Dr. Alex E. Blazer Course Site Syllabus
In Class Activities Scholarly Criticism Group Project
Exam Paper 1 Paper 2

Assignments

Invisible Men and Women Warriors: Coming of Age Fiction

English 335: Literature of American Minorities, Winter 2008

Section 1: MWF 11:00-11:50AM, 227 Lake Superior Hall

Section 2: M 6:00-8:50PM, 1116 AuSable Hall

In Class Activities

1. Practice Annotation

In order to prepare for the annotated bibliography component of the Group Project, you have read and written a summary paragraph on a journal article explaining Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. Today, you will share you annotations with your group. Break into your Hurston criticism groups and complete the following two tasks.

  1. Share your individual annotations and then collectively compose an annotation that your entire group thinks best summarizes the journal article. Your group will present this annotation to the class.
  2. Construct a timeline for your Group Project: divide the labor and set deadlines. Your group will give this timeline to me.

2. Developing a Thesis

While you developed your short paper from a set of predetermined topics related to the coming-of-age story, the topic for your research paper is open. In order to help to make sure that you are on the right track, we will do an in class activity that allows you to develop and get feedback on your idea.

  1. We will discuss the Dartmouth College Writing Program handout, Developing Your Thesis (other handouts you might want to look at on your own are the Ohio State University Writing Center's Thesis Statement and Harvard University Writing Center's Developing a Thesis, and my own Organization handout).
  2. Spend five minutes writing a focused thesis statement (or research question) that will guide your research paper, and if you have time, begin to outline your paper.
  3. Break into groups of 3 or 4 and discuss Dartmouth's thesis checklist:
    1. Does my thesis sentence attempt to answer (or at least to explore) a challenging intellectual question?
    2. Is the point I'm making one that would generate discussion and argument, or is it one that would leave people asking, "So what?"
    3. Is my thesis too vague? Too general? Should I focus on some more specific aspect of my topic?
    4. Does my thesis deal directly with the topic at hand, or is it a declaration of my personal feelings?
    5. Does my thesis indicate the direction of my argument? Does it suggest a structure for my paper?
    6. Does my introductory paragraph define terms important to my thesis? If I am writing a research paper, does my introduction "place" my thesis within the larger, ongoing scholarly discussion about my topic?
    7. Is the language in my thesis vivid and clear? Have I structured my sentence so that the important information is in the main clause? Have I used subordinate clauses to house less important information? Have I used parallelism to show the relationship between parts of my thesis? In short, is this thesis the very best sentence that it can be?

3. Min Jin Lee, Free Food for Millionaires

Today's in class activity will allow us to focus our discussion of this long novel by dividing into break out groups. Each group should discuss its assigned issue, find textual evidence and plot points that illustrate the issue, determine the novel's conflict and/or theme regarding the issue, and then report its findings to the class.

 

Groups

  1. Casey Han's development
  2. class and financial issues
  3. love and sexual issue
  4. intergenerational issues
  5. interracial issues

Criticism

To prepare for the group presentation, we first learned literary methods at GVSU. Next, we'll practice annotating a scholarly article, available online.

 

First, read and take notes on the article, paying particular attention to the questions it poses of Hurston's text, the issues it sees in the book, and the interpretive conclusions it makes of the novel. Then, write a 75-100 word annotation of the article that

  1. identifies the issue or question that the article is investigating,
  2. defines the article's thesis or main idea relevant to your work of literature (feel free to quote as well), and
  3. explains how the article helps your understanding of the work.

Bring your written annotation to class so we can work with them.

 

Article Section 01 MWF 11:00AM Section 02 M 6:00PM

Hattenhauer, "The Death of Janie Crawford: Tragedy and the American Dream in Their Eyes Were Watching God"

Brittany Lemmon

Andrew Schmalz

Amy Tran

Kathy Tran

Matthew Chicola

Patrick Johnson

Kristin Kolehouse

Teresa Stillman

Kaplan, "The Erotics of Talk: 'That Oldest Human Longing' in Their Eyes Were Watching God"

Ted Booker

Jacque Hettel

Tyler Olney

Tricia Schoenborn

Michael Sonneveldt

Bryan Fonger

Vincent Harriger

Caitlyn Knapp

Jim Munchow

Allan Vander Laan

Kitch, "Gender and Language: Dialect, Silence and the Disruption of Discourse"

