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LITR 5831 Seminar in World / Multicultural Literature:
official date: Tuesday,
21 June 2016 |
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(This webpage is the assignment for our course's midterm, to be reviewed, updated, and refined up to 20 June.)
Attendance not required on 21 June. Classroom available
for student use.
Value: app. 25-35% of final grade (grades not computed numerically)
Contents: 2 essays of 6-9 paragraphs each (details below)
Essay 1:
Describe and analyze the American Immigrant narrative, its
prominent patterns, motives, stages, values, and variations including "the
American Dream."
Essay 2:
Compare and contrast the minority and immigrant narratives,
with attention to USA's dominant culture.
(Don't fear overlap b/w essays. Welcome to cross-reference between the two essays for efficiency. For instance, Essay 2 might refer to points made in Essay 1, and Essay 1 might preview Essay 2. Manage repetitions efficiently and consciously.)
Special Requirements:
Title your essays.
Refer to at least one previous midterm from course's
Model Assignments. (More than one
such reference is welcome and usually impressive.)
Refer to
course objectives, terminology, and instructional webpages; develop or vary their meanings
relative to your readings and analysis.
Content Details
Essay 1: Describe
and analyze the American Immigrant narrative, its
prominent patterns, motives, stages, values, and variations including "the
American Dream."
Refer to 5-6 course texts, including at least one early
American source (9 June), at least two short fictions from Imagining America,
two nonfiction selections from Immigrant Voices, Vol. 2, ±
other online texts, poems,
web reviews, and critical sources. (Welcome also to refer to outside reading,
but concentrate on class readings.)
Refer to
objectives 1, 2, and 4, using
information from linked instructional pages.
Celebrate and criticize: acknowledge
aesthetic and ideological
resonance of the immigrant narrative while uncovering narrative or cultural
limits or consequences.
Consider the power of narrative as a cultural and literary
construct. (cultural narrative)
Essay 2: Compare and contrast the minority and immigrant narratives, with attention to USA's dominant culture.
Refer to 4-5 course texts total, mostly minority narratives,
poems, and other coursesite sources, but also 1-2 immigrant or dominant-culture narratives for
comparison or contrast.
Shift your focus from the immigrant narrative to the minority
narrative, but use the immigrant narrative as a background for comparison-contrast.
Keep objectives 1 & 2 in play, but highlight features from
Objective 3.
Following items are possible prompts, not a checklist—no way to do them all:
How do the minority and immigrant narratives inform and expose
each other?
How much are they in dialogue with each other, and how much
are they opposed or polarized? In what ways? How is the American Dream narrative
challenged or reinforced? (Many shades of gray)
Evaluate assimilation both positively and negatively. How does
the appropriateness of assimilation vary for immigrants and minorities? What
variations on assimilation are possible? (obj. 3c)
other possible terms or dialogues
assimilation and resistance
(obj. 3c)
the ethnic group’s original relation with USA & resulting
Social Contract
the
“color code”
(obj. 3f)
"model
minorities" and true minorities
Evaluation criteria for essays: Readability & surface competence, content quality, and unity / organization.
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.
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, instructional pages, and objectives, but
also refresh with your own insights and experiences. Avoid: "You could have
written this without taking the course."
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.)
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.