Final version now posted below, Tuesday, 21 March 2006.

LITR 4333: American Immigrant Literature
University of Houston-Clear Lake

Midterm exam and research report proposal, spring 2006

Date: Tuesday, 21 March

Format: Open-book, open-notebook

2 options for taking exam

·        in-class: 4-6:50; write in ink in bluebook or on notebook paper (fronts and backs of pages okay; single-spacing okay)

·        email: 2 hours and 50 minutes between 3:45pm and 8pm; write in word processing file; attach and paste into email message to whitec@uhcl.edu (or just reply to my email); include log of starts and stops, total time spent

Contents and attachments: Try both of the following

·        Paste the contents of the appropriate word processing file directly into the email message.

·        “Attach” your word processing file to an email message. (My computer and most of its programs work off of Microsoft Word 2000. The only word processing program my computer appears unable to translate is Microsoft Works, though Microsoft Word is fine, as are most others.  If in doubt, save your word processing file in "Rich Text Format" or a “text only” format.)

·       Email address: Send all emails to whitec@uhcl.edu. Note the "c" at the end of "whitec." If you send the email to "white" only, it goes to the wrong professor.

Around 3:45pm, the exam will be emailed to all the class's email addresses and will be posted to the course webpage.

Total time: You may spend the entire 2 hours and 50 minutes. If you spend less than two hours writing, you’re probably not developing enough material.

Email students keep a “log” of your writing times. Stops, starts, and pauses are okay.

Advance preparations:

·        You may complete your Research Report Proposal ahead of time and simply submit it with the rest of your midterm, or you may compose it during the exam period.

·        For your Web Review, you probably need to prepare ahead of time at least by scouting what you want to review, to the extent of making notes on what you want to say about the submissions you review.

·        You may plan, outline, and practice your essay answers as much as helpful, but please do the actual writing within the time limits.

·        If you wish to take the exam earlier in the day or even on a day prior to the exam, email me ahead of time to forewarn me of your plans.

Purpose of midterm exam:

Students develop and express learning on essential issues in American literature, identity, and education. Answers will help the instructor and future students to continue to enhance course. Even if multicultural categories of thought or analysis may appear irrelevant or irritating to some students, the formal structure of the essay constitutes a useful exercise in critical thinking.

Three parts to midterm exam and research report proposal (details below)

1. Web Review: Review submissions to the Model Assignments on course webpage. (30-40 minutes)

2. Long essay: Evaluate “immigrant / minority” distinction as organizing motif for multicultural literature (90-120 minutes)

3. Research report proposal (may be prepared ahead of time) (0-30 minutes)

Part 1. “Web Review.” (30-40 minutes)

Assignment: Review at least 3 submissions on the course’s “Model Assignments” page and write at least three paragraphs indicating what you learned from this review.

Requirements & guidelines:

·        At least one of the model assignments should be a midterm from LITR 4333. You may limit yourself to midterms if you like, but if so, try to look at midterms from more than one semester. Beyond the midterms, you are welcome to review research projects, final exams, and presentations, including materials from the graduate version of the course.

·        By “review,” I mean you should quickly describe what you found and where, why you were interested, and what you appreciated and learned from reading these materials. Of course you may negatively criticize what you found, but overall that’s not the purpose of the exercise.

·        To identify the model passages you’re responding to, you may copy and paste passages, or simply refer to them by paraphrases and brief quotations. Anyway, highlight the language used in the presentations as part of your review.

·        Welcome to comment on what you learn about doing good student work from looking at other students’ submissions.

·        Use the material to reinforce objectives or other ideas you’ve found in American Immigrant Literature.

·        Please consider what you learn from the model assignments that you didn’t learn from in-class instruction.

·        If you’ve done a previous “Web Highlight” as your presentation, you’re welcome to use a portion of that, but you’d also be expected to extend it to some new materials.

Part 2. Long essay on “immigrant / minority” distinction as organizing motif for multicultural literature (90+ minutes)

Assignment: Describe and evaluate “the immigrant story” as a fundamental story-line for organizing American multicultural literature.

