Assignments

English 4665/5665: American Literature from 1920 to the Present, Fall 2010

Section 01 (CRN 80021/80022): TR 3:30-4:45PM, Arts & Sciences 368

In Class Activities

1. Reassembling The Waste Land

During the week of August 23, we will interpret T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. Our discussion will benefit if we all do some homework. Here are the two tasks I'd like each of you to complete for your assigned part of the poem:

  1. narrative: reconstruct the overarching narrative thread from the various voices and situations in your assigned section
  2. allusion and theme: look up major allusions and interpret what they add to your assigned section's theme

Here are the assigned sections:

 

I. The Burial of the Dead: Brent Cruce, Lily Engleman, Jenny Graham, Katy Hedglin

II. A Game of Chess: Alison Johnson, Brittney Jones, Marlee McCampbell, Mike Murphy

III. The Fire Sermon: Christina Riddle, Stephen Rockwell, Keli Ross, Kyle Taylor

IV. Death by Water and V. What the Thunder Said: Joye Server, Chelsea Thomas, Jessica Ward, Brooke Woodard

2. Assembling Absalom, Absalom!'s Thomas Sutpen

For our first day of discussion of William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!, we will focus on the many faces and views of Thomas Sutpen. Bring to class a character sketch of Thomas Sutpen from the point of view of one of the main characters below, listing key traits, descriptions, actions as well as providing two significant quotations:

  1. Rosa Coldfield: Brent Cruce, Alison Johnson, Christina Riddle, Joye Server
  2. Quentin's father: Lily Engleman, Brittney Jones, Stephen Rockwell, Chelsea Thomas
  3. Quentin: Jenny Graham, Marlee McCampbell, Keli Ross, Jessica Ward
  4. Thomas Sutpen, as told to Quentin's grandfather: Katy Hedglin, Mike Murphy, Kyle Taylor, Brooke Woodard

3. Yoknapatawpha County Has Issues

For our second day of discussion of Absalom, Absalom!, we will focus on Faulkner's larger issues and themes. Bring to class your tentative interpretation of one of the issues below and provide two significant quotations that support your analysis.

  1. Race and Class
    • What cultural values and ideological power structures involving race and class does the novel question and critique? affirm and reinforce?
    • Compare and contrast how racism and classism create Sutpen's psyche with how racism and classism compose Charles Bon's world view.
    • Brent Cruce, Brittney Jones, Chelsea Thomas, Jessica Ward
  2. Family
    • How do the characters' (Rosa, Sutpen, Judith, Henry, and Charles Bon's) behavior patterns derive from childhood experiences in the family?
    • What does the novel say about family dynamics? about paternity, maternity, fraternity?
    • Jenny Graham, Christina Riddle, Mike Murphy, Keli Ross
  3. Gender and Sexuality
    • How might Judith and Henry's relationship connect to or be derived from their father's relationships with women, their father's view of sexuality?
    • Describe the nature of the patriarchy in the novel. What kind of masculinity exists in the novel? what kind of femininity?
    • Katy Hedglin, Stephen Rockwell, Joye Server, Kyle Taylor
  4. History and the Past
    • Given Shreve's, Quentin's, Mr. Compson's, Rosa Coldfield's, and Thomas Sutpen's attitudes toward and interactions with Sutpen's individual past, Sutpen's family line, and the South, what does the novel say about the individual's relationship to the past?
    • What is Rosa's attitude toward Sutpen's participation in the Civil War? Thinking about his final words in the novel, what does Quentin think about the South? What does the novel say about the history and culture of the South?
    • Lily Engleman, Alison Johnson, Marlee McCampbell, Brooke Woodard

4. Discussing Hemingway's Key Passages

To prepare for the short paper, let's break into three groups to determine and discuss how the most significant passage from the story sets up the core conflicts and theme of the story.

5. Breaking Down The Adding Machine

For our first day of discussion, let's break into groups to break down The Adding Machine into its constituent literary elements.

6. Adding Up The Adding Machine

For our second day of discussion, let's interpret what The Adding Machine adds up to theoretically and thematically by breaking into five groups, discussing the play from a particular interpretive method, then reporting back to the class.

