Literary & Historical Utopias

Date & time

• in-class students write exam in B2233 during class hours (3-6pm) on Thursday, 9 July. No class meeting.
   

• Email exams after last meeting on 7 July; due by 3pm Friday 10 July (unless prior arrangements).

No meeting 9 July: Instructor in office (B2529-8); confer, phone (281 283 3380), or email (whitec@uhcl.edu).

Two essays of 1-2 hours each

• 1 essay from "Overview" topics
• 1 essay from "Focus" topics

content details below

Relative weight: 30-40% of final grade

Format: In-class or email; open-book and open-notebook

Length: Most essays in 2007 finals were 6-10 paragraphs, varied by paragraph lengths.

Required References (across entire exam):

• Refer to 2-3 course objectives (or parts) more than briefly--discuss, develop, question or vary.
   

• Refer to 6 or more texts, at least half since the midterm.

  • Especially in your Overview essay, refer to texts both before and after the midterm.

  • Regard the Founding, Multicultural, & Alternative texts for 29-30 June and 6 July as course texts.
     

• Refer to at least one of your research postings, either applying research to a Focused Topic or integrating into your Overview essay.
   

• Quote or refer to at least one passage from the 2007 final exams or 2005 final exams
   

Optional references:

• Welcome to refer briefly to outside readings and other courses anywhere, but not required.
   

Contents

Write two essays, one from the "Overview" list and the other from the "Focus" topics

• Title both essays and indicate topic number(s)--e. g. A1, B3.
• Combine topics as inspired, but not required.
• If essays overlap with each other or midterm, no need to avoid or write everything over. Refer quickly to your own work as you would someone else's.
• Objectives are listed with most topics. Don't feel limited to those objectives, but develop objectives for both essays.
• Question prompts are not checklists. Your essays establish their own premises with reference to texts and objectives.

A. Overview topics (choose 1 topic from group A, or combine topics, for a single essay)

Topic A1. Utopia as Literature (Objectives 1 & 2, maybe others)
Discussion of utopias often leads to religion, history, politics, sociology, economics, gender, family--everything that constitutes a society. (Interdisciplinary objective 4.) How does a Literature course keep literary considerations foremost in the study of utopias?

2-3 course texts

Optional approaches:

• What do you learn about literature and fiction from studying this special genre? Or, how did fiction help you learn about utopian societies and thought?
• Since Utopias are written primarily for social purposes, what strategies, frustrations, or rewards are involved in keeping the "literature" aspect in sight?
• Non-literary aspects appeal to non-Literature students or students lacking confidence in genre.
• Recall passages or scenes in utopian fiction that deliver literary satisfactions. Identify what may be literary as opposed to cultural or social about such pleasures.
• If literary purposes are overlooked, what risks to utopian studies?

Topic A2. Utopias: Monocultural or Multicultural? (Obj. 3h & 4c)

Obj. 3h. How may utopian texts, communities, and studies exemplify multiculturalism or monoculturalism?

• Does defending utopian studies as "Western Civilization" simply muscle out multiculturalism?

• Is the utopian impulse universal or specific only to Western culture or civilization?

• If utopias or millennia are detected in non-Western texts or traditions, are such terms appropriate, or do we simply project our identities and values on cultures that are in fact doing something else altogether?

Assignment: Address one or more of Obj. 3h's questions, or develop a new question on related issues of utopia and multiculturalism.

How much should utopian studies invite, require, or repress of racial / ethnic difference or dissent? Consider the  multicultural value of "equality and difference" in relation to utopias' emphasis on equality  with risks of conformity.

3-4 text references:

• at least one text from 30 January (slave narratives, King's Dream speech, Chief Seattle, Wovoka) + Toni Morrison's Paradise

• historical utopia?--race may not be emphasized, but what impressions of mono- or multi-culturalism?

• research posting?

• For a "monocultural" utopia, consider connecting to one of our primary utopian texts or to the dominant culture texts from Founding Utopias on 29 January.

Content prompts:

• Did "multicultural texts" contribute to the course, or did the effort strain the concept?

• Are utopian studies fundamentally a "Western Civilization" theme and not a universal concept?

