Final Exam (3 July 2006)

Relative weight: 35-40% of final grade   Format: In-class or email

Format: Take-home or in-class. Open-book, open-notebook.

Schedule:

*        No attendance expectations on 3 July.

*      If you wish to take the exam in-class, simply show up at our classroom during the regular class period with paper, ink, and as many notes, print-outs, and books as you like. You must complete the exam between 3 and 6pm on 3 July. Writing on fronts and backs of pages is acceptable. In-class exams are read separately from email exams to limit impact of unequal times, opportunities, legibility, etc.

*        If you write the exam online, you are not expected to spend more than about 4 hours writing the exam. Two and a half-hours of writing may be adequate.

*        You may write and submit your exam via email any time after 6pm, Thursday, 29 June. The absolute deadline for email submission is 8pm, 3 July. If you can’t make that deadline, be in touch to explain your situation.

*        Email students keep a log of your writing schedule so that I can have some idea of how much time students are spending. Stops, starts, and pauses are okay. 

Content: 2 essays of at least one hour each. Write in your preferred order. 

Preview note: Overlap between the contents of the two essays and with your midterm may be inevitable. Cross-referencing is preferable to repetition. However you handle things, you are welcome to regard either or both of these essay assignments as extensions or complements to your midterm essay and to redevelop or extend ideas you started there.

Essay 1 assignment: Comprehensive review of course and your learning curve.

Length: 1.5 – 2 hours. 6-9 paragraphs? (depending on length, etc.)

Texts: Refer to at least four course readings, though a few more are welcome.  Welcome to refer to poetry from presentations.

Please give a title to your essay.

Topic: Since this course attempts a comprehensive approach to American multicultural  literature and history, this final essay seeks a broad and comprehensive response by the student. The essay will be evaluated on the general quality of its writing and reference to our shared texts and objectives, but also for its attempt to explain its interests within the broad American multicultural landscape described by this course.

Write a reflective essay describing and evaluating your learning experience with this course in terms of your own interests, the course’s readings, and our use of the Immigrant Narrative as a model or yardstick for describing multicultural American literature.

Assume the perspective of a student, educator, or citizen interested in multicultural issues. Such an interest does not predetermine expectations of your political, personal, or professional positions on such subjects. Welcome to provide representative details of your own backgrounds or situations, but not required.

Your audience will be the instructor, but also future students. Given the range of issues and texts this course might cover, and which constantly faced us, how did you make the course work for you?

Relate your personal and professional interests to the course’s texts, subject matter, and objectives. What did you enter the class knowing? What did you wish to learn? How far have those interests been satisfied? What was useful or helpful to have learned, and why? What can you do with what you've learned? What might be your next move?

Coordinate your personal and professional interests with those of the course, particularly its readings, objectives, and use of the immigrant narrative as a key to the American multicultural landscape of minority, immigrant, and dominant cultures. What are the advantages and shortcomings of our approach this semester? What other possibilities for organizing multicultural literature might you propose? Is there an argument for simply “celebrating difference?”

As part of your expression of how this class may have served your interests, briefly review one or both of your research postings. How did that freelance work express your interests in terms of or separate from the general course? This part may be separate, but ideally it would coordinate with the rest of the essay to describe your personal and professional interests in terms of family background, acquaintance, teaching or learning environments, political, social, and religious movements, or reading experience in schools or beyond.

This longish description is only to provide possibilities to those uncertain how to proceed. You can't do everything listed above, so do not regard it as a comprehensive checklist. Welcome to develop your own angle with the requirements indicated above. I’ll read your essay on its merits as long as it relates to the course’s readings and objectives.

Essay 2 assignment: Identifying and criticizing America’s dominant culture—or not!

Length: 1 – 1.5 hours. 5-7 paragraphs? (depending on length, etc.)

Texts: Refer to readings of the Exodus story, Of Plymouth Plantation, and two other relevant texts from this semester (e. g., Crevecoeur, the excerpt from Hunting Mr. Heartbreak, but other texts are possible). Refer at least one of the “dominant culture moments” in the class presentations.

Please give a title to your essay.

Topic: This course has attempted to identify an elusive subject that is unattractive if not repellent to some students of multiculturalism: the manifestations, makeup, and ideology of the USA’s dominant culture. For relevance to immigrant literature: What kind of culture do immigrants assimilate to? 

Reviewing required and selected texts, consider the following questions:

What are we talking about when we discuss the dominant culture? Is it an elite group or a larger mass? What are some of its potential identifying markers, institutions, or styles?

What are some of the attractions and repulsions, rewards and punishment attendant to such an investigation? Why does the dominant culture tend to resist or elude analysis or even the impulse to analyze?

In terms of Objective 4, how helpful is the "national migration" variation on the immigrant narrative in identifying the dominant culture and measuring its relations to immigrant and minority cultures?

In what ways does the dominant culture provide a functioning "base culture" that maintains or redevelops connections to the traditional past even as it progresses rapidly into a relentlessly revolutionary future? Consider the primacy of literacy and the combination of future-oriented capitalism and "old-time" Protestant Christianity.

Describe the most characteristic qualities of the dominant culture. Consider attitudes toward education, intermarriage, mobility, and the family.

Do not regard this long topic-description as a checklist. There's not enough time! Develop an angle on the subject that connects to essential texts, objectives, and ideas from the course. As with the first question, welcome to identify your personal and professional backgrounds and attitudes relative to this issue.

As a unifying theme, consider what you learn from this part of the course and this final writing exercise.