Dr. Alex E. Blazer	Course Site	Syllabus
In Class Activities	Selected Reading	Discussion Board
Paper 1	Paper 2	Exam

 

"Everything's Blue in This World"

Liberal Studies 314: Life Journey, Fall 2007

Section 02: MWF 10:00-10:50AM, 1125 Mackinac Hall

Section 05: MWF 2:00-2:50PM, 1116 AuSable Hall

In Class Activities

1. The Philosophy of Suicide and Melville's Bartleby

From time to time we will have in class small group activities designed to decenter the classroom, encourage participation, apply concepts, and connect readings. Each group will answer the questions assigned to it and report its findings to the class. Therefore, the group should select a secretary to take notes and a spokesperson to give the report. In order to ensure that the most amount of students can participate, the spokesperson should NOT be a student who regularly speaks in class. In this activity, your group will apply the philosophical conceptions of suicide from the Stanford Encyclopedia article to Melville's Bartleby, the Scrivener.

1. Using 1. Characterizing Suicide,
   1. define suicide and
   2. argue how Bartleby IS a suicide.
2. Using 1. Characterizing Suicide,
   1. define suicide and
   2. argue how Bartleby is NOT a suicide.
3. Using 2.2 The Christian Prohibition and 3.3 Religious Arguments,
   1. define the religious arguments for and against suicide and
   2. debate whether those arguments are appropriately applied to Melville's story.
4. Using 3.6 Autonomy, Rationality, and Responsibility
   1. define the rational arguments for and against suicide and
   2. debate whether Bartleby's suicide is rationally justified.
5. Using 3.7 Duties toward the Suicidal,
   1. describe one's moral duty to the suicidal and
   2. argue what you think the narrator's duty to Bartleby is, paying particular attention to his elegiacal epiphany, "Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!"

2. A. Alvarez, The Savage God: Background, Fallacies, Theories, Feelings

Divide into groups of no more than five, elect a secretary and a spokesperson, and discuss the assigned question.

1. Using Part 2 The Background, summarize the prevailing attitudes toward suicide in early Christianity, Roman civilization, and Greece. How would you characterize your culture's position toward suicide in comparison to earlier outlooks?
2. Using 1. Fallacies, define the six fallacies of suicide at the time Alvarez wrote the book. Do these myths still exist in our 2007 society?
3. Using 2. Theories (114-122), describe the sociological understanding of suicide.
4. Using 2. Theories (123-139), summarize the psychoanalytical debate regarding the causes and meaning of suicide.

3. Albert Camus, "An Absurd Reasoning"

I do not think it would be either useful or fair to give you a quiz on a work of philosophy that can be at times difficult to understand. However, I do want to make sure that you are confronting the work. To that end, for Wednesday, September 26, prepare a five question homework assignment that will substitute for a quiz:

1. Quote a passage in "Absurdity and Suicide" (3-21) that defines "the absurd" and then briefly explain in your own words what absurdity is.
2. Quote a passage in "Philosophical Suicide" (21-48) that describes a reaction to the absurd and then briefly explain it in your own words.
3. Quote the passage that you find the most interesting and insightful, and then explain it in your own words.
4. Quote the passage that you find the most difficult.
5. Prepare a question or issue for class discussion.

4. Maurice Blanchot, "Literature and the Right to Death" and "The Work and Death's Space"

As with Camus, I want to make sure that you're engaging the Blanchot texts, but I want to do so in a fair way. Moreover, the Camus assignment allowed me to obtain a sense of where the class is and is not understanding the philosophy, so I want to do a similar one for Blanchot. As you're reading the two essays, think about the following discussion questions (as well as the Blackboard discussion board respondents' questions). For Friday, October 5, briefly answer two questions: one question from "Literature and the Right to Death" and one question from "The Work and Death's Space" by explaining one of the quote in your own words. This assignment will substitute for an in-class quiz. (We're doing film and literature for the next few weeks, so we'll be back to normal quizzes soon.)

