LITR 5831 World Literature Colonial-Postcolonial  Assignments

Schedule & Format—both options are open-book and open-notebook.

• Write exam in-class during final exam period (4-7:50, Monday 9 December 2013)
  OR
• Write and send by email anytime after 3 December (last class)--deadline is midnight Tuesday, 10 Dec.

Notify instructor if you will take the exam in-class; office hours Monday 1-10

Content: 2 essays of app. 2 hours each.

Length: At least 6-8 paragraphs each. Best essays are usually longer than average, overflowing with relevant ideas connecting texts, objectives, discussions, presentations, research.

Essay 1: Describe and evaluate your learning experience, referring to texts, objectives, research, and midterm. (may incorporate or overlap with midterm essay[s])

Essay 2: Compose a dialogue between four texts since the midterm on a topic or theme of your choice (Objectives 1, 2, 3 & possibly others)

Requirements:

• Both essays must have titles.

• Make at least one reference to a previous final exam submission from earlier course offering (links above).

• In Essay 1, make at least one reference to your midterm submission.

Two helpful hints:

• Most common error in midterms was disregard of Course Objectives in syllabus.

• Meet your reader by using shared terms as well as references to shared texts.

Essay 1: Referring to the following sources, describe, prioritize, and evaluate your learning experience in our seminar:

• 2-3 course texts

• your midterm—review, evaluate, & extend or transition

• one or both of your research posts, or your research project (essay or journal)

• Objective 3: To account for Americans’ difficulties with colonial and postcolonial discourse.

• other course objectives

• content from student presentations, seminar discussions, methods, or lectures--what highlights? What worked and what didn't? What built on previous learning, what challenged previous learning, what surprised you?

Integrate these and other dimensions of our reading, research, and discussions into a central comprehensive thesis concerning a "learning outcome" or estimate of progress in your career.

Following are prompts or cues—not a checklist:

• "Learning experience" or "learning outcome" is not necessarily a life-changing experience. Apply the seminar to your developing personal and professional profile. Instructor wants to know what students enter knowing and thinking, and what parts of the course do students connect to and carry with them.
   
• What aspects of the course (content, texts, or methods) did you found most challenging or rewarding? What have you learned relative to your career as a reader, teacher, or researcher?
   
• Refer to at least one objective, or as many as helpful. The most common problem for midterms was neglect of objectives, which provide dependable language for meeting the seminar and instructor.

Essay 2: Referring to Objectives 1 & 2, compose a thematic dialogue between four texts since the midterm.

• The theme or subject of this dialogue is your choice—e. g., gender, tradition/modernity, voice, self-other--but your essay must address objectives 1 & 2 concerning dialogue, intertextuality, and the novel.

• For other dialogue-topic possibilities, review objectives.

• Consider Obj. 2a: "How may literary fiction instruct or deepen students’ knowledge of world history and international relations compared to history, political science, anthropology, etc.?" Evaluate fiction's usefulness for learning about the colonial-postcolonial dynamic and other issues in world cultural history.

• What do you learn from intertextuality or dialogue that differs from single-text or single-author studies?

Major texts or sources: (At least two should be from the five fictions immediately below)

The Man Who Would be King, Train to Pakistan, Jasmine, Things Fall Apart, Heart of Darkness

Other possible texts or sources: (Welcome to refer to any text(s) before midterm, but keep refocusing on texts since midterm.)

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 it into a unified, compelling essay.

• Readability & surface competence: 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 are remarked and factored.

• Content quality: Exams require comprehension of subject, demonstration of learning, and expression of instructional contents, but excellence is achieved by students extending or refreshing what they learn with new examples, insights, and expression. Make your reader *want* to process your writing by making its materials meaningful. Make everything matter to our study of literature and culture.

• Thematic Organization: Unify materials along a line of thought that a reader can follow from start to finish. 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.

Additional considerations:

• Audience: Write so someone in our seminar could recognize your terms and explanations and enjoy your personal contributions and style. Future students may read your essays in our "Model Assignments." Keep the instructor in sight—connect with shared terms and texts, and "write up" in terms of organization and ambition of thought.
  
• Balance course contents with your unique development. Your instructor naturally likes to see you valuing and using his ideas from lecture and syllabus, but mere repetition or coverage is frustrating, so integrate instructor's and course's materials with your intellect, your voice, your career and aspirations. Worst possible reaction: "You could have written this essay without taking the course."

Instructor's Reaction & continuing dialogue:

About a week after submission, you'll receive an email from the instructor including your grade report with your research grade, your final exam grade, and notes.

Consider replying to instructor. Graduate students work with faculty somewhere between master-apprentice and colleagues. Discussing written work can be a starting point for learning to interact with faculty. If you don't communicate in this way, look for other opportunities. Professors can be intimidating and unhip, but they're used to cooperating if you cultivate chances. We're just older versions of yourselves!

Unisphere at 1964 World's Fair, NYC