Format: Open-book, open-notebook

Options for taking exam:

• in-class: 7-9:50pm during class period 3 May; write in ink in bluebook or on notebook paper (fronts and backs of pages OK; single-spacing OK) or use a laptop; in-class midterms completed in 3 hours are graded separately from email exams.
  
• email: anytime after class on Thursday 26 April and before noon Saturday, 5 May; write in Word or Rich Text Format file; attach and paste into email message to whitec@uhcl.edu (or reply to my email)

Email students may take breaks and write parts in installments + review & revise.

Attendance not required on 3 May unless you take the exam in-class. Instructor will keep office hours during class period. If you plan to take the exam in class, please notify instructor.

Format: Open-book, open-notebook

• Use course materials + outside sources (<optional).

• No direct coaching or outside contributions from another person in writing final version, but you can ask for help proofreading as long as editor reviews changes with you. Welcome to consult beforehand with instructor or Writing Center.

• No copying or lifting from outside sources without attribution.

Contents (details further down)

Question 1: 1-hour+ essay on overall learning experience in Early American Literature w/ references to research posts

Question 2: (2 options)

2a. 1-hour+ essay on 3-4 texts that challenged, changed, or extended your thinking about American literature and/or history. Analyze texts individually and intertextually with your other text selections. Unify texts & ideas into a single overall thesis about early American literature and/or culture.

2b. 1-hour+ essay reviewing and comparing 3 of our four periods of study (Renaissance, 17c, Enlightenment, Romanticism)

Plus or Minus: Extra paragraphs reviewing and explicating Charlotte Temple and Edgar Huntly if you don't include them on Essay 1 or 2.

Special requirements:

• Number & title each essay—the better the title, the better the writing.

• Refer at least once somewhere in your exam to a previous final exam from LITR 4231 2010 final exam submissions or to a midterm from our class this semester. (See LITR 4231 Model Assignments.)

• You may refer to texts from across the semester, not just since the midterm, but most of your texts should be post-midterm.

• Refer to at least one web review (not web highlights on midterm—web reviews were class presentations). 

• Charlotte Temple and Edgar Huntly must be extensively featured and referenced at some point(s) in your exam. That is, you need somehow and somewhere to demonstrate that you did the required reading and thinking. If you can't work them into your essays, write some separate paragraphs on either or both.

Format / process notes

• Don’t copy out long passages from texts. Quote briefly; otherwise simply remind your reader of events, characters, situations in texts. No need for documentation unless it’s something surprising. Refer to texts by full title and full name of author the first time; abbreviations welcome thereafter; e. g., “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” > “Sinners”

• Organize your essays around a central theme or problem. Keep returning to theme and developing as you write and revise. 

• Confer with Writing Center—no guarantees of success, but your exam will be better than otherwise. Consult with instructor or other mentors. Use common sense to manage conflicting advice.

Audience: a member of our class or a student a future semester of this course, or maybe even your family or other teachers, so they may see what you learned. Your ultimate audience is the instructor, but my response may address whether you demonstrated learning that another reader might follow, comprehend, and care about.

Content Details: Essay 1

Question 1: 1-hour+ essay on overall learning experience in Early American Literature w/ references to research posts

Length: 6-9 paragraphs

Required references:

1-2 Objectives: you may only cover part of an objective, but use its terms and develop its idea(s). If you can connect to other objectives, all the better. Don’t just mention the objective(s), but work with them—reconnect and extend.

Overview of 3-4 course texts, mostly since midterm: you may cover 1-2 texts in more detail than others. Most important: connect texts to each other—compare subjects, themes, characters.

Details / suggestions:

This essay may extend ideas in your midterm—welcome to review and make references, redeveloping your ideas and applying them to new materials

Topic choice and development: You may range among texts, periods, course organization or style, but above all have an overall point about your learning experience to develop, stretch, or alter as you work through materials.

Possible organization: point A to point B

• Point A: What I came in knowing and why

• Point B: What I read and learned, and how it has extended, challenged, or changed my knowledge

• (possible) Point C: What would I want to read or learn next?

