LITR 5737: Literary & Historical Utopias
Final Exam Assignment 2007
(Updated 28 June. This is the official copy of the exam, to be used in place of the version in the syllabus.)
final exam (Monday, 2 July--due by noon, 3 July)
Basic information
Relative weight: 40-50% of final grade
Format: In-class or email; open-book and open-notebook
Date & time: in-class students: Students wishing to write the exam in class may take it during our regular seminar hours (3-6pm) on Monday, 2 July.
In-class materials: Write in blue or black ink in a bluebook or on handy paper. Fronts and backs, single-spacing acceptable. No pencil, please. Just cross through anything you don't want me to read.
Email exams may be taken any time after our last meeting on 28 June and are due by noon on Tuesday 3 July.
Email: email a copy of your answers to instructor at whitec@uhcl.edu.
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The mistake students are most likely to make is to send it to “white” rather than “whitec”; if you send it to “white,” it goes to another teacher.
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Attach appropriate word processing file(s) to an email for whitec@uhcl.edu.
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Copy the contents of your word processing file, then paste them into an email message to me at whitec@uhcl.edu
Spacing: No need to double-space, but OK if you do. I convert all electronic copies to single-space for reading onscreen.
Prep time and writing time: Spend 3-4 hours writing the exam you will submit, but spend as much time preparing as you like (or can find). Preparations could include the usual review of notes and texts, but you are also encouraged to outline, practice drafting, and after drafting, revise or rewrite as time permits. Outlines and previous drafts count as notes, which you may consult as you write your midterm for submission.
No meeting on 2 July: Instructor in office; welcome to confer, phone, or email.
Purposes, organization, evaluation, and audience
Purposes: Demonstrate comprehension of course materials while developing related interests of your own. Language and content should combine course texts, course objectives, and model assignments with your own readings, backgrounds, experiences, style, and understandings.
Organization: Write two complete essays, one from "Overview Topics" and the other from the "Focused Topics." (see below)
Thematic unity, continuity, and transitions are essential. The best exams connect parts to form larger ideas. Pause between paragraphs to review what you've written or preview what comes next. Summarize. Explain. Keep your larger goal in sight for yourself and your reader.
At the graduate level, surface qualities like spelling, punctuation, and grammar are taken for granted. An occasional careless error won't kill your grade, given the time pressures, but repeated or chronic errors will be remarked and factored.
Length: Given different people's styles, length is hard to estimate, but generally the better exams have more writing. Most of the 2005 final exams had at least a dozen paragraphs total in 2 essays.
Audience: Anyone in our seminar should recognize your terms and explanations and enjoy your personal contributions and style. Future students may read your essays in our "Model Assignments." But keep the instructor in sight--connect with shared terms and texts, and "write up" in organization and ambition of thought. You may identify and address a special hypothetical audience, like another classroom or a book group, but such a move is not expected or required.
Assignment: Write two essays, choosing one essay topic from the "Overview Topics" and the other from the "Focused Topics" listed below.
Your essay answers may appear in any order, but please list the topic you're covering. Also please don't forget to provide titles for both essays.
You may combine topics if so inspired, as long as the outcome respects the exam's and seminar's purposes, but let me know what you're up to, and in any case write two distinct essays.
If your essays overlap with each other or your midterm, no need to avoid the situation or write the material out again. Just make a quick reference to your own work as you would to someone else's.
Objectives are listed with most topics. Don't feel limited to those objectives, but refer to objectives in both essays.
The questions below are not checklists. You are expected to respect the spirit of the questions, but the details are only potential prompts. Your answers are read as essays that establish their own premises and speak for themselves.
A. Overview topics
Topic A1. (Objectives 1 &
2 + 4)
What literary
considerations are foremost in your study of utopias? What do you learn about literature and fiction from studying this
special genre? Or flipping that question, what do you learn about utopia from
reading fiction and other literature?
What strategies, frustrations, and/or rewards are involved in keeping the "literature" aspect in sight? Discussing utopian texts typically leads to other fields like history, politics, sociology, economics, gender, family--anything and everything that might constitute a society. (Interdisciplinary objective 4.)
But after all our seminar is a Literature course, and most people who can talk of utopias and dystopias are going to be readers and writers. Given this meeting of utopia and literature, how well does "utopian literature" work as literary art? How well do certain texts bridge from fiction to non-fiction? How well do "extra-literary texts" like political speeches, government documents, and scripture work as utopian literature? Are utopian studies a field where literary dreams meet practical realities?
Cast your net as widely or narrowly as your examples justify.
