilizations Materials on the World Wide Web,” World Civilizations workshop, August, 1996.
Lecture on Hildegard of Bingen’s poetry as part of a Hildegard symposium sponsored by the History Club, Fall 1994.
Lectures to World Civilizations workshop August, 1994 on African Literature and African art and architecture (the latter using multimedia materials).
Presentation to visiting journalism teachers of relevant resources on the Internet, for the Journalism Department,July 1994 .
Presentation to World Civilization faculty workshop on teaching about the music and poetry of India, August 1993. Also participated in a panel discussion of the experiences of those of us who had gone on the WSU-sponsored trip to India in December 1992-January 1993.
Multimedia lecture on early African civilizations for Residence Life Staff during program “Ticket to Tomorrow: Issues for Understanding the World We Live In,” 1993.
Talk on my project to edit and publish the Chernobyl poems of Liubov Sirota, for visiting faculty members from Far Eastern University, Vladivostok, 1992.
Lecture on the history of Judaism, World Civilizations workshop, 1992.
Lecture on Medieval lyric poetry and music, World Civilizations Workshop, 1991.
Presentation on World Civilization multimedia project, Faculty Day, 1991.
See above, “Professional Papers Presented,” for details of presentations on campus of “Nuclear Chic.”
Talk on nuclear war fiction scholarship to English and Math Scholarship contestants, 1988.
“Strategies for Capturing Student Interest,” part of the Faculty Seminars on Effective Teaching sponsored by the WSU Faculty Development Committee, March 1988.
“Nuclear War in Science Fiction, ” Palouse SANE, CUB noontime series on War and the Arts, September 1987.
University-wide talk on my nuclear war research and trip to the Soviet Union, September, 1987 (invited, sponsored by Department of English).
“An Introduction to Nuclear War in Fiction,” Stevens Hall, 1987.
“Nuclear War Fiction for Young Readers,” to English and Math Scholarship contestants, 1987.
Talk on my research on nuclear war fiction, to English and Math Scholarship contestants, 1986.
“Underground Comix,” Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections, Holland Library, 1986.
“The New Censorship: Feminists and Pornography,” Invited address for Library Faculty Award Presentation, 1984.
“Science Fiction and Nuclear War,” (Ground Zero: “The Bomb and the Arts” Symposium, 1982.
“Current Feminist Science Fiction,” Women’s Center, 1978.
“Pornography and Erotic Art,” Sex Information Center Staff, 1979 (twice).
“Feminism and Science Fiction,” 1979.
“Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time,” Women’s Center, 1978.
“Science Fiction and the Idea of the American Frontier,” American Studies Group, 1978.
“Images of Childhood in Art and Literature,” 1976.
“Sex and Sexuality in Literature,” Women’s Art Festival, 1975.
Lectures and debates for the League for the Promotion of Militant Atheism, 1972-74.
“The Oppression of Women in Literature,” 1970.

Guest Lectures to colleagues’ classes

“Writing and Publishing Science Fiction,” for Paula Coomer’s course on writing science fiction and horror, summer, 2005.
South Asian Literature in English and Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey, presentation to Asia 301, February 2004.
Using multimedia to present music in the classroom, a demonstration involving classic American popular songs for Camille Roman, English 555 seminar, March 2002.
Art on Biblical Themes, for English/Humanities 335, October 29, 2001.
Media lecture on Krishna, god of love, for Virginia Hyde graduate seminar, April 18, 2001.
Art and music on Biblical themes, two lectures for English 335, Fall, 1998.
Presentation of Internet resources for the study of English to English 512, Fall, 1995-1997.
Presentations on “postcolonial” studies to English 512, Fall, 1996 & 1997.
Lecture on the poetry of N/(c)gritude for a minicourse on African studies, Spring 1993.
Lecture on women poets before 1600, for Barbara Harbach’s Women’s Studies class, 1993.
Talk on my project to edit and publish the Chernobyl poems of Liubov Sirota, for Susan-Wyche Smith’s English 198 class, 1992.
Slide lecture on love in art for Deborah Haynes,Aeo art history class, 1992.
See above, “Professional Papers Presented,” for details of presentations on campus of “Nuclear Chic.”
“Feminist Utopias,” Women’s Studies 200: Introduction to Women’s Studies, Spring, 1987.
“Exodus,” English 335, The Bible as Literature, Spring 1987.
“Nuclear War in Fiction,” for the Continuing Education evening course, “Nuclear War: Issues of the Day,” 1985.
“The Aftermath of World War III in Fiction,” Seminar on WWIII, Political Science 322, 1984.
“Women in Science Fiction,” Foreign Lang. 505, Seminar on Images of Women in the Arts, 1984.
“Religion and Nuclear War in Fiction, 1945-1982,” Religious Studies Seminar, 1984.
“Death in Children’s Books,” UNIV 280, 1982.
“Interracial Children’s Books,” Education Seminar, 1981, repeated for Child and Family Studies class, 1982.
“Contemporary Children’s Poetry,” Education Seminar, 1981.
“Emile Zola’s Germinal and Nineteenth-Century Radicalism,” French Civilization, 1980.
“Women in Erotic Art,” Women Artists Fine Arts course, 1979.
“Children’s Picture Books,” two lectures for English 495, 1978.
“Pornography and Erotic Art,” Psychology 230 (Human Sexuality); 8 times.
“Science Fiction and the Idea of the American Frontier,” 1979, Engl/Hist 316.
“Sex in Underground Comix,” 1974, English seminar on Sex in Literature.
“Atheism,” 1974, Philosophy 101.
“Science Fiction,” 1974, English 101.

Computer-oriented service at WSU

Installed self-designed presentations on classical art and architecture on departmental laptops for use by Humanities instructors, 2005-2006.
Set up and trouble-shot the departmental portable computer, Fall 1997.
Helped configure and make sure standards were met for classroom multimedia/computer equipment in Avery, 1997-present.
Proofreading and editing Richard Hooker’s on-line World Civilizations course, 1997.
*World Civilizations home page Web master, 1995-2005.
Gathered numerous resources from the World Wide Web for adding images to the WSU media collection and helped draw up criteria for adding to the collection.
Gathered, downloaded, and printed out large quantities of material relating to Africa for Abdoulaye Saine, chair of the African Studies Committee, 1994.
Gave extensive computer training to Departmental Secretary Nelly Zamora early in the summer of 1994.
Trained WSU News Bureau staff in using the Internet for their work, Spring 1994.
Presented uses of the Internet for humanists at a workshop sponsored by WSU Computing entitled “CIRcling the Globe,” 1992.
Instructed colleagues and departmental secretaries in using e-mail, 1992-1993.
Installed memory upgrade in the computer of the secretary of the Office of General Education, 1993.
Answered numerous trouble-shooting calls, 1986-present.

Other Service at WSU

Regularly requested science fiction, classical music by women and African-Americans, and films on DVD for addition to the MMR collection.
Maintained an informal list of information on “postcolonial” and South Asian literature for local faculty and students.
Donated over a hundred volumes of nuclear war fiction to the WSU library, 2005.
Donated over a hundred underground comic books, alternative newspapers and other ephemera from the 1960s to the WSU library Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections, 2005.
Conceived of and helped plan for visit to campus by Nigerian author Wole Soyinka and Soyinka expert Femi Euba, funded, 2003-2004.
Donated over 700 slides of European art and architecture to the Department of Fine Arts slide collection, 2004.
Donated copies of the New York Times Book Review and Locus to the Bookie trade book department, 2000-2004.
Created and maintained Palouse Cultural Events Calendar, the only online source which combined events both on and off campus for Pullman and Moscow, ending Fall 2005.
Donated large collection of classical music and film soundtrack long-playing records and a DVD player to the Music Library, 2003.

Professional Service Outside of WSU

Served on review committee for best graduate student paper contest for the Science Fiction Research Association, 2006-2008, chaired committee 2008.
Donated 366 volumes of nuclear war fiction to the University of Iowa, 2005.

