Assignments

English 1102 Honors: English Composition II, Fall 2013

Section 07H (CRN 81607): TR 2:00-3:15PM, Arts & Sciences 150

Student Selections

To encourage you to take responsibility for this class—for your education—each member of the class will choose or help choose a work of literature for the class to read. Choose from books provided by the professor: The Best American Poetry 2012, The Best American Short Stories of 2012, and Drama: Classical to Contemporary. Since there is only one copy of each book, you will have to share. I suggest meeting at Blackbird, drinking some coffee, and passing the book around. Return the book with your selection on the assigned day; then, your professor will make copies of your selection and put them in the GeorgiaVIEW course packet for everyone to read.

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Due Date Selection Student
T, 8-27
Englander, "What We Talk about When We Talk about Anne Frank" 1 Lizzie Perrin
2 Jennifer Edwards
Pearlman, "Honeydew" 3 Alex Adamczyk
4 Alyssa Ahrens
T, 9-3
Orlen, "Where Do We Go After We Die?" 5 Darby McNally
Ruefle, "Middle School" 6 Natasha Markowich
Joseph, "So Where Are We?" 7 Liz Lohrmann
Collins, "Delivery" 8 Katherine Shaw
Kocot, "Poem" 9 Travis Dean
Haigh, "Paramour" 10 Madeline Achee
11 Angie Moryan
Millhauser, "Miracle Polish" 12 Kayla Draffin
13 Molly Lawson
T, 9-10
Schwartz, "The Afterlife" 14 David Pitt
Seidel, "Rain" 15 Sean McAleer
Yezzi, "Minding Rites" 16 Maochi Li
Betts, "At the End of Life, a Secret" 17 Amber Akers
Shippy, "Our Posthumous Lives" 18 Ryan Olliffe
Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead 19 Matthew Pearson
20 Laura Ahrens

In Class Activities

1. Analyzing a Book of Poetry

Continuing the first individual informal writing assignment, today, we're going to

  1. divide into 5 groups of 4 members,
  2. select a poem from your group's assigned selection,
  3. do a close reading of the poem, and
  4. analyze how the core conflict and overall meaning of the poem fits
  5. into the core conflict and overall meaning of the poetic sequence
  6. (if you have time, compose a thesis statement for a possible paper)

Here are the groups:

  1. January-December: "While He Told Me," "Unspeakable," "The Flurry," "Material Ode"
  2. "Gramercy," "Telling My Mother," "Silence, with Two Texts," "The Last Hour"
  3. "Last Look," "Stag's Leap," "Known to Be Left," "Object Loss," "Poem for the Breasts"
  4. Winter: "Not Going to Him," "Pain I Did Not," "The Worst Thing," "Frontis Nulla Fides"
  5. "On the Hearth of the Broken House," "Love," "The Healers," "Left-Wife Goose," "Something That Keeps," "The Easel," "Approaching Godthåb"

2. The Significance of a Poem

We've practiced closely reading poems and short passages of fiction at length, and you're deep into writing the close reading paper. For the next part of the course, in addition to literary explication and analysis, we're going to address the personal and cultural significance of literature. Break into five groups of four members led by the students who selected the poems for today's class. Each group should discuss the following issues and report back to the class:

Here are the leaders and poems:

  1. Amber Akers: Betts, "At the End of Life, a Secret"
  2. David Pitt: Schwartz, "The Afterlife"
  3. Sean McAleer: Seidel, "Rain"
  4. Ryan Olliffe: Shippy, "Our Posthumous Lives"
  5. Maochi Li: Yezzi, "Minding Rites"

3. The Cultural Evaluation of a Novel

Now that we've read two-thirds of Ben Fountain's Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, we can make some tentative claims about its cultural significance.

