Research Posts (2 installments + review in final exam) (app. 25% of final grade)
Content: the best introduction to this assignment is to review previous student submissions at model assignments. Assignment: Write and email two “adventures or experiments in research.” These exercises must be relevant to our subject matter but may reflect your personal and professional interests. Try connecting to Literature, but not absolutely required—posts may move into history, sociology, anthropology, etc. Essential information: Research posts are not essays of literary criticism but reports on your research findings on criticism or history concerning American immigrant literature and / or culture. Most typical mistake: Students want to write a personal analysis of texts we're studying or might study because that's the kind of writing they're familiar with in a Literature course. That approach is an essay, not a report. Your final exam will summarize and assess these research experiments as part of your overall learning experience. Only absolute stipulation for content: your subject must have something to do with immigrants or immigration. You cannot write about a minority group (African Americans, Native Americans, indigenous Latino/as in American Southwest) without connecting your discussion to the larger subject of immigration. (However, you could write about Afro-Caribbean immigration, Native American migration experiences, or early Spanish-American immigration.) Discuss with instructor.
Length: at least 4 paragraphs, plus or minus bibliographic information. You may write more than 4 paragraphs, but beyond 6 or 7 paragraphs may push the assignment too far. Bibliographic requirements and information + Works Cited / Bibliography?
Organization,
Content, etc.: Title your entry to serve as a link. Title should indicate content. Title may take the form of a question. 1st paragraph: Introduce and frame a question you want to answer or a topic you want to know more about. Explain source or background of your interest; what you already knew on subject, how or where you learned it or were alerted to it, etc. These backgrounds may be personal as well as educational or professional. At some point in this introductory paragraph, a statement of the question you’re trying to answer should appear. 2nd and 3rd paragraphs: describe your search for answers to your question or topic of interest. Locate, describe, and evaluate at least two sources in some detail. Your content may change directions according to what you learned instead of what you expected to learn. You may attempt some brief analysis or opinion, but the main purpose is to describe, summarize, and share information in an interesting and readable way. 4th paragraph: What is the answer to your question? Your “answer” may take a variety of forms, as long as you demonstrate learning.
Your two posts may change subjects or continue a single subject. Remain aware of need to discuss your research posts as part of final exam essay on your overall learning curve. Choosing a topic or topics: Before either post, welcome to email instructor regarding choice of topic(s) for 1st & 2nd posts. Previewing with instructor does not commit. Topics for research posts evolve as research is carried out. Grading: Grades for research postings are not returned until Final Grade Report. The grade is based on readability, interest, and quality of research. (By interest, I don’t mean whether I would have chosen the topic, but how well the report generates and sustains interest.) The first research post will only be replied to with a brief note of receipt and review; your only grade for your research posts will be a composite grade for both. Review further by request or in conference.
Official schedule: final class meeting,
7 July 2016, 3-6pm;
email submission window:
6-9 July Course grades are due to registrar following week; students will receive final grade reports app. 1 week after submission. Relative weight: 40%(+-) of final grade
Format: Take-home
email exam.
Open-book, open-notebook.
(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:
Attendance not required on 7 July. Classroom available for
student use.
Submit email exam any time after 6pm, Tuesday,
6
July. Deadline for email submission is noon Saturday,
9 July. If problems, communicate. Special Requirements:
![]() Rationale for Essays 1 & 2
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
References:
Some other content approaches:
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.
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? "Assimilation" is widely-known but discredited. "Acculturation" sounds friendlier but is less current, while "hybrid" remains metaphorical rather than common-usage. "Resistance" is always dramatic or romantic but at the potential cost of dialogue or exchange. 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?) (Model Assignments:
Carol Fountain,
Formal Excellence v.
Representative Inclusiveness 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.
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.
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