 

"Literature and the Right to Death"

1. In the first few pages of the essay, what relationship does Blanchot profess between the writer and the void, i.e., nothingness, as illustrated by the following passages?
   • "[. . .] he will begin to write, but starting from nothing and with nothing in mind─like a nothingness working in nothingness, to borrow an expression of Hegel's" (362).
   • "What is written is neither well nor badly written, neither important nor frivolous, memorable nor forgettable: it is the perfect act through which what was nothing when it was inside emerges into the monumental reality of the outside as something which is necessarily true, as a translation which is necessarily faithful, since the person it translates exists only through it and in it" (363).
   • "A writer cannot withdraw into himself, for he would then have to give up writing. As he writes, he cannot sacrifice the pure night of his own possibilities, because his work is alive only if that night—and no other—becomes day, if what is most singular about him and farthest removed from existence as already revealed now reveals itself within shared existence" (365).
2. What is the relationship between author, work, and reader, as argued in the following passage?
   • "Under the eyes of honesty pass in succession the author, the work, and the reader; in succession the art of writing, the thing written, and the truth of that thing or the Thing Itself; still in succession, the writer without a name, pure absence of himself, pure idleness, then the writer who is work, who is the action of a creation indifferent to what it is creating, then the writer who is the result of this work and is worth something because of this result and not because of the work, as real as the created thing is real; then the writer who is no longer affirmed by this result but denied by it, who saves the ephemeral work by saving its ideal, the truth of the work, etc." (368-9).
3. What does the book do to the world?
   • "This is why it seems to me to be an experiment whose effects I cannot grasp, no matter how consciously they were produced, and in the face of which I shall be unable to remain the same, for this reason: in the presence of something other, I become other. But there is an even more decisive reason: this other thing—the book—of which I had only an idea and which I could not possibly have known in advance, is precisely myself become other. The book, the written thing, enters the world and carries out its work of transformation and negation" (371-2).
4. How does death give meaning to art and to existence?
• "Therefore it is accurate to say that when I speak: death speaks in me. My speech is a warning that at this very moment death is loose in the world, that it is a warning that at this very moment death is loose in the world, that it has suddenly appeared between me, as I speak, and the being I address: it is there between us as the distance that separates us, but this distance is also what prevents us from being separated, because it contains the condition for all understanding. Death alone allows me to grasp what I want to attain; it exists in words as the only way they can have meaning. Without death, everything would sink into absurdity and nothingness" (380).
5. What is the relationship between affirmative, creative, and meaningful literary life of language and the negative, dark night of abyssal death and nothingness?
• "But language is the life that endures death and maintains itself in it" (391)
• "If we call this power negation of unreality or death, then presently death, negation, and unreality, at work in the depths of language, will signify the advent of truth in the world, the construction of intelligible being, the formation of meaning" (398).
• "Death ends in being: this is man’s hope and his task, because nothingness itself helps to make the world, nothingness is the creator of the world in man as he works and understands. Death ends in being: this is man’s laceration, the source of his unhappy fate, since by man death comes to being and by man meaning rests on nothingness; the only way we can comprehend is by denying ourselves existence, by making death possible, by contaminating what we comprehend with the nothing of death, so that if we emerge from being, we fall outside the possibility of death, so that if we emerge from being, we fall outside the possibility of death, and the way out becomes the disappearance of every way out" (398-9).

"The Work and Death's Space"

