Relative weight: app. 30-40% of final grade

Date & time: In-class students may write the exam during our Thursday, 23 June class meeting (3-6pm).  Email exams may be written any time after class meeting on 21 June but are due to whitec@uhcl.edu by noon Saturday, 25 June.

Length: app. 10-12 paragraphs, depending on unit lengths: Paragraph organization. Of course you may write more. If you write much less, try more examples and analysis.

Prep time and writing time: Spend at least 3-4 hours writing the exam you will submit. If you want to spend more time writing and revising, OK as schedule permits, but additional length or effort doesn't automatically make higher grades. Manage time relative to whole session's work.

Midterm Content / Assignment: Write one long essay or 2-3 briefer ones developing the following topics.

These elements can appear in any order or throughout your exam.

1. Advantages & disadvantages of utopias for literary study, referring to and developing 1+ course objective(s)

2. summary-analysis of utopian genre & conventions, referring to and developing 1+ course objective(s) (new element to exam; under-represented in samples & under-developed in objectives, so welcome to revise objective[s])

3. Highlight special interests in course (potentially involving 1^st and/or 2^nd research post)

(Detailed prompts below)

Required textual references: Make extensive reference to our four major texts: Utopia, Looking Backward, Herland, and Anthem. (If you write separate essays, you don’t automatically have to refer to all 4 in each part.)

Special requirements:

• Any essay you write should have a title.
• Refer to at least one passage or insight from the 2009 midterm submissions, 2007 midterms, or 2005 midterms
• Refer to at least one class presentation--web reviews, student-led discussions, even instructor's presentations if something works.

Possible references--not required but potentially helpful:

• outside readings and other courses, texts, or discussions anywhere.

·        student-discussion comments relevant to your themes.

·        your first research posting (or plans for second).

Detailed prompts (for 3 content items above):

Not a checklist—consider all possibilities, but develop your best ideas in a unified essay. All students vary emphases--I read what you write.

“Utopia(s)” or “utopian literature” in descriptions below may include dystopias, ecotopias, actual communities as convenient.

1. Advantages & drawbacks of utopias for literary study (Objectives 3 & 4)

• What did you enter knowing of our subject, what have you learned, and how do you reconcile attitudes toward utopian literature, thought, and experimentation, which are reflexively dismissed ("They don't work") despite their persistent recurrence in Western Civilization and education? Welcome to use previously-read texts for examples.

·        Develop a working or provisional definition of utopia (literary and historical)

o   explore utopia's literary and historical meanings, backgrounds, challenges, and purposes

o   acknowledge and account for the difficulties of definition

o   identity some attractions and detractions for this field of study

2. summary-analysis of utopian genre & conventions (Objectives 1 & 2)

• What genres may be involved in utopian literature, particularly utopian fiction?

• Which conventions seem important for identifying utopian fiction or for other purposes (such as fictional development)? What functions or significance may these conventions serve? Consider Literature of Ideas and purpose of literature: instruct and entertain.

• Conventions may divide to formal conventions (e.g., dialogue, analogy) and content conventions (e.g., millennium, family issues, collective & individual)

3. Highlight special interests in course (potentially involving 1^st &/or 2^nd research post)

·        What personal attraction or apprehension toward subject of utopia? How has this reaction developed?

·        What are you most interested in learning from or about this subject? Or, what aspect(s) seems most valuable? Consider in relation to your 1^st and/or 2^nd research post?

·        Relate your interests to a course objective (or part of one, or some combination of 2 or more, which may overlap w/ 2 & 3 above).

o   Analyze your interest in the objective(s) and review the seminar's discussion. (If this objective hasn't yet received much coverage, welcome to play it off what we have discussed)

o   An option here (and on the final): revise an objective or offer a new one. Relate your new objective to the existing objectives or their organization.

o   Explain and defend your emphasis and relate it back to the seminar's attractions, distractions, etc.

o   The final exam offers an option of continuing the objective-discussion.

Email: email a copy of your answers to instructor at whitec@uhcl.edu.

·        Mistake students are most likely to make: sending to “white” rather than “whitec”; “white” goes to another teacher.

·        Attach appropriate word processing file(s) to email

·        Copy contents of your word processing file, paste them into an email message to whitec@uhcl.edu

·        All submissions are posted to the Model Assignments.

Spacing: No need to double-space, but OK if you do. I convert all electronic copies to single-space for reading onscreen.

Evaluation standards: As in most Literature courses, quality of reading and writing is the key to judging excellent work from competent work--not just reproducing data but organizing a unified, compelling essay.

"Unified": Thematic continuity and transitions are essential. Connect parts to form larger ideas. Pause between paragraphs to review what you've written or to preview what comes next. Summarize. Explain. Review and preview.

"Compelling": Exams require comprehension and expression of instructional contents. Excellence appears when students use fresh examples, insights, and expression to extend or vary what they learn. A good sign is learning as you write.

Style: At the graduate level, competence with surface issues like spelling, punctuation, and grammar is taken for granted. An occasional careless error won't kill your grade, given time pressures, but repeated or chronic errors will be remarked and factored.

Paragraph and essay organization: Expect suggestions. (Paragraph organization + transitions)

Audience: Write so someone in our seminar could recognize your terms, process your explanations, and enjoy your personal contributions and style. Future students may read your essays in our "Model Assignments." Keep instructor and assignment in sight--connect with shared terms and texts, and "write up" in terms of organization and ambition of thought.

In-class and email exams are read separately, with different conditions factored.

Return of midterms

Receipt of your email midterm will be acknowledged by reply email, usually within a few hours.

Check email for your midterm note and grade from instructor in first days of July.