Here are the individual group topics:

  1. Religion
  2. War
  3. News Media and Public Affairs
  4. Hollywood
  5. Sports

Informal Writing

The goal of informal writing assignments is to help you to think actively and write critically about literature. These short assignments of 1-2 double-spaced, MLA formatted pages will also prepare you to write the longer, formal papers. You will be asked to analyze some element of literature (conflict, character, setting, imagery, figure of speech, etc.), respond to a thematic issue, or summarize scholarly criticism in preparation for formal papers and research projects.

 

Responses will be due by the start of class on the due date as a Word or RTF file (here is a template; and here is how to convert) in GeorgiaVIEW > Dropbox > Informal Writing #. Retrieve your graded electronically submitted paper approximately one week after submission by logging into GeorgiaVIEW > Assignments > Informal Writing #. Here is a grading rationale and calculation of informal writing assignments; and here is a handout on how to use GeorgiaVIEW.

1. Olds, Stag's Leap

Select your favorite passage (about 5-10 lines) from the first half of Sharon Olds' Stag's Leap (1-42). First, do a close reading of the passage like we've been practicing in class discussion. Then, comment on how the passage fits into the overall meaning of the poem. Finally, discuss how the poem and its passage fit into the sequence of poems, addressing the meaning of the poetic sequence so far in the book. Due Thursday, August 29.

2. Nathan Englander or Edith Pearlman

Choose either short story, then select what you consider to be the most significant passage of that text. Why is it the most significant passage? What core conflict(s) and overarching theme(s) does it convey? If you were to write a formal paper on this story's and this passage's predominant meaning, what would your thesis statement—that makes a claim, defines the scope of your argument, and shapes your argument—be? Due Thursday, September 5.

3. Jennifer Haigh or Steven Millhauser

Pretend you're going to write your close reading paper on either Jennifer Haigh's "Paramour" or Steven Millhauser's "Miracle Polish." Select the most significant passage, write a tentative thesis statement that addresses the core conflict and overall meaning of both the passage and the story, and compose a rough outline of your paper that proves your thesis. Due Thursday, September 12.

4. Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman

After attending a performance of the play, write a response about the play's personal and cultural significance. Culturally, what does the play say about the American dream in terms of labor and family? Does the cultural critique of 1950s American hold true today? Personally, what does the play say about marriage and family? What does the play suggest about fantasy and depression? Due Tuesday, October 8.

5. Albee, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

In order to practice writing an annotation for the annotated bibliography part of the research project, first read Nardo's "Stoppard's Space Men: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern on Film", and then, with your research group, collectively write a 75-100 word summary and evaluation of the article by 1) identifying the question, issue, or topic that the essay is investigating, 2) defining the source's thesis or conclusion regarding the play, and 3) explaining how the article helps your understanding of the play. Note that this is a collaborative informal writing assignment; therefore, only one group member needs to submit for the group. Due Thursday, November 7.

Peer Response

Goals

The dual goals of this course are for you to read and write about literature in a variety of manners. Informal writing and formal papers allow you to analyze the texts. Peer response sessions extend the reading and writing process by allowing you and your peers to engage in direct oral and written dialogue about matters of composition and interpretation, with the ultimate goal of improving your formal papers. You have the opportunity to revise your first two formal papers based upon comments by your peers and professor. You will provide constructive criticism to two or three other members of the class as will they to you.

 

Note: If a group member does not submit her paper in Word or RTF format at least two days before the peer response session, the rest of the group is not responsible for responding to her paper.

Paper 1 Peer Response

  1. Writers upload their papers to both GeorgiaVIEW > Discussions > Paper 1 Peer Response > Group # Topic and GeorgiaVIEW > Dropbox > Paper 1 Draft 1 on Thursday, September 19.
  2. Each group member reads, take notes on, and prepares to respond to just fellow group members' papers before the peer response class.
  3. We will not be holding regular class during the peer response sessions. You need only attend class during your group's scheduled date and time, see below.
  4. For the peer response session, either bring your laptop or bring paper print outs of the papers. The peer response group will collectively complete the Paper 1 Close Reading peer response sheet for each writer, then upload the completed response to GeorgiaVIEW> Discussions > Paper 1 Peer Response > Group # Topic.