1. Describe the relationship between writing and experience that Blanchot posits in the first two pages of the chapter, particularly in the following passage.
• "Poetry is experience, linked to a vital approach, to a movement which is accomplished in the serious, purposeful course of life. In order to write a single line, one must have exhausted life. And now, the other answer: to write a single line, one must have exhausted art, one must have exhausted one’s life in the search for art. These two answers share the idea that art is experience because it is experimental: because it is a search—an investigation which is not undetermined but is, rather, determined by its indeterminacy, and involves the whole of life, even if it seems to know nothing of life" (89).
2. Describe the relationship between writing and death that Blanchot posits in the next few sections, especially in the following maxim.
• "Write to be able to die─Die to be able to write" (94).
3. What does Blanchot mean by calling suicide a bet and a leap in the following passage?
• "To kill oneself is to mistake one death for the other; it is a sort of bizarre play on words. I go to meet the death which is in the world, at my disposal, and I think that thereby I can reach the other death, over which I have no power─which has none over me either, for it has nothing to do with me, and if I know nothing of it, it knows no more of me; it is the empty intimacy of this ignorance. That is why suicide remains essentially a bet, something hazardous: not because I leave myself a chance to survive, as sometimes happens, but because suicide is a leap. It is the passage from the certainty of an act that has been planned, consciously decided upon, and vigorously executed, to something which disorients every project, remains foreign to all decisions─the indecisive and uncertain, the crumbling of the inert and the obscurity of the nontrue" (104)?
4. How might Blanchot's conception of writing as a dying leap into "the unreality of the indefinite" illuminate Plath's poetry?
• "This comparison of art to suicide is shocking in a way. But there is nothing surprising about it if, leaving aside appearances, one understands that each of these two movements is testing a singular form of possibility. Both involve a power that wants to be power even in the region of the ungraspable, where the domain of goals ends. In both cases an invisible but decisive leap intervenes: not in the sense that through death we pass into the unknown and that after death we are delivered to the unfathomable beyond. No, the act of dying itself constitutes this leap, the empty depth of the beyond. It is the fact of dying that includes a radical reversal, through which the death that was the extreme form of my power not only becomes what loosens my hold upon myself by casting me out of my power to begin and even to finish, but also becomes that which is without any relation to me, without power over me—that which is stripped of all possibility—the unreality of the indefinite. I cannot represent this reversal to myself, I cannot even conceive of it as definitive. It is not the irreversible step beyond which there would be no return, for it is that which is not accomplished, the interminable and the incessant" (106).

5. Suicide Song Roundtable

After discussing Nine Inch Nails' The Downward Spiral, we will have a roundtable discussion of songs about suicide supplied by the class. To that end, each member of the class will send me a song and lyrics, and I will have them posted on reserve. All of us can log on to ARES to listen to the songs and read the lyrics and then have a discussion about common themes and issues in contemporary songs about suicide.

• By Monday, 10-8, email me 1) an mp3 or link to the song, and 2) song lyrics. You will know that I received the song if it appears on the list below.
• Unless otherwise noted, songs will be available on ARES on Monday, 10-15.
• Lyrics are available in Blackboard Course Documents.

Time takes a cigarette. . . . Liberal Studies 314.02: 10:00-10:50AM MWF

1. Alkaline Trio, "I'm Dying Tomorrow," From Here to Infirmary (2000) [Mike Golczynski]
2. Alkaline Trio, "You're Dead," From Here to Infirmary (2000) [Mike Golczynski]
3. blink-182, "Adam's Song," Enema of the State (1999) [Heath Biller, Melody Gerber, Heather Malone, Becky Rudenga, Ashley Ruiz, Faith VanDyke]

4. Blue October, "Black Orchid," The Answer (1998) [Kirsten Holyfield]

5. David Bowie, "Rock 'N' Roll Suicide," The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972) [Dan Shaaf]

6. Eminem featuring Dido, "Stan," The Marshall Mathers LP [Erin Hart]

7. Evanescence, "Bring Me to Life," Fallen (2003) [Alexander Kollias]
8. Good Charlotte, "Hold On," The Young and the Hopeless (2002) [Erin Hasper]

9. Blaine Larsen, "How Do You Get That Lonely," In My High School (2004) [Stacy Grasman]

10. Lifehouse, "The Joke," Who We Are (2007) [Jessica Groleau]

11. The Mars Volta, "Televators," De-Loused in the Comatorium (2003) [Mike Golczynski]

12. Dave Matthews, "Some Devil," Some Devil (2003) [Jena Davis]

13. Outkast, "Toilet Tisha," Stankonia (2000) [Mike Golczynski]
14. P.O.D., "Youth of a Nation," Satellite (2002) [Brent Webb]
15. Brad Paisley featuring Allison Krauss, "Whiskey Lullaby," Mud in the Tires (2003) [Amy Emery and Jeremy Rotman]
16. RED, "Breathe into Me," End of Silence [Dayna Frownfelder]
17. Rise Against, "The Approaching Curve," The Sufferer and the Witness (2006) [Mike Golczynski]

