Novel Presentation/Project

The End-Of-Novel Project (25%)

·        10% presentation,

·        10% essay,

·        5% novel packet.

·        There’s also a quiz on 05.07 testing that you paid attention and learned what the other groups taught.

Due: 05.07/05.09

Part I: Presentation

Description: Your group must analyze Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita using a critical approach. You will teach your classmates not only about the theory you apply to the novel, but also to the benefits of reading the novel through that lens. To do so convincingly and successfully, each group is responsible for performing a presentation that is at least 10 minutes long, but no longer than 15 minutes that intrigues, entertains, and instructs their peers on one of the following critical lenses:

(A)  Psychological/Freudian

(B)  Mythological/Narratology/Archetypes

(C)  Post-Colonial/New Historicism

(D)  Sociological/Marxist

(E)   Feminism/Queer/Gender

(F)   Eco-critical

Grading Areas:

 History and Background of Critical Approach (25 points) – The successful group will have thoroughly shown how their approach has been used to explain literature. They will have covered how and why it was founded and its benefits of being used; it will cite relevant and appropriate research, and best of all, they will do so while still holding their peers attention.

Application (25 points) - The successful group will convincingly and meaningfully apply their theory to the novel. They will walk their peers through a critical reading of the novel while illustrating both the value of the theory and the value of the novel. The successful group will use plenty of support and will guide their peers in an easy to follow, easy to understand way.

Creativity (20 points) - The successful group will bring something creative to help express their point of view and to help share their valuable findings.  They may play music, create a video, make a power point, host a game, produce a scene, assemble a panel of scholars, dress in costume, conduct a puppet show, guide us through an exercise, or prepare an enjoyable, helpful hand out (these are all choices students have made in the past). Surprise me.

Equality (5 points) - The successful group will share responsibility and every student will have an equal hand in the success of their group.

Presentation (5 points) - This isn’t speech class. At the same time, I need you to be as confident and as clear and as loud as possible. Do your best to teach us.

Question (10 points) and Answer (10 points) - The successful group will be able to answer questions posed by the audience in a satisfactory way; in turn, when the group is viewing other projects, they will ask intelligent questions. Part of these points will also be earned by your writing 5 test questions to be given to all of the groups after you’ve presented.

Part II: The Essay

This is, after all, a writing course.

Each student will be responsible for constructing a brief 2-3 page essay reporting the findings of their project. While the essay should and could stand alone, it is completely grounded by what you discovered in preparing for the presentation. The successful essay will:

·        Explain a literary lense,

·        Quote an expert and integrate secondary research in doing so,

·        Apply it to the novel,

·        Find a large picture take away that justifies why and how theory can be applied to fiction.

The essay ensures that every student independently learned something of value while working in the group. Think of it this way. Also, think of it as 10% of your overall grade and your third essay. After this, we have only two essays left, one of which is the revision project linked to you portfolio.

Part III: Novel Packet

Each day the novel is due, so is an exercise from the packet. It ensures you’re reading this novel thoughtfully and practicing critical close reading skills. Although each should be done according to the date attached, I will not be collecting any of it until the day your group presents. Having it done each day, however, will enable you to interact in class.

Note: Each day, come in with vocabulary circled you don’t understand or references that fail to land.

Before Day 1 (04.18): Take notes as you read in the form of a simple T Chart. Make at least ten entries. Write down a page number for each.

I read… (specific direct quotations)	I thought… (Thoughts and commentary and questions)

Before Day 2 (04.23): In your dialogue journal, write down 5 open ended questions about the text thus far. Answer one, using direct evidence from the novel, and practice writing an academic, formal paragraph.

Before Day 3 (04.25): I want you to do something artistic. You may use the computer or collage or draw with hand, but I’d like you to create a visual of a character or a setting from the novel. Push yourself to do something you haven’t before. Use your hands and your imagination to make the book tangible.

Before Day 4 (04.30):  In your Dialogue Journal, rewrite a scene from the novel from another character’s perspective. This piece will be shared and workshopped in class and can ultimately go in your portfolio. Bear in mind, Humbert Humbert is a highly stylized narrator. How would your narrator speak?

Before Day 5 (04.30): Bring in your Found Poem.

·        Definition: A type of poetry that is created by taking words or phrases from other sources (books, articles, etc.), and rearranging them into the form of a poem (usually free verse).

·        How to create a found poem:

1.     Your poem uses our novel as its primary source of inspiration, but you complicating that source by inviting another author from our course can be really excellent.

2.     Select a central idea, theme, or topic that will be the focus of the poem.

3.     Select words, phrases, or sentences from the text that convey your idea, theme, or topic.

4.     Rearrange the words, phrases, or sentences to form your poem.

·       The lines should flow and have a logical sequence.

·       You should not add words outside of those present in the quotes you have chosen.

·       Remember: poems do not always rhyme.

5.     Give your poem a creative title.

·        Guidelines:

·       The poem should be at least 15 lines long.

·       Use at least 10 different quotes from the book to select words, phrases, or sentences.

·       Utilize the secondary sources provide and feel free to find some of your own. Note: Your liner notes and quotes from discussion can be very fruitful.

·       Follow the steps on the “Found Poetry” handout to create the poem.

