What All It Is Overview of upcoming assignments

What All It Is Overview of upcoming assignments

Overview • The Project Proposal • Due Wednesday, September 28 th at 2: 30 pm • The Form Paper • Due Tuesday, October 4 th at 12 am • Thesis Workshop • Due Monday, September 26 th at 10 am

The Project Proposal • Post a 2 -3 page proposal by Wednesday, September 28 th at 2: 30 pm. • Read all proposals by class on Thursday, September 29 th 2: 30 pm. • Discuss and vote on proposals in class on Thursday, September 29 th.

The Project • One of my objectives for this course is for students to realize how black literature emerges out of necessity as promiscuously social in its forms and as in explicit and implicit conversation with multiple audiences. The relation between form and content is always important in art, but in black literature where the literary art and its contents are always a reflection of even when they are not specifically about black personhood-proof of black people’s ability to be or not be people. Even when black writers chafed under this burden of “negro art, ” they always understood the art as doing something. It’s doing something on a number of levels: it’s doing something for the writer, for the readers, but also in its conversation with other texts in the world. A piece of writing can change the way we read something else or the way we interact with a particular candidate’s campaign rhetoric. • The goal of the final project is for us to join that tradition even if only on the periphery. . for it is a tradition of undeveloped peripheries. We will together ask ourselves how the way black artistic and intellectual tradition not only bears witness to and helps us think about black history and legacy but how it continues to help us think through the matter of black life which is to say life today. • We will come up with the form of this final project together.

The Project Guidelines Our Final Project Will: • situate itself thoughtfully within and in response to the ongoing black (artistic and intellectual) tradition. • explore theme of formation and deformation (of forming and deforming). • utilize forms and mediums that reflect and enhance the project's central aim(s). • address in a relevant and meaningful way some contemporary political and/or cultural issue. • engage a public broader than our class (on social media, in performance, public lectures, publications, etc. ). • enable everyone in the class to include at least one revised piece of academic work (one of the papers or the posts) and at least some thoughtful and thorough creative work. • incorporate at least three of the texts on the syllabus (either explicitly or in allusion, reference, signifying puns, etc. ).

Project Assessment • There will be only one grade for the project, but people may receive different grades based on their individual contribution to the project. Individual grades will be calculated as follows: • 40% Group Project Grade (will be the same for everyone in the group). • 50% completeness (satisfies above requirements) • 30% mechanics (clear and accurately cited, thoroughly reviewed for language/grammar). • 20% overall quality (works on its own and not just as a project in this class). • 30% Individual Project Evaluation Grade • 50% self evaluation • 50% group evaluation form • 30% Individual Project Participation • • 25% timely and thorough completion of all pre-project assignments and check-ins 25% active, reliable, and relevant contribution to all in-class discussion 25% reasonable and respectful out-of-class communication with group* 25% thoughtful and substantive revision of any individually authored piece of academic or creative work you contribute to the project

The Project Proposal Guidelines • Proposal Description • The What: exactly what do you think we should do. (i. e. group paper, publish a zine, put on a play). • Justification: You should justify your project by explaining how it allows us to meet the posted project requirements. The biggest questions to consider are: What aspect of the black artistic/intellectual tradition are you/we most interested in exploring? AND how does the form you’re proposing engage that aspect (i. e. how does the form engage our potential content)? • The Logistics: How do you envision this project actually being carried out. You should address questions like: How will labor be divided between either amongst the whole class or amongst smaller groups of three or four? What do you envision being the general timeline for successfully completing the project? Would we need any special materials or skills sets? What kind of additional out of class communication time will be required? • Submitting Your Proposal • • Post by Wednesday, September 28 th at 2: 30 pm Check all appropriate category boxes Cut and paste text of proposal into the post AND Upload a link of your Word document version of the proposal. • Formatting Word Document Version • • 2 -3 pages double spaced 12 point Times New Roman font 1 inch margins.

The Form Paper • Due Tuesday, October 4 th at 12: 00 am. • Really that means it’s due at the end of Monday, but I’ll be asleep, so if it’s there in my inbox on Tuesday morning, you’re fine. (note: usually I’m working by 8: 30 am or 9 am). • Please email me your paper as a Word document.

The Form Paper: Guidelines • Write a paper on one of the texts from the syllabus (if it is a text we haven’t yet gotten to, please clear it with me). • Your paper will focus on how this text is using form. • The stakes of your argument should be about what the text does with form or what they reveal, challenge, or underscore about form. Still that does not mean that you are not talking about what’s going on in the story. Under all close reading is the question: How does X writerly choice (form) affect the way we understand what the text is doing in regards to Y? • You should analyze the text using at least one of the close reading strategies: • Follow the Trail: inspect the patterns and effect of one recurring formal device throughout the text • Archaeological Dig: examine the way more than one formal elements work as an assemblage in one specific passage. • Side by Side: compare and contrast two moments in which the formal choices seem to unite two disparate moments or distinguish two moments that otherwise seem very similar. use one of the close reading strategies.