18. Dmitri Shostakovich, String Quartet No. 8 in C Minor (Op. 110) (1960) [Douglas Ward]

19. Dmitri Shostakovich, Le Suicidé from Symphony No. 14 (Op. 135) (1969) [Douglas Ward]

20. Third Eye Blind, "Jumper," Third Eye Blind (1997) [Rob Swick]
21. Thousand Foot Krutch, Last Words, Phenomenon (2003) [Alisha Sonnenberg]

22. Underoath, "Act of Depression," Act of Depression (1999) [Julie Kenyon]

23. The Verve Pipe, "The Freshmen," Villains (1996) [Seth Howe and Becky Rudenga]

At the bottom of the ocean she dwells. . . . Liberal Studies 314.05: 2:00-2:50PM MWF

1. About Last Night, "What If I Died Tomorrow," MySpace.com [Sarah Curle]
2. Amber Pacific, "Gone So Young," The Possibility and the Promise (2005) [Matt Cristiano, actually in Section 02]

3. Christine Andreas, "By the River," from December Songs; The Maury Yeston Songbook (2003) [Shelby Klein]

4. Avant, "Suicide," Ecstasy (2002) [Kennisha Wrack]

5. blink-182, "Adam's Song," Enema of the State (1999) [Sheila Keller and Lana Nelson]

6. Bright Eyes, "Padriac My Prince," Letting off the Happiness (1998) [Ellen Carpenter]

7. Disturbed, "Meaning of Life," The Sickness (2000) [Heather Wilson]

8. The Dresden Dolls, "Bad Habit," The Dresden Dolls (2003) [Rachel Gleason]
9. Evanescence, "Tourniquet," Fallen (2003) [Selma Suljic]
10. Fall Out Boy, "7 Minutes in Heaven (Atavan Halen)," From under the Cork Tree (2006) [Daniel Gorski]
11. Nelly Furtado, "All Good Things (Come to an End)," Loose (2006) [Jennifer Reibeling]
12. H.I.M. (His Infernal Majesty), "Join Me in Death," Razorblade Romance (2000) [Jennifer Reibeling]
13. Interpol, "Stella Was a A Diver And She Was Always Down," Turn on the Bright Lights (2002) [Tom Clippard]
14. Blaine Larsen, "How Do You Get That Lonely," In My High School (2004) [Taryn Byl]
15. Linkin Park, "The Little Things You Give Away," Minutes to Midnight (2007) [Ashley Huntoon]

16. Marilyn Manson, "Suicide Is Painless," Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000) [Heather Wilson]

17. Metallica, "Fade to Black," Ride the Lightning (1984) [Cody Moore]

18. Motion City Soundtrack, "Let's Get Fucked Up and Die," Commit This To Memory (2005) [Heather Wilson]

19. Brad Paisley featuring Allison Krauss, "Whiskey Lullaby," Mud in the Tires (2003) [Selma Suljić]

20. Papa Roach, "Last Resort," Infest (2000) [Nate Clark, Kristen Martin, and Hillary Wisneski]

21. Senses Fail, "Lady in a Blue Dress," Let It Enfold You (2004) [Heather Wilson]

22. Shinedown, "45," Leave a Whisper (2004) [Shiela Keller]
23. Silverchair, "Suicidal Dreams," Frogstomp (1995) [Lauren Gardner and Derik Vincent]
24. Sneaker Pimps , "6 Underground," Becoming X (1997) [Rick Glenn]

25. Sonata Artica, "Victoria's Secret," Winterheart's Guild (2003) [Anne Wiltzer]

26. Staind, "4 Walls," Tolerate (1996) [Nicole Picard]

27. Third Eye Blind, "Jumper," Third Eye Blind (1997) [Amanda Sellars]
28. Three Days Grace, "Never Too Late," One X (2006) [Sophie Luyckx]
29. T-Pain, "I Got It," Epiphany (2007) [Kia McBride]
30. T-Pain, "Suicide" Epiphany (2007) [Kia McBride]

31. The Verve Pipe, "The Freshmen," Villains (1996) [Tara Griess]

6. Working Thesis Activity

You brought to class today a working thesis and list of ten sources for your comparison/contrast paper. Before submitting this assignment to me, share it with a group (3-4) of your peers to see what they think about the efficacy of your comparison/contrast idea.

