Student-Designed Essay Assignment

Your essay should discuss 3-4 texts since the midterm, but it may use additional texts before and since midterm.

Possible topics (not in priority order)

1. Your personal insight about tragedy and its related genres; or about women in tragedy; or about O'Neill. This "personal insight" could be quite specific, but relate it to broader course lessons, themes, backgrounds.

2. Your general "learning curve" about tragedy and related genres across the semester. Where did you start and where have you arrived? What do you carry out of the course?

3. As an added dimension, those of you who were interested in the way the course was run are welcome to reflect on some of the teaching / learning aspects of this "student-centered" classroom. You're not expected to sing its praises but evaluate how ell it worked, what was gained, and what perhaps sacrificed by running a course this way. How transferable are these methods to other levels or types of education?

4. If you want a more specific, definable question, you can answer one of the questions asked on the 2002 final exam, or some combination of these questions. But develop the question so that it fills half the exam period rather than a third, as it was originally designed to do.

5. Interplay of tragedy, comedy, romance as imitations of reality and appeals to audience

6. Tragedy as a search for truth, development of reason and exercise of learning.

7. Tragedy as catharsis, for playwright and / or audience.

8. Any combination of above +- added elements.

One addition to requirements for final:

Make at least one reference to course webpage (this class's midterm samples, any class's final samples, research reports, genre presentation postings)