7. Reflecting upon Reflecting upon Reflecting upon "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

Eliot's modernist poetry, though collaged and fractured, is still grounded in narrative. Ashbery's postmodernist poetry is an abstract and conceptual stream of consciousness in which many, if not most, of the images proceed without reference to signified reality. Today, we're going to begin our discussion of "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror" by breaking into groups and positing what the lines mentioning mirrors, speculation, reflection, and so forth, might mean.

8. Responding to Versed

Rae Armantrout's unconventional, experimental, language-centered poetry defies traditional literary expectations and conventional meaning. To begin our discussion of her work, let's individually respond to the reading experience.

  1. Expectation vs Reality: Describe your expectations of a work of literature in general and a poem in particular. How does Armantrout's poetry defy your ideals? What does her poetry actually provide you, the reader? In other words, what do you want
    2. and what do you get?
  2. Reading Experience: Do a line-by-line reading of "Operations" (15). How might the poem be anticipating or controlling your reading experience? What does reading the poem do to you?
  3. Indeteriminacy and Interaction: Indeterminacy occurs when the meaning of literary work is rendered open-ended, tentative, and provisional, if not uncertain and undecidable. How does the poem's indeterminacy structure your interaction with it? What meaning do you, the reader, create from this radically open-ended poem?

9. Curating the Colored Museum

Let's divide into 4 groups to discuss how and why George C. Wolfe curated The Colored Museum in the manner he did.

 

The Groups

  1. "Git on Board," "Cookin' with Aunt Ethel," "The Photo Session"
  2. "Soldier with a Secret," "The Gospel According to Miss Roj," "The Hairpiece"
  3. "The Last Mama-on-the-Couch-Play," "Symbiosis"
  4. "Lala's Opening," "Permutations," "The Party"

The Questions

  1. The Museum Structure: Why does Wolfe call his play The Colored Museum and individual plays "The Exhibits"? Based on this structural understanding, what is the general theme of the play?
  2. The Exhibits: Describe the tone, setting, and protagonists of your assigned exhibits. How do your assigned exhibits fit into the overarching structure, and what overarching meaning arises from these juxtaposed exhibits?
  3. Postmodern/Drama: In what ways is this play stylistically and thematically similar to the postmodern poems and plays we've studied? Different from?

10. Postmodern Fiction

Let's break into groups to cut to the quick of each of the stories. Each group should answer the assigned questions as well as discuss which characteristics of postmodernism, as defined by Barry Lewis in "Postmodernism and Fiction," the assigned story exemplifies.

 

The Traits of Postmodernism

  1. temporal disorder
  2. pastiche
  3. fragmentation
  4. looseness of association
  5. paranoia
  6. short circuits

The Groups and Questions

  1. Robert Coover, "A Night at the Movies" (Brent Cruce)
    • What parts of the story are real and what parts film? Why is the projectionist called a phantom? Discuss the conflict between film and reality in the story. How is that conflict resolved, if at all, by the story's conclusion, by the story's theme?
  2. Susan Daitch, "X ≠ Y"
    • Why is the story told in the second person, and how is identity at issue? What is the core conflict regarding terror and terrorism? What in the story is real and what is fantasy or daydream? What does the last paragraph of the story mean?
  3. David Foster Wallace, "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men," "Datum Centurio," and "Octet" (Marlee McCampbell)
    • Focusing on "Octet," what does framing the story as a series of pop quizzes mean? How does the structure, frame, and meaning of the story shift when the narrator is introduced in footnotes? How does the narrator feel about self-reflexive meta-narrative? Why does he participate in it?
  4. Thomas Pynchon, "Entropy" (Kyle Taylor)
    • What are entropy and the Laws of Thermodynamics? What is significant about the story taking place during a lease-breaking party? What does Callisto mean when he talks about applying the concept of heat-death to culture? What do the death of Callisto's bird and the breaking of the window by Aubade mean?