1. Does the thesis make a specific and focused claim?
2. What is the paper's comparison? What is its contrast?
3. Can you envision a 6-8 page paper being derived and structured from this working thesis?

Selected Reading

Sylvia Plath

1. Note: Selected poems are also bookmarked in the Blackboard > Course Documents > Plath file.
   November Graveyard
2. All the Dead Dears
3. The Triumph of Wit Over Suffering
4. The Ghost's Leavetaking
5. Whiteness I Remember
6. I Want, I Want
7. Two Views of a Cadaver Room
8. Suicide off Egg Rock
9. The Colossus
10. The Hanging Man
11. Stillborn
12. Barren Woman
13. In Plaster
14. I Am Vertical
15. Last Words
16. Apprehensions
17. Stings
18. Daddy
19. Stopped Dead
20. Fever 103
21. Cut
22. Purdah
23. Lady Lazarus
24. Death & Co.
25. The Munich Mannequins
26. Edge

Discussion Board Response

Blackboard Post: You will respond to a reading, and post your response to our course discussion board at Blackboard > Discussion Board. The response should

• be formatted in Word or Rich-Text Format (not Works) only according to the MLA styled template,
• be 2-3 double-spaced pages long,
• show your active engagement in the text's issues (don't simply summarize the text, tentatively analyze and interpret its meaning; if you've signed up for a poet, feel free to closely read just one or two poems),
• help your peers understand the text by pointing out key issues, and
• broach issues for class discussion.

Informal Presentation: You will also be responsible for a brief, informal presentation which introduces the key issues and possible themes of the text as you see them and also broaches issues for class discussion.

 

Due Dates:

1. Your discussion board response will be due in Blackboard > Discussion Board on the Friday before we discuss an essay in class. If you do not submit your response to Blackboard at least one day before the text is discussed in class, you will fail the assignment.
2. Your brief, informal presentation will be due on the day we discuss the reading in class. This date is approximate for we sometimes fall a day behind.
3. I will return your graded response to you in Blackboard > My Grades > Discussion Board Response by the next week.
4. For example, we are scheduled to discuss Goethe on 9-12. Therefore, the summary will be due in Blackboard > Discussion Board by Friday, 9-5. In class on Wednesday, 9-12, the respondent will informally present her reading of Goethe and I will grade her response and return it to Blackboard > My Grades > Discussion Board Response by the following week.

Note: It is your responsibility to remember to post your response on time.

 

Section 02: MWF 10:00-10:50AM, 142 Niemeyer Living Center

 

Blackboard Due Date	Presentation Due Date (approximate)	Reading	Student
F, 8-31	W, 9-5	Alvarez, The Savage God (11-94)	Daniel Enyia
	F, 9-7	Alvarez, The Savage God (95-162)
F, 9-7	M, 9-10	Alvarez, The Savage God (163-308; note: although you should read the entire selection, we will only focus on 223-286)	Douglas Ward
	W, 9-12	Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther	Jessica Groleau
			Alisha Sonnenberg
			Faith VanDyke
F, 9-14	W, 9-19	Chopin, The Awakening	Brent Webb
			Heather Malone
			Megan LeRoux
F, 9-21	M, 9-24	Artaud, "Van Gogh, Man Suicided by Society" (online) "Is Suicide a Solution?" (online) from "Art and Death" (online)
	W, 9-26	Camus, "An Absurd Reasoning" (online)
			Jeremy Rotman
F, 9-28	M, 10-1	Plath, selected poems (online)	Dayna Frownfelder
			Erin Hart
	F, 10-5	Blanchot, "The Work and Death's Space" (online) "Literature and the Right to Death" (online)	JaNomia Smith
F, 10-12	M, 10-15	Donnie Darko discussion	Becky Rudenga
			Rob Swick
	F, 10-19	Nine Inch Nails, The Downward Spiral (online)	Dan Shaaf
F, 10-19	W, 10-24	Salinger, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" (online)	Heath Biller
	F, 10-26	Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters	Ashley Ruiz
F, 10-26	M, 10-29	Salinger, Seymour: An Introduction	Seth Howe
	W, 10-31	Salinger, "Hapworth 16, 1924" (online)	Josh Seiferlein
F, 11-2	W, 11-7	Eliot or Yeats	Kristen Holyfield
			Matt Cristiano
F, 11-9	M, 11-12	Hemingway	Jena Davis
			Alexander Kollias
	F, 11-16	Shange, for colored girls	Mike Golczynski
			Erin Hasper
W, 11-28	F, 11-30	Groundhog Day (Note that whoever signs up for this slot will have to post a response to Blackboard Wednesday night so the class can discuss it Friday)	Jennifer Burkholder
			Stacy Grassman
F, 11-30	M, 12-3	Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides	Amy Emery
			Julie M. Kenyon
			Melody Gerber
			Amanda Seaberg