Aaron Carbaugh

Christina Le Vey

Shannon Lewis

Elizabeth Meloche

Kelly Ryan

Katie Bibler

Nicole Butcher

Kameron Dysert

Mindy Kalembkiewicz

Aaron Norris

McGowan, "Liberation and Domination: Their Eyes Were Watching God and the Evolution of Capitalism"

Shelby Anderson

Gerrit Clemence

Ashley Larson

Kristen Mahal

Alison Van Kampen

Amy Bennett

Nicole Kinder

Chad Patton

James Spray

Chad Waite

Miller, "'Some Other Way to Try': From Defiance to Creative Submission in Their Eyes Were Watching God"

Ashley Capps

Mitch Diep

Jake Heaton

Josh Meyers

Natalie Thomas

Melissa Ausúa

Becky Bronsink

Melissa Ferguson

Jami Lundburg

Daniel Schippers

Sartwell, "Bits of Broken Glass: Zora Neale Hurston's Conception of Self"

Brittni Chapman

Jessica Dirheimer

Andrea Suttner

Bobby Tiernan

Cristina Walcott

Sujen Coyle

Shavon Doyle

Kate Geskus

Erika Lynds

Greg Shumaker

Group Presentation

The three goals of the presentation is for students to pose tentative readings of a novel, conduct research, and lead class discussion; therefore, groups of 4-5 will write a 2-3 page preliminary analysis of the work that elucidates core conflicts and character developments, an annotated bibliography summarizing scholarly criticism of the work, and discussion and debate questions. They will also deliver this material in a class presentation that introduces key characters, issues, and themes. Note that Blackboard Group Pages affords group discussion board, collaboration, email, and file exchange.

Presentation Schedule: Section 1, MWF 11:00-11:50AM

 

Novel Due Date Students
Ellison, Invisible Man

M, 2-4

Ted Booker

Jacque Hettel

Tyler Olney

Tricia Schoenborn

Michael Sonneveldt

Morrison, Song of Solomon

M, 2-11

Aaron Carbaugh

Christina Le Vey

Shannon Lewis

Elizabeth Meloche

Kelly Ryan

Thomas, Down These Mean Streets
M, 3-10

Shelby Anderson

Gerrit Clemence

Kristen Mahal

Alison Van Kampen

Cisneros, The House on Mango Street
M, 3-17

Ashley Capps

Mitch Diep

Jake Heaton

Josh Meyers

Natalie Thomas

Kingston, The Woman Warrior
M, 3-24

Brittni Chapman

Jessica Dirheimer

Andrea Suttner

Bobby Tiernan

Cristina Walcott

Alexie, Flight

M, 4-14

Brittany Lemmon

Andrew Schmalz

Amy Tran

Kathy Tran

 

Presentation Schedule: Section 02, M 6:00-8:50PM

 

Novel Due Date Students
Ellison, Invisible Man

M, 2-4

Bryan Fongers

Vincent Harriger

Caitlyn Knapp

Jim Munchow

Allan Vander Laan

Morrison, Song of Solomon

M, 2-11

Nicole Butcher

Kameron Dysert

Mindy Kalembkiewicz

Aaron Norris

Thomas, Down These Mean Streets

M, 3-10

Amy Bennett

Nicole Kinder

Chad Patton

James Spray

Cisneros, The House on Mango Street
M, 3-17

Melissa Ausúa

Becky Bronsink

Jami Lundburg

Kingston, The Woman Warrior
M, 3-24

Sujen Coyle

Shavon Doyle

Kate Geskus

Erika Lynds

Greg Shumaker

Alexie, Flight

M, 4-14

Matthew Chicola

Patrick Johnson

Kristin Kolehouse

Short Paper

In 5-6 pages, your MLA styled short paper will analyze the artistic, emotional, intellectual, psychological, sexual, social, or spiritual development (or lack thereof) of either Dave, "The Hammer Man" narrator, Janie, John, the Invisible Man, or Milkman. How and why does the protagonist's character and worldview change (or not) from the beginning of the story to the end? Choose one particular aspect of the coming-of-age drama like sexuality, socialization, marginalization, philosophy, or spirituality and analyze how the character progresses, regresses, or stagnates in that area. Obviously, you can bring in other areas of the bildungsroman, but your thesis needs to be focused and your interpretation should be proven with rigorous analysis of textual evidence (quotes).

Research Paper

While the first paper specifically directed you to address a coming-of-age theme, in this paper you can investigate any issue you wish.