11. Kathy Acker's Don Quixote

Here are the general topics and issues that you should be looking for while reading Kathy Acker's Don Quixote:

  • the postmodern identity quest
  • love: parental, romantic, and sexual
  • class and economics
  • politics and government
  • gender and feminism
Now let's break into small groups to discuss Acker theoretically and thematically.
  1. Poststructuralism and Postmodernism
    • How does Don Quixote's identity shift and remain in a flux that goes beyond normal character development or arc?
      • To become a knight, one must be completely hole-ly. (13)
      • Because I love you I've destroyed myself: I'm you. Lines eleven and twelve. Love destroys common time and reverses subject and object; verb acts on itself; I'm your mirror; identity's gone because there's no separation between life and death. (51)
      • In order to fuck you have to appear, and neither of us can appear in this society which demands appearances based on lies and hypocrisies: We are too honest to exist. (130)
      • Being for a split second mirrors of each other, we had to be other than we were. (140)
    • How does the meaning of the text stay playful and undecidable, even after one has finished reading the novel?
    • How does the novel implement a Baudrillardian hyperreality that deconstructs the distinction between image and reality and a Lyotardian narrative that questions metanarratives?
      • History's a fiction, and, as such, propaganda. Just as death destroys pain and time memory, so magic does away with history. (30)
      • And so a nameless dog and Don Quixote went away, one with the other. They saw blood wherever they went, bloody abortions screaming with pain that anaesthetics only drive under the surface of consciousness, blood hidden under the clean white male weaponry. They clutched at their memories which were now skeletons moldering on the desert of blood. These memories of America decayed. They no longer knew what they had left. Loneliness-being-lost and lack of liberalism threw themselves upon the Night and her companion like pleasure, like the bliss of a throbbing red cunt dawn. (125)
      • Nothing's real because nothing has meaning for me because no one's touching me. No one tells me what means what. There's no schooling here. Where there's no language, there's no reality. (156)
      • Mad language is consciousness in myth. (192)
  2. Psychoanalysis
    • What psychological issues are revealed by Don Quixote's attitude toward love and sexuality as well as her actual emotional and sexual behavior?
      • My wound is inside me. It is the wound of lack of love. (17)
      • Today, only the knights who're made enough to want to love someone who loves them maintain this order of poetry. (24)
      • Then sexual love would have to be the meeting-place of individual life and death. (28)
      • You don't love me! I'm nothing. You've made me nothing. (82)
      • "Having someone control me so that it's possible I'll be rejected." How could I eradicate, not my being controlled, by my fear of being controlled? By being controlled as much as possible: by willful marriage. I would ask the person whom I loved the most, feared the most, to marry me. (134)
      • You force me to love you solely according to your desires. Now you're molding me by mentally hurting me. Since you want me to be nothing but that which loves you, you treat me as nothing. You're my human destruction. You are my school. (158-9)
    • In what ways can we view the novel as analogous to a dream or a fantasy? What does the narrative and its symbols reveal about Don Quixote's unconscious desires, fears, wounds, or unresolved conflicts?
      • I'm imaginatively saving the world. (154)
  3. Feminism
    • What does the novel reveal about the operations (economically, politically, socially, or psychologically) of patriarchy? Does the work reinforce or undermine patriarchal ideology?
      • Are women pirates or slaves? According to whom? (93)
      • But evil must be evil. If evil is evil, how can any one or thing be evil that goes against itself? A man who controls political power does whatever he likes. It's nature for him to do whatever he likes because that's what having power means and is: the power to do. A man who controls other people steals their souls. Therefore, when the poor or soulless steal, they are acting unnaturally, they're redressing through unnatural means the proper balance of human power. This is why women have to get abortions. (178)
    • How is the work "gendered"? That is, how does it seem to define feminity and masculinity? Does Don Quixote's behavior always conform to her assigned gender? Does the work suggest that there are genders other than feminine and masculine?
      • 'I, myself,' the receptionist confided, 'used to be mad. I refused to be a woman the way I was supposed to be.' (11)
      • 'My God!' Don Quixote exclaimed. 'You're not the sexual gender I thought you were! And I love you.'
        [. . . ] Loving a woman is controlling. Whereas, when I make love with a man, I'm the opposite: I'm so physically and mentally open or sensitive, I simultaneously can't bear being touched and come continuously. Whereas I can't come with women, which is why, for safety's sake, I was making love with them. (127)
    • What does the novel suggest about women's creativity and a feminine form of writing? What roles does the work play in terms of women's literary history and literary tradition?
      • Women're the cause of human suffering. For women are so intelligent, they don't want anything to do with love. Men have tried to get rid of their suffering by altering this: first, by changing women; second, when this didn't work because women are stubborn creatures, by simply lying, bu saying that women live only for men's love. An alteration of language, rather than of material, usually changes material conditions . . . (27)
      • The night ended or shitted again. 'I wanted to find a meaning or myth or language that was mine, rather than those which try to control me; but language is communal and here is no community.' Having concluded, Don Quixote turned around and started walking home, although she had no home. (194-5)
  4. Marxism
    • Does the work reinforce (intentionally or not) capitalist or classist values?
    • Does the work criticize oppressive socioeconomic forces or repressive ideologies?
      • I had the abortion because I refused normalcy which is the capitulation to social control. To letting our political leaders locate our identities in the social. In normal good love: (17-8)
      • The Prince doesn't have any morals. Why? Because morals're part and parcel of a government which runs partly by means of the so-called 'have-not'' or bourgeoisie's cover-up, (via 'Culture'), of the 'haves'' total control. (21)
      • Decadence is aristocracy is rationality is gold is death-in-life. (65)
      • The United States is exactly as it was started: religiously intolerant, militaristic, greedy, and dependent on slavery as all democracies have been. (124)
      • 'In my dream, my teacher said to me: "All the accepted forms of education in this country, rather than teaching the child to know who she is or to know, dictate to the child who she is. Thus obfuscate any act of knowledge. Since there educators train the mind rather than the body, we can start with the physical body, the place of shitting, eating, etc., to break through our opinions or false education." (166)
      • 'Since you have no choice and you must choose,' the old creep answered, 'this is what being enchanted means─tell me: who are you?" (187)
      • The Beginning of the Dogs' Song
        'Because it isn't truth that animal life is over,
        because we are not worthless dogs,
        because we are not slaves, oh landlords, oh J. Paul Getty, even though now and then you pat us on our heads or fuck us, throw us scraps of food and love, give us doggie walking suits to make us slaves,
        because your human history which is the history of slavery is not our history,
        because your culture is slavery:' (198)
    • Or, is the work ideologically conflicted between capitalist and Marxist agendas?
    • [The psychoanalytic, feminist, and Marxist questions are adopted from Lois Tyson's Critical Theory Today]