 

Section 05: MWF 2:00-2:50PM, 1116 AuSable Hall

 

Blackboard Due Date	Presentation Due Date (approximate)	Reading	Student
F, 8-31	W, 9-5	Alvarez, The Savage God (11-94)	Daniel Gorski
	F, 9-7	Alvarez, The Savage God (95-162)	Shelby Klein
F, 9-7	M, 9-10	Alvarez, The Savage God (163-308; note: although you should read the entire selection, we will only focus on 223-286)	Heather Wilson
			Adam Channells
	W, 9-12	Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther	Taryn Byl
			Kristen Martin
			Ryan Bell
F, 9-14	W, 9-19	Chopin, The Awakening	Kate Switalski
			Abigail Hoeksema
			Amanda Sellars
F, 9-21	M, 9-24	Artaud, "Van Gogh, Man Suicided by Society" (online) "Is Suicide a Solution?" (online) from "Art and Death" (online)	Selma Suljić
	W, 9-26	Camus, "An Absurd Reasoning" (online)	Sophie Luyckx
			Lauren Gardner
F, 9-28	M, 10-1	Plath, selected poems (online)	Ashley Huntoon
			Ellen Carpenter
	F, 10-5	Blanchot, "The Work and Death's Space" (online) "Literature and the Right to Death" (online)	Nicole Picard
			Adam Channells
F, 10-12	M, 10-15	Donnie Darko discussion	Sheila Keller
			Sarah Curle
	F, 10-19	Nine Inch Nails, The Downward Spiral (online)
F, 10-19	W, 10-24	Salinger, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" (online)	Hillary Wisheski
	F, 10-26	Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters	Rick Glenn
F, 10-26	M, 10-29	Salinger, Seymour: An Introduction	Nate Clark
	W, 10-31	Salinger, "Hapworth 16, 1924" (online)	Derik Vincent
F, 11-2	W, 11-7	Eliot or Yeats	Anne Wiltzer
			Lana Nelson
F, 11-9	M, 11-12	Hemingway	Kennisha Wrack
			Cody Moore
	F, 11-16	Shange, for colored girls...	Rachel Gleason
W, 11-28	F, 11-30	Film, Groundhog Day (Note that whoever signs up for this slot will have to post a response to Blackboard Wednesday night so the class can discuss it Friday)	Tom Clippard
			Jennifer Reibeling
F, 11-30	M, 12-3	Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides	Tara Griess
			Kia McBride

Short Paper

We have read and discussed the lives and deaths of Bartleby, Werther, and Edna Pontellier; and we have read and discussed the philosophical debate and literary/cultural history of suicide in the Stanford Encyclopedia, Artaud, Camus, and Alverez. In a 4-5 page paper controlled and structured by a strong, focused thesis that makes a debatable and arguable claim, analyze either the worldview of a suicidal protagonist (Bartleby, Werther, or Edna Pontellier) or the worldview of a text (Bartleby, The Sorrows of Young Werther, The Awakening) as distinct from its protagonist. How does the protagonist or story view life, the world, living in the world? How does it look at death? What does the character's life and death mean? Feel free to both affirm and interrogate, evaluate and critique that worldview using your own views and those pertinent ones found in the philosophical and literary/cultural texts by Stanford, Artaud, Camus, and Alvarez. Obviously, worldview, life, death, and suicide are big ideas, so feel free to focus your topic onto just one if need be. The point of the paper is for you to dig into a key aspect of a character's or story's outlook on life, death, and suicide.

