About

Syllabus

Honors English II
Illinoistown: A Cultural History of
East St. Louis in the Twentieth Century

McKendree University
Spring 2009
CAR 302
10-11:50 TTH

Instructors:

Dr. Martha H. Patterson
Associate Professor of English
mhpatterson@mckendree.edu
618-537-6881

Dr. Ann V. Collins
Assistant Professor of Political Science
avcollins@mckendree.edu
618-537-6897

Patterson office hours: 11-1 MW

Collins office hours: 9-9:50 MWF

Guest lectures to speak at East St. Louis Senior High School

Wed. Jan. 14, 9-9:50 Dr. Shelly Lemons
Wed. Jan. 21 9-9:50 Dr. Andrew Theising
Wed. Jan. 28 9-9:50 Harper Barnes (to be arranged)
Wed. Feb. 4, 9-9:50 Dr. Eugene Redmond
Wed. Feb. 11th East St. Louis Tour to be led by Reginald Petty
Wed. Mar. 4 East St. Louis Tour back up weather date
Wed. Apr. 1 9-9:50 Lillian Parks (to be arranged)
ESLSH students visit McKendree. Lecture by Bill Nunes (to be arranged)

Required Texts
(available at McKendree bookstore)

Barnes, Harper. Never Been a Time: The 1917 Race Riot That Sparked the Civil Rights Movement (Walker Publishing Company 2008)

Redmond, Eugene. Sentry of the Four Golden Pillars

Theising, Andrew J. Made in USA East St. Louis: The Rise and Fall of an Industrial River Town

Coursepack
Additional readings that we will hand out, post on Blackboard, or put on reserve at Holman Library

You will also have some research expenses such as copying of articles from newspapers, not to exceed $15.00

Website: There are a number of primary source documents available to you on the following website http://riverweb.cet.uiuc.edu/IBEX/index.html


Objectives: The course will explore the cultural history of East St. Louis during the twentieth century with the goal of creating an educational website on the period. The topics we will be covering include: the 1917 riots, the rise of organized crime in the city (including the Shelton Gang and Frank Buster Wortman), the effects of the Depression, industrial development and decline, the rise of the Black Arts Movement (including Katherine Dunham and Eugene Redmond), jazz, blues, and rock and roll musical history (Miles Davis, Chuck Berry, Johnnie Johnson, Duke Ellington, Ike and Tina Turner), the Civil Rights Movement, sports history, environmental and economic challenges facing East St. Louis, and points of hope. As part of this course, we will collaborate with East St. Louis Senior High School junior-level high school students, and our goal will be to create a website on the history and culture of this city in the 20th century.

English 112 is designed to continue practices of those writing skills learned in ENG 111, particularly those in research and argumentation.

You will learn to:

1. Develop techniques for effective reading (annotating an essay and being aware of and having an appreciation for language).
2. Develop the ability to paraphrase, summarize, and synthesize the ideas of others discovered in a variety of readings.
3. Develop critical analysis skills through practice in applying them to a selection of readings (this would include the ability to read different kinds of texts and the ability to analyze and interpret rhetorical modes, literary genres, etc.).
4. Develop the ability to work through the writing process, including being able to use pre-writing, organizing, drafting and revising skills.
5. Develop the ability to write acceptable short expository, analytical and argumentative essays, employing a thesis with appropriate examples and supporting evidence that suit a particular audience.
6. Develop the ability to evaluate and edit one.s own as well as others. writing.
7. Develop greater awareness of correctness and appropriateness in the use of written English, including style, grammar, and mechanics.
8. Develop the ability to recognize and avoid plagiarism
9. Learn to use available resources to do research, including library holdings, print and electronic resources, and other resources.
10. Develop the ability to find sources and evaluate them for accuracy, currency, credibility, etc.
11. Develop ability to focus a topic, develop hypotheses and generate research questions that will lead to an original work.
12. Develop ability to complete a research project with an original, arguable thesis in response to an assignment.
13. Develop ability to support an argument by incorporating and synthesizing secondary sources, summarizing, paraphrasing and quoting where necessary.
14. Develop ability to document secondary sources in MLA documentation style.

Course conduct policy: By enrolling in this course, you agree to conduct yourself professionally as you work with East St. Louis Senior High School (ESLSH) students and thereby represent McKendree University. Your only means of conduct with ESLSH students will be via email. Your email correspondence should include a salutation and valediction, standard grammar, and punctuation.

You also agree to follow the rules set forth in the Oral History Guidelines.

Website Guidelines: As you craft your essays, you will be working with several East St. Louis students using Google Docs. We hope to have a creative commons license for the website, which means that we encourage others to use the material on the site, if properly credited, for nonprofit educational or creative purposes.

Papers: You will write three, 3- to 5-page, typed essays and one 8- to 10-page research paper on the topics listed above under objectives. Your research paper will be an extension of one of your short papers. Each paper must include in-text citations and a bibliography in MLA styles. The goal of your writing this semester will be to revise it until it is polished enough to appear with your byline on the website.
For each day late, paper grades are lowered one-third letter grade. (A to A-, B+ to B, etc.)
You will also be editing several papers written by East St. Louis Senior High students throughout the semester. The goal of these exercises is to sharpen your editing skills, as well as your own writing.