Here are the group meeting dates and times, which will occur during class time in A&S 150.

Paper 2 Peer Response

  1. Writers upload their papers to both GeorgiaVIEW > Discussions > Paper 2 Peer Response > Group # Topic and GeorgiaVIEW > Dropbox > Paper 2 Draft 1 on Thursday, October 17.
  2. Each group member reads, take notes on, and prepares to respond to just fellow group members' papers before the peer response class.
  3. We will not be holding regular class during the peer response sessions. You need only attend class during your group's scheduled date and time, see below.
  4. For the peer response session, either bring your laptop or bring paper print outs of the papers. The peer response group will collectively complete the Paper 1 Significance peer response sheet for each writer, then upload the completed response to GeorgiaVIEW> Discussions > Paper 2 Peer Response > Group # Topic.

Here are the groups, all of which meet at the beginning of class on Tuesday, October 22.

Paper 1 Close Reading

We have discussed at length poems by Dickman, Kumanyakaa, and Olds and short stories by Bambara, Joyce, and Pearlman; and we have read even more works by Cirelland Dove, Moxley, Nezhukumatathil, Englander, Collins, Joseph, Kocot, Orlen, Ruefle, Haigh, Millhauser, Betts, Schwartz, Seidel, Shippy, and Yezzi. You have written about some of these works in your informal responses. Now is your opportunity to rigorously analyze a work of literature. For the first formal paper, write a four-five page essay that either 1) explicates, line-by-line, a short poem assigned on the syllabus, being sure to illuminate, through nuanced reading of figurative language, diction, connotation, and symbol, how the central tensions, ambiguities, and contradictions constitute a cohesive theme or 2) examines the most important passage in one of the short stories we have read so far, interpreting it sentence-by-sentence through nuanced reading of figurative language, diction, connotation, and symbol, and arguing its centrality to the core conflicts, character, and overall theme of the story. In other words, using either this short poem or this short story key passage, you should write a paper that interprets the universal theme of the work by explicating the fundamental conflicts within the particular lines of text. Your essay should be driven by a thesis that argues the work's theme and logically organized by close reading of the text: unpack the tension and conflict, connotation and diction, idea and theme.

 

1. Pick any poem or short story on the syllabus up to Tuesday, September 17.

2. Do a close reading/textual analysis of the poem or key story passage that explicates particular, significant words and lines.

3. Interpret the key conflict and overall theme/meaning/idea of the work of literature.

 

Note: You will write at least one draft of this paper and have the option of revising. The first draft, which will also be reviewed by your peers, will be given a tentative grade. If you choose to revise, the second draft grade will replace the first. If you earn an F on the first draft, you must revise, otherwise you will fail the course.

Parameters

Paper 2 Significance

In the first formal paper, you closely read a poem or short story passage and in so doing explicated how the literary language set up the core conflict and overall theme. Since then, we have discussed how literature is significant both personally and culturally. In the second formal paper, you will also interpret the conflict and main idea of a literary work of your choice on the syllabus up to Thursday, October 10, but not the one on which you wrote your first paper. Beyond simply discussing the issues, you will also examine the text's personal or cultural significance, in other words, its meaning in either your life or the lives of others. Discuss either why this work of literature is important to you or why this work is or should be important to the world. Some questions to consider include but are not limited to: Why is the literary work important—or not? What ethical, psychological, political, or cultural consequences does the text have? Who do you think should read this work, why do you think they need to read it, and how do you think it will affect them? How has the work of literature confronted, challenged, or changed either your world view or the belief system held by the particular audience? Your thesis should make a claim not only about the meaning of the text but also about the text's significance. Your paper should not only analyze the meaning of the work through textual evidence but also argue the text's significance.