• Length: 4-5 pages
  • Your paper will be penalized one-third of a letter grade if it does not end at least halfway down on the fourth page while implementing 12 pt Times New Roman font, double-spacing, and 1" margins. If it does not end at least halfway down on the third page, it will be penalized two-thirds of a letter grade. Since you are expected to write a complete paper on the first draft, the length penalty will carry over to the second draft grade.
• Style: MLA style
• One-third of a letter grade will be deducted for each of three problems in the following categories: 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. Correct MLA style in the second draft will void the first draft's MLA style penalty.
• Format
  • Your paper must be formatted in Corel WordPerfect, Microsoft Word, or Rich-Text Format.
  • Update 9-25: TurnItIn does not accept Microsoft Works or OpenOffice, so you must convert those files to WordPerfect, Word, or Rich-Text Format..
• Due Dates
• Mandatory Draft 1: Friday, September 28 via Blackboard > Assignments > Short Paper Draft 1
• Optional Draft 2: Friday, October 12 via Blackboard > Assignments > Short Paper Draft 2
  • Should you choose to revise, you must include a one or two paragraph statement describing what you learned about your first draft from your professor, what stylistic and substantive changes you made in the second draft, and how your interpretation re-envisioned the text and argument in the second draft. Moreover, you must highlight your revisions using your word processing program's text highlighter. Note that revision does not automatically guarantee either a better grade or an A.
• Grade
  • You will be assessed on your understanding of the course themes and the worldview of the text, your ability to analytically interpret the text, and your thesis.

Comparison/Contrast Paper

In the first paper, you analyzed the meaning of one character's life and/or death. In the second paper, you will compare and contrast an idea or issue that you see occurring in two of the works we've read, viewed, or listened to, but not on the story on which you wrote your first paper. There is only one topic in a comparison/contrast paper; do not compare and contrast apples and oranges. The essay should reveal where the texts' worldviews or themes converge in a similar central idea but also diverge around that very same issue. Some topics that we have discussed in a number of texts are identity quests, finding one's passion, the purpose of art and writing, self-destruction, self-creation, self-sacrifice, love, absurdity, the relationship between the individual and society, the relationship between the writer and the reader. This list is far from complete: what idea do you find in two texts that you wish to compare and contrast?

 

To help you support your analysis, you must incorporate four secondary sources of scholarly books and journal articles found through the university library catalogue and databases, two secondary sources for each of the two primary texts. See me if you choose to write on Alvarez or Nine Inch Nails.

• Length: 6-8 pages
  • Your paper will be penalized one-third of a letter grade if it does not end at least halfway down on the fourth page while implementing 12 pt Times New Roman font, double-spacing, and 1" margins. If it does not end at least halfway down on the sixth page, it will be penalized two-thirds of a letter grade. Since you are expected to write a complete paper on the first draft, the length penalty will carry over to the second draft grade.
• Style: MLA style
• One-third of a letter grade will be deducted for each of three problems in the following categories: 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. Correct MLA style in the second draft will void the first draft's MLA style penalty.
• Format
  • Your paper must be formatted in Corel WordPerfect, Microsoft Word, or Rich-Text Format.
• Due Dates
• Thesis and Sources: Monday, November 12 bring to class a print out of your working thesis and a list of 10 possible sources
  • Approximately 5 secondary sources for each primary text for a total of 10, approximately 5 scholarly books and 5 scholarly journal articles.
  • If you fail to submit a working thesis and list of sources, your final paper grade will be penalized one-third of a letter grade.
• Mandatory Draft 1: Monday, November 19 via Blackboard > Assignments > Comparison/Contrast Paper Draft 1
• Optional Draft 2: Monday, December 3 via Blackboard > Assignments > Comparison/Contrast Paper Draft 2
  • Should you choose to revise, you must include a one or two paragraph statement describing what you learned about your first draft from your professor, what stylistic and substantive changes you made in the second draft, and how your interpretation re-envisioned the text and argument in the second draft. Moreover, you must highlight your revisions using your word processing program's text highlighter. Note that revision does not automatically guarantee either a better grade or an A.
• Grade
  • You will be assessed on your understanding of the course themes, your ability to analytically compare and contrast texts, your research, and your comparative thesis.