Off-Campus Lectures

Common Errors in English Usage, Wordstock, Portland, Oregon, November 11, 2007.
“Turning Web Writing into Printed Publications,” workshop at Wordstock, Portland, Oregon, November 11, 2007.
Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, invited public lecture for the Fishtrap Center, Enterprise, Oregon, February 21, 2006, repeated for King County Library System, Shoreline, Washington, Fall 2007.
Nuke/Pop slide lecture, Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, Seattle, August 6, 2004 (paid).
Readings from Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, for the Pullman Historical Club, 1999. (Paid).
Formal debate with Douglas Wilson at the University of Idaho on the subject, Resolved: “Belief in God is necessary for a valid ethics,” Fall 1999.
Invited talk and debate about Christian fundamentalism at St. Andrew, Aeos College, Moscow, Idaho, Fall 1999.
Presentation on Rushdie research for students being recruited at Vancouver, via WHETS, Spring 1998.
Talk on the flood narrative as part of the Moscow Public Library,Aeos Community Enrichment Program discussion series on Genesis, Fall 1997.
Five presentations at the 28th annual Amerikastudientagung, Bonn, Germany (workshop for German high school teachers of American studies, invited and paid for by the American Information Service, Department of State):
May 8, 1997: Presentation of the film Blade Runner
May 9, 1997: “Future Visions: A Survey of American Science Fiction.”
May 9 & 10, 1997: “Teaching Science Fiction” workshops
May 10, 1997: “Blade Runner: The Book and the Movie”
May 11, 1997: “Nuclear Chic: Images of Nuclear War in American Culture” at the James F. Byrnes Institute, Stuttgart (invited and paid for by the Institute)
May 14, 1997: “Nuclear Chic: Images of Nuclear War in American Culture” at the Carl Schurz Haus, Freiberg (invited and paid for by the Haus).
For a group touring Provence, a lecture/reading on troubadour poetry, June, 1996 (paid).
For a group touring classical Greek sites, on the Arcadian ideal in European culture, and a two talks about and performance of brief excerpts from the Oresteia of Aeschylus, May 1993.
For a community study group, a lecture on Nigerian author Wole Soyinka, 1993.
“Children’s Nuclear War Fiction,” Seattle University, 1989.
“Learning About Nuclear War Through Fiction,” Seattle University, 1989.
“How to Argue with Christians,” Student Humanist Association, University of Idaho, 1989.
“Bible Abuse: The Misuse of the Bible.” Student Humanist Association, University of Idaho, 1989.
“Teaching a Pilot Section of World Civilizations,” Danforth Scholars Group, February 1988.
“Science Fiction and the Future of Government,” invited address at a Washington State 4-H conference on constitutional futures, Olympia, February 1988.
Talk on my research and trip to the USSR to Social Concerns Group, at University of Idaho, 1987.
“Nuclear War in Fiction,” two talks at Pullman High School, 1987.
“Nuclear War in Fiction,” Eastern Washington University, Spokane Higher Education Center, 1987.
“Recent Nuclear War Fiction,” Lewis and Clark College library noon lecture series, 1987.
“The Best Nuclear War Fiction for Young Readers,” Young Readers Group, Public Library, 1987.
“Atheism and Humanism,” Moscow High School, 1976-1987.
“Teaching About Utopias/Dystopias,” Society for Utopian Studies, Monterey, CA, 1986.
“Nuclear War in Science Fiction,” Moscow Science Fiction Convention, 1985.
“Beautiful Books for Preschoolers,” Cooperative Daycare Center, 1982.
“Books for Children of Single Parents,” Palouse Area Singles Group, 1978.
“Nonfiction Books for Preschoolers,” Community Day Care School staff, 1978.
“Pornography and Erotic Art,” for the Palouse Area Singles Group, 1978.
“The Western Background to Racism,” symposium on Racism and the Public Schools, 1978.
“Pornography, Obscenity and Privacy,” symposium on privacy, Pacific Lutheran University, 1978.
“Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time,” for the Common Ministry, 1978.
“Atheism,” formal debate with Professor Nicholas Gier, Philosophy Department, University of Idaho, 1973.

Off-Campus Presentations and Websites

Slightly revised WSU/Palouse photo tour, 2005-2006.
Added a number of regional photographic tours to my WSU/Palouse Web site, 2003-4.
Conducted a small workshop for teachers on using science fiction in the classroom, Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, Seattle, August 7, 2004 (paid).
Created a Web tour of WSU and the Palouse aimed especially at orienting new graduate students and faculty to the area, August, 2002, at http://users.pullman.com/brians/index.html.
Interview on the protests against the World Trade Organization for Web-based radio station in New Orleans, 1999.
“Current Changes in the U.S.S.R.: A Recent Visitor’s View,” panel of Russians and Americans discussing nuclear war, sponsored by Physicians for Social Responsibility, Spokane, Sacred Heart Hospital Auditorium.
“Women: Planning for the Future” (Facilitator), Northwest Women’s Studies Association Annual Conference, Moscow, Idaho, 1979.
“Sex in Science Fiction” (chair and speaker), Moscow Science Fiction Convention, 1979.
“The Radical Teacher,” Conference on English Education, Portland, Oregon, 1971.

Radio and Television Appearances

Radio interview about Common Errors in English Usage on Youth Radio, KPFT Houston, August 14, 2009.
Radio panel with author David Guterson about Snow Falling on Cedars, BBC World Book Club, February 7, 2009.
Radio interview about Common Errors in English Usage on The Lionel Show, Air America, December 18, 2008.
Panelist on World Book Club interview with Wole Soyinka, BBC radio, May 2007.
Radio interview about “Mr. Gradgrind’s Literal Answers to Rhetorical Questions, by Scott Simon for the National Public Radio Show Weekend Edition Saturday, Fall, 2007.
Radio interview about nuclear war in films: “Nuclear Disarmament: An Impossible Dream?” interviewed by Margot Adler for the National Public Radio show Justice Talking, October 9, 2006.
Radio interview about English errors on “Wordmaster,” Voice of America, August 23, 2005.
Radio interview about “Common Errors in English”, KUOW, Seattle, April 26, 2004.
Radio interview on Stanislaw Lem,Aeos Solaris and the Tarkovsky and Soderbergh film versions of it, broadcast January 25, 2003, Radio Free Europe (translated into Russian).
Radio interview on Common Errors, Nashville Public Radio. 2002.
Radio interview on nuclear war fiction, KXLY, Seattle, 1988
Radio interview on nuclear war fiction, KXL, Portland, 1988
Appeared in a Soviet documentary about the Seventh IPPNW Congress broadcast in the Soviet Union, 1987.
Radio interview on trip to Russia, KXLY, Spokane, 1987.
Radio interview on trip to Russia and research, KPBX, Spokane, 1987.
Radio interviews on current trends in nuclear war fiction on KIRO (Seattle), KING (Seattle), 1985; KRPL (Moscow, ID), KXLY (Spokane), 1984
“Nuclear War in Fiction,” segment on”Grassroots Journal,” KWSU-TV, 1984
Produced programs for women’s music program on Polish composer Graznia Bacewicz and Ella Fitzgerald, KZUU-FM, 1982
Produced and hosted weekly show, “Radio’s Golden Age,” KZUU-FM, 1982-1984.
“Children’s Picture Books,” KWSU-TV, Pullman, WA, 1978.
“The Pagan Origins of Christmas,” KUID-FM, 1975.
Panel on sex education, KSPS-TV, Spokane, 1974.
Debate with Nicholas Gier on Theism vs. Atheism on KUID-FM, 1973.
Panel discussion of a new Idaho obscenity statute, KUID-TV, 1973.
“The New Pornography,” interview, KUID-FM, Moscow, ID, 1973.

Articles about my work

(many others not yet listed here)

“Speaking of English,” by Peter Monaghan, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 28, 2004, p. A6 & A8.