Question sets: For each of the five major topics, you will be required to draft three in-depth discussion questions. Questions must be typed and submitted electronically as well as in hard copy. These questions will be shared with East St. Louis Senior High School students to enhance their learning and may be posted on the website.

Quizzes: There will be at least twelve quizzes on the required readings, and we will average the best ten for your grade.
Attendance and Participation: We expect you to come to class on time and to be prepared for each day.s discussion. You are also expected to follow current East St. Louis news. These stories will serve as launching points for each class period. Each of you at one point during the semester will be asked to lead a discussion of East St. Louis news. Because class participation is essential to this course, more than two unexcused absences will result in a lower grade (a third of your overall grade is reduced for each absence beyond the two). Excused absences are documented and approved McKendree events, medical illness, or a death in the family. Unexcused absences are everything else, including job responsibilities and family trips. Please do not arrive late, whisper in class, wear hats, eat food, leave your cell phone on, text message, or leave for the restroom during class. Besides being rude, such behavior will adversely affect your grade for the class. If you miss class or arrive late, you are responsible for finding what work you have missed.

Plagiarism Policy: Plagiarism means to borrow ideas from but not to give credit to their source (including SparkNotes, a friend's paper, a book's introduction, other literature or student-paper websites). Keep in mind that we regularly check on-line website sources and that plagiarism is relatively easy to detect since we will have examples of in-class as well as out-of-class writing. Plagiarism on a paper will result in a failing evaluation of that paper. A second offense will result in a failure for the class. Each incidence of plagiarism will be reported to the Provost. We will follow the guidelines in your student handbook.

Grading:
You must attend class regularly and complete all assignments to earn credit for the course.

Attendance, participation.including reading quizzes, following the news, and peer editing ESLSH school student papers: 20%

Papers: three, each 10% (total 30%)
Discussion Questions: 10%
Oral History: 10%
Final 8-10 page paper: 30%

We will use a +/- grading scale 90-100=A-, 89-90=B+, etc.

F--for any of the following: significantly shorter than assigned length; more than two days late (without previous consultation), plagiarism, did not follow assignment or seems to demonstrate no effort to engage seriously with the text.

D--for any combination of the following: extensive plot summary, strung together. quotes, very poor textual analysis, extremely poor structure, lack of a coherent argument, very poorly proofread.

C--demonstrates a fairly thorough understanding of the text. The argument, however, is seemingly uninspired, rather obvious, inadequately supported or virtually absent. Generally some problems in textual analysis, organization, or mechanics.

B--offers an interesting, well-organized, and well-supported argument. Demonstrates sound ability to use textual evidence. Counter-arguments considered. Work is structurally and mechanically polished.

A--goes beyond the assignment, not in length but in insight. Creative, interesting, and provocative argument with each point thoroughly supported with evidence from the text. Elegantly written with very few, if any, mechanical problems.


Course Schedule:
Week One
Jan. 13 Illinoistown Introduction
Jan. 15 Lumpkins "Return to the Political Arena," 1917-1929. from American Pogrom: The East St. Louis Race Riot and Black Politics (coursepack); Malcolm McLaughlin, Power, Community and Racial Killing in East St. Louis (coursepack)
Film screening: Made in USA

Week Two
Jan. 20 DuBois "The Massacre of East St. Louis" (Blackboard); Marcus Garvey's "The Conspiracy of the East St. Louis Riot" (coursepack) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/garvey/filmmore/ps_riots.html; and Harper Barnes Never Been a Time 1-105
Jan. 22 Andy Theising, Chapter Four "Operating Just Outside the City Limit" Made in USA pp. 133-182
Dr. Collins: PowerPoint lecture on American race riots

Week Three
Jan. 27 Harper Barnes Never Been a Time 106-137
Jan. 29 Harper Barnes Never Been a Time 138-222
Discussion Questions Set #1 Due

Week Four
Feb. 3 Harper Barnes Never Been a Time 223-247; Lumpkins "Return to the Political Arena" p. 143-173 from American Pogrom: The East St. Louis Race Riot and Black Politics (coursepack)
Feb. 5 Rough Draft Workshop of Paper #1

Week Five
Feb. 10 Andrew Theising, "The Beginning of Organized Crime in East St. Louis"
http://riverweb.cet.uiuc.edu/IBEX/nunes/esl%20history/organized_crime.htm
Bill Nunes and Andrew Theising "Roaring Twenties, the Depression and Wartime Prosperity: 1920-1945 in Bill Nunes East St. Louis, Illinois Year by Year Illustrated History (on reserve) pp. 56-79.
Feb. 12 Paper #1 Due
Listen to Ruben Yelvington interview.

