Section 339: Midterm Review Exercise

Respond to this post if you're in 339!

Section 340: Midterm Review Exercise

Respond to this post if you're in 340!

MIDTERM REVIEW

As mentioned in class today, everyone will be responsible for selecting what they interpret as an important passage from one of the assigned readings through Feb 28 and then writing a response to that passage in the form of an answer for the midterm exam. Please follow the directions below as you write your mock midterm exam answer. The directions are from the Guidelines for the Midterm Examination that Professor Keller sent out earlier this week. As you will see after reading the guidelines, the current writing assignment incorporates Part I (Identification of passages) and Part II (Brief explication of selected passages) of the exam. Lastly, because I would like you to collectively construct a useful study tool, you may not choose and post on a passage if someone else in your section has already chosen and written on it.

1) Identify the full publishing name of the author and the title of the work in which the passage appears. Spell and punctuate correctly.

2) Write a sentence or two describing the context of the passage in the work by identifying: the speaker(s) or the characters(s) involved; where in the plot the passage appears or its place in/relation to the work's structure; and what precisely is happening. Describing context might involve noting other cultural contexts or historical events to which the work responds.

3) Write two or three sentences explaining the significance of the passage and how that significance is demonstrated in the specific details of the passage--such as its specific language or imagery, its tone, its uses of repetition, figurative language, allusion, etc.

If the passage you select is poetry, modify these directions as appropriate to the passage. If it doesn't involve character or plot, then in a) identify a major theme of the passage, and in b) explain the poems development of that theme by analyzing the details of the text (such as imagery, the figurative language, the connotations of specific words, the uses of rhyme, repetition, allusion, etc.).

Note: Do not post on your blog. I will set up two separate spaces on this blog for each discussion section to compile their answers.

VIOLENT PERSPECTIVES, PERSPECTIVES ON VIOLENCE

With our readings and discussions in mind, I would like you to take some time to view the historical photographs and postcards of lynching collected at Without Sanctuary. In the narrative that accompanies the movie shown on the website, the collector James Allen says,

Studying these photos has engendered in me a caution of whites, of the majority, of the young, of religion, of the accepted. Perhaps a certain circumspection concerning these things was already in me, but surely not as actively as after the first sight of a brittle postcard of Leo Frank dead in an oak tree. It wasn't the corpse that bewildered me as much as the canine-thin faces of the pack, lingering in the woods, circling after the kill.

For your first blog assignment, reflect and write on your experience as viewers of the photographs and postcards of lynching and compare this to your experience as readers of literary texts that represent similar acts of unspeakable violence. How does viewing a postcard of a lynching differ from reading a literary text that represents lynching? What can a novel or a poem tell us about violence and the American pysche that a picture postcard cannot? And vice versa? What does it mean for us in the 21st century to view/read about acts of violence from the past?

In your discussion, refer to at least one of the photographs/postcards collected in Without Sanctuary and at least one of the literary texts we have discussed so far this semester. Please post your 250 word responses (roughly two complete paragraphs) on your weblog by 10 p.m. this Tuesday, February 21. Finally, echoing Allen, you must begin your response with "Studying these photos [or one of the course novels or poems] has engendered in me..."

WELCOME

to our course weblog! Starting this week, I invite you to create and maintain your own blog by regularly posting your writing online. I believe that blogging for English 169 will enrich our class discussions on violence and the American psyche as well as help strengthen your skills of writing, argumentation, and literary analysis.

Here are some reasons why I think blogging will be a useful learning tool for our class:

• Posting online helps you hone your voice for a public: no matter what discipline or profession you plan on pursuing, your main audience will most likely include your peers and colleagues.
  
• In writing publicly you’ll have conversations with your classmates and thus be able to practice argumentation on a responsive audience.
• Indeed, the quickest way to become a smarter person is to observe your colleagues’ thinking processes and take mental notes about your own.

And here are some guidelines to keep in mind as you blog:

• Grading standards don’t change just because you’re online: I expect every blog entry to contain an argument and supporting evidence.
  
• Always Cite your sources, whether they be articles you are reading or classmates with whom you are conversing.
• Think about your audience. Although you’re writing for me and your fellow classmates, do keep in mind that a larger public can also read your blog.
  
• DUE DATES for your original entries, unless otherwise specified, will be each Tuesday by 8 p.m. and responses to a classmate's blog entry will be due each Thursday by 8 p.m.

I greatly look forward to continuing our classroom conversations online and extending our blog discussions into the classroom.