Miscellaneous Service

Donated large collection of nuclear war fiction to Holland Library, Fall 2007.
Donated a collection of science fiction by women authors to Holland Library, Fall 2006.
Exhibit of international Disney Comic books at Neill Public Library, Summer, 2006.
Exhibit of international Floaty Pens at Brain Education Library, Fall 2006.
Created a photo calendar of my regional photographs and posted it for free downloading on my personal Website, 2005.
Supplied photos of the McConnell Mansion in Moscow for a presentation by Kathleen Ryan of Design North to the Latah County Historical Society, July, 2005.
Supplied photo of Japan for Asia Program poster, WSU, 2005.
Identified and contributed music for presentation by Birgitta Ingemanson for the rededication of Thompson Hall, September 23, 2000.
Donated a large collection of comic books and other ephemera relating to nuclear war to Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections in Holland/New Library, 2000.
Donated over 1,000 underground comic books, underground newspapers, and other ,Aeo60s-related items to Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections in Holland/New Library, 2000.
Consulted with representatives of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Cooperative Extension Service about distance learning via the Web.
Coached soprano Karen Wicklund on the pronunciation of words in Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky for a concert, Spring 1995.
Spoke on career planning at New Faculty Orientation, Fall 1993.
Selected and prepared color photocopies and captions from slides in my collection of popular culture nuclear weapons imagery for a touring exhibit entitled “Yes, In My Back Yard?” curated by Helen Slade, opening in Richland, Washington, February 4-27, 1992. Exhibit traveled to WSU, Spring 1996.
*Acting, from 1990 to the present, as agent and editor for Liubov Sirota, a poet living now in Kiev, who was injured by the Chernobyl explosion. I have arranged for her poems about the disaster to be translated and published and solicited from Dr. Adolph Harash of Moscow State University an introduction, which I also had translated. Selections were read to music on the National Public Radio program Terra Infirma on April 1, 1992; the poem “Radiophobia” was published in the August 5, 1992 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association; one other poem was published in New York Quarterly, all the poems and a revised version of the introduction appeared in Calyx , Winter 1992/1993, and in Selections on Words and Healing edited by Sue Brannan Walker & Rosaly Demaios Roffman (Mobile, Alabama: Negative Capability Press). The article by Dr. Harash has also appeared in the Canadian magazine Woman’s World. I continue to communicate with Sirota from time to time. One poem was reprinted in a Calyx Books anthology of women, Aeos poetry, 2002.
In late 1999 I edited, annotated, and added to the site pictures from the abandoned city of Pripyat and the Chernobyl reactor by Lyubov Sirota’s son Sasha. During January 2001, edited more pictures by Lyubov Sirota herself, with her annotations translated by Birgitta Ingemanson.
Advised Professor Yuri Mironetz of Far Eastern University, Vladivostok, on how to design and teach a course in science fiction (the first to be offered in Russia), 1992. Supplied Prof. Mironetz with numerous books and articles to aid him in his teaching. The course was successfully given Spring, 1993.
Compiled and edited an anthology of literature for use in World Civilizations (Gen Ed 110), consisting of mostly lyric poetry from many cultures, with an introductory teacher’s guide written by myself. Reproduced by the General Education Office and distributed to 110 instructors at the World Civilizations workshop, Summer, 1992.

Community Service

Member, film committee, Kenworthy Film Society, 2002-2007. I recommended many of the films shown at this nonprofit theater.
Computer Services for Pullman NOW and Palouse SANE, 1980s.
Membership Secretary, Pullman NOW, 1986-89.
Secretary, Washington State Conference of AAUP, 1983-84; reelected for 1984-86.
“Why It Is in the Interests of Whites to Combat Racism,” talk, Pullman, YWCA, 1983.
Speaker for NOW on Awareness Week Panel: “How can abortion be made as unnecessary as possible?” 1983
Judge, Pullman Chapter of NOW, essay context, 1983.
Secretary, Pullman Chapter of the National Organization for Women, 1982-83.
“The Causes and Prevention of War,” address, Whitman College, 1980.
Training draft counselors for the Walla Walla Society of Friends, 1980.
Panel discussion on draft registration, Whitman College, 1980.
Talks on the draft to various campus and community groups, workshops and training sessions, 1980.
Class on “Religious Themes in Science Fiction,” with Rev. Roger Pettenger, Common Ministry, 1977.
Free University class on children’s picture books, taught six times, 1977-82
Annual lecture on “Atheism and Humanism” to world history classes at Moscow High School, Moscow, ID, 1976-1988.
Coordinator, Community Free University, 1970-present.
Leader of various classes in the CFU, including two dealing with literature: “Intimacy” and “Contemporary Utopias”, 1969-1971.
Author of a draft counseling column for the Daily Evergreen, 1970-73.
Draft counseling, 1968-1980.

Books by Paul Brians

March 10, 2017 elizabeth.wasson

Books by Paul Brians

I’ve had a varied career and none of my books has much to do with the others; but here’s information about each of them.

For a full list of my publications, including articles, contributed chapters in books, and e-publications, see my vita.

Paul Brians
Department of English
Washington State University
Pullman 99164-5020.

Bawdy Tales from the Courts of Medieval France

This is a collection of stories ranging from risqué to raunchy from mostly obscure Medieval French originals. The book was published in paperback as a Harper Torchbook in 1973, but was too sensational for classroom use and not sensational enough for popular sales. Harper & Row decided to put out a hardcover edition to stimulate library sales (at that time libraries seldom bought paperbacks), but they never advertised it and few were sold. After selling the bulk of the first edition, Harper & Row sold off most of the rest to a reseller cheap and let it go out of print.

However, the book has entertained and informed quite a few people (including Barbara Tuchman, who cited it in A Distant Mirror), including some teachers who use photocopies of certain stories in their classes. For this I get an occasional royalty check. It includes the only English translation of a very rare Arthurian tale, “The Knight of the Sword” in which Gawain is tested on a magical bed, as well as such low-brow entertainments as “The Lady Who Was Castrated” and “The Lay of the Lecher.”

The hardbound library edition is extremely rare (I have a few copies for sale to libraries only), but paper copies appear from time to time at reasonable prices from used book dealers. Try searching at ABEBooks.com

Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction 1895-1984

This history and annotated bibliography of nuclear war as it has been depicted in fiction was the product of ten years of research. I published widely on the subject until the end of the Cold War led to a sharp dropoff in interest in the subject. The first edition of 1986 almost sold out before Kent State University Press remaindered it. There are no copies presently available for sale, but many libraries own a copy. However, this book has been rendered obsolete by the Web publication of the second edition, which should be used instead.

Reading About the World, Vols. 1 & 2.

A custom-published reader for the study of world civilizations. Samples and further information are available by clicking on the title above. Copies can be purchased from Amazon.com.

Reading About the World, Vols. 1 & 2. A custom-published reader for the study of world civilizations. Samples and further information are available by clicking on the title above. Copies can be purchased from Amazon.com. reader_cover_2

Common Errors in English Usage

Published 2003 by William, James Co., this is the book version of my popular Web site, “Common Errors in English.” It is a usage guide which attempts to be helpful and entertaining without overwhelming the reader with technical detail.

Common Errors in English Usage Published 2003 by William, James Co., this is the book version of my popular Web site, "Common Errors in English." It is a usage guide which attempts to be helpful and entertaining without overwhelming the reader with technical detail. Click here to read more about the book.

Modern South Asian Literature in English

Published 2003 by Greenwood Press. This is a discussion of some authors from India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka who write fiction in English (Attia Hosain, Jhumpa Lahiri, Rohinton Mistry, Bharati Mukherjee, R. K. Narayan, Michael Ondaatje, Raja Rao, Arundhati Roy, Salman Rushdie, Shyam Selvadurai, Khushwant Singh, Bapsi Sidhwa, Manil Suri, and Rabindranath Tagore). These essays are aimed at being helpful to readers beginning to explore this popular literature. It avoids fearsome theoretical and critical vocabulary and aims at explaining what needs explaining without giving away plot surprises. Ideal for libraries, reading groups, and beginning college courses on the subject.

Four Seasons on Bainbridge Island, 2010

This book is a self-published collection of photographs of Bainbridge Island, Washington, focusing on characteristic flowers and other plants in different times of year. Information is provided about parks, hikes, other attractions, and various seasonal events on the island. For more information, write paulbrians@gmail.com.

This book (Island Seasons Press, 2010) is a self-published collection of photographs of Bainbridge Island, Washington, focusing on characteristic flowers and other plants in different times of year. Information is provided about parks, hikes, other attractions, and various seasonal events on the island. For more information, write paulbrians@gmail.com.

Humanities 303 Syllabus Spring 2008

December 7, 2016 elizabeth.wasson

Instructor: Paul Brians

Office: Avery 202H

Office hours: 9:30-10:30 daily (I’m also in much of the rest of the time)

Phone (try this before e-mailing): 335-5689

Appointments: 335-7124

E-mail: paulbrians@gmail.com

Textbooks for this course (please do not substitute other editions or translations):

* Voltaire: Philosophical Dictionary, translated by Theodore Besterman

* Goethe’s Faust, translated by Walter Kaufmann

* Zola, Germinal, trans. Collier

* Dostoyevsky: Notes from Underground, translated by Andrew R. MacAndrew

* Nietzsche: Thus Spoke Zarathustra, translated by Walter Kaufmann. (Note Penguin also publishes other translations that are not as good—be sure to get the Kaufmann. DO NOT USE the 1892 public-domain translation by Thomas Common.