Undergraduate Assignments

Literary Biography

GeorgiaVIEW Post

Once in the semester, you will write literary biography of an author we're reading in class and post it to GeorgiaVIEW > Discussions > Literary Biographies. Much like a Norton anthology or Contemporary Authors author biography, this paper should

  • be 3-4 page MLA styled pages in Word 2003 or RTF format (you may use my MLA styled template),
  • summarize the author's literary world view (not her life story), paying special attention to the work we're reading in class,
  • note the author's general themes and issues as well as her particular themes and issues in the work we're reading,
  • and explain the common ways that critics interpret the text we're reading.
  • Supplemental materials that will be much appreciated (but are not required) include a bibliography of important works of criticism on the text at hand, useful scholarly websites, and your issue questions for class discussion.

Below is a list of sources that will help you collect the information for your literary bibliography. They are available through the GCSU Library.

Informal Presentation

You will also be asked to introduce the author and work on the first day of class discussion. Your graded paper will be returned to you within a week of your presentation in GeorgiaVIEW > Assignments > Literary Biography.

Due Dates

  1. Your written literary biography will be due in GeorgiaVIEW > Discussions > Literary Biographies on the Wednesday before we discuss an author in class. If you do not submit your written summary to Blackboard before the article is discussed in class, you will fail the assignment.
  2. Your brief, informal presentation will be due on the day we discuss the author in class. This date is approximate for we sometimes fall a day behind.
  3. I will return your graded literary biography to you in GeorgiaVIEW > Assignments > Literary Biography a week after we discuss the article in class.
  4. For example, we are scheduled to discuss Faulkner on Thursday, 9-2. Therefore, someone's literary biography will be due in GeorgiaVIEW by Thursday, 8-26. In class on Thursday, 9-2, that student will informally present her literary biography. I will return the graded literary biography to her the following week in GeorgiaVIEW > Assignments >Literary Biography.

Note: It is extremely important for each person to turn in the literary biographies on time and attend class for the presentation component. Biographies will be penalized one letter grade for each day, not class period, that they are turned in late. Failing to present the article to the class without providing a valid absence excuse will result in a one letter grade penalty.