·       The quotes selected should be written on the following worksheet and turned in with the poem

o   Underline or highlight the parts of the quote that were used in the poem.

o   Use correct parenthetical citation.

Essay #2

TAKE HOME ESSAY #2—Secondary Sources: The Romantic,  The Grotesque, The Off-Limits & The Sometimes Deadly (Rough Draft Due 04.02, Final Draft Due 04.04)

As we progress through the course, one of our critical goals is to expand your competency as a reader and critic by actively entering into the literary discussion and debate.  You will begin to do this in this second assignment. Whether we engage in conversation about text on the page or in the classroom, effective argumentation about what we read and the significance of that reading depends on imagining how other readers have responded to the same text as us; it demands understanding and analyzing how and why we read.

Secondary Sources: Generally speaking, three types of secondary sources are used in essays about literature: literary criticism, biography, and history. The goal of a particular essay and the kinds of questions it raises will determine which kind of sources you use.

1. opinion (or debatable claims)—other readers’ views and interpretations of the text, author, or topic, which "you support, criticize, or develop"; 

2. information—facts (which "you interpret") about the author’s life; the text’s composition, publication, or reception; the era during, or about which, the author wrote; or the literary movement of which the author was a part; 

3. concept—general terms or theoretical frameworks that you borrow and apply to your author or text.

Literary Theories: Generally speaking, there are four types of literary theory. Remember that each type of scholarship and theory has a place, and if it deepens and improves your paper, it belongs in our classroom. Your choice of theory depends more on what you intend to analyze than on what our classis about.

1.      Mimetic Theories (interested in the relationship between the Work and the Universe)

2.      Pragmatic Theories (interested in the relationship between the Work and the Audience)

3.      Expressive Theories (interested in the relationship between the Work and the Artist)

4.      Objective Theories (interested in close reading of the Work)

Important Things to Know:

●       This paper makes up 15% of your overall grade.

●       Throughout this 4-5 page paper, you will continue to use close reading skills and your understanding of figurative language and rhetorical device to analyze something we have read during our third and fourth units of discussion, but with this essay, you are asked to enhance that work by referencing secondary sources.

o       It is critical that in this paper you find a way to strike a balance between your primary source, the text you are analyzing, and your secondary source, the opinions and reactions and understanding of your primary source as expressed by other people).

o       Advice: it is important that you have a good grasp of the primary source and have formed your own opinion about it before you turn to secondary sources. Although secondary sources can help support your view, I am still primarily interested in what you think about the work.

●       While prompts will be provided, you are expected to construct something unique and creative.

●       This essay is a huge component of your meeting our guaranteed SLOs. It centers upon your ability to generate critical arguments through the synthesis of material from various sources, including research sources.

●       On 04.02, an in-class workshop is required for each student;  missing said workshop will result in a 5% reduction of the essay’s overall grade as will turning it in late. Taking it to be work shopped in the campus writing center will result in a 5% extra-credit boost.

Prompts:

1. In many of the pieces we read, death and discovery were closely correlated. How is discovery of the self or insight into identity tied to the process of dying? What do we learn about characters as they face death and what to do they learn as well? What is the source of this marriage? Explain how authors use death and fear to build characterization and to show insight.

2. In the process of exploring death and its effects, many authors stumble upon a discussion of God, the afterlife, and the very philosophy and essence of human existence. While comparing two works with differing understandings of death, pay special attention to how authors change their approach and reveal their philosophies on the afterlife and the existence of a higher power.  For some, is death an escape? Is it something to feel anxious over? Excited for? At peace with? Extrapolate. Examine what the differences are, why they exist, and how they work as rhetorical choices.

3. M. H. Abrams, literary critic, argues that until the Romantics, literature was usually understood as a mirror, reflecting the real world, in some kind of mimesis, but for the Romantics, writing was more like a lamp: the light of the writer's inner soul spilled out to illuminate the world. Which understanding of literature is more in line with your own? The mirror or the lamp? While exploring how the literature we have read in the last two units does either, please explain.

4. How is science reshaped and included in literature? Literary Critic, Matthew Arnold, has theorized that literature works to reconcile science with the human experience. Do any of the stories in our last two units offer their readers this moment of explanation? Furthermore, is such a reconciliation even possible and what are the effects of trying? What are the moral needs of understanding life romantically, emotionally, scientifically, or morally? Can these ways co-exist?

5. Why do people like horror, sex, the dirty, the unallowed, the banned? These stories are all massively popular and have withstood the test of time. Looking at no more than three pieces of literature, consider what motivates the reader to engage with these pieces of art. Consider Julia Kristeva’s theory of the abject and what Goth critic, Kate Ferguson explains as literature’s important job of “speak[ing] what in the polite world […] cannot be spoken.”

Possible Valentine's Day Poems

That's Nerudo, and that's what I've written in my valentine, but here are some poems below for you:

If you're crushing hard:
Sometimes I know...

A Queer alternative, very short, abstract, very physical:
the city is peopled...

In case you and your valentine have some complicated emotions:
heart to heart

If everything else is falling apart except for bae:
love poem

Welcome Bluebirds!

I just can't wait to be your teacher. We are going to read such good literature together.

Sincerely,
Erica