* Marx & Engels: The Communist Manifesto (Penguin) (1998). Other editions are OK, but their page numbers won’t match up with those in the study guide.

Online Resources:

* Home Page

* Common Errors in English

Course Overview

All of the study guides and other materials for this class are available on the Web, linked from the online version this document. Be careful to read ahead in the syllabus so you see what assignments are coming up. Don’t wait until the night before class. Note that if you work only from a printed-out version of this syllabus, you will lack many important hyperlinks. Always check the online syllabus when doing your assignments.

Students are responsible for reading assignments and for preparing answers to the related on-line study questions before coming to class on the dates noted. Written assignments marked with an asterisk (*) are due on the date next to or above the asterisk. Besides the short papers noted here, you must also attend and report on a cultural event relating to the European 18th and 19th centuries. A list of acceptable events will be provided.

Course Goals

When you have successfully completed this course, you should:

* have a general grasp of major trends in Western European art history from the 17th century to World War I.

* be able to listen with increased understanding to classical music from the same eras.

* understand some of the basic over-arching themes in philosophy and literature of the 18th and 19th centuries.

* be able to discuss fairly complex and sophisticated ideas such as are treated in the works assigned.

Course Outline

The following syllabus provides a concise outline of the course topics and requirements by week. January

8: Introduction; video: The Art of the Western World, 5: Realms of Light—The Baroque [12395] (The Baroque: Bernini, Cortona, Caravaggio, Borromini, Fischer von Erlach,Velazquez, Vermeer, Rubens, Rembrandt, etc.).

View video in class, take notes.

10: Read the “Course Introduction”

Music: Pachelbel, Vivaldi, Handel. Write something about one or more of the pieces of music and turn it in at the end of class. Do not “review” the music, saying whether it is good or bad; analyze it or report on what you have learned.

Read “The Enlightenment” online and write at least 50 words about some aspect of the Enlightenment to be turned in at the beginning of class.

15: Do this assignment only after having read “The Enlightenment” and done the assigned writing. Using the on-line Study Guide, then read Voltaire: Philosophical Dictionary: have the following articles read and notes taken about them to turn in at the beginning of class, at least 50 words covering more than one or two articles: Abbe, Ame, Amour-propre, Athee, atheisme, Beau, beaute, Bien (tout est, Bornes de l’esprit humaine, Catechisme chinois, Certain, certitude, Chaine des evenements, Credo). As you read, also mentally try to find the answers to as many of the study questions in the Study Guide as you can.

17: Film: Knowledge or Certainty [1617] Before coming to class, read the online study guide; during the film, take notes; at the end of class, turn in a brief written response to the film addressing something in its contents, at least 50 words. Do not “review” the film; discuss its ideas.

22: Music Lecture Video #2 [r472]: Bach. Do assigned writing in class—at least 50 words—and turn it in at the end of class.

24: Voltaire: Philosophical Dictionary: have the following articles read and notes taken about them to turn in at the beginning of class, at least 50 words: Egalite, Enthousiasme, Etat, gouvernements, Fanatisime, Foi, Guerre, Liberte de pensee, Prejuges, Secte, Theiste, Tolerance, Tyrannie. Using the online study guide, write answers to some of the study questions, at least 50 words total.

29: Library session, introduction to the research paper.

Sign up for library research topics. Be sure to attend. This is not a general library orientation, but a specialized presentation on sources you will need to use for doing this assignment. Look at “Suggested Research Topics for Humanities 303” online before coming to class and tentatively identify two or three topics you would like to work on. You may make up your own topic with my permission. See me first.

Although it is aimed primarily at off-campus students, you will also find much useful information in the Web page “Research Paper Assignment”.

* First paper due, on Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary, 600 words. Be sure to read “Helpful Hints for Writing Papers” before beginning this assignment. Design your own topic or choose one of the following, using details from Voltaire which demonstrate your understand of his writings: freedom, free will and determinism, religion, tolerance, government, relativism. You may argue with him, but only if you present fully all relevant evidence on both sides. You must use material from two or more articles. If you have trouble choosing a topic or are uncertain whether your topic is acceptable, ask for help!

31: Read the Introduction to Romanticism at http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/hum_303/romanticism.html and write 50 words about the information and ideas on that page to turn in at the beginning of class.

Using the online Faust Study Guide, read Job: Chapters 1 & 2; Goethe: Faust: Introduction, Prologue in Heaven. Write 50 words answering some of the study questions to turn in.

February

5: Video: The Art of the Western World, 6: An Age of Reason, An Age of Passion [12396] (Antoine Watteau: Departure from Cythera, Robert Adams, Francois Boucher, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Jean-Baptiste Chardin, Nicolas Poussin, Jacques Lemercier: Palais-Royal, Charles Perrault: Colonnade of the Louvre, Germain Soufflot: Pantheon, Giambattista Piranesi: drawings of Paestum, Jacques-Louis David: Death of Marat & The Sabine Women, Vignon: La Madeleine, Dominique Ingres: Odalisque, Jean-Antoine Gros, Francisco de Goya: The Horrors of War, Gericault, Eugene Delacroix: Liberty Leading the People, Theodore Gericault: The Raft of the Medusa) Take notes during videotape, turn in 50 words about the art at the end of class.

7: Goethe: Faust: Night, Before the City Gate, both scenes titled “Study.” Using the online study guide write 50 words answering some of the study questions to turn in at the beginning of class.

12: Music Lecture Video #3 [r485]: Mozart, Beethoven. Take notes during presentation, turn in 50 words on the music at the end of class.

Research paper proposal and annotated bibliography due: a paragraph outlining the topic and a list of sources to be used, with comments for each explaining why the sources will be useful to you. Be sure to include all three elements: the proposal itself, the list of sources, and the comments. If you have not already done so, read “The Research Paper” online at http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/hum_303/research.html.

14: Goethe: Faust: Witch’s Kitchen, Street, Evening, Promenade, The Neighbor’s House, Street, Garden, A Garden Bower, Wood and Cave, Gretchen’s Room, Martha’s Garden. Use study guide, write 50 words answering some of the study questions to turn in.

19: Video: “The Artist Was a Woman” [VHS 18321]. Take notes during presentation, turn in 50 words on the music at the end of class.

21: Goethe: Faust: At the Well, City Wall, Night: Street in Front of Gretchen’s Door, Cathedral, Walpurgis Night, Dismal Day, Night, Open Field. Using the study guide, write 50 words answering some of the study questions to turn in.

26: Note: during the next week and a half, you have little homework other than to write your paper on Faust. This is the time that you are expected to use to also read Zola’s Germinal. Because it is a long book, you may want to start reading ahead now and not put it off until the week when it is due.

Goethe: Faust: Dungeon, Charming Landscape, Open Country, Palace, Deep Night, Midnight, Large Outer Court of the Palace, Entombment, Mountain Gorges: Forest, Rock and Desert. Using the online study guide, write 50 words answering some of the study questions to turn in.

28: Before class, read the online Study Guide for La Traviata.

Music Lecture Video #5 [r521]: Romanticism: Berlioz, DVD: Verdi: La Traviata, beginning, turn in 50 words on the opera and another 50 words on the other music at the end of class.

March

4: Verdi: La Traviata (conclusion) [11765], turn in 50 words on the opera at the end of class.

6:. Women Composers. Listen to presentation, turn in 50 words about the music at the end of class.

* Second paper due, on Goethe’s Faust, 1200 words. Counts 20 points. Design your own topic or choose one of the following:, remembering that you will be expected to define your topic further, since most of these are very broad: Faust and Mephistopheles, Faust and Gretchen, Thought vs. Action, Religion, Humor, Music, Magic, Classical Mythology. Again, if you have trouble choosing or defining a topic, ask for help.

18: Read “Realism and Naturalism” and turn in 50 words about it at the beginning of class.

Zola: Germinal: Parts 1-3. Use Study Guide, write 50 words answering some of the study questions to turn in at the beginning of class.

20: Zola: Germinal: Parts 4-6. Use Study Guide, write 50 words answering some of the study questions to turn in at the beginnning of class.

25: Zola: Germinal: Part 7. Use Study Guide, write 50 words answering some of the study questions to turn in at the beginnning of class. Video: Mary Cassatt [14390]. Write 50 words in class about the video, to be turned in at the end of class.

27: Read “19th Century Russian Literature” and write 50 words about it to be turned in at the beginning of class.

Dostoyevsky: Notes from Underground: Part One. Use the study guide, write 50 words answering some of the study questions to turn in at the beginning of class.

