COURSE ASSIGNMENTS

 

1. Course Portfolio (see description below)
2. Literacy Autobiography (5 pages)*
3. Faculty Specialization Research Report (4-5 pages)*
4. Poetry analysis (5-6 pages)*
5. Author Biography (5 pages)*
6. Major Project (10 pages)**
7. Major Project Presentation (1 page)
8. Academic Discernment Narrative (5 pages)*

 

* Denotes an assignment that can be among the three submitted along with Major Project for Course Portfolio

**The Major Project MUST be included in the Course Portfolio

 

PLEASE NOTE: FAILURE TO TURN IN ANY ASSIGNMENT (either to your workgroup or to the instructors) WILL RESULT IN FAILURE OF THE COURSE, REGARDLESS OF YOUR GRADES ON ANY OTHER ASSIGNMENTS. 

 

IF YOU SUBMIT A DRAFT TO YOUR GROUP OR TO THE INSTRUCTORS LATER THAN THE SPECIFIED THE DEADLINE, FOR EACH DAY (24 hour period) YOU ARE LATE, THE GRADE FOR YOUR ENTIRE PORTFOLIO WILL BE PENALIZED BY ONE HALF GRADE.

 

THE PORTFOLIO SYSTEM:

 

The main goal for your writing this semester is to expand your horizons, push yourself to new limits, to take risks and to explore new possibilities for yourself as a writer, thinker, and scholar.  To help you to do so more freely, individual writing assignments will not receive separate letter grades. Instead, you will compile your best writing from the semester into a course portfolio to be submitted at the end of the semester.  The portfolio will be graded holistically. The portfolio assessment model allows you to develop and take risks without fear of permanent penalty.

 

This portfolio will contain your major project (required) plus three additional pieces that you feel best represent your talents and abilities.  You may choose from among your (1) your literacy autobiography; (2) Your faculty research report (3) your poetry analysis; (4) your literary biography; or (5) your academic discernment narrative.  Thus, if you have taken a risk with one of the assignments and you feel it is not successful, you will not be penalized for it. 

 

If you want to know what grade we would give a piece of writing were it to be graded separately we can give you that estimate, but that estimate is non-binding, as the portfolio will be evaluated holistically and not based on averages of grades of individual components.


When you work on any writing assignment for this course, you'll start by pre-writing, draft your piece, and, after the first two assignments, you’ll get responses about your essay from your writing group members, revise your drafts, and submit it to me for feedback.  I'll respond to your writing with questions, comments, and suggestions for expanding, developing and further revising. After I return the paper, we'll move on to the next writing assignment and go through the same procedure.  During the concluding weeks of the term, you'll return to the assignments you've written over the course of the semester and we'll spend more time doing serious revisions and workshopping the ones that you plan on submitting for your final portfolio.  This portfolio should contain the pre-writing, drafts and final versions of each of the papers you've selected.  Because you may need it to include in the portfolio, during the semester, don’t throw out any of the stages of any writing you do for this course!  A letter grade will be assigned to the portfolio in its entirety, and not to individual essays.  As such, the grade will reflect my assessment of your holistic range, abilities, and efforts as a writer.  This portfolio grade will make up 70% of your final grade.

 

PLEASE NOTE: Although only three polished pieces plus the major project need to be included in the portfolio, this does not mean that you are permitted to skip any of the other assignments.  You must have full, complete, and good-faith drafts complete of each and every assignment on the days that you workshop with your group.  You must also turn in to the instructors the completed assignment on the day that it due.  If you do not turn in a full draft to your group on workshop day, or if you do not turn in the assignment to the instructors on the day that it is due, you will automatically fail the course.  This is non-negotiable. It is the instructors' prerogative to determine what constitutes a full and good-faith draft.  If you have any questions or concerns about this please speak to the instructors immediately. 

 

The quality of the draft that you submit to your group should be the same level of quality of a paper that you would submit to me for a grade.  If I determine that you have not taken the work in the draft seriously, your grade for your ENTIRE portfolio will be penalized one half grade.

 

WRITING WORKSHOP GROUPS

During the second week of the semester you will be assigned to a 4-5 person writing workshop group.  Groups will be determined on the basis of how you describe yourself in your literacy autobiography.  Thus, if you indicate that you are more drawn to creative writing, for instance, you will be grouped with other creative writers.  If you suggest that you are more intrigued by American literature, likewise, you will be placed with others with similar interests. However, if you are still not sure where you are feeling drawn to, that’s okay.  I will do my best to place you with others who seem to have similar backgrounds or interests.  You’ll need to make sure that you exchange contact information with your group once assigned. 

 

When papers are listed on our syllabus as “due to the group,” this means that you should email a draft to each group member, cc’ing me also, by 9pm on the day before the workshop is scheduled.  This is a hard deadline, and not meeting it will have the same serious consequences as not meeting the deadline for the paper itself (or any other deadline for this course).

 

INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT DESCRIPTIONS
 

LITERACY AUTOBIOGRAPHY (5 pages or 1250 words minimum)

 

Describe or discuss a significant moment or moments for you in your development as a reader of literature and/or as a writer/critic. How did particular events or experiences shape who you are as a writer and literature student, and how did these affect your aspirations, inspirations, and reservations about writing, about literature, or, in some cases, about teaching English?  In short, why are you here -- in this class, and in this major or minor -- today? If you've already reflected on this question, has your response changed since the last time you wrote about this question?

