LITR 4232 American Renaissance
syllabus details
Midterm
Date: 4 October 2010--email midterms due by 7 October noon

Open-book, open-notebook.  Use course materials + outside sources (<optional).
No direct coaching or contributions from another person in writing final version.
No copying or lifting from outside sources without attribution.

Timing of exam: (Instructor office hours 1-4 exam day; 281 283 3380; whitec@uhcl.edu)

In-class students: bring notes, texts, laptop, outlines, drafts to class-time, 1-3:50, 4 October; write exam in 3 hours

Email students: write and submit midterm anytime after 27 September class—deadline Thursday 7 October noon (receipt acknowledged within 24 hours)

  • Total time writing: 3-4 hours--Divide? e.g., 2 hours Sunday, 2 hours Monday.

  • write & submit answers in any order, but indicate numbers & options

  • all 1 file please—exceptions OK

  • Number & title each essay or section--the better the title, the better the writing.

  • sections’ contents may overlap / repeat; acknowledge, cross-reference, economize

  • If your exam will be late, communicate! (professional courtesy)

unity / transition

paragraph structure

Instructional Materials

 

Model Assignments

previous midterm assignments

2008 midterm samples

2006 midterm samples

2004 midterm samples

 

4-5 parts to midterm

1. Long essay describing and focusing learning, challenges, issues concerning American Renaissance or American Romantic literature. (6-8 paragraphs)

2. Short essay (4-6 paragraphs) on 1 of 2 options (or combinations as inspired) :

  • 2a. Highlight and analyze a passage from our course readings--your best textual experience  in comprehending course contents (terms, themes, objectives, class discussion)

  • 2b. Favorite term, objective, concept in course + explanation & application to 1-2 readings

3. Web highlights: Review at least 3 posts from course website's Model Assignments (4-6 paragraphs)

4. Research proposal (2+ paragraphs) indicating research project & options

5. (Optional): Describe & evaluate your reading experiences with our online texts.

1. Long essay describing and focusing learning, challenges, issues concerning the American Renaissance or Romantic Period of American literature. (6-8 paragraphs)

Referring to 3-4 texts, write a readable, unified, and compelling essay describing and evaluating your learning experience so far.

Possible approaches:

  • If a principal, a department head, or a former teacher asked what you are learning in American Renaissance, what answer could you write?

  • If a younger student began studying the subject and asked what you know, how would you make your answer interesting, organized, and rewarding?

  • Explain the course's contents to someone starting our course as you did 6 weeks ago.

  • (Though you may address an outside reader, also consider how your answers would sound to a member of our course, like me.)

Or simply organize, unify, and prioritize your learning experience. What matters and why? Discuss texts, objectives, terms, class style, the American past and present.

You may focus briefly on a very specific aspect of the course that appeals to you, but connect to the course’s larger issues, threads, objectives, and texts. Express understanding of the whole course, but welcome to shift focus as you go.

Two aspects or dimensions to your answer:

1. Understanding and explaining course contents:

  • Textual references
  • Course terms, themes, objectives
  • Lecture / discussion

You can't cover everything & aren't expected to--emphasize, prioritize, organize some materials at the expense of others, leading to the 2nd aspect, less substantial but also essential:

2. Extend, flavor, freshen, update course contents with your insights, text interpretations & connections, or outside examples of terms, themes, objectives.

Most students can reproduce what they hear in class. To excel, students make course materials matter for them and their world—new examples, unexpected interpretations, fresh connections, so the past matters to the future.

2. Short essay (4-6 paragraphs). Choose & indicate either 2a or 2b. If  inspired to combine the options, announce at start of answer.

2a. Highlight a passage from our course readings—your best textual experience before the midterm—explaining why it made an impression on you. Analyze the passage’s language, how it works and connects. Apply to course terms and/or objectives + extend or apply beyond course.

Copy and paste the passage into your exam, or refer to it so instructor can find it or know what you’re talking about. (Doesn’t count as essay length)

You may refer to more than 1 passage, but more material may equal shallower analysis. If 2 passages, be sure to connect.

References to discussion or lecture welcome; otherwise analyze text on its own terms, in larger context, by connecting to other texts.

Make it matter. Why or how does the passage speak to literary and/or cultural issues in and beyond our course?

[One way to make your passage matter is to connect it to other course readings; e.g. Ligeia as dark lady > Cora in Mohicans]

samples from 2008 midterms (Self-Selected Passage Analysis)

samples from 2006 midterms (Identify & Signify)

2b. Favorite term, objective, concept in course + why + application to 1-2 readings

What  term or idea appeals to you the most & why? What concepts does it explain? Why does the term or its applications matter? Two textual references may be better than one.

Connect, compare, or contrast with other terms.

How has your understanding evolved?