April

1: Dostoyevsky: Notes from Underground: Part Two. Use the study guide, write 50 words answering some of the study questions to turn in at the beginning of class..

3: Videotape: The Art of the Western World, 7: A Fresh View Impressionism and Post-Impressionism [12397] (Courbet, Degas, Manet, Monet, Renoir, Whistler, Pissarro, Sargent, Cassatt, Gauguin, Seurat, Van Gogh, Signac, Bernard, Toulouse-Lautrec, Valadon, Cezanne), Impressionist art show. Write 50 words about the presentations to be turned in at the end of class.

* Research paper due. 20 points; required revised version due April 29.

8: Read “The Influence of Nietzsche,” taking notes, write 50 words about this page to turn in at the beginning of class.

Nietzsche: Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Translator’s Preface, beginning through “On the Three Metamorphoses.” Use study guide, write 50 words answering some of the study questions to turn in at the beginning of class.

10: Nietzsche: Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On the Teachers of Virtue” through “On the Flies of the Marketplace.” Use study guide, write 50 words answering some of the study questions to turn in at the beginning of class.

15: Nietzsche: Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “On Chastity” through through the end of the First Part (“On the Gift-Giving Virtue.” Use study guide, write 50 words answering some of the study questions to turn in at the beginning of class..

Music Videotape Lecture 6 [r559]: Impressionist Music: Debussy & Ravel. Turn in 50 words on the music at the end of class.

17: Read “Misconceptions, Confusions, and Conflicts Concerning Socialism, Communism, and Capitalism” online. Turn in 50 words about it at the beginning of class.

Read “Introduction to 19th-Century Socialism” online. Turn in 50 words about it at the beginning of class.

Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels: The Communist Manifesto: Prologue, Section 1 . Use Study Guide, write 50 words answering some of the study questions to turn in.

22: Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels: The Communist Manifesto: Sections 2 & 4. Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels: The Communist Manifesto: Section 2. Use Study Guide, write 50 words answering some of the study questions to turn in.

24: Music Video Lecture 7 [r569]: Early 20th Century music.

29: * Third paper due, on Zola, Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, or Marx, 1200 words minimum. Counts 10 points. If you wrote on one of these authors for your research paper, choose a different one to write on for this assignment. Sample topics on Germinal: Women, Changes in the Miners, Sexuality and Nature, The Mine as Monster. Sample topics on Dostoyevsky: The UM’s Assault on the Enlightenment, The Concept of Freedom, Self-Hatred, Fear of Love. Sample topics on Nietzsche (be sure to use more than one passage from the book): Relativism, Freedom, Principal Characteristics of the Overman, Nietzsche and Christianity, Romantic and Enlightenment Aspects. Sample topics on Marx: The Nature of Class Struggle, The Role of the Bourgeoisie in Transforming History, Marx’s Answers to his Critics, Advantages and Disadvantages of Communism as Described in the Manifesto.

* Final date for cultural event report.

* All revised papers due, including revised research paper.

Course Work

Papers:

If you have trouble with your printer, you may bring in the paper on a disk or removeable drive or send it to me by e-mail attachment. Printer problems are never an excuse for not getting a paper in on time.

Regular papers are not necessarily research papers, and it is possible to receive maximum points on a paper without doing research for it, although papers incorporating good library work will normally receive higher grades. Suggested topics are listed on your syllabus. You should choose a topic you are particularly interested in, not try to guess what I want you to write. When I can learn something new from a paper, I am pleased. If you have difficulty thinking of a topic, see or call me. I am also happy to look over rough drafts and answer questions about proposed topics. In addition, one paper per semester will be a required library research paper incorporating information gathered from scholarly books and articles (not just Web pages and reference books like dictionaries and encyclopedias). For more details on how to write papers for this class, see “Helpful Hints for Writing Class Papers.” For details on how to write the research paper for this class, see the page entitled “Research Paper Assignment“.

Papers are due at the beginning of class on the day specified in the syllabus. Do not cut class to finish a paper. Papers may always be submitted before the due date if you wish. There is no midterm or final examination in this class.

The following elements are taken into consideration when I grade your papers: 1) You must convince me that you have read and understood the material involved. 2) You must have something interesting to say about it. 3) Originality counts—easy, common topics tend to earn lower grades than difficult ones done well. 4) Significant writing (spelling, punctuation, usage) errors will be marked on each paper before it is returned to you. If there are more than a few you must identify the errors and correct them (by hand, on the same paper, without retyping it) and hand the paper back in before a grade will be recorded for you. 5) I look for unified essays on a well-defined topic with a clear title and coherent structure. 6) I expect you to support your arguments with references to the text, often including quotations appropriately introduced and analyzed (but quote only to make points about the material quoted, not simply for its own sake). 7) You must do more than merely summarize the plot of the works you have read. See “Helpful Hints for Writing Class Papers” for more information.

Late Papers:

If you think you have a valid excuse (medical, etc.) for not getting a paper in on time, let me know in advance (phone) if you can. Choosing to work on other classes rather than this one is never an acceptable excuse for handing in a paper late. Because of my make-up policy (see below), it almost always makes more sense to send in even a poorly-done, rushed paper than none at all. Papers sent in late with no excuse will not receive a passing grade. To pass the course you must hand in all assigned papers. Do not assume you will be allowed to hand in work late. Pay careful attention to due dates on the syllabus.

Revised Papers:

You may not make up a paper which you have failed to hand in. However, if you do hand in a paper and are dissatisfied with your grade, after consulting with me, you may revise your paper and have your grade raised if it is significantly improved. You are required the revise the research paper once unless your first draft earns an A. Other revisions will be handled on an individual basis, and limits will be set as to the number of revisions allowed and the time allowed to hand them in. Simply substituting phrases that I have suggested to improve your writing does not result in an improved grade. You have to make the sort of substantial changes I suggest in the note I make at the end of your paper.

Cultural Event Assignment:

Humanities 303 students will attend a cultural event relating to the 18th or 19th centuries and report on it in a 600-word paper which will be graded like the other papers in the course (worth 10 points).

Announcements of qualifying events will be posted online. If you want to attend an appropriate event elsewhere during Spring break, check it out with me in advance.

Study Questions:

For each of the reading assignments, the study guide online contains a series of study questions which I want you to think about. It is your assignment to mentally answer as many of these questions as you can while you read, and to write at least 50 words answering some of them to turn in at the beginning of the class in which we discuss the assignment. When an assignment that you are to write a number of words, it means that is the lower limit. You can always write more.

Make sure you can discuss all parts of each week’s assignment—not just the beginning. Show that you are thinking seriously about these questions. These study question assignments are graded pass/fail (I will let you know quickly if you have done an inadequate one). You must miss or fail no more than five of these Speakeasy discussion assignments to pass the course.

Exams:

There is no midterm or final examination in this class.

E-mails:

I will be sending out occasional class announcements via e-mail using the WSU system. However, this means that you must have a valid e-mail address that you actually use listed in the WSU directory. To make sure you are listed in the directory go to http://www.wsu.edu/and click “People,” and search for your name (last name first, no comma). If the Email field is blank or lists an address other than the one you actually use, you need to log into “myWSU” and create an account.

If you do not wish to use your wsu.edu address to read your mail, set up mail forwarding in “myWSU“to forward your official mail to whatever e-mail address you prefer.

Grading

Again, to pass the course you must complete all papers. The research paper especially is not optional. Note that you will not receive a letter grade on your research paper until after it has been revised in response to my initial comments on it.

Grading of daily writings

Attendance and participation in the course are measured by the notes you turn in at the beginning of class. Together the written contributions count as 20% of your grade. Contributions are graded on a pass-fail basis. Assume they have been counted unless I make a response to what you have written saying it is inadequate.

Course Work Points Percent of Final Grade

Voltaire paper 10 10%

Faust paper 20 20%

Third paper 20 20%

Research paper 20 20%

Cultural event report 10 10%

Daily Writings 20 20%

TOTALS 100 100%

Grade Points Grade Points

A 9.5 or above C 7.3–7.7

A– 9.0–9.4 C– 7.0–7.2

B+ 8.8–8.9 D 6.5–6.9

B 8.3–8.7 F 6.5 & Below

B– 8.0–8.2

C+ 7.8–7.9

Standards for grading papers:

All assigned papers must be turned in to pass the course.