The Form Paper: example argument • Your argument will focus on some formal choice the author/text utilizes. • examples: epigraphs, sentimental imagery, juxtaposing disparate objects, etc. • Your argument will make a claim about what the author/text is doing with or to that formal element. • examples: The author is bringing in a variety of classical and high culture texts with the epigraphs OR the author is aligning each of the chapters with the chapter of the Psalms in the Old Testament Bible. • Your argument will explicate its stakes (or “So What? ”) of this claim; you will tell us how your claim about the author’s particular textual element the author/text uses affects the way we read/interpret/understand some larger theme in the text. • examples: While the narrative is explicit about their lack of education and not being very literate or clever, their epigraphs bring forth such a diverse range of high culture and classical literary reference, that the narrator performs her ability to transcend her early lack of education, defy the expectation of women and people of color to show herself as conversant in the literature of the day as any respected, well bred and educated white man. OR Even though the narrative is very critical of Christianity of the South and white people, they align their own self within sacred word in a way that both shows them to be a Christian and also allows them to tap into the intense and intimate passions of David’s psalms to God. )

The Form Paper: Formatting • 5 Pages • Double Spaced • 12 point, Times New Roman font • 1 inch margins • Name, Page Number, and optional items like Date, Title, etc. must go in the footer or header. • Clear and accurate MLA formatted citations. For this paper that will mostly be parenthetical citations and one bibliographic entry for that source at the end of your paper. • Note: The fifth page should be at least 1/2 of the way completed. One word on the fifth page is not complete.

The Form Paper: Assessment • 25% Thesis Statement • relevant to the assignment • close-reading based • • Thesis is about aspect in/of the text not something outside the text. • example: Your thesis is not about all of slavery or all black women, topics for which you would need more than one piece of literature to make a substantial claim about. Your thesis is about the way Harriet Wilson’s narrative aligns the injustices of northern racial indentured to injustices of southern slavery. Note: You should be able to articulate your claims with the author or text as the active subject of your claim, so: “The author/text does X in such a Y way that it asks us to consider Z. ” • specifically narrowed in scope • clear text-based stakes example • • includes a brief, relevant, and clear road map includes relevant textual evidence accurately presented and accurately cited provides explicit discussion of what you want us to notice in the textual evidence you provide and explicit discussion of how what you want us to notice supports your overall claim utilizes at least one of the strategies in the “Methods for Close Reading” handout organization (clarity and logical coherence of the manner in which you organize and order your points and examples) transitions (do you have them; are they relevant) 25% Mechanics • • • example: Your stakes emerge in the fact that your reading demands we reconsider the seeming happiness of the idyll family presented in the opening of Harriet Jacob’s narrative and the implied endorsement of the domestic sphere that image seemed to provided). Your stakes are not about slavery being wrong. 25% Structure &Argumentation • • • example: Your thesis focuses on Harriet Wilson’s varied metaphors of ascent in the opening and closing of the novel (not about all of Harriet Wilson’s novel or even about growing up in general in Wilson’s novel). 25% Engaging the Text • • • i. e. for FORM paper addresses a formal element in one of the texts on the syllabus and in FORMATION paper addresses a text’s particular treatment of theme of formation and deformation overall readability adherence to grammar, spelling, punctuation, and other language rules Note: you don’t need to cite more than the text you are focusing on in this paper, but if you do, you should include clear, complete, and accurate MLA formatted citations.

Thesis Workshop • Post Thesis by Monday September 26 th at 10 am. • Read everyone’s Thesis before class on Tuesday • Thesis Workshop will be in class on Tuesday, September 27 th

Thesis Workshop : General Tips • Read the assignment thoroughly! • Make sure you understand all parts of the assignment. • Decide on a text and your focus as soon as possible. (Yes the focus of our topics sometimes change, which is okay, but it’s also easy to spend a lot of time wafting back and forth between two texts and or three possible topics in one text instead of spending time doing the close and thorough examination of any one part). • Identify which close reading strategy most resonates with you and your interests [see posted handout]. • Pre-write. Don’t expect to write a perfect paper without doing the messy work of writing to think. Prewriting might include but is not limited to: outlining, bullet point notes; webbing; categorizing quotes, etc. • Write and revise several drafts of your THESIS statement.

Thesis Workshop: Crafting a Thesis • Your thesis statement is an articulation of the argument that should make explicit: • • • Your Text: The specific text you’re examining. Your Scope: The specific part of the text you are focusing on (i. e. for the FORM paper, the specific formal element). Your Claim: your argument about what text specific formal element is doing (both in the specific place[s] it appears and subsequently for the text as a whole). The Stakes: why does your claim matter? How does your claim about what’s going on in this specific aspect of the narrative affect how we read some larger theme in the text? Road Map: How will your organize your argument or go about illustrating your claim. • Most thesis statements will be 2 -4 sentences. • Your thesis statement should include 1 -2 sentences that articulate your argument. • • Your Text Your Scope Your Claim The Stakes • You should follow this argument statement up with a road map of 1 -2 sentences that gives your reader a preview of how you will organize your argument. Remember how you lay out your points goes a long way to getting your point across convincingly. • example: I will show first how in opening scenes of chapter one, the narrative uses airy imagery to create a sense/idea of X, an idea which I argue it reinforces with its light and wispy tone. In the latter part of my paper though I will show this suggestion of groundless-ness and ease is completely belied by the extremely terse and cryptic last line of the chapter, which in its opposition forces the reader to reconsider the opening scenes and the sense of X as really a matter of Y (OR reconsidering the sense of X in the opening scenes as being integrally bound up with and more complicated by Y).

A Special Note

Thesis Statements are Hard

Writing is Hard

Thinking is Hard

y la vida también … es difícil