Week Six
Feb. 17 From Taylor Pensoneau's Brothers Notorious: The Shelton's Southern Illinois. Legendary Gangsters, Prologue vi-vii and Ch. 3 Destined for Trouble, Ch. 4 "Bootlegging: The Farm Boys Hit Their Stride" and Ch. 5 "Flies in the Ointment-S" "Glenn Young and the KKK" 14-60 (coursepack); "The Shelton's: America's Bloodiest Gang" The Saturday Evening Post, March 18, 1950 (Blackboard); Andrew Theising, Made in U.S.A. pp. 183-220.
Discussion Questions Set #2 Due
Feb. 19 Rough Draft Workshop of Paper #2

Week Seven
Feb. 24 Selection from John Szwed's So What: The Life of Miles Davis Chapter One (coursepack); selection from Miles Davis and American Culture, Gerald Early's The Art of the Muscle: Miles Davis as American Knight and American Knave (coursepack); and Eugene Redmond's "So What(?)It's All Blues Anyway: An Anecdotal/Jazzological Tour of Milesville" (Blackboard)
Feb. 26 Paper #2 Due
Film showing Miles Davis Story

Week Eight
Mar. 3 Bill Nunes, "The Caste System at East St. Louis High" from Coming of Age in '40s and '50s East St. Louis (coursepack); "All American Cities: The National Municipal League and Look Magazine salute this year's winners," Look Magazine. March 1, 1960, pp. 78-87 (Blackboard)
Mar. 5 Elliott M. Rudwick.s "Fifty Years of Race Relations in East St. Louis: The Breaking Down of White Supremacy" (coursepack); Flores Alexander Forbes. Will You Die With Me?: My Life and the Black Panther Party (coursepack)

Week Nine
Mar. 10 Spring Break
Mar. 12 Spring Break

Week Ten
Mar. 17 Joyce Aschenbrenner's Katherine Dunham: Dancing a Life Arts and the Community. (173-202) (coursepack); selections from Kaiso! : Writings by and about Katherine Dunham. Edited by Vè A. Clark and Sara E. Johnson Chronology, Katherine Dunham ."The Negro Dance," "An Amazing Aura: Interview with Katherine Dunham," Katherine Dunham "Notes on the Dance," "Need for Study of Dances of Primitive Peoples," Eugene Redmond "Cultural Fusion and Spiritual Unity," Jeanelle Stovall Katherine Dunham Museum. (coursepack)
Mar. 19 Exhibit at the Missouri History Museum, "Katherine Dunham: Beyond the Dance" field trip Discussion Questions Set #3 Due

Week Eleven
Mar. 23 Rough Draft Workshop of Paper #3
Mar. 25 Elizabeth Alexander "Josephine Baker Museum" Kalamu Ya Salaam "The Call of the Wild," Bernice Johnson Reagon "Greed" and "They are All Falling around Me," Sterling D. Plumpp's "Be-Bop" and "Ornate with Smoke" from Furious Flower: African American Poetry from the Black Arts Movement to the Present, ed. Joanne V. Gabbin (coursepack); Benjamin Looker's BAG Point from which Creation Begins The Black Artists, Group of St. Louis. Missouri Historical Society Press, St. Louis, 2004. Chapter 2, "Double Vision: Black Arts and Urban Reform." (coursepack)

Week Twelve
Mar. 31 Ain't But a Place. An Anthology of African American Writings about St. Louis Ed. Gerald Early. St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society Press, 1998; Eugene B. Redmond's "Carryover", "A Tale of Two Toms" (coursepack); The Furious Flowering of African American Poetry, ed. Joanne V. Gabbin, interview with Eugene Redmond (coursepack)
Apr. 2 Paper #3 Due
Eugene Redmond Sentry of the Four Golden Pillars
Watch interview with Redmond

Week Thirteen
Apr. 7 From "Of Dreams Deferred, Dead of Alive," ed. Femi Ojo-Ade, Tess Onwueme "Another African artist's Wayward Thoughts on Eugene Redmond's Poetry." (coursepack)
Discussion Questions Set #4 Due
Apr. 9 Jackie Joyner-Kersee's A Kind of Grace: The Autobiography of the World's Greatest Female Athlete (coursepack); Unlevel Playing Field: A Documentary History of the African American Experience in Sport Ed. By David K. Wiggins and Patrick B. Miller (Blackboard); Bell, Taylor, Sweet Charlie, Dike, Cazzie, and Bobby Joe: High School Basketball in Illinois (Blackboard)

Week Fourteen
Apr. 14 Oral History Day
Apr. 16 Jonothan Kozol, from Savage Inequalities: Children in America's School, "Life on the Mississippi: East St. Louis", Illinois. 7-39 (coursepack); "The First Negro School" from Clementine R. Hamilton's The Ebony Tree (coursepack)

Week Fifteen
Apr. 21 Rough Draft Workshop of Research Paper
Apr. 23 Craig E. Colten "Environmental Development in the East St. Louis Region, 1890-1970". (coursepack); Environmental Justice Case Study: East St. Louis http://www.umich.edu/~snre492/Jones/stlouis.htm#Contacts

Week Sixteen
Apr. 28 Debra H. Moore and Andrew J. Theising, "The Hollow Prize of East St. Louis" (coursepack) Discussion Questions Set #5 Due
Apr. 30 Wrap up. How did things go?

Your oral history analysis is due on the date and time of the final exam.