Topics are challenging, often original; papers are well organized, filled with detail, and demonstrate a thorough knowledge of the topic. Examples are chosen from several portions of the work. Opinion papers are carefully argued, with detailed attention being paid to opposing arguments and evidence. Papers receiving an “A” are usually somewhat longer than the minimum assigned, typically a page or so longer, though this all depends on the compactness of your writing style—a paper which is long and diffuse does not result in a higher grade and a very compact, exceptionally well-written paper will occasionally receive an “A.” The writing should be exceptionally clear and generally free of mechanical errors.

Topics are acceptable, papers well organized, containing some supporting detail, and demonstrate an above-average knowledge of the topic. Examples are chosen from several portions of the work. Papers are at least the minimum length assigned. Opinion papers are carefully argued, with some attention being paid to opposing argument and evidence. Writing is above average, containing only occasional mechanical errors. A “B” is given for above-average work.

Topics are acceptable, but simple. Paper are poorly organized, containing inadequate detail, demonstrating only partial knowledge of the topic (focusing only on one short passage from a work or some minor aspect of it). Papers are at least the minimum length assigned. Opinion papers contain unsupported assertions and ignore opposing arguments and evidence. Writing is average or below, and mechanical errors are numerous. Paper does not appear to have been proofread carefully. A “C” is given for average work.

Inappropriately chosen topic does not demonstrate more than a minimal comprehension of the topic. Papers are at least the minimum length assigned. Opinion papers contain unsupported assertions and ignore opposing arguments and evidence. Writing is poor, filled with mechanical errors. Paper does not appear to have been proofread. A “D” is given for barely acceptable work.

Paper is shorter than the minimum length required. Topic is unacceptable because it does not cover more than an incidental (or unassigned) portion of the work or does not reveal a satisfactory level of knowledge . Generalizations are unsupported with evidence and opinion papers contain unsupported assertions and ignore opposing arguments and evidence. Writing is not of acceptable college-level quality. Paper does not appear to have been proofread. An “F” is given for unsatisfactory work.

Statement on Disabilities

Reasonable accommodations are available for students with a documented disability. If you have a disability and may need accommodations to fully participate in this class, please visit the Disability Resource Center (DRC). All accommodations MUST be approved through the DRC (Admin Annex Bldg, Room 205). Please stop by or call 509-335-3417 to make an appointment with a disability specialist.

Academic Integrity

As an institution of higher education, Washington State University is committed to principles of truth and academic honesty. All members of the University community share the responsibility for maintaining and supporting these principles. When a student enrolls in Washington State University, the student assumes an obligation to pursue academic endeavors in a manner consistent with the standards of academic integrity adopted by the University. To maintain the academic integrity of the community, the University cannot tolerate acts of academic dishonesty including any forms of cheating, plagiarism, or fabrication. Washington State University reserves the right and the power to discipline or to exclude students who engage in academic dishonesty.

Anyone plagiarising in this class will fail the course and be reported to student conduct.

Posted by Paul Brians January 5, 2008.

Research Paper Assignment

December 7, 2016 elizabeth.wasson

The Assignment

Of necessity, the instructions for this assignment are somewhat vague. Each student will have to explore different resources and will need to develop an individual approach to the subject. The goal is a brief but detailed exploration of some narrowly defined aspect of the Humanities during the period stretching from the Enlightenment to World War I. These instructions are aimed mainly at distance-learning students, but local students in Pullman should also find much of them useful. The students working in Pullman who can spend time in the library there have a number of advantages in working on the literary and philosophical topics. Distance-learning students can request journal articles and books by e-mail from the library. For information on how to use WSU’s library remotely, see the Distance Degree Library Services page. The DDLS librarians should be able to help you find materials you can use if you phone them at (800) 435-5832.

Note that this is not an Internet-based research assignment. You are expected to use the resources of the WSU libraries, both books and journals. The “request this item” button in Griffin will lead you to a page where you can request items from WSU to be mailed to you. If you have access to a large public library like Seattle Public or a good academic library attached to a college, you may use that with permission from me; but do not try to rely on small local libraries. They will not have the kinds of specialized materials you are expected to use in your research.

It is crucial that you be in constant contact with me about what you are doing, what you are trying, what is working and what is not. I want to have e-mail from you at least every couple of weeks about how your research is going. Any time you run into a problem or have a question, drop me a line at paulbrians@gmail.com. Do not put this assignment off until near the due date–you will certainly not be able to do a satisfactory job at the last moment.

Suggested research paper topics for which you will probably need a large library:

Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary: its composition and reception in the 18^th century.
Voltaire’s thought and reputation and the French Revolution.
Voltaire and deism.
The relationship of Baroque music or art to the political structures of the age of Absolutism.
Émile Zola and art.
Romanticism and the French Revolution.
The relationship between Richard Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra and Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Influences of
Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra on the 20^th century.
Nietzsche’s relationship to the enlightenment, to the romantic movement.

More general topics which can be done from anywhere
(must be chosen from the artists and musicians listed on the syllabus or in assignments for this course)

Any topic dealing with Goethe’s Faust.
Any topic dealing with Zola’s Germinal.
Any topic dealing with Notes from Underground.
The influence of an artist or musician on others. The history of a particular movement in art or music.
The influence of a literary work on a work of art or piece of music.
The reflection of historical events in a piece of art or music.
Other topics relating to art or music, but avoid strictly biographical papers which simply retell the individual’s life without examining his or her works. Many students enjoy working on operas.

There is a list of opera videotapes you can borrow from WSU’s MMS at it’s new webpage.Look up information about the opera that interests you to make sure it was written between 1700 and 1914–the period covered by this course. Then call the DDP librarian at (800) 435-5832 for help in checking out your opera.

All papers on art and music must examine individual works of art and music the writer has seen reproductions of or heard recordings of and describe how they look and sound. Do not treat operas as if they were plays, paying attention only to plot and dialogue.

Steps in doing the assignment

Select your topic and have it approved by me.
Do some background work to find sources and submit an annotated bibliography (a list of sources, with an explanation attached to each one of why it should be useful).
Do your research USING THE WSU LIBRARY.
Write your paper and turn it in.
After I have marked it up, you must revise your paper following my suggestions to improve your grade

See the syllabus for due dates.

Good reference works to check for information
(Note: “Dictionaries” are often actually encyclopedias in disguise.)

For art
The Dictionary of Art
Art Index

For literature
The Humanities Index
Dictionary of Literary Biography
Oxford Companion to French Literature
Oxford Companion to English Literature
Oxford Companion to German Literature

Especially useful are the following massive sets published by Gale Research. If you are lucky enough to find a library that has them, be warned that they are tricky to use. You can also ask Distance Degree Library Services (DDPlib@wsu.edu or (800) 435-5832 ) to help you use the copies that are on the WSU campus and photocopy and send you the relevant pages. Ask a librarian to show you how. Which set you use is determined by the death date of the author on whom you are doing research. Zola died in the early 20^th century, so for information on him you have to look in the third set.

Literature Criticism 1400-1800
Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism
Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism
(Note the inconsistency in this title, “literary,” not “literature” like the others.)

For Music

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (available online through Griffin)
Music Index
New Grove Dictionary of Opera

For Philosophy
Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Philosopher’s Index
The Humanities Index (availablee online through Griffin)

If a library lacks one of these, ask a librarian to show you something similar.

Tips:

Begin by looking up your topic in the Encyclopedia Britannica, available through the WSU Libraries pages here. Note bibliographic citations at the end of the articles you read; these may be sources you’ll want to track down. Other computer-based encyclopedias like Encarta are inadequate for the kind of research you will be doing.

Go to WSU Libraries. This is a huge and powerful database (which may also be available online or on CD-ROM at a library near you), but it needs some care in using it. Many other libraries have bound, printed volumes of this as well. Here are some tips:

Don’t use the MLA bibliography to look for articles about Voltaire or Nietzsche. It is best for literature, not philosophy (see “For Philosophy,” above).

After you do your intial search, you can use the “limit search” button to restrict the search to articles and books in English unless you are fluent in some relevant foreign language. Or, alternatively, when you first enter MLA, you can click on the button marked “Advanced Search” and narrow the search to English before you start.

Entries are given ten at a time. To see the next ten, click on the “Next Page” button.

Ignore references to dissertations. You do not have easy access to these and they are usually not considered authoritative sources.

Using the on-line version, copy and paste the bibliographic data into a word processing document to save you time. You can reformat it later.

Do not assume that all these books and articles are available in the WSU library; but you may well be able to get some of them through Summit.

In the case of journal articles you want from WSU note that many of the online databases such as Project Muse go back only a few years–you will need to search the last 25 or 30 years for many of these topics.

