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LITR 5831 Seminar in Multicultural Literature: American Immigrant
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final exam assignment
Official schedule: final class meeting,
3 July 2014, 3-6pm;
email submission window:
2-5 July
Course grades are due to registrar following week; students will receive final grade reports same week.
Relative weight: 40%(+-) of final
grade
Format: In-class or email
Format: Take-home or in-class.
Open-book, open-notebook.
Essay 1:
Review, focus, and extend overall seminar experience to demonstrate learning and
preview potential extensions or applications in research, teaching, or writing
(professional or creative).
Essay 2:
Choose a topic from list below, combine 2+ topics, or develop a topic of
your own that refers to course texts and various objectives.
(Don't fear some overlap between the two essays; cross-reference for efficiency? Essay 1 might preview Essay 2, and Essay 2 might refer to points made in Essay 1. Manage repetitions efficiently and consciously.)
Schedule:
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No attendance expectations on 3 July. To take the
exam in-class, show up at classroom at regular class period with paper, pen,
notes, print-outs, books, laptop, etc. Complete exam between 3 and 6pm
on 3 July. In-class exams are read
separately from email exams to limit impact of unequal time, opportunities,
legibility, etc.
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If you write the exam online, spend 3+ hours total
writing and editing your exam
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Submit email exam any time after 6pm, Tuesday,
1
July. Deadline for email submission is noon Saturday,
5 July. If problems, communicate.
Special Requirements:
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Title your essays.
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Refer to objectives and terms and develop, challenge, or vary their meanings in relation to your readings and analysis.
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Somewhere in your exam, refer at least once to a final exam from previous semesters' Model Assignments: something you learned, disagree with, used as a model. More than one such reference is often impressive. You may refer to assignments besides the final exams, including this semester's research posts and midterms. More than one such reference is impressive and usually helps substantiate or extend your ideas or examples.
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Somewhere in your exam (probably but not exclusively Essay 1), refer to at least one of your research posts as part of your learning experience or development of special topic.
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No requirement for Works Cited except for special circumstances.
Rationale for Essays 1 & 2
Essay 1 surveys, organizes, and extends a wider range of
learning. Textual references may be more glancing or sweeping.
Essay 2 goes for deeper focus and detail. Textual examples may
be explored more thoroughly.
Overlap of Essays 1 & 2 with each other and your midterm is not automatically a problem.
You may refer to, extend, or rethink anything you wrote in your midterm; welcome to regard these essay assignments as extensions or complements to your midterm essays and as opportunities to develop ideas you started there.
Essay 1: Review, focus, and extend overall seminar experience to demonstrate learning and preview potential extensions or applications in research, teaching, or writing (professional or creative).
Relevant course objective: Objective 1: To identify the immigrant narrative as a defining story, model, or social contract and recognize its relations to "the American Dream" and other multicultural narratives and identities.
Because the seminar attempts a comprehensive survey of American multicultural
literature and history, this assignment seeks a similar breadth of response by the student.
You can't cover every possible group in thorough detail, but you can
inter-relate our various groups through their varying relationships to the
Immigrant Narrative and the USA's dominant culture. The
essay will be evaluated on the quality of its writing and reference to our
shared texts and objectives, but also for its attempt to comprehend the multicultural landscape
surveyed by the course.
The following b
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What are the pro's and cons of organizing our seminar subject in terms of the immigrant story as a cultural narrative that determines American identities, even for those who are not immigrants? What other narratives may correspond? (rags-to-riches, American Dream, coming-of-age / initiation / conversion narrative, liberation / emergence). What other alternatives to current organization?
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What multicultural groups are excluded or alienated by the immigrant narrative? Given the numbers of such groups, are other comprehensive organizations possible?
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Potential applications: What potentials and limits of immigrant experience as an organizing narrative of multicultural American literature (or, you want to go cultural, the prevailing American mentality or ideology?
References:
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At least 4 references to course texts that sample different groups surveyed; feature at least one minority text to reinforce immigrant-minority distinction
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Review your own research post(s) plus or minus your midterm or midterms by classmates.