Assumptions or premises behind the assignment. (Discussion of these premises is not required, but you are welcome to review, refer to, reinforce or question these in your essay answer.)

1. Multicultural and minority studies are part of the USA’s educational and literary landscape, and may be expected to remain so for the foreseeable future.

2. Apparently most surveys of multicultural literature do not develop formal mechanisms for deciding which ethnic groups are included or why. Such surveys often resolve to “celebrate difference” and operate implicitly on the assumption that “each group is unique” and “everyone gets a turn.” Analysis of groups may be unified in terms of their common exploitation by a dominant culture.

3. Problems rise from this casual inclusiveness. American culture includes so many ethnic groups that no survey can cover them all. Which ethnic groups must be included? What larger categories can ethnic groups be grouped within? Is it possible to move beyond “celebrating difference” and emphasizing victimization? Can different ethnic groups share differences and commonality?

4. “American Immigrant Literature” serves the existing order of multicultural difference by surveying texts by a wide range of American ethnic groups. However, it also develops a standard for grouping and evaluating different ethnic groups. This standard measures both the groups’ differences and their potential for shared experience and identity. This standard is “the immigrant narrative.”

Back to the assignment:

Write an essay describing your experience with the course’s themes and categories, and applying our course readings to these themes and categories.

Absolutely essential elements of the essay:

The primary organization and content of the essay is to describe, compare, and contrast the differing historical backgrounds and literary narratives for the following multicultural categories:

·        Immigrants

·        Minorities

·        Groups that may fall somewhere between immigrant and minority identity to form a new identity or “third way.”

Required references: You are expected to refer to the course objectives, particularly objectives 1 and 3. Your essay should involve at least some discussion of the following issues:

·        assimilation and resistance

·        the ethnic group’s original relation with USA & the resulting Social Contract

·        family structure and individualism

·        the “color code”

Additional writing pointers

·        One possible way to enter or start the essay may be as a “personal path of learning” in terms of identifying and distinguishing types of multicultural or ethnic groups.

·        You are welcome to personalize the essay somewhat, explaining your own personal and educational backgrounds in such subjects, along with your own attitudes toward multicultural literature. But keep returning to the historical backgrounds, the course objectives, and our shared texts.

·        You are not required to agree with the instructor. You are only required to apply the course’s terms and objectives to the texts. The best essay exams follow some main ideas from the course but also extend them in unexpected and rewarding directions.

·        Conclude by summarizing what you have learned. How have these texts, this course, and the exam changed, reinforced, or otherwise developed your perceptions of the USA as a multicultural nation?

·        Is it possible for Americans to talk systematically and constructively about race and ethnicity? If not through this approach, how?

Length of the essay: Different people write paragraphs of different lengths, but this essay should be at least 6-8 paragraphs. You should spend at least one and a half hours writing the essay.

Textual requirements: Refer to at least 6 texts from our course readings—either the daily assigned readings, the poems presented, or the texts (such as Crevecoeur or Equiano) presented on the course webpage.

·        Of the 6 required texts, two should exemplify the immigrant narrative, two should exemplify the minority narrative, and two should be from the “in-between” groups.

·        Of the 6 texts, at least four should be prose pieces from Imagining America, the nonfiction handouts, or the Equiano and Crevecoeur texts on the webpage. Two of the texts may be poems presented from Unsettling America. You may use all prose texts if you prefer.

·        (These are only minimal requirements. Of course you may refer briefly or allusively to more.)

Texts from which to choose for immigrant / minority essay

Immigrant narratives

Fiction and nonfiction: Anzia Yezierska, “Soap and Water” (IA 105-110) [handout]; Nicholasa Mohr, “The English Lesson” (IA 21-34); Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, “Going Home: Brooklyn Revisited” (VA 158-169) [handout]; Sui Sin Far, "In the Land of the Free" (IA 3-11); Gish Jen, “In the American Society” (IA 158-171); Maxine Hong Kingston, from The Woman Warrior (VA 195-200) [handout]; Carlos Bulosan, from American is in the Heart [handout]

Poetry: Joseph Papaleo, “American Dream: First Report,” UA 88; Nellie Wong, “When I was Growing Up,” UA 55

