Relative weight: app. 30-40% of final grade    Format: email or in-class

Date & time: No regular class meeting 24 June; instructor holds office hours 3-6pm.

Students may write exam in class during Monday, 24 June class meeting (3-6pm).

Email exams may be written any time after class meeting on 20 June but are due to whiteC@uhcl.edu by noon Tuesday, 25 June.

Two parts to midterm:

part 1: Web highlights from previous midterms, research posts, and final exams (5-8 paragraphs?)

part 2: Essay in 1-3 parts on learning and interests re Literary and Historical Utopias (9-12 paragraphs?). Essay(s) must cover all 3 sets of topics (see below).

Content details below.

Throughout this exam, references to “utopia(s)” or “utopian literature” may be understood to include dystopias, ecotopias, & actual communities as convenient.

Overall Midterm Requirements:

All essays including Web Highlights must have titles.

Refer frequently to course objectives, terms, texts, presentations, and handouts. You don't have to cite numbers and bullets as much as indicate awareness of course's common materials, themes, texts, and terms. 

Required textual references: In part 2, make extensive reference to our four major texts: Utopia, Herland, Anthem, and Ecotopia. (If you write more than one essay for part 2, you don’t automatically have to refer to all 4 in each section.) You're also welcome to refer to materials from web reviews and instructor-presentations.  

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 post (or plans for 2nd post).

part 1: Web highlights from previous midterms, research posts, and final exams) (5-8 paragraphs?)

This feature of the midterm is new to this seminar but has worked successfully in other seminars.

Assignment: Review at least 3 submissions on the course webpage’s “Model Assignments” page and write 5-8 paragraphs (total) on what you found and learned.

Purpose: To enhance peer-instruction and potential for later seminars to build on earlier seminars' learning.

Organization: variable; most students review one item at a time, but the best submissions tend to approach the entire assignment as a coherent whole, connecting learning and insights from each assignment reviewed to a summary of what has been learned overall.

Requirements & guidelines:

At least one Model Assignment must be a midterm from the Utopia seminar's previous semesters. You may restrict your highlights to midterms, but research posts and final exams may also be included.

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

To identify the passages to which you’re responding, copy and paste brief selections into your web review, or simply refer to them with 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 in terms of what you learn or where the model fails.

What did you learn from reviewing model assignments that you didn't learn from in-class discussion or instruction?

Web highlights from LITR 5431 American Literature: Romanticism 2013; Web highlights from LITR 5431 American Literature: Romanticism 2010 ; Web highlights from LITR 5731 American Immigrant Literature; Web highlights models from LITR 5731 Minority Literature

Note on grading: Most students fulfill assignment by going through 3 assignments individually, one at a time, with few connections or relations observed between the separate models.

Most better submissions unify the assignment into a whole, purposeful essay in which the learning experience of one review connects to the learning experience of another, and the exam-taker's entire learning experience is previewed and summarized in the essay's introduction and conclusion.

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

part 2: Essay in 1-3 parts on learning and interests re Literary and Historical Utopias (9-12 paragraphs). Essay(s) must cover all 3 sets of topics listed below.

Assignment: To demonstrate learning and apply knowledge of Literary and Historical Utopias.

Purpose: To enhance peer-instruction and potential for later seminars to build on earlier seminars' learning.

Length: app. 10-14 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 essay(s).

1. Appeals and detractions of utopias for literary study (Objectives 3 & 4)

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

3. Highlight special interests in course (any course objective[s]; potentially involving 1^st / 2^nd research post[s])

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.

1. Appeals & detractions 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 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 difficulties of definition

o   identity & deal with 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)

• Standard features / conventions of utopian / dystopian literature

3. Highlight special interests in course (potentially involving 1^st &/or 2^nd research post + possible extension in final exam essay)

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

·        What have you been 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 this part of your essay.

Email: email 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 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 near end of week.

Instructor's response often focuses on writing and organization as tranferable skills. For content, instructor often encourages students to "use course terms and objectives more frequently and systematically." The impression you don't want to give is that "you could have written this exam without taking the course!"