  1. Select any work of literature on the syllabus up to October 10, but not one already written about in Paper 1.
  2. Using textual evidence, explicate the core conflict and key meaning of the literary work.
  3. Explain why and how the literary work is significant either personally or culturally.

Note: You will write at least one draft of this paper and have the option of revising. The first draft, which will also be reviewed by your peers, will be given a tentative grade. If you choose to revise, the second draft grade will replace the first. If you earn an F on the first draft, you must revise, otherwise you will fail the course.

Parameters

Group Project

Groups of 3-4 will choose a work of literature from the assigned genre (poetry, fiction, drama) that is neither by an author on our syllabus nor researched in high school, compile a 12-16 source annotated bibliography of scholarly literary criticism on the text, write a 4-6 page paper summarizing the literary debate on the text, and share their findings with the class in a 20 minute presentation and 10 minute question and answer session.

 

You may write your research paper on the same literary work as your group project as long as each group member proves her own distinct topic; or you may choose another text which you've not previously written on in college or high school, subject to professor approval.

Timeline

Week

Date

Due
Week 10

October 22

sign up
Week 11

October 31

topic
Week 12 November 5

bibliography

plan of action
Week 14 November 19

groups 1-3 conferences
November 21

groups 3-5 conferences
Week 15 November 26

mandatory research paper thesis/outline and peer response

group 1 presentation
Week 16

December 3

optional first draft and peer response

groups 2-3 presentations

December 5

peer response

groups 4-5 presentations
Finals

December 10

research paper

1. Sign Up

On Tuesday, October 22, you will self-select your groups of 3-4. Those who have no preference and those who are absent will be placed in a group by the professor.

 

Group

Students

Group 1 Poetry

Anne Sexton

1 Travis Dean: Confessionalism debate
2 Jennifer Edwards: Sexton and death
3 Maochi Li: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Smart
4 Ryan Olliffe: Sexton and fairy tales

Group 2 Fiction

Hawthorne, "The Minister's Black Veil"

5 Madeleine Achee: isolation vs social
6 Kayla Draffin: inner perception vs social reality
7 Molly Lawson: isolation
8 Angie Moryan: not a veil of penance but push toward sin

Group 3 Drama

Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun

9 Alex Adamczyk: flipped gender roles
10 Amber Akers: racial and national pride
11 Natasha Markowich: racial tension
12

Group 4 Poetry or Fiction

(genre can't overlap with Group 5)

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

 13 Liz Lohrmann: Shakespeare, MacBeth
14 Sean McAleer: historical analysis of "The Charge of the Light Brigade"
15 Lizzie Perrin: Romantic/Victorian transition
16 Katherine Shaw: "feminism"

Group 5 Fiction or Drama

(genre can't overlap with group 4)

Shelley, Frankenstein

 17 Laura Ahrens: technology
18 Darby McNally: feminism
19 Matthew Pearson: bioethics or Dracula
20 David Pitt: social determinism

2. Topic

Poetry groups will select a few poems or a book of poetry by a single poet; fiction groups will select a couple of short stories, a short story collection, or a novel by a single author; drama groups will select a full length play by a playwright. Groups may not select works by authors who are on our syllabus or previously researched by members in high school. In other words, choose an author and work you have not studied in this or other classes.

 

On Tuesday, October 29, groups will submit three ranked choices of literary works to the professor, who will advise and approve the final selection based upon appropriateness and researchability.

3. Bibliography and Plan of Action

On Tuesday, November 5, groups will submit to GeorgiaVIEW > Assignments > Bibliography and Plan of Action

  1. a 20 source bibliographical list in MLA Format of approximately half scholarly books from the GCSU and USG libraries and approximately half scholarly journal articles from databases like Academic Search Complete using the Literary Research Methods handout.
    • Do not submit primary texts by the author, encyclopedia entries, magazine articles, newspaper articles, book reviews, websites, or study guides like Sparknotes and MasterPlots, or plagiarism paper mills.
    • While other professors might consider encyclopedias, newspapers, magazines, and website study guides to be appropriate for college level research, I deem academic books and peer reviewed journal articles the only appropriate sources for scholarly research.
  2. a plan of action listing when the group will meet outside of class as well as each group member's responsibilities

4. Conferences

On Tuesday, November 19, Groups 1-3 will conference with the professor while other groups work in class on their projects. On Thursday, Groups 4-5 will conference.