This simple organization can be used overall and in parts of the essay—repeat as helpful!

Essay 2: choose either 2a or 2b (or make some combination)

Question 2a: 1-hour+ essay on 3-4 texts that challenged, changed, or extended your thinking about American literature and/or history. Analyze texts individually and intertextually with your other text selections. Unify texts & ideas into a single overall thesis about early American literature and culture. Make your exam matter to a reader living now.

Length: 6-9 paragraphs

To develop thesis, emphasize what you learn by reading these texts individually and together. 

1-2 Objectives: you may only cover part of an objective, but use its terms and develop its idea(s). If you can connect to other objectives, all the better. Don’t just mention the objective(s), but work with them—reconnect and extend.

Possible unifying themes:

Dominant culture or multicultural studies

Women in literature and culture

Development of literature as we know it

The gothic or sublime

Other formal or genre emphases like poetry, fiction, religious or political texts

Other options: start with text selection or theme selection, or develop them together

Unity / diversity: who tells the story of America? (obj. 4—which America to teach?)

Voices and images of women and ethnicities (obj. 4)

How to tell a single story about a diverse America? (obj. 6)

Material and spiritual aspects of American culture

What's surprising and familiar about early American literature

2b. 1-hour+ essay reviewing and comparing 3 of our four periods of study (Renaissance, 17c, Enlightenment, Romanticism)

Write a unified essay containing the following elements:

• Review "periods" webpage & discuss purpose and limits of studying literature & history by periods.

• Select three of the periods covered by our course for review and discussion. (You may do all 4 if so inclined.)

Renaissance

Seventeenth Century

Enlightenment / Age of Reason

Romanticism

• Choose from four to six texts total from our course to illustrate and complicate these periods. Some texts may embody more than one period—no problem, just explain.

• Refer to at least one piece of music from our music web reviews

Native American Music; European Renaissance music; Baroque music; "Classical" Classical Music (Enlightenment); Romantic Music 

• Welcome to refer to one or more works of art from our visual art web reviews

Enlightenment / Romantic visual art; Neo-Classical Style of Architecture

Grading criteria:

general guidelines for exam grades

• The best exams, even from students who don’t get everything, are essays where I see people learning something, making connections, and enjoying the possibilities. If you’re bored and would rather do something else, I soon feel that way too.

• Another key is how much your writing used the course's terms and objectives as opposed to talking about whatever you would have said without taking the course. Above all, don’t talk like celebrities or athletes about dreams and how anyone can do anything if they only believe in themselves. Yawn! . . . that’s nice but can you tell me something we didn’t know already?

Content and organization are inseparable. The more you organize, the more your ideas develop and connect to others, forming larger ideas.

Advice while prepping / drafting:

Organization: Unity / Transition / Continuity

Content: If you're running short of material or ideas, look for more examples or analyze examples further.

• Use language of course to write what matters to you so it matters to others. Blend your language and ideas with those of the course.

• Connect, connect, connect.

• Pause and summarize points.

• Maximize use of course web sites.

Final steps:

• Review & edit your essay. Make it better.

• Emphasize your main points. Connect ideas. Develop examples.

• Remember what teachers have told you about your writing.

• Examinations are not just chances to show what you already knew or to wish you’d known more beforehand—exams test learning in action.

• See grading standards above.

• Rest & edit before sending. Surface quality is part of your grade. If you have trouble with spelling, word endings, punctuation, etc., get help from a mentor or tutor as long as they explain changes.

Most common problems in midterms:

• Forgetting or ignoring objectives and course terms.

• Failing to review or even mention discussion of terms in class or on linked pages. (A real killer is starting a discussion of the Enlightenment by citing Webster's Dictionary and ignoring what we discussed and what the links provided.)

• Forgetting or failing to proofread, edit, and improve before submission.

• Students writing like they'd never think about any of this unless I made them.

• Students find all kinds of excuses not to write about what they're thinking about. Don't fear repeating or overlapping answers. Just be self-conscious with cross-referencing, showing that you know what you're doing.