Length: 6-8 paragraphs total ( 3+ double-spaced page equivalent)

Contents (mostly repeats or redevelopments from Midterm1 rewrite, with notes on rewriting and extending):

"Working Definition" = use the Introduction to Genres to define the meaning, importance, and limits of "genre." Specifically define and distinguish Subject / Audience genre, Formal genre, and Narrative genre with brief, general examples. This "working definition" can be revised, questioned, or extended as you work with examples of your chosen genre.

Continue illustrating and analyzing the genre you chose in Midterm1: If you have a main example—e.g., When Harry Met Sally for "Romantic Comedy"—introduce it early in your essay and use it to illustrate and explain the three categories of genre. Revise, extend, and unify your definitions, example-descriptions, and analyses started in Midterm1 and Midterm2. Explain so that someone who doesn't know what you're talking about can understand what you're talking about, both in definitions and examples. 

Use critical-thinking pattern of definition-example-analysis, in which a working definition is tested against examples, then revised or extended based on how the example proves, disproves, or varies the definition. Result: refreshed and continuing learning about genre and of text-examples.

• Requirement: You must describe or analyze your chosen genre through all three categories from Introduction to Genres:

  • Subject / Audience genre

  • Formal genre

  • Narrative genre (aspect most emphasized in course)

If you introduced enough examples on the midterm drafts, you may simply improve your explanations of those examples. If you didn't introduce enough examples or have thought of some new ones that help, add 1 or 2 more.

• Your research sources may include the Introduction to Genres page and another term-page from our course website or my coursesite's terms index.

General revision advice based on Midterm1 & Midterm2 submissions:

Introduce your main example(s) as early as possible, and use it or them to help explain the three genre categories. For instance, if your genre is "horror" and your main example is It Follows, introduce It Follows in your opening paragraph and use it to illustrate all three categories of genre: subject/audience, formal, narrative.

Part 2. Complete "Learning about Tragedy" Essay: Revise, improve, & extend essay begun in Midterms 1 & 2 on learning experience with tragedy, extending to include Hippolytos, Phaedra, and Desire Under the Elms. (Revise / improve midterm2 draft & add at least 5 paragraphs for 12+ paragraph total.)

Assignment:  Correct, improve, and extend your Learning Essay 1 from Midterm1. Review instructor's feedback. Rethink ideas and extend examples with more analysis and citations of texts and course website resources.

Required references to texts: As examples and illustrations for your learning experince in Tragedy since Midterm2, you must refer to passages in Euripides's Hippolytos, Racine's Phaedra, and O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms.

If my response-notes to your midterms say you did not adequately refer to our course readings in your Learning Essay's earlier drafts, incorporate references to examples from Oresteia trilogy (Agamemnon + selections from Libation Bearers & Euminides); Mourning Becomes Electra / Homecoming, and Lysistrata; plus or minus other plays (or films) you know or class has presented, like The Bacchae. Your essay is also expected to refer to all three of the Family of Oedipus cycle (Oedipus the King, Antigone, & Oedipus at Colonus) as well as to the selected scenes from Hamlet.

After improving or redeveloping your Midterm2 draft, transition to or unify those paragraphs with more paragraphs describing your learning experience since Midterm2. In these new paragraphs, focus particularly on Hippolytos, Phaedra, and Desire Under the Elms.  What have you learned that is worth learning (or teaching) about tragedy, genre, psychology, families, fate and free will, the individual and the community (or authority), Western Civilization, or other themes relevant to these plays?

Purpose of text references: Students who don't read assignments for Literature classes usually can't keep up with discussions, terms, objectives, and examples, or at best they minimally repeat references to examples described in class. If you want to be taken seriously as a good student, you need to demonstrate you can apply the course's lessons to your assigned readings. (If teachers-in-training don't read your assignments, they can't complain when their students don't read theirs.) 

Consistent themes throughout course:

Depending on your emphases, you need not refer to every theme, but the best essays unify as many ideas and texts as possible.

Part 3. Complete Research Report: Write at least 8-10 substantial paragraphs with four sources completing your Research Report on selected special topic.

Summarize your research and learning on your special topic and describe how what you've learned relates to our course on Tragedy (or to your teaching of tragedy or genres).

Research requirements: For the final exam, four research sources providing information on your topic are required. These sources may be from our course website or from beyond. You should try to feature at least one or more source from beyond our website.

Especially consider using "essential instructional page(s)" provided for each special topic.

Also some of your research sources may be from Model Assignments provided with your special topic.

The best responses to this assignment typically find more advanced sources beyond our course website. Other recommended research sources include reference books (encyclopedias, handbooks), MLA searches, and interviews with former teachers or professors.

You don't have to agree with your research sources; you can treat them as material to differ with or to provide contrary information; but you have to refer to them. Avoid writing what you could have written without taking our course--writing off the top of your head and repeating familiar cliches makes for bad writing and reading. 

Choice of Special Topic: You are expected to continue the topic you proposed in Midterm1. However, you may change topics as long as you explain why you originally chose your first topic and why you are switching to the new topic. (This explanation may be brief, but make it meaningful in terms of your learning.)

Assignment description: Write a complete report describing your research and learning concerning your Special Topic.

• Organize the information you found and review how you may use it, either in your knowledge of literature, college career, teaching, or personal development.

• The emphasis is on information, not opinion and analysis, though some summary, analysis, and evaluation is welcome and expected. It's a report foremost.

• You are encouraged to connect your findings to course objectives or texts.

Default organization: The path of least resistance is to describe and unify your report as a "quest" or "journey of learning."

Audience: Future students may use your research reports as sources for theirs. Appeal to their interests and explain why they should care about what you learned.

Works Cited / Bibliography: Include a list of your major research sources (at least four total for Final Exam).

• MLA style is preferred, but other standard forms are acceptable. Don't spend too much time fussing over forms when you should be organizing your research so that it explains your learning to your reader.

• My test for documentation: Would I be able to track it down using the information provided?

• You may use previous research reports for 1 or 2 of your sources

Evaluation standards: Readability, competence levels, and interest.

Readability & surface competence: Your reader must be able to process what you're reporting. Given the pressures of a timed writing exercise, some rough edges are acceptable, but chronic errors or elementary style can hurt.

Content quality: use of course resources (lecture, discussion, instructional links), comprehension of subject, demonstration of learning, + interest & significance: Make your reader *want* to process your report. Make the information meaningful; make it matter to our study of literature and culture.

Thematic Organization: Unify materials along a line of thought that a reader can follow from start to finish. (Consider "path of learning": what you started with, what you encountered, where you arrived.)