American Literature: Romanticism Midterm & research proposal assignment

Contents Overview

4-5 parts to midterm

1. Long essay describing and focusing learning, challenges, issues concerning Romanticism. (7-10 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 (plus or minus class discussion) in comprehending course contents (terms, themes, objectives)

• 2b. Apply course terms & themes or objectives to a previously-read literary text, American or otherwise, Romantic or otherwise; comparisons-contrasts, connects-disconnects.

3. Web highlights: Review at least 3 posts from course website's Model Assignments (5-8 paragraphs)

4. Research proposal indicating choice of research options (essay or journal) and likely content (2+ paragraphs)

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

Content Details on Parts 1-4

For the requirement to refer to objectives: you may refer to part or all of any objective, or combinations, or parts.

1. Long essay describing and focusing learning, challenges, issues concerning Romanticism. (7-10 paragraphs)

Refer to at least 4 texts from readings before midterm. You may refer briefly to texts beyond course or later in semester; other courses may connect.

Question, Content, or Strategy

Writing a unified, thesis-driven essay, answer the following questions or options (not checklists;

What idea, understanding, or image of American Romanticism is created by our texts, objectives, terms, and discussions? How  does this image build from or depend on earlier courses and readings, and what purpose may it serve in your larger academic or professional career?

Or

Develop an alternative organization or thematic for describing, analyzing, evaluating and applying your learning experience with our readings, seminar, and / or objectives. The following sub-options only suggest partial or complete possibilities.

Begin with a “focusing experience”—a text, objective, or moment that provided a foothold for comprehending our course materials—then expand or  apply to other texts or insights with consistent theme and appropriate variations.

Organize by problem-solution or question-answer involving objective(s), texts, and/or expectations or assumptions operating in class discussion. What issue do you or the seminar continually return that helps you imagine American Romanticism?

A possible organization is your progress from ignorance / confusion / etc. > consciousness, mastery, familiarity

Course title: How do American identity and Romanticism inform or create each other through literature?

Possible-to-likely materials for #1 (or other questions):

What did you know about Romanticism before this course? Describe knowledge from previous courses, texts, images, applications.

What is familiar or unfamiliar about Romanticism in American Literature?

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

2a. Describe best textual experience (plus or minus class discussion) in comprehending course contents (terms, themes, objectives)

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 toward 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 undergrad American Renaissance midterms:

samples from 2008 midterms (Self-Selected Passage Analysis)

samples from 2006 midterms (Identify & Signify)

2b. Apply course terms & themes or objectives to a previously-read literary text, American or otherwise, Romantic or otherwise; comparisons-contrasts, connects-disconnects. (3-5 paragraphs)

New assignment, so no models

Questions? Suggestions?

Possible examples:

Romantic texts from other courses or contexts: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre; Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

American texts / authors from Realist period (later 1800s): Kate Chopin, The Awakening; Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn; Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence; Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

Consider referring to a film, but beware pop-culture slacking--analyze critically.

(New assignment--no samples)

3. Web highlights: Review at least 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 American Romanticism's previous semesters. You may restrict your review to midterms, but research projects, research proposals, final exams, and presentations are available from several semesters. Reviewing research projects may help your proposal.

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

To identify model passages you’re responding to, copy and paste brief selections into your web review, or simply refer to them using paraphrases, summaries, and brief quotations. (You'll see both options in models.) Either way, highlight and discuss the language used in the passages as part of your review. Critique what you’re reviewing for what you learn or where it lets down.

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 indicating choice of research options (essay or journal) and likely content (2+ paragraphs)

Research Proposals 2006

Any of your 1-3 answers may refer to your research plans.

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

• 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 2008 midterm:

Jonathan Edwards’ “Personal Narrative” could be seen as one extended account of his sublime religious experiences. He repeatedly describes his walks in the fields and pastures and how in his meditations “there came into [his] mind a sweet sense of the glorious majesty and grace of God, that [he] knew not how to express.” Nature is clearly key to his moments of transcendence, as Mary Brooks notes in her midterm: “Edwards finds his sublime religious meaning from being alone in the vastness of nature and from encountering all the vast array of phenomena that nature has to hold.” Yet I differ from Brooks in her notion that Edwards finds  his religious meaning through nature alone. Edwards describes moments that are extremely emotional, almost otherworldly; while they do take place in nature and are sometimes a response to nature, they are even more a product of a mind and heart attuned to the metaphysical in everything. Ultimately, his sensitive spiritual nature leads him to a profound pleasure/pain response: “I seemed to see them both in a sweet conjunction: majesty and meekness joined together…an awful sweetness; a high, and great, and holy gentleness,” and again later, “And his blood and atonement has appeared sweet…which is always accompanied with an ardency of spirit, and inward strugglings and breathings, and groanings, that cannot be uttered, to be emptied of myself, and swallowed up in Christ.” Particularly in this second quote, we can see how the pleasure/pain sublime response leads to change, or at least a desire for change, in Edwards’s life. . . .

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:

• even some grad 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 via phone, email, 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.

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. You're welcome to use terms and knowledge from previous courses, but you don't want me to respond, "You could have written this exam without taking our seminar."

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.

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.