 

GAV Due Date Presentation Due Date Reading Student
R, 8-12
T, 8-17
   
R, 8-19
   
R, 8-19
T, 8-24
   
R, 8-26
   
R, 8-26
T, 8-31
   
R, 9-2
Faulkner 1 Jenny Graham
R, 9-2
T, 9-7
   
R, 9-9
Fitzgerald 2 Brooke Woodard
R, 9-9
T, 9-14
Hemingway 3 Mike Murphy
R, 9-16
Larsen 4 Katie Hedglin
R, 9-16
T, 9-21
   
R, 9-23
Rice 5 Keli Ross
R, 9-23
T, 9-28
   
R, 9-30
Treadwell 6
R, 9-30
T, 10-5
   
R, 10-7
   
R, 10-7
T, 10-12
   
R, 10-14
Ashbery 7 Stephen W. Rockwell
R, 10-14
T, 10-19
   
R, 10-21
Armantrout 8 Brittney Jones
R, 10-21
T, 10-26
   
R, 10-28
Albee  
R, 10-28
T, 11-2
Shepard 9 Lily Engleman
R, 11-4
Baraka 10 Chelsea Thomas
R, 11-4
T, 11-9
   
R, 11-11
Coover 11 Brent Cruce
R, 11-11
T, 11-16
Pynchon 12 Kyle Taylor
Wallace 13 Marlee McCampbell
R, 11-18
Acker, Don Quixote 14 Alison Johnson
R, 11-18
T, 11-23
   
R, 11-25
   
R, 11-25
T, 11-30
Danielewski, Only Revolutions 15 Christina Riddle
16 Jessica Ward
R, 12-2
   

Close Reading

For the first paper, perform a close reading of a literary work we've read in the first six weeks of class, either a short poem, a short section of a long poem, or a significant passage of fiction. The short, close reading paper should demonstrate how a nuanced and rigorous reading of the selection not only broaches the key issues and core conflicts of the literary work but also points to the text's overall thematic meaning.

  • Length: 4-5 pages
    • Your paper grade will be penalized one-third of a letter grade if itdoes not end at least halfway down on the minimum page length while implementing 12 pt Times New Roman font, double-spacing, and 1" margins. Each page short of the minimum requirement will result in an a one-third letter final grade penalty.
  • Style: MLA style
    • One-third of a letter grade will be deducted for each of three problems in the following categories, for a possible total penalty of one letter grade: 1) margins, 2) font size/style and line-spacing, and 3) quoting and citing. Before you turn in a formal paper, make sure your work follows MLA style by referring to my FAQ on papers and using the checklist on the MLA style handout.
  • Format: Your paper must be formatted in Word 1997-2003.doc, Word 2007-2010.docx, WordPerfect.wpd, or Rich-Text Format.rtf.
  • Due Date: Thursday, September 23 by 3:30PM to TurnItIn > Short Paper.
  • Grade: Your paper will be assessed on your thesis and textual analysis. Approximately one week after you submit, your graded paper will be returned to you in GeorgiaVIEW > Assignments > Paper 1. Here's how to calculate your final grade.

In Class Exam

You will write two thesis-driven comparison/contrast essays of your choice from a selection of four questions.

 

The broad topics that you will be tested on, generated from class discussion Thursday, September 30, are:

  • modernism
  • Lost Generation, Jazz Age, American Dream
  • crisis of belief, crisis of identity
  • how characters are rendered in modernism
  • the oppressive machine
  • class
  • race
  • gender

Preparations for this exam include:

  • rereading the literary works as necessary
  • reviewing and typing your class notes
  • creating flashcards for each work that includes character sketches (traits, conflicts, arcs) for major characters, the work's conflicts/issues, the work's themes
  • composing comparisons between various works regarding key topics

Research Paper

While the short paper asked you to perform a close reading and the in class exam tested your ability to make connections and distinctions among the themes and style of modernism, the research paper will afford you the time and space to perform a sustained and sourced discussion of a significant issue in a modern or postmodern work. You will write an 8-10 page research paper, incorporporating at least 4 scholarly journal articles and 1 scholarly book or book chapter, on a work read in class (but not one written on previously) or another work by one of the authors studied in class. Your thesis-driven paper should employ textual analysis and support its interpretation of the issue with scholarly criticism.

