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Summary of Assignments for This Class

Conferences
Responses
Midterm Exam
Paper Prospectus
Paper
Final Exam

Conferences

You will be required to meet with me at least three times during the term, including an introductory conference at the beginning of the term. (Naturally, you are welcome to consult me more than three times.) If all goes well, this should be a pleasant requirement to fulfill; I just want to let you know the conferences are coming. All I ask--nay, beg--is that you show up when we agree that we'll meet. If you really really can't do so, please email me to let me know not to wait for you.

Responses

This assignment was adapted from one given by Michael Barsanti

There are many assignments due for this class that are called "Responses." Students are often confused by these assignments, in part because they are less formal than what they have been asked to write for classes in the past. I don't expect the Responses to have a coherent point, or to make especially brilliant readings of the stories assigned. They should represent a first attempt to make sense out of the assignment, a first attempt at getting the bits and pieces you have marked in the reading to hang together in some way. Responses are due by 8:00 pm the evening before the class for which they are assigned.

Here's how I imagine you doing these assignments:

1. You read the assigned readings, and mark them up accordingly with passages that strike you. In some cases, you may be assigned to follow a particular theme or answer a particular question. Other times, I will leave the assignment open-ended.

2. Having finished the reading, you page back through what you have read, scanning over the things you've marked.

3. You sit at a computer and type. You can be tentative, speculative, or downright wrong about what you're saying. You simply need to write something.

4. You type 300 or so words (one page single spaced) and read it over, fiddling with it as you please.

5. You copy and paste your response into the appropriate place on the class discussion board. Should you have trouble with the discussion board server for any reason, send an email to the class (including me) with your response, and post it to the board when the technical problems are resolved.

These responses will be fodder for class discussions and for papers, so be sure to read the message board and to refer back to your own writing as the semester progresses.

Midterm Exam

The exam will have one section of passage identification, a short answer section on poetic terms, and an essay question. The best way to study for the passage identification section is to read the poems over carefully and to have taken good notes on class discussions; I will test you primarily on passages about which we have talked in class. We will discuss the midterm in more detail as it approaches.

Paper Prospectus

Your paper prospectus will be a one-page prose sketch of your plans for the paper; before doing this, you should obviously read the section below. We will use this document as the starting point for a pre-paper discussion early the following week.

Paper

Length

The paper should be between 1500 and 2100 words long, approximately 5-7 pages. If you have a large amount of quoted text, the paper can be slightly longer.

Audience: What You Can Assume About Your Reader

You can assume that your reader has read the primary text you discuss and understood them at a very superficial level. (There's no need, in other words, to explain what the text or texts are "about.") That understanding is only superficial, though; your essay, then, should present to your reader a way of seeing the text[s] at hand that will teach that reader a more worthwhile and interesting way of understanding that text.

Argument

I like the following explanation that Michael Gamer uses:

What Essays Should At Least Do

1. You need to have something that you want to figure out or explore. It needs to have a question that it poses, or something like a question--a reason for being. In other words, the essay should provide a clear sense of what general questions inform it--why are you writing an essay about this? Why this essay and not some other one? What will this essay, when I've finished reading it, have taught me?
2. You need a METHOD--a plan of attack of how to explore your question concretely so that, by doing some kind of concrete analysis (comparison, or whatever), you are then in a position to answer your larger question. Consequently, you should be clear about what concrete aspect of the texts you will be analyzing, and how, by analyzing this, you will be able to answer whatever question is causing you to write the essay in the In other words, you need to present a way of understanding some concrete, demonstrable aspect of the text (like how "human nature" is represented in it), and use that analysis as a way toward something tougher to nail down (such as how, by tracing how "human nature" is constructed in a text, you can deduce from this information what the author's agenda is, or what set of cultural constraints that author is responding to.)
3. This means that you need to take the last 40% of your essay and think about the significance of your analysis--now that you've analyzed what you have, what can we now understand or see that we couldn't before? Or, put another way, if you're going to drag me up a steep hill called your analysis and make me work through it, there'd better be a good view at the top of the hill----one that answers how this analysis you've done changes the way we think about the author and/or the text or issues in question.

Final Exam

The structure of the final will be similar to that of the midterm, and it will be a cumulative exam, covering the material of the whole course. The final will place a greater emphasis on examining your ability to connect works we've read to each other and to apply (rather than merely identify) the terms and concepts we have used in the class.