Greenwald, Michael, and  Roberto Dario Pomo, Roger Schultz, and Anne Marie Welsh.  
The Longman Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Drama.
New York: Pearson Longman, 2004.

Prerequisite: ENGL 101. An examination of modern drama with an emphasis on drama as a response to social, cultural and historical context. Special attention will be paid to a comparative look at drama around the globe. Plays will include works from major playwrights, such as Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, Shaw, O'Neill, Miller, Williams, Brecht, Pirandello, Hansberry, Orton, Ionesco, Beckett, Pinter, Fugard, Albee, Stoppard, or Shepard. Film and television adaptations of some of the plays may be included.

The main intent of this course is to provide an overview of major dramatic works in the twentieth century, focusing on formal characteristics of drama in this period, as well as on the social, historical, or cultural contexts of the plays being studied. In order to better understand issues of form and content, the works will also be discussed in their relationship to specific dramatic movements such as realism, naturalism, expressionism, absurdism, modernism, and poststructuralism or postmodernism. Students completing this course should gain a firm understanding of how and why, in any given period, plays from one area of the globe may or may not be similar to plays from other geographical regions or cultures.

In addition to the reading and discussion of plays, the course will include formal projects that require research and synthesis of ideas from the discussions and readings, as well as a proctored exam.

Grades will be determined as follows:

* Final exam acceptable range is 20%-40%, per the Dean's office, September, 2003.

Participation:

It is also important that students and faculty have shared expectations regarding the grading of assignments. The following broad definitions are based on the suggestions of the UMUC Information Literacy and Writing Assessment Task Force and offer general criteria for grading.

• The grade of A reflects excellence. The A paper offers a well-focused and organized discussion appropriate to the instructor's assignment, reflects critical use of relevant materials, and demonstrates effective and formal writing requirements. Research papers must demonstrate outstanding efforts to identify varied pertinent sources, to use those materials critically in the text of the papers, and to provide error-free citations of those resources.
• The grade of B represents an effort beyond satisfactory and indicates the paper was completed in an appropriate and competent manner and, in general, demonstrates a strong attempt at original and critical analysis, writing, and research. The B paper may contain a number of minor errors of grammar or citation, and its thesis or its conclusions may be undeveloped or too weakly supported.
• The grade of C indicates that the paper was done in a satisfactory or appropriate fashion and represents the average work expected for university courses. The presentation is organized around a central idea with arguments supported by relevant examples. The paper is structured into correctly written paragraphs and sentences. Although fulfilling the assignment, the C paper may exhibit one or more weaknesses including, but not limited to, errors of punctuation and grammar, imprecise or incorrect word use, inaccurate or uncritical use of materials, occasional inconsistency of organization or development, and lack of direct relevance of the selected research materials to the topic.
• The grade of D indicates that the paper may have a poorly defined topic or thesis, lack clear focus or organization, and contain unsupported generalizations or conclusions. Research support is inadequate, not clearly relevant, or improperly documented. A less-than-minimal research effort is evident. The paper may also suffer from numerous or major formal writing errors.
• The grade of F indicates that the paper is not clearly relevant to the assignment and that its topic and thesis are poorly focused or defined. The paper may display inadequate organization or development, unsupported generalizations, and nonstandard formal features (including language usage, sentence structure, paragraphing, and so on). Research support is absent, inadequate, or irrelevant to the assignment.

The projects for this course will offer you the opportunity to apply concepts to specific readings of a play or plays. Because this is an advanced English course, you will be expected to demonstrate your ability to write well in standard, academic English, to support your position with evidence drawn from the plays or from critical sources (as appropriate), and to document your sources according to the MLA guidelines. Each project can be thought of as your taking a position on the topic and providing evidence for the reader to understand how you have read the play and arrived at your conclusions. A brief outline of the three projects follows:

• Project 1: A 750- to 1,000-word essay analyzing the elements of realism, naturalism, or absurdism in a play.
• Project 2: A research paper of at least 1,000 words focused on the social, historical, or cultural context of a selected work.
• Project 3: A research paper of at least 2,000 words that compares and contrasts two plays from a perspective relevant and significant for the two plays selected. Depending on the plays in question, the paper may focus primarily on formal elements, characteristics as examples of a particular literary movement, theme, or historical, social, or cultural context. Topics and thesis statements must be approved. Writing and/or drafting activities will accompany the development of this paper.

• originality of idea
• development of the ideas, using evidence from the readings or from source materials as appropriate
• logical and systematic development of the paper
• proper documentation using the MLA Style Guide
• use of standard English with few or no grammatical errors