Select a text that we've read in class (but not the one on which you wrote your short paper), a text by an author we've read in class, or a text by a minority that we've read in class. See me if you want to pursue a text not covered in class. In a focused, thesis-driven paper, rigorously interpret and analyze that piece using specific textual evidence (i.e., quotes) and literary research (4-5 scholarly journal articles, books, or book chapters) to support your argument. Although this is a research paper, the emphasis should be on your ideas, your way of reading the text. The research is necesary but do not let it overwhelm your voice. I'll be glad to discuss paper topics with you at any time.

Exam

The one hour and fifty minute in class cumulative final exam will consist of comparison and contrast essays. You will be given five or six questions from which you will answer three, thus you should prepare to spend approximately 35 minutes on each essay. I will provide a sheet listing the course's novels, short stories, and films as well as their main characters. The one essay topic that you must answer involves the relationship between dominant and marginalized/minority groups in the stories we have read: how does the dominant group achieve its dominance, how does it treat the minority group, and how does the minority group respond. Besides this mandatory issue, probable issues you should prepare to discuss are class, gender, sexuality, family, and of course development of identity.

 

If I were preparing for this exam, I would create and review a page or two of notes for each author consisting of the following:

I would also compare and contrast the stories in terms of main characters, conflicts, and theme. Although you could simply review your original class notes, I advise composing these set of notes for doing so attunes your thinking and writing process to the cause of the exam in a much more active way than using old notes. Constructing notes is prewriting for the essay exam. Your exam will be accessed on its interpretive and analytical understanding of the stories in terms of character and theme as well as its ability to make connections and distinctions among the stories.

  1. Richard Wright, “The Man Who Was Almost a Man
    • Dave
    • Ma
    • Pa
    • Mister Hawkins
  2. Toni Cade Bambara, “The Hammer Man”
    • narrator
    • Manny
  3. Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
    • Janie Crawford
    • Nanny Crawford
    • Logan Killicks
    • Joe “Jody” Starks
    • Vergible “Tea Cake” Woods
    • Mrs. Turner
    • Pheoby Watson
  4. James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain
    • John Grimes
    • Gabriel Grimes
    • Florence Grimes
    • Elizabeth Grimes
    • Deborah
    • Richard
    • Esther
    • Elisha
  5. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
    • narrator
    • Dr. Bledsoe
    • Mr. Norton
    • Jim Trueblood
    • the veteran
    • Emerson
    • Mary
    • Brother Jack
    • Tod Clifton
    • Ras the Exhorter/Destroyer
    • Rinehart
  6. Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
    • Milkman Dead
    • Pilate Dead
    • Macon Dead
    • Ruther Foster Dead
    • Guitar Bains
    • Hagar
    • Reba
    • First Corinthians Dead
    • Magdalene
    • Circe
    • Henry Porter
  7. Real Women Have Curves
    • Ana Garcia
    • Carmen Garcia
    • Estela Garcia
    • Mr. Guzman
    • Jimmy
  8. Richard Rodriguez, “Aria”
  9. Piri Thomas, Down These Mean Streets
    • Piri Thomas
    • John Thomas
    • Lola Thomas
    • James Thomas
    • Trina
    • Waneko
    • Brew
    • Gerald Andrew West
  10. Junot Diaz, “Drown” and “No Face”
    • narrator (“Drown”)
    • Beto (“Drown”)
    • narrator’s mother (“Drown”)
    • narrator (“No Face”)
  11. Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street
    • Esperanza
    • Sally
    • Nenny
    • Marin
    • Alicia
  12. Ka Vang, “Ms. Pac-Man Ruined My Gang Life”
    • Cindy
    • Nikki
    • Mandy
    • Tiny
  13. Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior
    • Maxine Hong Kingston
    • No Name Woman
    • Brave Orchid
    • Moon Orchid
  14. The Namesake
    • Ashoke Ganguli
    • Ashima Ganguli
    • Gogol Ganguli
    • Sophie Ganguli
    • Maxine
    • Moushumi
  15. Min Jin Lee, Free Food for Millionaires
    • Casey Han
    • Joseph Han
    • Leah Han
    • Tina Han
    • Jay Currie
    • Unu
    • Ella
    • Ted
    • Sabine
    • Hugh Underhill
  16. Sherman Alexie, Flight
    • Michael/Zits
    • Justice
    • Officer Dave
    • Hank Storm
    • 13-year-old during Custer’s Last Stand
    • Gus
    • Jimmy
    • Michael’s father