 

For your conference, be prepared to discuss the status of your group project and compose a working thesis for your individual research paper.

5. Presentation, Annotated Bibliography, Debate Paper

On Tuesday, November 26, Tuesday, December 3, and Thursday, December 5, groups will teach the class their selected literary works in a 20 minute presentation with a 10 minute question and answer session. On the day of the presentation, one group member will submit the group's 12-16 source annotated bibliography (4 sources per group member) and their 4-6 page literary debate paper to GeorgiaVIEW > Assignents > Group Project. Be sure to put the annotated bibliography and literary debate paper in one file.

 

Your presentation may use any of the equipment in our room (chalkboard, projector, speakers, web browser, Powerpoint, DVD). Clips like YouTube may be used but do not count toward the 20 minute time limit.

 

An annotated bibliography is an MLA styled works cited list of scholarly books, book chapters, and peer-reviewed journal articles that provides a 75-100 word summary of each secondary source's argument as well as how the secondary source interprets and illuminates the meaning of the primary text, i.e., the literary work. Do not simply summarize the topic, provide the thesis. I recommend answering the following questions:

  1. What question, issue, or topic is the source investigating?
  2. What is the source's thesis or conclusion regarding the work of literature?
  3. How does the source help your understanding of the work of literature?

And I suggest using this template.

 

A literary debate paper summarizes the literary research findings, poses the predominant questions literary critics ask about the meaning of the literary work, and argues the opposing ways of interpreting the primary text.

 

Submit the bibliography and paper as one file to GeorgiaVIEW > Group Project on the day of your presentation. Retrieve your graded project approximately one week later in GeorgiaVIEW > Group Projects.

6. Group Policy

Each group member is responsible for staying connected with the group, attending meetings, actively participating in meetings, doing her delegated work, i.e., contributing her fair share to the project. In order to hold singular members accountable in a team project, each group member should individually compose and submit to GeorgiaVIEW > Dropbox > Group Project - Individual Evaluation a paragraph that assesses their own performance and their peers' service to the assignment. If it becomes apparent that a group member did not participate (skipped meetings, didn't complete her assigned work, etc.), that member will be assessed individually rather than receive the group grade.

Paper 3 Research

In the first formal paper, you analyzed a particular passage, and in the second paper you not only analyzed but also evaluated the significance of a literary work. In the third paper, you will move beyond your own analyses and arguments by engaging what real-world literary critics find significant about a work of literature. For the research paper, select a literary work that you have neither studied in high school nor have written about in this class or any other class; then clear your choice with your professor. (If you submit a paper that you wrote for another class, you will fail the assignment and the course.) You may write about the same literary work as your group project, but you may not write on the same issues as your fellow group members.

 

Write an in depth analysis and interpretation of an issue (some meaning that is in dispute, some interpretation that is open to debate, or a key conflict in the text) that both you and literary critics find provocative. Your paper should integrate at least 5 works of scholarly criticism (journal articles, books, and book chapters) to provide support and counterargument for your reading of the issue.

 

The threefold emphasis of this paper is your thoughtful evaluation of the issue at work in the text via rigorous analysis of the text and the use the secondary sources to aid and challenge your interpretation and critical judgment.

 

You submitted the previous formal papers to both your peers and professor for review (and a tentative grade from your professor) in order to develop the best compositional practice of drafting and revision. In this paper, in order to prepare you for regular, non-composition classes in which the professor only grades the final paper, you will be expected to draft and revise on your own with only the help of your peers and without the first draft grade from your professor.

Parameters

 

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