  • Length: 8-10 pages
    • Your paper grade will be penalized one-third of a letter grade if it does not end at least halfway down on the minimum page length (not including the Works Cited page) while implementing 12 pt Times New Roman font, double-spacing, and 1" margins. Each page short of the minimum requirement will result in an a one-third letter final grade penalty.
  • Style: MLA style
    • One-third of a letter grade will be deducted for each of three problems in the following categories, for a possible total penalty of one letter grade: 1) margins, 2) font size/style and line-spacing, and 3) quoting and citing. Before you turn in a formal paper, make sure your work follows MLA style by referring to my FAQ on papers and using the checklist on the MLA style handout.
  • Format: Your paper must be formatted in Word 1997-2003.doc, Word 2007-2010.docx, WordPerfect.wpd, or Rich-Text Format.rtf.
  • Due Date: Tuesday, November 23 by 3:30PM in TurnItIn > Research Paper
  • Grade: Your paper will be assessed on your thesis, your textual analysis of the work, and your incorporation of scholarly sources. Approximately one week after you submit, your graded paper will be returned to you in GeorgiaVIEW > Assignments > Research Paper. Here's how to calculate your final grade.

Take-Home Exam

You will write two 4-5 page comparative essays from a selection of four to six questions, focusing on postmodern American literature but also asking one question about modernism. The exam will be posted here on Tuesday, 11-30.

 

Write two different essays on four different literary works by answering two of the following four essay questions. Do not use a work in more than one essay. Here are important guidelines for essays:

  • Each of the two essays should be 4-5 typed, double-spaced pages using 1" margins and 12pt Times New Roman Font.
  • The exam should be submitted in one Word-, RTF-, or WordPerfect-formatted file on TurnItIn > Exam 2 by Wednesday, December 8 at 2:00PM.
  • Not all texts are appropriate for all essays. Choose works which afford adequate material to address the question at hand. Do not use an author to answer more than one essay.
  • Organize essays by argument and analysis. Have a controlling idea, an interpretation, a thesis that bridges the works. Support your points with textual evidence (quotations) when necessary and warranted; avoid plot summary. Make connections and distinctions among the texts; in other words, compare and contrast the works' key themes.
  • Your essays will be graded on their analytical and interpretive understanding of the four authors' works as well as their ability to compare and contrast thematic meanings and issues in a thesis-driven essay.

Here are the essay options:

  • Modern/Postmodern: Choose one modernist work of literature and two postmodernist texts by two authors, then write an essay that comparatively analyzes how the modernist work influences the two postmodernist ones in terms of style and/or theme.
  • Postmodern Genre Study: Compare and contrast the styles and themes of two postmodern works of the same genre by two authors (drama, poetry, fiction).
  • Meta-Playfulness: While modernism is characterized by disillusionment and crisis, metafiction and play characterize postmodernism. Write an essay that compares and contrasts how two postmodern works by two authors play with narrative frames and otherwise blur boundaries.
  • Identity Politics: Choose either African-Americans or women and write an essay that compares and contrasts how two postmodern works by two authors both advances and ironizes the status of the political class you selected.

Here are the exam requirements:

  • Length: 8-10 pages
    • Your grade will be penalized one-third of a letter grade if it does not end at least halfway down on the minimum page length (not including the Works Cited page) while implementing 12 pt Times New Roman font, double-spacing, and 1" margins. Each page short of the minimum requirement will result in an a one-third letter final grade penalty.
  • Style: MLA style
    • One-third of a letter grade will be deducted for each of three problems in the following categories, for a possible total penalty of one letter grade: 1) margins, 2) font size/style and line-spacing, and 3) quoting and citing. Before you turn in a formal paper, make sure your work follows MLA style by referring to my FAQ on papers and using the checklist on the MLA style handout.
  • Format: Your paper must be formatted in Word 1997-2003.doc, Word 2007-2010.docx, WordPerfect.wpd, or Rich-Text Format.rtf.
  • Due Date: Wednesday, December 8 by 2:00PM in TurnItIn > Exam 2
    • If I do not receive or cannot open your paper, I will send an email Wednesday night. If I still do not receive or cannot open your paper by Friday, December 10, you will automatically fail the course.
  • Grades, Comments, and Paper Return:
    • Your exam will be assessed on comparative thesis, understanding of individual works, and comparison/contrast between works.
    • You can access your final grade in the course via MyCats after Wednesday, December 15.
    • I am happy to provide comments and return finals to those who ask; simply write "please comment" at the top of your paper. I will not return papers of those who do not request feedback. If you do request feedback, you can access your graded paper in GeorgiaVIEW > Assignments > Exam 2 after Wednesday, December 15. Here's how to calculate your final grade.

