Take-home Midterm Exam (due13-14 June):

Length: 5-7 typed double-spaced pages.

Transmission: You must email your exam to me at whitec@uhcl.edu. Your submission may be excerpted for the webpage. If you submit a hard copy, parts may be highlighted for electronic submission.

Topic: An aspect of one of the course objectives.  Describe how three early American texts (from Columbus, Smith, Bradstreet, Rowlandson, Jefferson, Rowson, Irving, Poe, Hawthorne, Edwards, Emerson, and Fuller) exemplify the development of an aspect of Romanticism.

            The above paragraph is the formal description of the mid-term assignment—that is, you will not be given another sheet describing the assignment, though of course we can discuss it.  The most successful versions of this exam tend to focus on a rather specific aspect of Objective 2, such as “the Gothic.”  You may even focus more specifically than the objective indicates—that is, you may analyze an aspect of the gothic or a specific feature of the romance or of Romantic spirit, for instance.

            You are encouraged to review the examples of midterm exams on the course webpage from LITR 5535 2000. The only difference in their assignment was a requirement to discuss Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans, which we are not reading. You are welcome to cite ideas from these midterms. You are also welcome to cite external sources, though this assignment does not have a research requirement. It is expected that you will incorporate major ideas from class lecture and discussion, and that a member of this class could recognize your ideas and references as relevant to our course as it has developed thus far.