This is a new question for LITR 4232, so no midterm samples from earlier semesters.

3. Course web reviews: Review 3(+) posts from course website's Model Assignments

Assignment: Review at least 3 submissions on the course webpage’s “Model Assignments” page and write 5-7 paragraphs (total) on what you found and learned.

Requirements & guidelines:

At least one Model Assignment must be a midterm from LITR 4232's previous semesters. You may limit to midterms, but research projects, research proposals, final exams, and presentations may help your proposal.

“Review”: describe what interested you, where, why, what you learned. You may criticize what you found, but not required.

To identify passages, copy and paste brief selections into your web review or refer to them using locations, paraphrases, summaries, and brief quotes. (Both options in models.) Either way, highlight and discuss language used in the passages as part of your commentary. Critique what you learn.

What did you learn from reviewing model assignments that you didn't learn from in-class instruction?

Models of web reviews from LITR 5731 American Immigrant Literature

Web Review models from LITR 5731 Minority Literature

4. Research proposal (2+ paragraphs) indicating research project & options

proposals 2006

proposals 2004

Any of your answers may refer to your research plans, but #4 is required as a separate element.

5. (Optional): Describe & evaluate your reading experiences with our online texts.

Write as much as you like, but no discredit if you don't.

  • Describe how you read our online texts--onscreen or print out?

  • How helpful are highlights and annotations?

  • What difficulties or advantages compared to standard anthology? Preference?

  • Any observations or suggestions welcome.

Midterm purpose: exercise & assess understanding and expression of course contents in readable, unified writing. 

Preparing for exam:

·        Preview, take notes, outline, pre-write, practice as helpful. (Esp. preview web highlight selections)

·        Discuss questions, answers, references, and strategies with classmates, instructor, or Writing Center--not cheating to help each other prepare.

·        Assumption: you’ll write your final draft in 3-4 hours. Don’t just copy out what you’ve already drafted, but rethink, improve, add examples, analyze examples, summarize, organize, emphasize.

·       Preview unity/transition and paragraph structure

Writing the exam:

  • Don’t think of reasons *not* to try out potentially good material that interests you and may go somewhere.

  • If you run out of material, develop examples. Don't worry about instructor being bored.

  • Review unity/transition and paragraph structure

  • Take extra time to review and improve submission. When draft is finished, rest and return later.

Documentation?--No documentation required for references to course texts except for citing author, title, & context.

Example from a 2006 midterm:

In “Resistance to Civil Government” Thoreau uses a mix of Romantic language and sublime imagery to make the individual the supreme authority from which governments derive their power: “when an acorn and a chestnut fall side by side, the one does not remain inert to make way for the other, but both obey their own laws, and spring and grow and flourish as best they can, till one, perchance, overshadows and destroys the other.  If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man.” The moral reference to nature is specifically Romantic in that it recalls the simplicity of the natural world and the natural order. The analogy of competition requires the reader to consider the role of governments and individuals in both their natural urges and their moral obligations to themselves and each other. Towards the end, Thoreau argues, “There will never be a really free and enlightened State, until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.”  The passage's uplifting language promotes the status of the individual.  Words such as “enlightened,” “higher,” and “independent” will probably evoke a higher plane of thought than might usually be associated with the concepts of government.

Instructor’s response:

7-10 days after turning in exam, you’ll receive an email with your midterm grade and 1-3 paragraphs of feedback.

Feedback is brief:

  • many students don’t read instructor’s comments, read only enough to shrug, or read on cellphone

  • exam's purpose may be less instruction than exercise of memory, critical thinking, writing

  •  ask for more feedback or a conference—I’m pleased when you do

Response to research proposal may be only “yes” + brief note since many students change their research option or topic. The proposal’s purpose is less to commit than to start thinking and planning.

Grading standards:

Quality of writing: interest and importance of theme; thematic organization and development ; transitions or connections between parts; general unity of writing; surface quality (absence of chronic errors); inclusion of titles: unity/transition; paragraph structure

Evidence of learning: All midterms must competently use central terms, themes, and objectives with text-examples highlighted in lecture-discussion.

Extension of learning: Better midterms refresh, extend, or vary terms, themes, and examples with student's own language and examples from wider reading, viewing, and experience beyond course.00

Dependable distinction between competent and outstanding essays:

Competent essays treat texts or authors in isolation from each other, picking up one text or author but then forgetting it and putting it down when they proceed to the next text or author.

Better essays connect one text or author to another, looking back and forth from one part to the next, building on earlier points and remembering what they said before, extending starting points to larger points.

 

I try not to do “rules-based” grading, so don’t be nervous about me busting you for something minor or ridiculous. Emphasizing writing may sound rules-based, but purpose is to develop your ideas rather than judging right and wrong.