(This webpage is the midterm assignment. It will be updated and refined up to 30 September.)

Three parts to Midterm:

• Web Highlights from at least 3 submissions in seminar's Model Assignments

• Essay in 1,2, or 3 parts describing Colonial & Postcolonial Literature, its attractions and challenges for literary studies and instruction (objectives 1-3)

• Research proposal

Format: email

• No regular class meeting on 7 October but classroom available for students who want to write exam in-class; instructor keeps office hours 7-10.

• Email exams due to whitec@uhcl.edu by 9pm Tuesday, 8 October. "Submission window" is 31 September-8 October.

• Submissions are posted (as is) on course webpage by instructor.

Confer with instructor or Writing Center any time regarding either part of your midterm.

• Office: Bayou 2529-7

• Phone: 281 283 3380

• Email: whitec@uhcl.edu

Weight: 20-30% of final grade

Web Highlights length: 5-8 paragraphs

Essay length: Write one long essay or 2-3 briefer ones

• If 1 essay, 9-12 paragraphs;
• if 2 essays, app. 5-6 paragraphs each;
• if 3 essays, app. 3-4 paragraphs each.

Research Proposal Length: 2-3 paragraphs

Special Requirements or guidelines:

• Title all essay(s) including Web Review.

• Spacing: No need to double-space, but OK. All electronic copies converted to single-space for onscreen reading.
   
• Prep time and writing time: Spend at least 3-4 hours writing your exam in its final form, but prepare as much as you like or can. Preparations include review of notes and texts, but also outlining and drafting, which you may use as notes when you write your final version.
  
• You may personalize your discussion and use the pronoun “I” (not required), but keep returning to shared material. You might organize by describing previous knowledge or experience of genre, then what learned.

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 seminar to build on earlier seminars' learning.

Requirements & guidelines:

At least one Model Assignment must be a midterm from the 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 assignments or passages to which you respond, copy and paste brief selections into your web review, or simply refer to them (author, title, semester?) with paraphrases, summaries, and brief quotations. (You'll see both options in models.) Either way, highlight and discuss language in passages as part of your review. Critique what you’re reviewing in terms of what you learn or where the model disappoints.

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

Web highlights from LITR 5439 Utopias 2013; 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 organization and grading: Too many students fulfill assignment by going through 3 assignments individually, one at a time until finished, with few or no connections or relations observed between the separate models.

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.

Part 2: Essay(s) assignment

Organization: 1-3 Essay(s) on Objectives 1-3

Using the dialogue model by which the course is organized, write an essay describing your learning experience in the seminar and with its subject, readings, and objectives. How do you integrate the subject and readings of this seminar to your previous studies of literature and culture?

Suggestions appear below, but I'll read what you send me. Course-specific expectations:

• A member of the class would recognize what you're discussing as falling within our subject area, and find the surface style and thematic progression readable.

• References to leading aspects of objectives 1-3. (You can't cover everything, so don't try, but keep returning to objectives and terms)

• Examples drawn from shared texts: Crusoe, Lucy, A Small Place, The Man Who Would be King, poems. (You may also refer briefly to other texts beyond the course that relate.)

• References to terms, ideas, discussions, issues introduced in seminar. (Again you may also refer briefly to terms and ideas from other courses or experiences beyond our seminar.)

If you're stumped, ask yourself some questions and start building some answers. I'm not looking for this or that particular insight as much as how you respond honestly and constructively to our shared readings and discussions while keeping the objectives (terms and themes) in play.

Purpose of exam:

• Demonstrate comprehension & application of objectives 1-3. (You can't cover every aspect, so prioritize.)

• Working knowledge of terms & texts.

• Set a path of learning in new territory

• Use "dialogue" style or intertextuality

Cover as much course material as you can explain compellingly and readably (I’ll let you know if you don’t do enough), but you can’t cover everything and aren’t expected to. Much of your own contribution will be selecting, prioritizing, emphasizing, and connecting what matters to you and whatever set of identities you represent. Make it interesting and make it matter, first to yourself but also to your reader (both instructor and future students).

Possible Prompts:

• What did you know and have you learned about colonial and postcolonial literature?

• What are the field’s attractions? Intimidations? Methods or styles? Applications? What have you found most interesting and useful?

• Your reaction to studying texts in dialogue or intertextually rather than as autonomous texts? > Demonstration with texts to midterm.