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Consider references to post-midterm groupings of New World Immigrants and 19th-20th Century Immigrants:
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Refer to at least one final exam or other submission from a previous course.
Some other content approaches:
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What did you learn about American multiculturalism? What did you come in knowing, and how does studying the Immigrant Narrative & variations confirm, challenge, or expand your knowledge?
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Arrange your essay so that your progress in knowledge or reading works with some of our groupings like "model minority" immigrants, true minorities, New World immigrants, etc., or if you had a favorite objective or theme, run with that, but create a big picture of your understanding in relation to the course.
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Another approach might be to describe the course to a stranger or a colleague, or think about teaching it? But don't describe casually—organize thematically.
Essay 2: Choose a topic from list below, combine 2+ topics, or develop a topic of your own that refers to course texts and various objectives.
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Refer to at least 4 texts, one of which may be film or poetry
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Outside texts OK for brief reference.
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Connect to at least 1 course objective (or parts).
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References to earlier student samples on similar subjects welcome but not required.
Topics:
2a. Describe how
2b.
Dominant culture: What glimpses
and insights, with what worth? Why won’t
students recognize or discuss? What are the costs and benefits of identifying
the
2c. Immigrant narrative / experience and family or gender experience; possible focus on women's identities and rights but contextualize with other aspects of immigrant narrative or history. (Obj. 5)
2d. Assimilation, Acculturation, Resistance, hybrid identities?
2e. Revisit minority-immigrant distinction focusing on
assimilation and intermarriage, possibly starting with
article on intermarriage
and including discussion of mestizo
model of Hispanic culture vs. "purity" model of North American culture,
+ resistance to or variations on inter-racial marriage b/w dominant and minority
cultures. (Obj. 5; model assignment:
Mary Brooks, Love, Honor and
Assimilate
2f. Should multicultural literary studies emphasize formal excellence or representative inclusiveness? Should texts be selected for universal excellence or for marginalized or emergent voices? How much does "universal excellence" mean dominant-culture values? How much does representative inclusiveness threaten norms or standards? (Example from final classes: How much is Long Day's Journey a classic tragedy, and how much an expression of Irish-American culture?)
2g. As a variation on 2f, write an essay on Narrative and Cultural Narrative—with particular focus on the Immigrant Narrative—as an organizing motif for multicultural literature. Some contents may resemble Essay 1's course overview, but concentrate more on narrative theory as a way to teach both fiction and history, both individual and collective stories.
2h. Combine one or more of the options above, or develop a question or topic of your own that refers to course texts and varies objectives. Acknowledge course objective(s) relating to your subject.
Model Assignments for 2h:
Carlos Marquina, The Gatekeepers
Evaluation criteria for essays: Readability & surface competence, content quality, and unity / organization.
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Readability & surface competence: Your reader must be able to process what you're reporting. Given the pressures of a timed writing exercise, some rough edges are acceptable, but chronic errors or elementary style can hurt.
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Content quality: Comprehension of subject, demonstration of learning, + interest & significance: Make your reader *want* to process your report. Make the information meaningful; make it matter to our study of literature and culture. Reproduce course materials, especially through reference to terms and objectives, but also refresh with your own insights and experiences. Avoid: "You could have written this without taking the course."
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Thematic Unity and Organization: Unify materials along a line of thought that a reader can follow from start to finish. (Consider "path of learning": what you started with, what you encountered, where you arrived.)
Such variable techniques are not my first thought when I read exams, but they are dependable explanations for how students' work can improve.
Evidence & extension of learning: All exams must competently use central terms and themes from objectives with text-examples from lecture-discussion or your own reading. Knowledge beyond the course and on-the-spot inventiveness are impressive, but establish mastery of our course’s essential materials. Beware being told, "You could have written this essay without taking the course." As for extension of learning, the best exams comprehend but also refresh the course’s terms, objectives, and texts with the student's voice, insights, and examples from and beyond our course.