Take-Home Exam

Choose two topics from the following three possibilities. Write two well-organized, four-page essays each of whose rigorous analysis is driven by a focused thesis and proven with textual evidence.

1. Theme: The topic of this course is life journeys that end in suicide. However, general topic and specific themes are not synonymous. What primary theme do you take away from this class? Analyzing two or three texts, compose a four page essay on an issue, idea, or theme that you have found central to the reading, class discussion, and the very fiber of the course. Although you may not choose a text you dealt with elsewhere in this exam, you may choose one (not two, not three) work on which you have already written a formal paper, but your essay should not be a regurgitation of what you have already argued in that paper: pick a different topic and theme.
2. Wake Up: Kafka writes that "we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn’t wake us up
   with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?" What one work of art, music, philosophy, or literature that we have read in this class woke you up? What text's worldview and theme challenged your conventional ways of thinking? Compose a four page essay that first and foremost analyzes the text's core issue but also reflects upon its opposition to the orthodox world in general and you in particular. Although you may not choose an author you dealt with elsewhere in this exam, you may choose a work on which you have already written a formal paper, but your essay should not be a regurgitation of what you have already argued in that paper: pick a different topic and theme. See me if you cannot think of one text that woke you up.
3. Interpretation: The course is bookended by enigmatic lives, puzzling deaths: we commenced with the confounding normalcy of Symborka's "The Suicide's Room" and the mystifying brick wall reveries of Melville's "Bartleby," and we concluded with the teenages boys become middle-aged men's unseeing nostalgic gaze upon the Lisbon sisters. In between we studied life journeys filled with not only dreams, passion, creativity, sexuality, and existentialism but also obsession, psychosis, self-destruction, repression, and absurdism. Use the analytical skills practiced in this class to write a thesis-driven essay about the life's journey to death of either the Lisbon sisters or a character of your choosing in a work of literature (poetry, short story, novel, play, film, or television) of your choosing that has specifically been approved by me.

• Length: Two essays of 4 pages each for a total of 8 pages
  • Your exam will be penalized one-third of a letter grade if it does not end at least halfway down on the eighth page while implementing 12 pt Times New Roman font, double-spacing, and 1" margins. If it does not end at least halfway down on the seventh page, it will be penalized two-thirds of a letter grade.
• Style: MLA style
• One-third of a letter grade will be deducted for each of three problems in the following categories: 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. Correct MLA style in the second draft will void the first draft's MLA style penalty.
• Format
  • Your paper must be formatted in Corel WordPerfect, Microsoft Word, or Rich-Text Format.
• Due Date
• Section 02 (10AM class): The exam is due via Blackboard > Assignments > Exam by Tuesday, December 11. I will glady accept exams early.
  • If I do not receive or cannot open your exam, I will send an email Wednesday morning. If I still do not receive or cannot open your exam by Thursday, December 13, you will automatically fail the course.
• Section 05 (2PM class): The exam is due via Blackboard > Assignments > Exam by Monday, December 10. I will glady accept exams early.
  • If I do not receive or cannot open your exam, I will send an email Tuesday morning. If I still do not receive or cannot open your exam by Wednesday, December 12, you will automatically fail the course.
• Grades, Comments, and Paper Return
  • You will be assessed on your understanding of the course themes, your ability to analyze texts, and your theses.
  • You can access your final grade in the course via the Registrar after Tuesday, December 18.
  • If you want comments, please ask for them. I will not return exams to those who do not request feedback. If you do request comments, you can access your graded paper in Blackboard >My Grades > Exam after Tuesday, December 18.