• What would you like to learn or achieve, according to what the course offers? (The world's too big to learn it all, so don't hesitate to concentrate on a region or period of colonial / postcolonial history)

• How does this course fit or not into your learning or career concerning classical and multicultural literature? How can you imagine applying it in teaching or research?

• If you were already familiar with our subject, sketch your experience and indicate how it's been confirmed or varied.

• Objective 3 describes most Americans' unfamiliarity with our topic. Aside from exoticism or difference, what possible gains or applications are possible for this field of study?

• Don't feel intimidated. Keep our materials in sight and write what matters to you. I'll read what you write and help however I can.

• An exercise for self-starting is to ask yourself, relative to the course and its readings, what you've been thinking about and why. If parts of the texts or course interest or even bother you, that's a sign that they matter. What are they telling you, making you question? What can you know or learn about these issues, questions, or topics? Make notes, organize oppositions of values and styles and turn them into dialogues.

Organization and Style

Besides putting our texts and concepts in dialogue, put yourself in dialogue with the seminar--self / other, known / unknown, familiar / unfamiliar, America / world

Since our course's materials may be unfamiliar, your writing strategy might personalize your essay(s).

One possibility would be to share something of your own literary background, interests, and ambitions, progressing to how this course may or may not match or extend them.

The "path of learning" is another personalizing or humanizing approach. It may sound mickey-mouse at first, but it can take you places, and you can submerge the artificial parts.

Required References (somewhere in your midterm)

• Several references to "Shooting an Elephant," Robinson Crusoe, A Small Place, Lucy, and The Man Who Would be King. (You may naturally prefer to discuss the postcolonial texts, but don't lose their dialogue with the colonial texts.)

• References to colonial-postcolonial history and theory in class, web reviews, or other websites

• References to handouts or links highlighted in lecture

• References to objectives 1-3 (not every word or theme, but what matters and applies to texts)

• Optional: poems by Walcott or Kipling, or paintings by Gauguin

• Optional: personal references to course, contents, outside texts, knowledge, experience

Obviously you can't cover everything and shouldn't try. The list above is offered as general expectations, but as long as you're delivering plenty of material, your reader may not pay attention to what you're leaving out.

Part 3: Research proposal

Research Proposal due with midterm between 30 September-8 October (discuss with instructor any time)

Research Proposal Length: 2-3 paragraphs.

Essential contents:

1. Indicate choice between two options--either

• 2 research posts (each 4+ paragraphs & Works Cited w/ 4+ sources) due 13-16 October, 17-20 November

OR

• 1 research project: term paper or journal (12+ pages & Works Cited) due 17-20 November

• If Research Project, choose between Journal or Essay (see Research Project link)

2. Explain choice: extensions of previous interests or knowledge, learning possibilities, reasons for curiosity, applications.

2a. Impressive if you refer to previous Model Assignments that impressed you as models.

3. Indicate possible topics or contents of Research Posts or Project + reasons for interest, previous knowledge, possible texts, authors, themes, cultural or historical issues

Notes:

Your Research Proposal is provisional--as long as time permits, change your plan by communicating with instructor

You have considerable freedom to develop your research according to your own needs or interests. However, most students entering this course have few preconceptions, topics, or ideas ready.

If you start with a "research post," you could develop that post into a research project, either essay or journal.

Simple advice for topics:

Review syllabus for texts, parts of world, objectives (themes and terms)

Review Model Assignments for previous projects and posts:

research projects 2011

research projects 2001

research posts 2008

research posts 2009

research projects 2009

No grade for your Research Proposal, though lack of effort or interest may be noted.

With your midterm I'll return some brief feedback. I almost never say "no" to a plan or proposal, but I may have suggestions for development.

If you choose Research Posts, the first is due 13-16 October, the second 17-20 November.

If you choose a Research Project, it is due 17-20 November.

Grade and response to Posts or Project may arrive with "Final Grade Report" following final exam.

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.

• "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, but excellence is achieved by students extending or refreshing what they learn with new examples, insights, and expression.

• 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 are remarked and factored.

• 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.
  
• 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.

Instructor's Reaction & continuing dialogue:

A week or two after submission, you'll receive an email from the instructor including your grade report with a midterm grade and a note responding to your effort and accomplishment.

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