 |
LITR 4232 American
Renaissance
Final Exam, Spring 2012 Model Assignments |
 |
Due date: 27 April-11 May; deadline noon Friday 11 May unless special permission
Content: 1 mid-length essay (4-6 paragraphs) + 2 long essays (6-9 paragraphs)
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.
-
No copying or lifting from outside sources without attribution.
Email students:
-
Total time writing: 3-4 hours—Divide? e.g., 2 hours Sunday, 2 hours Monday?
-
write & submit answers in any order, but indicate choices
-
all 1 file please—exceptions OK
-
sections’ contents may overlap / repeat; acknowledge, cross-reference, economize
-
If your exam will be late, communicate! (professional courtesy)
Special Requirements:
-
Number & title each essay—the better the title, the better the writing.
-
Refer at least once to a previous LITR 4232 final exam answer or our class’s midterm samples (Model Assignments)(You may worry about cheating or saying something someone else has already written, but I'm impressed by references to learning from previous exams and the exam usually benefits.)
A. Mid-length essay (4-6
paragraphs)
Choose ONE of these 2 options,
either 1a or 1b (1b has sub-options)
A1. Review & prioritize your learning in American Renaissance. If someone comparably educated asked you what you gained from our course (and for any reason you weren’t inclined to gripe), how would you answer?
Possible emphases:
-
2-3 uses for course and / or texts; questions you had about literature that have been answered or came into focus
-
Personal / professional applications; applications to career or general learning
-
Usefulness of literary-historical studies? What clicked and why?
-
What do your interests in the course reveal about your profile as a Literature major, and how do these interests connect to academic or professional interests beyond this course?
-
If the course wasn't your preference, what can you make of it?
-
Highlights of semester. Connections to other courses. How are you maturing as a reader and writer?
Not looking for cheerleading but an intelligent measurement of what you learned and can imagine doing with it. If you have criticisms, make them work for you and me. You'll be judged not for flattery or disapproval but for your thinking and writing about our texts, subject, and classroom related to your sense of needs for literature and teaching in our society.
Potential themes and links: Critical thinking; unity / transition in writing; Student leadership; Literature as entertainment + improvement, escape + engagement; "close reading"; "Historicism":
A2. Mid-length essay on 1 or 2 terms or subjects: (you may choose one only or connect two)
Overall assignment: Write 4-6 paragraphs defining or describing the term or subject and its significance; apply to at least two texts and refer to appropriate web links. Summarize an overall point about learning experience.
-
Passive Resistance / Civil Disobedience
-
Sentimental / Domestic Literature in the American Renaissance (+ / - sentimental stereotypes)
-
Religious literature or references discussed as literature in public schools?
-
Transcendentalism
Texts to consider:
-
Passive Resistance & Civil Disobedience: Thoreau's Resistance to Civil Government (1849), Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1851-2); civil disobedience tradition(s)
-
Sentimental / Domestic Literature in the American Renaissance (+ or - sentimental stereotypes): sentiment or sentimentality, domestic literature, sentimental stereotypes; Susan B. Warner, The Wide, Wide World (1850); Maria Susanna Cummins, The Lamplighter (1854); Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1851-2); Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861); for sentimental stereotypes. consider Harriet Beecher Stowe, "Sojourner Truth, the Libyan Sibyl"; Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle or The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
-
Religious literature or references discussed as literature in public schools? the 2nd Great Awakening; Beecher family; William Apess (Pequot), "An Indian's Looking-Glass for the White Man"; Susan B. Warner, The Wide, Wide World (1850); Maria Susanna Cummins, The Lamplighter (1854); Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1851-2); Harriet Beecher Stowe, "Sojourner Truth, the Libyan Sibyl"; Frederick Douglass, A Narrative of the Life (1845); George Whitefield, sermon excerpts; Abraham Lincoln, The House Divided Speech; The Gettysburg Address; The 2nd Inaugural Address; Rebecca Harding Davis, Life in the Iron Mills (1861)
-
Transcendentalism: Transcendentalism, Ralph Waldo Emerson, selections from Nature (1836), Margaret Fuller, The Great Lawsuit, Henry David Thoreau, Resistance to Civil Government (1849), Emerson, Thoreau
B. Long Essay Questions
Answer Two Questions
(6-9 paragraph essays)
B1. Essay Question 1. Briefly define the Gothic & describe its various characteristics and uses in 3-4 course readings.