Similarly, if the item you are seeking is actually a chapter in a book rather than in a journal, search for the title of the book it appeared in, not the author or title of the chapter.

In the case of books, use the Griffin Catalog at http://www.systems.wsu.edu/griffin/wsugate.htm to search for the author or title. If you have only a subject, but no author or title yet, note that often a keyword search is more effective than a subject start to get started. For instance, to find the English translation of the source of Bizet’s Carmen you need to use “Carmen” and “Merimee” as keywords (you would have read in Grove or the Britannica that Prosper Merimée wrote the original novel).

The MLA Bibliography online covers articles published since 1963, and in the earlier years, many interesting journals were not indexed. But you can read the bibliographies of the articles and books you find here to discover what the classic earlier works are which discuss your topic.

Do not stop at the first few hits. Not all the information you find will be useful. You need to do some background reading on your subject to get a sense of which sources might be helpful. This is the reason for checking the encyclopedia first, before starting your MLA search.

Finally, local students find your materials in the library, and DDP students use the “Request This Item” button in Griffin.

To begin your library research, start at the DDLS website http://www.wsulibs.wsu.edu/electric/library/, in the left-hand frame, click on “Article Indexes/Full Text & More,” then on “General & Multidisciplinary.” There are several databases on this page that may be helpful to you, depending on your topic:

1. ArticleFirst (request articles from DDLS)

2. JSTOR (full-text)

3. Oxford English Dictionary (full-text)

4. WorldCat (request items from Interlibrary Loan, or DDLS)

At the bottom of the “General & Multidisciplinary” page, you will find another link to “Humanities” resources. Click on that link, and you will find the following databases which may be useful:

1. Art Abstracts (request articles from DDLS)

2. Arts & Humanities Search (request articles from DDLS)

3. Grove Dictionary of Art (full-text)

4. Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians (full-text)

5. International Index to Music Periodicals (request articles from DDLS)

6. MLA (request articles from DDLS)

7. Project Muse (full-text)

8. ProQuest Direct (many full-text)

Beware of sources dating back before 1950; most of them are out of date. Normally I will not accept such sources. If you are unclear on how to access any citations you find in the above databases, contact DDLS. (DDPlib@wsu.edu or 1-800-435-5832)

Another service available through Griffin is WorldCat via FirstSearch. Start at the usual Gateway page and click on “Article Indexes/Full Text & More,” then on “General & Multidisciplinary,” then on “FirstSearch.” If you can’t figure out how to create and use login ID and password, ask a librarian. DDP students write Extended Degree Library Services at DDPlib@wsu.edu or phone (800) 435-5832. Once inside FirstSearch, click on the first “Database Areas” link: “Arts & Humanities. Then, under “General Databases,” click on “WorldCat.” This database will give you mostly books, not articles. Some of them may be very old. Beware of sources dating back before 1950. Most of them are out of date. By clicking on “Limit Search” you can limit your search to books dating 1950-1999, or any other two years you want, and while you’re at it, limit the language to English. FirstSearch may tell you whether the book is in the WSU library; but you may also be able to borrow a book we don’t own from another library near you or through the Interlibrary Loan service of your local library. This latter option, however, can be a very slow process, so you need to plan weeks in advance if you want to try it.

A faster alternative is Summit, a free interlibrary loan service for certain Washington and Oregon libraries only. This can be especially valuable if the only copy of a book you need is checked out from WSU. If you do not find what you want in Griffin, click the green “Search Summit” button. Again, ask your librarian if you have questions.

In looking for books, the obvious place to start is Griffin itself. Remember: you cannot search for article titles or authors within Griffin, only for the titles of journals which contain such articles. The natural temptation is to search by subject, but this is usually a mistake unless you know the precise wording of the Library of Congress description of the subject you are looking for. Instead, use “keyword” searching to type in terms that are associated with your subject.

ProQuest, also available through Griffin, is good for doing research on current events, but is rather poor for the kinds of subjects you will be studying in this class. Because ProQuest only goes back to the mid-1980s it is missing many important and useful articles that are included in the MLA bibliography. In addition, MLA contains books as well as articles while ProQuest is confined to articles only. Its only advantage over MLA is that you may be able to view articles you find either as a whole or in part on your computer screen, without having to wait for them to be sent by the library. Give it a try, but don’t spend a lot of time trying to do serious research there. Librarians will be able to give you advice about which databases are most appropriate for your subject.

Searching the Web

The Web is good for pictures, dates, and basic information; but it should not provide the main sources for your paper. Papers based mostly or entirely on Web research will not receive passing grades. Here are some tips on Web searching to get you started. Serious scholarship on the humanities in Europe during the 18^th and 19^th centuries is spotty at best online. However, there are some extremely valuable sources out there. Here are some tips to guide you as you search.

Be flexible about trying different search terms. This bit of advice applies to all kinds of searches, not just on the Web. If you are searching for Voltaire’s influence on the French Revolution, you will probably also want to look separately for sites dealing with Voltaire and sites on the history of the French Revolution. You might also look for the terms “enlightenment” and “revolution” together.

Google is now the premier search engine because it gives better results for most searches, by finding first the sites to which most other sites have linked. The upshot is that pages that others have found useful bounce immediately to the top of Google’s hit list. Try typing in “influence of the enlightenment on the french revolution” (between quotation marks) in Google and you’ll find a ton of papers on this topic other students have written. Be cautious about using them as sources–they aren’t necessarily experts, but you can certainly get ideas here. Just don’t copy them. Remember, I can find these sources just as easily as you can.

Here’s an important tip. The first time I tried this, I mistyped “enlightenment” as “enlightnement,” and found only five pages whose authors had made the same typing error–all of them useless. If you get an unexpectedly small number of hits, check your spelling.

Asking an Expert

Sometimes the easiest way to find a good Web page is to ask someone knowledgeable; but how do you find such a person?

The obvious answer, is TRY ME! In fact, part of this assignment involves me or a librarian giving you suggestions about what sources to look at. You are absolutely expected to follow up on these suggestions. Papers which turn out weak because suggestions were ignored will receive a failing grade. For instance, anyone who is interested in writing about Voltaire and the French Revolution is always told by me to look at an old but excellent source: volumes 7-10 of Will Durant’s The Story of Civilization. These are big fat volumes, so may look forbidding; but a few minutes spent with their indexes will teach you more about your topic than many hours of Internet searching (and they’re wonderfully readable). They also have the great advantage of being in just about any library, even small local ones. But the only way you are likely to hear about these books is from me. Asking for help is not “cheating”; it’s one of the main skills we are trying to teach you.

Doing your research

Step 1: Gathering and selecting information

One of the secrets of a good research paper is gathering much more information than you will actually use at the end. You want to avoid at all cost writing a paper on sources you don’t understand. Let’s look back at an article I once found on “The Influence of the Enlightenment on the French Revolution” at the Mining Co. (now defunct). Looking more closely, I found that it refers us to arguments by Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine about the French Revolution. (I also note that the author was not particularly skilled in spelling and punctuation; I wouldn’t want to copy his errors.) In fact, this was a page from a course in which students were reading articles by these two authors. The names are vaguely familiar, but if you look their names up in the encylopedia you’ll discover that the first was an Englishman and the second an American. Therefore these people may have analyzed the French Revolution; but they were not themselves French, or involved in the Revolution directly. We may decide not to use them, because they tell us more about what non-French contemporaries thought about the Revolution than what modern historians think about it. Encyclopedias are great resources for giving us background information to help explain what we are reading.

Suppose you had used Griffin to look for books whose titles included the words “French Revolution” and found Roger Lawrence Williams’ The French Revolution of 1870-1871. But because you have done background reading on the revolution in the encyclopedia, you realize that this book can’t possibly refer to the 1789 revolution. In fact, there were several “French revolutions” of which only the 1789 one is usually referred to as the French Revolution. You have to know enough about your topic to reject irrelevant sources like this.

Step 2: Evaluating information

Judging authoritativeness

If you find a book in a scholarly library or in the pages of a scholarly journal, it has probably gone through one or more screening processes to ensure that it has some degree of authority and reliability. However, anyone can publish anything on the Web, which is filled with amateurish, biased, fraudulent and satirical pages which can damage your paper if you depend on them. How do you decide whether a Web source you’ve found is from a trustworthy source?