• Despite the diversification of literary studies, utopian studies seems to meet multicultural literature only tangentially. How might these fields meet more productively without losing essential western-civilization backgrounds of classic utopian thought?

• Minority or multicultural narratives often operate by "oppression > liberation." Are such narratives compatible with utopian or dystopian literature?

• Suggest revisions to Objectives 3h & 4c?

Topic A3. Teaching Utopia (Obj. 5 & 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 gains and risks does the subject pose?

• What potential for motivating or alienating students?

• What positives and negatives for utopian studies in contrast to our educational & economic emphasis on heroic individualism in dystopian texts like 1984 and Anthem?

• Personal & professional experiences are welcome, but return to objectives and texts in this course or other courses.

Topic A4. All-purpose Overview Option

Develop an Overview essay that helps meet the final requirements and relates your learning to your personal & professional interests.

Organization and content are open to students' direction. Content options offer possibilities, but ask yourself what you've learned and relate this learning to other courses, readings, teaching, research, career, lifestyle, or other social issues on any scale.

Content options:

• What subjects do utopian studies open for study that are otherwise repressed or ignored?
• Continue your midterm essay?
• Learning outcomes?
• Shift in literary emphasis from formal issues to social significance
• utopia / dystopia as single subject?
• observe an issue, subject, or problem that rose repeatedly from web reviews or class discussions

Requirements:

Refer to 3 or more texts from across the semester

Refer to 1 or more course objectives, developing your topic's relevance to the objective.

Reference options:

Outside texts, courses, issues are all possibilities, but speak to this course's objectives, materials, and methods.

B. Focused Topics (choose 1 topic from group B, or combine topics, for a single essay)

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. Evaluate “millennialism” (Obj. 2d) in utopian narratives. How does millennialism change the concept or dynamics of utopia? What literary or cultural advantages or disadvantages result? Refer to Revelation and 2-3 other texts.

Topic B3. Final course text: Callenbach's Ecotopia (1975); answer one of the following, or attempt some combination if so inspired.

• a. How much does Callenbach’s Ecotopia match or vary generic conventions of utopian fiction in our earlier utopian texts? How much is an ecotopian concept already built into other course texts? Refer primarily to Ecotopia but also to two other texts. If Herland, consider that both involve ecology and feminism--in a word, "eco-feminism": evaluate the assumed connection.
   

• b. As texts for public school curricula, how successfully might Ecotopia or other utopian texts of our utopian texts replace standard assigned texts in the dystopian tradition such as Anthem, 1984, and Brave New World? What problems or rewards?
   

• c. Using Ecotopia as a leading example, what are some frustrations and 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: Convergence of literature and history in utopian studies (Obj. 3, 4).

• What connections did you make between these two aspects of utopian studies?

• How might you help others share and develop such learning?

• What relations are possible between literary and historical utopias?

• Suggestions for the seminar's coordination of these aspects?

• How might you re-organize our objectives so that the "Literary Objectives" and the "Historical Objectives" are less separate?

Topic B5: Focused review and application of research postings & other sources

• Plan or imagine a larger research project based on your research posting(s) and other sources in this course or beyond.

• Review highlights, outcomes, and possible extensions of your research (in postings and elsewhere)

• Relate to at least one course objective.

• Consider web reviews, class discussions, outside readings, other courses at any level as student or teacher.

• The "learning path" offers a familiar organization: What was the source of your interest, what did you learn, why does it matter, what next?

Evaluation standards: As in most Literature courses, quality of reading and writing is key to distinguishing excellence and competence--not just covering course materials but referring to them extensively and organizing analyses into unified, compelling essays.

Competence in spelling, punctuation, grammar, and clarity are taken for granted in graduate studies. Given time pressures, occasional careless errors won't break your grade, but chronic errors must be factored.

Good writing is always inventive, surprising, and hard to describe, but outstanding literary criticism observably extends a line of argument through thorough development of textual examples.

Another, more subtle sign is writing that mixes the author's language and style with that of the course. Reference to course objectives is the most dependable source of the course's common language.

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.

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.

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

•        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.

•         Attach appropriate word processing file(s) to an email for whitec@uhcl.edu.

•         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. All web postings go single-space.

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.