Graduate Assignments

Presentation

You will either present/teach a critical article already on the syllabus or research/find and present/teach an article that advances class discussion of a literary work. The presentation portion should be 15-20 minutes and the Q&A component 10-15 minutes.

Take-Home Exam 1

You will write two thesis-driven comparison/contrast essays of your choice from a selection of four questions. Each essay will be 4-6 pages long and include supporting quotations. The exam will be posted here on Thursday, October 7.

 

Write two different essays on four different literary works by answering two of the following four essay questions. Do not use a work in more than one essay. Here are important guidelines for essays:

  • Each of the two essays should be 4-6 typed, double-spaced pages using 1" margins and 12pt Times New Roman Font.
  • The exam should be submitted in one Word-, RTF-, or WordPerfect-formatted file on TurnItIn > Exam 1 (Graduate Only) by the start of class Thursday, October 14.
  • Not all texts are appropriate for all essays. Choose works which afford adequate material to address the question at hand. Do not use an author to answer more than one essay.
  • Organize essays by argument and analysis. Have a controlling idea, an interpretation, a thesis that bridges the works. Support your points with textual evidence (quotations) when necessary and warranted; avoid plot summary. Make connections and distinctions among the texts; in other words, compare and contrast the works' key themes.
  • Your essays will be graded on their analytical and interpretive understanding of the four authors' works as well as their ability to compare and contrast thematic meanings and issues in a thesis-driven essay.

Questions announced on Thursday, October 7.

  • Crisis of Belief / Crisis of Characterization: In his seminal essay on modernism, "The Idea of the Modern," Irving Howe entitles two significant sections "The Problem of Belief Becomes Exacerbated, Sometimes to the Point of Dismissal" and "In the Novel There Appears a Whole New Sense of Character, Structure and the Role of the Protagonist or Hero." Write an essay that first compares the crisis of belief of protagonists from two authors' works and then compares how those characters are rendered in the two works. How does the form (of the characterization) follow the function (of the character's crisis of belief)? [Note: this is a comparison essay only, no contrast.]
  • Welcome to the Machine: Individualism is a mainstay of the American character; consequently, the quest for individuality in conflict with society's rage to conform is a major theme in American literature. Compare and contrast two individual characters' (or poets' or speakers' from two authors) struggles within their particular social systems. How do they feel constrained? How do they (or do they even) transcend the system? [Note: this is a comparison and contrast essay.]
  • Dream and Disillusionment: Compare and contrast why and how the dreams (for example, the American dream) of characters from works by two authors are disillusioned. What do they dream and why are their dreams deferred? [Note: this is a comparison and contrast essay.]
  • Identity Crisis: Race/Class/Gender: Choose just one of the political issues of identity (race, class, or gender) and then write an essay that compares and contrasts how that one issue engenders an identity crisis for characters in two authors' texts. What puts the self at issue? [Note: this is a comparison and contrast essay.]

Modernist Works

  • Pound, "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley"
  • Eliot, "The Wasteland"
  • Des Imagistes
  • Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!
  • Fitzgerald, "Babylon Revisited" and "Winter Dreams"
  • Hemingway, "The End of Something," "Soldier's Home," and "The Snows of Kilimanjaro"
  • Larsen, Quicksand
  • Rice, The Adding Machine
  • Treadwell, Machinal

Research Paper

You will write a 15-20 page research paper entering, engaging, and advancing the scholarly discourse of a twentieth-century American literary work either discussed in class or selected by you and approved by the professor. Your essay should be worthy of being presented at a conference, integrate at least 7 secondary sources (5 scholarly journal articles and 2 books/book chapters), and apply at least 2 theoretical articles on modernism or postmodernism, whichever is appropriate.