Briefly review
Irving’s or Cooper’s use of the Gothic
(pre-midterm)
Refer more extensively to Poe,
Hawthorne, and/or Davis.
(You may use Poe’s stories, poems, or both.)
You may also refer to
at least one other text or author
(The Gothic may appear only briefly or tangentially in ways we may not have
discussed, but there are plenty of examples).
Conclusion: consider the significance of the Gothic. Why do authors return to it? Obviously it’s a hook for readers, but what does it achieve besides interest or entertainment?
B2.
Essay
question 2. A
constantly changing society like
Most Americans react to our revolutionary society
in two extreme ways:
moral
absolutism—“A
woman’s place is in the home,” “It’s their own fault,” and “Just say no”
(upside: definite, absolute, and certain; downside: simplistic, polarizing,
self-righteous)
or
moral relativism:
"Live and let live," "You are not the judge of me," "As long as you feel all
right about it . . . ." (upside: tolerance, open-mindedness; downside:
indifference, casualness, complications)
Rather than choosing between intense
narrow-mindedness or careless open-mindedness, classic writers like
Hawthorne, Whitman,
Margaret Fuller,
Susan B. Warner (Wide, Wide World), Harriet Beecher
Stowe, and
Emily Dickinson,
or great leaders like Abraham
Lincoln,
and minority writers like Harriet Jacobs
or Frederick Douglass admit that
morality is
important but also that it’s
complicated.
Referring to writings by at least
two of these writers (and to others in or beyond
course for comparison or contrast),
describe how moral problems are depicted vividly and
significantly but without a simple, reductive moral judgment of who is right or
wrong, or innocent or guilty.
Give a
picture of the moral situation in which characters
or people find themselves.
What does a reader
learn and what
pleasure or benefit may s/he
take from such writings?
What responsibilities, rewards, and risks of studying complex moral issues as here?
In education based on statistical bubble-testing, may such studies by defended as critical thinking?
B3. Essay question 3.
“American Renaissance”
surveys literature in a dynamic & formative period of American history. How have
our readings developed your ideas of history, or how has history developed your
idea of literature?
“Developed” may mean
confirmed, changed, challenged, extended, etc.
Two ways to organize:
Start with interesting,
applicable, and resonant historical fact(s) or idea(s) you learned, then develop
through text analysis or reaction
or
Start with texts that
brought history suddenly and dramatically to life while explaining your
reactions.
As usual, don’t treat your texts separately but compare, contrast, connect.
Text requirements: three texts from course, connected to each other by history or learning experience.
From Obj. 3 methods / pedagogy:
Possible websites: civil disobedience tradition(s); The 2nd Great Awakening, Mexican-American War
Possible authors / texts: Alcott;
(New Question--no models)
B4. Essay question 4. Write an essay comparing classic, popular, and representative authors and literature in terms of their differing (or overlapping) styles, values, audiences, and appeals (Objective 1).
Define and give examples of classical, popular, and representative literature from our course and beyond. (Suggestions from our course below. Don’t just rename but describe them in ways that fit your definitions.)
Some authors may fit more than one category.
What different pleasures, benefits, and challenges does each category offer a reader in our time? How were they received in their own time and by periods following their publication?
For what different purposes are these types of literature written?
What may one learn from reading across these different categories of literature?
What different readers might be attracted to the different categories?
Which balance of categories, is most appropriate for a college literature class like ours? What about other literature classrooms?
As usual in an essay like this, do a lot of comparing and contrasting from start to finish, for the sake of sparking ideas and weaving organization.
Summarize your learning experience with possible applications to research or teaching.
websites: classic, popular, and representative authors and literature; Alternative American Renaissance
Examples from our course readings: (not exhaustive—welcome to bring in others)
“Classic” authors and texts: Dickinson; Hawthorne; Emerson; Cooper; Irving; Thoreau
“Popular” authors and texts: Irving, Poe, Cooper, Stowe; you may also refer to popular authors beyond this course.
“Representative” texts and authors: William Apess; Cherokee Memorials; Frederick Douglass; Sojourner Truth; Harriet Jacobs; Margaret Fuller; Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
*Also consider authors who combine or cross categories: Poe, Douglass, Stowe, Irving, Fuller, Cooper.