Online: Crevecoeur, Notes from an American Farmer (1782), esp. “What is an American?” & “Description of Charlestown: Thoughts of Slavery.” Copy posted on “Research Links” of course webpage, or use the following URL:

http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/4333/sylsched/crevecoeur.htm

Minority Narratives

Fiction and nonfiction: James Baldwin, from No Name in the Street [handout]; Jewelle Gomez, “Don’t Explain” (182-190); Toni Cade Bambara, “The Lesson” (IA 145-152); Alice Walker, “Elethia” (IA 307-309); Leslie Marmon Silko, “The Man to Send Rain Clouds” (IA 205-209); Louise Erdrich, "American Horse" (IA 210-220); Mei Mei Evans, “Gussuk” (IA 237-251)

Poetry: Patricia Smith, “Blonde White Women,” UA 77; Chrystos, “I Have Not Signed a Treaty with the United States Government,” UA 304

Online: Olaudah Equiano, Interesting Narrative of the Life of Gustavus Vassa, or Olaudah Equiano, the African. Copy posted on “Research Links” of course webpage, or use the following URL:

http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/4333/lecture/equianoexcerpt.htm

Mexican-American, Hispanic, and Afro-Caribbean narratives that may fall or move somewhere between immigrant and minority identities

Fiction and nonfiction: Richard Rodriguez, from Hunger of Memory [handout]; Gary Soto, “Like Mexicans” [handout]; Nash Candelaria, "El Patron" (IA 221-228); Sandra Cisneros, "Barbie-Q" (IA 252-253); Junot Diaz, "How to Date a Browngirl . . . “ (IA 276-279); Oscar Hijuelos, “Visitors, 1965” (IA 310-325) Judith Ortiz Cofer, "Silent Dancing" [handout]; June Jordan, “Report from the Bahamas” [handout]; Edwidge Danticat, “Children of the Sea” (IA 98-112); Paule Marshall, “The Making of a Writer: From the Poets in the Kitchen” [handout]; Paule Marshall, “To Da-Duh, in Memoriam” (IA 368-377)

Poetry: Martin Espada, “Coca-Cola and Coco Frio,” UA 124; Pat Mora, “Immigrants,” UA 119; Tino Villanueva, “Haciendo Apenas la Recoleccion,” UA 191

3. Research report proposal (may be prepared ahead of time)

Note on Research Report Proposal (from syllabus)

As part of your midterm exam, you will write and submit a proposal for the Research Report that is part of your final exam.

·        You may write this proposal ahead of time and simply turn it in with the midterm, or you may write it during the midterm period.

Assignment: Write 3-5 sentences identifying your probable topic, explaining why you chose it, and speculating on what you hope to learn and how. Explain the sources of your interest. Give some indication of what you already know and what you wish to find out.

Range of subjects: You have considerable freedom to choose, but a reader of your proposal should immediately recognize its relevant to a class on immigrant literature and identity.

Possibilities for topics:

·        Literature associated with a particular immigrant ethnic group—identify which group you’re interested in, e. g. Chinese-American, Mexican-American, Turkish-American.

·        History of a particular immigrant group plus or minus some literature or movements associated with them.

·        An immigrant or ethnic group that mixes immigrant and minority traditions, e. g. Haitians, Jamaicans, or other West Indians; Mexican Americans?

·        Literature associated with a particular immigrant writer, e. g. Gish Jen, Frank McCourt, Henry Roth, Crevecoeur. (This would be a career review with some bibliography of major writings.)

·        Some other immigrant-literature-related topic, perhaps of a more formal literary nature focusing on narrative, language issues, publishing challenges, etc.

·        Other topics or areas may be developed as the semester progresses. The main thing is for you to choose a topic you care about and want to learn about and share.

Final Exam with Research Report (2 May 2006)

Part 1: Research Report with bibliography or works cited (1-1.5 hours)

Part 2: Essay question regarding immigrant literature and dominant culture (national migration) (1-1.5 hours)

Relative weight: 50% of final grade   Format: In-class or email

LITR 4332 (Minority Literature) research report proposals:

LITR 4332 (Minority Literature) research report samples:

 (scroll down page)