  • Length: 15-20 pages
    • Your paper grade will be penalized one-third of a letter grade if it does not end at least halfway down on the minimum page length (excluding the Works Cited page) while implementing 12 pt Times New Roman font, double-spacing, and 1" margins. Each page short of the minimum requirement will result in an a one-third letter final grade penalty.
  • Style: MLA style
    • One-third of a letter grade will be deducted for each of three problems in the following categories, for a possible total penalty of one letter grade: 1) margins, 2) font size/style and line-spacing, and 3) quoting and citing. Before you turn in a formal paper, make sure your work follows MLA style by referring to my FAQ on papers and using the checklist on the MLA style handout.
  • Format: Your paper must be formatted in Word 1997-2003.doc, Word 2007-2010.docx, WordPerfect.wpd, or Rich-Text Format.rtf.
  • Due Date: Tuesday, November 23 by 3:30PM to TurnItIn > Research Paper
  • Grade: Your paper will be assessed on your thesis, your textual analysis of the work, your engagement of the scholarly discourse, and your theoretical understanding of the literary period from which the work derives. Approximately one week after you submit, your graded paper will be returned to you in GeorgiaVIEW > Assignments > Research Paper. Here's how to calculate your final grade.

Take Home Exam 2

You will write two 6-7 page comparative essays from a selection of four to six questions, focusing on postmodern American literature but also asking one question about modernism. The exam will be posted here on Tuesday, November 30.

 

Write two different essays on four different literary works by answering two of the following four essay questions. Do not use a work in more than one essay. Here are important guidelines for essays:

  • Each of the two essays should be 4-6 typed, double-spaced pages using 1" margins and 12pt Times New Roman Font.
  • The exam should be submitted in one Word-, RTF-, or WordPerfect-formatted file on TurnItIn > Exam 2 by 2:00PM on Wednesday, December 8.
  • Not all texts are appropriate for all essays. Choose works which afford adequate material to address the question at hand. Do not use an author to answer more than one essay.
  • Organize essays by argument and analysis. Have a controlling idea, an interpretation, a thesis that bridges the works. Support your points with textual evidence (quotations) when necessary and warranted; avoid plot summary. Make connections and distinctions among the texts; in other words, compare and contrast the works' key themes.
  • Your essays will be graded on their analytical and interpretive understanding of the four authors' works as well as their ability to compare and contrast thematic meanings and issues in a thesis-driven essay.

Here are the essay options:

  • Modern/Postmodern: Choose one modernist work of literature and two postmodernist texts by two authors, then write an essay that comparatively analyzes how the modernist work influences the two postmodernist ones in terms of style and/or theme.
  • Postmodern Genre Study: Compare and contrast the styles and themes of two postmodern works of the same genre by two authors (drama, poetry, fiction).
  • Meta-Playfulness: While modernism is characterized by disillusionment and crisis, metafiction and play characterize postmodernism. Write an essay that compares and contrasts how two postmodern works by two authors play with narrative frames and otherwise blur boundaries.
  • Identity Politics: Choose either African-Americans or women and write an essay that compares and contrasts how two postmodern works by two authors both advances and ironizes the status of the political class you selected.

Here are the exam requirements:

  • Length: 12-14 pages
    • Your grade will be penalized one-third of a letter grade if it does not end at least halfway down on the minimum page length (not including the Works Cited page) while implementing 12 pt Times New Roman font, double-spacing, and 1" margins. Each page short of the minimum requirement will result in an a one-third letter final grade penalty.
  • Style: MLA style
    • One-third of a letter grade will be deducted for each of three problems in the following categories, for a possible total penalty of one letter grade: 1) margins, 2) font size/style and line-spacing, and 3) quoting and citing. Before you turn in a formal paper, make sure your work follows MLA style by referring to my FAQ on papers and using the checklist on the MLA style handout.
  • Format: Your paper must be formatted in Word 1997-2003.doc, Word 2007-2010.docx, WordPerfect.wpd, or Rich-Text Format.rtf.
  • Due Date: Wednesday, December 8 by 2:00PM in TurnItIn > Exam 2
    • If I do not receive or cannot open your paper, I will send an email Wednesday night. If I still do not receive or cannot open your paper by Friday, December 10, you will automatically fail the course.
  • Grade:
    • Your exam will be assessed on comparative thesis, understanding of individual works, and comparison/contrast between works.
    • You can access your final grade in the course via MyCats after Wednesday, December 15.
    • I am happy to provide comments and return finals to those who ask; simply write "please comment" at the top of your paper. I will not return papers of those who do not request feedback. If you do request feedback, you can access your graded paper in GeorgiaVIEW > Assignments > Exam 2 after Wednesday, December 15. Here's how to calculate your final grade.

 

© Alex E. Blazer 2024