Trust brand names. Articles in the Encyclopedia Britannica may not be perfect, but they come from respectable sources.
Look for scholarly authorship. Is the author a specialist in the field working for a famous or distinguished university?
Do other people frequently refer to this source as authoritative? Check bibliographies.
Has it been selected by some thoughtful scholarly group such as the people who run The English Server at the University of Washington (http://eserver.org/) or created by a well-known institution such as the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art (http://www.metmuseum.org/)?

Judging Comprehensibility

Use a source only if you understand it. Of course you can increase your comprehension by using dictionaries and encyclopedias; but, if even after trying that, much of what you are reading remains obscure to you, move on to another source you can better understand. Trying to use a source which the student author has not understood is a fatal flaw of many research papers.

Judging relevance

Not every item you find by using a key word or subject search will really be relevant to your topic. You need to define the topic of your paper yourself, not let it be defined by a dumb search engine. This almost always means learning more about a topic than you will be able to use directly in your paper. Be ruthless about throwing away irrelevant material.

Detecting bias

Suppose you had found the site called “The French Revolution” which seemed pretty well organized and straightforward. But as you read through it you note numerous Biblical quotations and much discussion of religious issues. You slowly realize that the author of this site has a very definite point of view: he is a conservative Christian attacking the ideas of the Enlightenment as expressed in the French Revolution. You may or may not agree with him, but you need to judge his words in the light of that information and compare what he says with what other historians say. You may also realize that this is mostly a lecture outline and that you would have to attend his course to get the real substance of his arguments. Don’t let yourself be “captured” by a single source.

Getting help

If you are having trouble deciding whether a source you have found is useful, share it with me and let me advise you. Constant communication with the teacher is an essential tool of doing good research. Don’t flounder on your own. If the source is a Web page, send me the URL at brians@wsu.edu.

For help with the WSU library, write Extended Degree Library Services at DDP@wsu.edu or phone them at (800) 435-5832.

Step 3: Taking notes

Photocopiers and Web browsers have made the gathering and reproduction of raw data much easier; you can even use recent versions of Microsoft Word to open a Web page directly and save it as a document. However, this is not note-taking. Nothing is more frustrating than sitting down on the night before a paper is due to that pile of photocopies and books you gathered weeks ago, only to find that most of it is irrelevant junk and that you desperately need other materials. Spend a good long time in the library or on the Web looking closely at the resources you find to decide whether they are worth copying, checking out, or otherwise reproducing them. A highlighter can be a useful tool in marking important passages (just don’t use one on a library book!), but ultimately you’ll need some real notes. The old file-card system still works well; but if you’re comfortable at a computer you’ll find that organizing your notes in a database or the outline view of your word processing software will work even better. Make sure that every note is securely tagged as coming from a specific source with a complete bibliographic citation (author, title, etc.)

Once you have a good many notes, begin to sort them into groups by topic. Try various arrangments, and a structure for your paper should slowly emerge.

Step 4: Organizing your paper

Always begin with at least an informal outline. Don’t just start writing without any notion of where you are headed.

Create some logical order for your paper. A chronological order may explain how some idea developed. A geographical order may relate a topic across national boundaries.

Digest your sources and use them for your own purposes. A summary of an article followed by another summary of a different article, and so on, is not a paper. It is just a set of notes. You need to compare sources, often referring to two different ones in the same paragraph or even sentence.

Avoid making your big points first and then trailing off into minor ones. Structure your paper to lead up to a strong conclusion.

Step 5: Making Citations

For this class, you will use the Modern Language Association format, which is explained in Arthur C. Banks’ helpful “Guide for Writing Research Papers.” Pay close attention to the section on “Parenthetical Documentation.” Do not substitute APA style, in which only last name of the author and the date of the article are given. This does not work in the humanities. Page numbers are crucial.

Cite only sources you actually use; use only sources you cite.

Call your list of sources “Sources Cited,” not “Bibliography.” A bibliography is a much more ambitious and thorough project than what you will be doing for this paper.

EXTREMELY IMPORTANT!

Cite a source not only when you quote from it, but when you paraphrase from it or draw ideas from it. Failure to do so is plagiarism, and can incur severe penalties (typically, failing the course).

Always introduce your sources by name; don’t just start quoting them. For instance: “Jessica L. Rabbit argues in her article on Los Angeles history that . . . (98).” Note when you mention the author of an article or book in this way, you need not repeat it in the parenthetical citation. Later citations from the same source do not always need introduction if they occur soon after the original one, so you can just cite the source as follows: “(Rabbit 72).”

For information on how to cite Web sources, see this Web page.

Avoiding plagiarism

Computers make it easy to copy. Don’t be tempted. Computers also make it easy to track down the sources of copied information. I am ruthless with plagiarists. Persons caught plagiarizing material in their papers will not be allowed to revise for a better grade. All cases of plagiarism will result in a failing grade for the course and a report to Student Conduct.

Other helpful documents

Be sure to check out these before you write your paper:

MANDATORY: Helpful Hints for Writing Class Papers

OPTIONAL BUT EXTREMELY USEFUL: Common Errors in English

These contain directions for avoiding my pet peeves.

Length

The minimum length for this assignment (see syllabus) is very, very short for a research paper. Unless your writing is wonderfully concise, you will need to write more. If you cannot stretch your material to this minimum you don’t have enough material or–more likely–aren’t examining it closely enough. Believe it or not, the chief reason people run out of things to say is that they have defined their topics too broadly. A narrow, tightly-focused topic will allow you to get specific and dig into the finer shades of the topic, and finding enough to write about will be no problem. Avoid vague generalizations.

If your paper reads like an encyclopedia article, giving an overview of a person’s entire career, it is too broad. You need to focus on a narrow subject within the general work of the writer, artist, philosopher, or musician. You should not write at all about their birth, childhood, and education unless they are strictly relevant to your topic.

If you are writing about one of the books we study in this class, your paper needs to go well beyond the ideas and facts presented in the relevant study guide. You are supposed to become something of an expert in your subject, and come up with new information and ideas not already discussed in class.

Revising your paper

Almost all the papers in this course should be revised at least once. That is part of the point of the class, teaching you how to write better. Be sure to incorporate suggestions that are made, particularly broad, general ones like “this section lacks focus–concentrate on a single topic.” Merely cleaning up typos and spelling errors is not revision–it’s proofreading, and will not improve your grade.

Be careful about trying to solve problems by simply moving chunks of text around. Usually you have to do some actual rewriting to improve a paper. When a paragraph is moved, it often needs to be adjusted somewhat to fit within its new environment. If I ask you to develop a section further, do not simply cut it out. You get no increase in grade for simply making the specific spelling and grammatical changes I suggest; you have to do actual rewriting for that.

Seeking help

The point of this assignment is not to fling you in the sea of knowledge and stand by to see if you can avoid the sharks; it is to teach you something more about how to do research in the humanities and write about it. You get no credit for struggling silently on your own. Again, please use the resources available to you: For questions about this assignment, ask me. Keep asking me questions and sending me ideas. If you find yourself tempted to tell someone else “I don’t know what he wants,” it means you need to ask me more questions. For help with the WSU library, ask the DDP librarian at DDPlib@wsu.edu or phone them at (800) 435-5832. If you need help with your writing, try the WSU Online Writing Lab at http://owl.wsu.edu/. You can send them drafts of your paper and they will help guide you through the process of revising it. You can even arrange to “chat” with a writing tutor in a chat room about your work. Take advantage of this terrific resource.

Step 6: Submitting your paper

Pullman students will hand in printed copy in person, but for DDP students, unlike most of your weekly writing assignments, which can be pasted into the forms in the Bridge, you need to send formally formatted papers through “My DDP.” This method is simple and works quite well, but write or phone DDP if you have any questions about how to use it. Be aware that papers submitted through My DDP may take up to a full working day to reach me.

I can open documents created by any version of Microsoft Word and many other word processors. If you are using Word Perfect, or some other word processor, let me know. I can open most of them, but there are a few I can’t.

I can also open any document that has been saved as HTML or in Rich Text Format (RTF).

Revising your paper

Your first draft will be marked up and commented on, but not assigned a letter grade. You will receive credit and a grade for for this paper only after having revised it. Fixing typos and other small slips according to my suggestions is mandatory, but not an important way to improve your grade. The only way to get a good grade is to follow the suggestions spelled out at the very end of your paper, which may call for more research, narrowing of topic, or reorganization of your paper. Note that this revision is mandatory, and that it must be done in order to pass the course.

Created by Paul Brians, July 2, 1998

Revised May 10, 2005