Assignments

ENGL 705–Schooling American Poetry

Blogging Responses

All blog posts are due Tuesday by 8pm, though I encourage earlier posts.  All comments should be posted prior to class.  Note that the blog is required reading prior to each class, and that you are expected to comment in some detail on at least 10 posts across the semester.

There are 10 required posts in a range of categories.  

Over the course of the semester, each of you will compose 8 reading-response posts of 400-500 words (not including quotations). Blog posts will will be a prominent feature of the course for the first 10 weeks before we transition to the final project, so I encourage you to use these posts to explore your own ideas about, and affinities with, any given school, poet, or period. I expect your posts to be polished, free of major errors, properly formatted, and they will, at times, incorporate various forms of media and external reference (images, video embeds, links to other sites or posts, and so on). Never blogged before using the WordPress platform? Check out the instructions in the drop-down under the blog link in the main menu. As you review the instructions, please pay close attention to the use of categories. Each student is required to post at least once in each of the four blog-response categories, and no more than three times in any given category. This ensures both choice and balance. Categories include: “CloseRead,” “Context / Archival,” “Critical,” and “Creative.” You will post twice in each category, and there will also be two posts related to a “Final Project” category. Those posts are described under the Final Project header below. While there is no set template for these posts, please conclude each post with a question or two that emerge from your reflection–a question that will allow us to follow the conversation back to the shared reading, extending those insights together. Here’s a breakdown of the categories: 

• “CloseRead”: In these posts, please practice your skills at literary explication, also known as “close reading.” Poems are often dense and difficult, and poetry of the twentieth century and beyond is often especially so. The goal here is to pay attention to the texts’s particulars–to sound, formal structure, allusion, metaphor, ambiguity, voice, speaker,  lineation, narrative, themes, motifs, and so on. Even in a course where we will do our best to situate each poem within its cultural and historical context, we can’t forget matters of style and form: we must read through them, rather than around them. Thus, though your close-reading can attend to broader contextual matters, please quote from the text and stay close to the textual particulars even as you make a case for their broader significance. Also, assume an external readership, which means you should set up quotes and scenes using narrative / descriptive cues.

• “Context / Archival”: The readings for any given week suggest a range of contextual influences–those things that motivate, inspire, or constrain a given poem or movement either positively or negatively. As the readings during any given week will only hint at these contexts, the goal in these posts will be to fill in some details: how did developments in photography influence the Imagist movement? What ideas from Freudian psychoanalysis might help us make sense of the Confessional poets? What economic forces contributed to what we now call the Harlem Renaissance?  What archival documents (magazine articles, poetics essays, anthologies) from around this time help shed a light on the given school or movement? While the “Critical” posts, described below, should relate directly to a given school or movement, “Context” posts require you to connect the dots more fully. You might also treat this more as an archival project, drawing up relevant conversations from the era.

• “Critical”: These posts required that you summarize a peer-reviewed academic article or book chapter–preferably one that the class has access to via library databases. Use the library catalog or the MLA International Bibliography or a smaller database like Project Muse to locate an article relating to an author or poem or school discussion. I assume that most of you have taken some course with a dedicated assignment related to responsible summary. These are research-based posts and they should always be written with reference to the article and its author. The easiest way to make sure you’re doing this correctly is to (1) maintain the summary frame by using frequent signal phrases (“so-and-so argues,” “so-and-so describes”); and (2) introduce quotes without assuming that anyone else in the class is familiar with the article (we’re not).

• “Creative”: For this prompt, you are asked to compose a poetic imitation that relates in some way to the aesthetic principles of a given school. Even if you’re not a poet or have never written a poem, engaging the various poetries from the perspective of creation rather than reflection can be eye-opening. Here, you have two options:
  1. Compose a poetic imitation embodying the aesthetic principles or formal tricks at play in one of the poems we read for class.  Please include a brief reflection on your imitation to help frame and explain your efforts–and what you learned through them–to the rest of the class.
  2. Compose a poetic response.  While an imitation is more calculated, what I am calling a response might be thought more as an inspired “talking back” the source–talking back with anger or agreement or sadness or joy or sarcasm.  Again, please include a brief reflection, for the benefit of your readers, that helps frame or justify your response. 