Topic A2. (Objectives 3c &
3f)
Objective 3c asks,
"Is the utopian impulse universal, or is it
unique to western civilization?" Objective 3f asks,
"What social structures, units, or identities does utopia expose or frustrate?"
and refers to "ethnicity" as one such identity. How do you reconcile
utopia's pretensions to universality with modern needs for multicultural
applications?
Most utopian studies follow the "Western Civilization" attitude of European-American dominant culture, which declares or assumes that we're all in this together and equally. Such a posture may imply that issues of race and ethnicity only distract from universal principles. But . . .
Given the mixed history of Western Civilization in relation to non-Western cultures, does this attitude repress ethnic or racial difference? How much should utopian studies invite or require expression of racial / ethnic difference, resistance, or dissent? If a danger of utopias is that a society based on equality becomes too similar or restrictive, what is the value of multiculturalism's celebration of "equality and difference?"
Review instances in our texts or presentations where race and ethnicity emerged and either interacted with or faded from utopian experience. Feature some of the texts discussed on 19, 21, and 26 June, but try to involve our utopian novels and at least one presentation from elsewhere in the course.
Did our "multicultural texts" contribute to the course, or did the effort to stretch utopian studies to include multicultural literature strain the concept? Is there a basis for arguing that utopian studies is fundamentally a "Western Civilization" theme and and a universal concept--for better or worse? My personal-professional background for this question is that despite the diversification of literary studies, utopian studies meets multicultural literature only tangentially. How might they meet more productively?
Topic A3. (Objective 4 &
others depending on answer content)
Evaluate the significance, worthiness, and range of
utopian studies as a topic for literature courses at any educational level. What
advantages and risks does the subject pose? What potential for motivating or
alienating students? What are the positives and negatives of utopian studies in
contrast to our educational and economic systems’ emphasis on heroic
individualism and on dystopian course-texts like 1984 and Anthem?
B. Focused Topics
Topic B1. Evaluate and revise a course objective (or part of one, or some combination). You are welcome to continue ideas begun in your midterm, making direct references to what you wrote then and enlarging or extending earlier positions.
Topic B2. (Obj. 2d) Evaluate the recurrence of “millennialism” in utopian narratives. How does millennialism change the concept or dynamics of utopia? What literary or cultural advantages or disadvantages result? Refer to Revelation, 2-3 other texts, and a presentation.
Topic B3. Concluding course text: Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia (1975); answer one of the following, or attempt some combination if so inspired.
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B3a. How much does Callenbach’s Ecotopia match or vary the generic conventions of utopian fiction in our earlier utopian texts? How much is an ecotopian concept already built into previous utopian or dystopian fictions, or not? Refer primarily to Ecotopia but also to two other texts and a presentation. If you discuss Herland, you may consider that both involve ecology and feminism--in a word, "eco-feminism": evaluate the assumed connection.
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B3b. As texts for our public school curricula, how successfully might Ecotopia or other utopian texts of our utopian texts replace our standard assigned texts in the dystopian tradition such as Anthem, 1984, and Brave New World. What problems and rewards might rise?
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B3c. Using Ecotopia as your leading example, what are some of the standard frustrations and quirky-guilty pleasures of reading utopian fiction? In what ways does or doesn't it measure up to the quality of literature you expect in a graduate seminar? Compare to other texts this semester. How do you rationalize these issues of literary quality?
Topic B4: (Obj. 3, 4) What did you learn from the convergence of literature and history in utopian studies? How might you help others share and develop such learning? What relations are possible between literary and historical utopias?
From the instructor's perspective, these two parts of our course remain too distinct. Literary discussions and historical presentations worked on their own terms, but the seminar did not leap to draw connections between the two.
But maybe you saw more than was said. What connections did students perceive between these two aspects of our seminar? How might the connections be enhanced? Is there a mechanism that would force or encourage interactions between utopian literature and history? How might you re-organize our objectives so that the "Literary Objectives" and the "Historical Objectives" are less separate?
This question is somewhat pedagogically-oriented, so please develop literary and historical content with examples from texts and presentations.
Required textual references: Some questions above require references to specific texts. Otherwise show your range of reference to texts throughout the course and beyond, but don't hesitate to treat some texts in greater depth than others. The texts for 19, 21, and 26 June may be shorter and either photocopied or on the web, but the instructor regards them as course texts, and you are welcome to do the same.
Special requirements:
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Especially in your Overview Topic, refer to texts both before and after the midterm.
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Refer to at least one passage or insight from the 2005 final exams
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Refer to at least one student presentation--either information listed or student comments in presentation / discussion
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Please provide titles for your essays and indicate the number of the topic (or combination of topics) you’re answering.
Possible references:
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Welcome to refer briefly to outside readings and other courses or discussions anywhere, but not required.