 

FACULTY RESEARCH REPORT (4-5 pages, approximately 1000-1250 words)

 

In order for you to get to know about the faculty you will be working in the department, to help you make decisions about your academic coursework in future, and to build your research skills, in this assignment you will find an essay, article, book chapter, story or group of poems written by two different members of Creighton’s English department.  Choose faculty members who teach in a specialization you might want to work in.  You may choose only one Creative Writing faculty member.  IMPORTANT: Summarizing book reviews written by faculty members are not permitted.  It is usually pretty obvious that a book review is a book review, but if you have a question as to whether a piece by a faculty member is appropriate or not for this assignment, please do not hesitate to contact me in advance.  If you write up a book review, you will receive no credit for the assignment.

 

Using perfect MLA format, first provide the citation of those two items, then write a summary (approximately 500 words each) of each item. (I will assume you understand how to do perfect MLA format, but you should consult your MLA guidebook if you are not sure). You are welcome, but not obligated to include a more critical/analytical appraisal of the item if you wish. 

 

In order to find information about each faculty member’s writing/research you can use a variety of methods.  You can use MLA or other legitimate online search engine (be sure to use library’s website -- googling can lead to heartache here).  Or you can check out faculty CVs via the department webpage.  For our creative writing faculty there’s the Nebraska Center for Writers site or even Amazon.com.  Finally, faculty post the first page of their most recent publications on a bulletin board just outside the English department office.  Please note that if you choose the work of a faculty member who writes poetry (e.g., Prof. Aizenberg) you must read at least 5 poems per one write-up.


IMPORTANT: you are not permitted to email, call, or visit the faculty member’s office to ask them personally if they have written anything that you can look at, or if they will give you copies of their work.  It is your role to research and retrieve these items, and if it is brought to my attention that students are asking faculty members to do their work for them, it will seriously adversely affect your grade.

 

POETRY ANALYSIS (6 pages or 1500 words)

 

Choose one of the poems from the collection of poetry by John Clare.  It can be one that was discussed in class but you can also choose any other poem in the collection that might interest you.  Write an analysis of that poem.  This means that you must develop an argument about what the poem means, not simply what it is "about".  You must do more than describe the poem, you must help guide your reader to appreciate significant aspects of the poem that might have gone unnoticed without your analysis. You are allowed to use outside sources if you wish; however, as this is an analysis of the primary text, and not a report or research paper, outside sources may detract from your successfully accomplishing the goals of this assignment.  See Additional Information for Papers for how to create a solid argument about a work of literature (as opposed to a description of or opinion on).

 

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY (adapted from Paul P. Reuben, Perspectives in American Literature website, http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/append/axd.html#bio) (5 pages or 1250 words)

 

Choose an author you admire and write a literary biography of him or her.   If you are interested in Composition Theory or Contemporary Critical Theory, you can choose a theorist rather a more conventional literary writer. Please be aware that the author you choose will also be the author whom you work with for your major project.

 

Your literary biography will be based on library research; use a minimum of two different sources to construct the biography; check the Reinert Library for books or articles on your author and also use the multi-volume Dictionary of Literary Biography.   You are not permitted to use as your two main sources website sources or online encyclopedias (like Encarta.  Sources like Wikipedia are controversially unreliable.  While you may look at these resources, they cannot be counted as the two primary sources (if you look at them, however, you will still need to cite them on your Works Cited page). Please be sure to document all your information and sources.  Otherwise, it could be considered plagiarism.

 

Things to try to consider as you work to find a focus in your biography

 

1. The important biographical events in narrative (essay) form.
2. The role and contribution of your author - major themes; reasons for current popularity (or lack thereof).
3. The critical/theoretical treatment of your writer in the academic scholarly press, particularly during the last ten years.
4. Is your author in a state of excavation and recovery by contemporary critics and why?
5. How has your author been assessed in relation to her/his peers?
6. What is the place of your author in relation to literary tradition?
7. What critical/theoretical perspective does your author offer upon her/his era?
8. How might your writer reject easy classification?
 

MAJOR PROJECT (10 pages or 2500 words plus 1-page handout for presentation)

Choose a text by the author about whom you wrote a literary biography.  Depending on your area of interest, you will produce a project about a particular text by that author.  Students who are interested in literary criticism can produce a traditional research paper about the text.  Creative writers can produce a creative response to the text.  For instance, you can rewrite a portion of a story based on the perspective of another character (examples of this are Bronte’s Jane Eyre/Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea or Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe/Coetzee’s Foe or Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde/Valerie Martin’s Mary Reilly).  Or you can write a series of poems that respond to the text or author.  You could even adapt the text to another genre (e.g., turning a story into a play).  If you are interested in new media, consider a film script – or design a content rich website.  If you are interested in Composition Studies or Critical Theory, your author and text may be a theoretical one rather than a traditional literary one. There are certainly other possibilities, and I welcome the opportunity to explore them with you.

Regardless of how you proceed, you will need to incorporate research into this project, whether it is of the more conventional variety for a traditional research paper or a kind that will help you develop a creative project.

In addition, you will make a brief 3-5 minute presentation on your project, which will include a one-page handout for the class, with useful information about your project.  Your presentation will be evaluated both upon its content, orally and in the handout, as well as your clear and coherent delivery of that content.  The presentation will receive a separate grade, worth 5% of the total final grade.  See Presentation Evaluation and Grading for further information.

DISCERNMENT NARRATIVE (5 pages or 1250 words)

Based on your experiences, research, and writing this semester, discuss what you want to do (or what you think you must do) with writing and reading as part of your expected career or educational direction in the near future. Do you think your answer to this question is different now than it would have been at the start of this semester?  How would you best (re)define your interests now that you have learned about the different areas in English studies. What have been the most important or significant things you have learned about yourself as a reader, writer, thinker or critic in the past semester, either as a result of this course or other courses or events?  How have these shaped your sense of your direction and plans within the discipline? Where will you go from here, and why?