Style: Though blog posts are naturally more informal–and perhaps less affectedly stuffy–than the more academic writing you typically do for English courses, I expect them to be intelligent, engaging, and free of grammatical errors.  If your post seems too casual, vague, and doesn’t engage their putative subject with rigor and depth, it will receive a lower grade.  I will comment on your posts every week, feedback that I hope helps you come to understand what good blogging entails.  It is good to keep in mind: though more “informal,” blog posts are often riskier, pithier and more dynamic than standard research-paper writing in my experience.  And remember: this blog will be public and searchable—it can and will be read by people outside the class. That said, you can create a pseudonym for your blog identity–or just use your first name. You can control this via the “User Profile” function.

Final Project

The final project for this course is a seminar paper not unlike the kind you might find in typical graduate courses across the country. In this paper, you will make an argument about a poetic school, community, or movement of your own choosing. In this paper, you will establish and engage a dynamic critical conversation before offering your own extension of that conversation in a paper informed by your knowledge of American poetry across the twentieth century and its contexts, and enlivened by your own close engagement with the primary and secondary material through critical engagements and close readings. The seminar paper will be between 15-20 pages, it will incorporate at least 10 sources, and it will go through an intensive peer-review and revision process. I am always open to discussing outcomes for the Final Project that might depart from the more familiar assignment described above; please feel free to pitch some ideas, but make sure this conversation begins as soon as possible in the semester.

The Final Project begins with conversations between the professor and each student about a possible topic, and then grows more focused after Spring Break as you prepare a carefully curated topic introduction, reading list, and supplemental bibliography. In addition to the final project itself, which will go through a revision process and receive feedback from both the professor and your peers, there will also be a more formal Proposal posted to the blog and due on the day of the module you design. You will also co-lead a class (alongside the professor) on the day that the class discusses readings related to your project (indicated as “student-choice mini-module” on the course schedule).

Final Project Proposal Blog Post: 

The proposal should be 400-600 words long and use MLA formatting as relevant. Please organize your proposal along the following lines:

• First, come up with an intriguing title for your proposal. This may not be the final title, but it’s important to start formulating a title that is both informative and engaging. I like the template the pivots around a colon offering a more compact or even creative formulation followed by an explanatory statement after the colon.
• At the start of the proposal itself, craft an effective, brief, introduction that frames your project more broadly. This might involve summarizing your chosen topic in light of the conversation you engage, or establishing an important historical or theoretical context for your project, or even tossing us into the middle of a dynamic analytical moment. It’s all about “framing” the project strategically and effectively–and in an engaging manner.
• Next, offer some critical background on your topic–this is the conversation you hope to answer. You should make the theoretical or methodological foundation for your paper clear, and also describe the more specific critical conversation surrounding your chosen topic / texts in a way that makes room for your own argument. I call this part of your paper the expanded “Conversational Thesis”–essentially a map and mirror of the research conversation you will build through your research. You shouldn’t name actual critics here–just give a sense of the contours of the conversation by using phrases that provide a more general identity for the participants in the conversation. Here’s it’s all about giving the reader a sense of the contours of the conversation and the characters (that is, critics) who will take part in it.
• Next, formulate a tentative—but pointed and specific—hypothesis. The goal here is both to join and extend an ongoing conversation related to your chosen text.  A tentative hypothesis–a preview of what you hope to argue–will be a tool you use to direct and refine your subsequent, and to help guide your own contribution to this conversation. Be ready to change and mold your hypothesis as you research and think more deeply about your topic. Together, the conversational thesis and the hypothesis form what I call “Dueling Thesis Statements“–which form a crucial building block of any extended research project. You can refer to these templates for building your Dueling Ts.
• At the end of your proposal, articulate, in a fresh way, the purpose or goal of this research.  Do your best to convey a sense of urgency and importance and interest. How does your project ask us to think–or even act–differently? What are its broader implications? What is at stake here? You can also be personal here: what drew you to the project? Why is it exciting to you? What qualifications do you bring to the project?

Note that this project does not include a separate annotated bibliography. I hope you begin the mini-module by offering a justification for the texts you chose, and also gesturing towards the broader body of research you’ve begun to explore.