Link to assignment

Click here for larger view of assignment

The Sheridan Baker Thesis Machine

Overview:

To sharpen our critical reading skills, we will collaborate on creating a custom edited version of our course texts that reflect our classroom discussions and interest. We will add media resources and annotations in the form of questions, observations, links, and images/ videos that will enrich our understanding of these texts.

For this assignment you will use the tool hypothes.is tool through the CUNY Academic Commons site. The goal of the project is to work on your habits of mind as they relate to reading and analysis and, along the way, gain a sense of how each other reads and interprets the literature from the syllabus on the pages of the actual texts we will be reading and discussing. This will additionally give you a platform to ask questions and make observations immediately, as you read the text. 

Strategy:

I would like you to annotate course readings-before the due dates marked on the syllabus-with questions, comments, and observations. These could be based on media resources that enrich your understanding of the text from the Web and/or your own typed comments.

Mechanics

For the dates marked on the syllabus, each of you should post at least three thoughtful, substantive annotations. These should be posted at least three hours before we meet to discuss a given text.

Annotation quality:

The annotations you post should perform at least one of four tasks:

• A close reading of a line or passage of text that conveys the section’s significance.
• Ask important questions that the passage raises.
• Provide historical/cultural context of the text under study. (This would be a good place to use multimedia elements.)
• Give a sense of relevant, interesting contemporary connections that the text under study raises in your mind.

Ground rules:

1. As stated above, each annotation should perform one of those four jobs.
2. Each person in a keyword working group should make at least three substantial annotations per text.
3. Multimedia: Try to incorporate images, links, and videos into your annotations. Additionally, post primary or archival material from the Web if you come across it.

ENG 102 

Paper 1

Prompt

Literature in general, but especially poetry, asks us to look at something we either think we understand or something that we have not thought a lot about, and to see it in a new light. It asks us to realize that its topic is more complicated, more ambiguous, and more beautiful than we realized.

For this paper I would like you to choose a poem from the syllabus and write a paper that answers the following question: what does this poem ask you to think about differently? In approaching this question, I would like you perform a close reading of the poem you choose and make reference to at least one feature of literature Jonathan Culler discusses in A Very Short Introduction to Literary Theory. 

What is a close reading?

Things to keep in mind: 

• Focus on the poem you have chosen! I want to see you pay careful attention to the elements of poetry we have discussed:
  • word choice, 
  • figurative language, 
  • stanza, 
  • rhyming, 
  • Imagery
  • and tone. 
• Remember that language is tricky in poetry on purpose. The poet uses language in ways it isn’t used in everyday speech in order to have a particular effect on the reader/ to make a point/ open up possibilities of meaning. Your job here is to explain how the author is using language in strange ways to achieve particular effects or meanings.
• Notice strangeness, patterns, word choice, rhyme scheme, stanza and line shape, and analyze how those elements relate to or produce meaning
• When you introduce an author, use their first and last name the first time you reference them. When you use their name afterward, you only use the last name.
• Be as specific as possible. Do not say, “the author uses diction to set a happy tone” – say what kind of diction specifically and what it does –  give an example i.e. “Whitman’s use of exclamation marks sets a celebratory tone.”
• Remember “the speaker” speaks in a poem, not the author. Say “the speaker says,” not the author says – the author wrote the poem, but the speaker speaks in it – this is a convention of literary criticism

Sample Outline:

• Introduce the topic that the poet is asking us to think differently about
• Introduce the poem and the poet
• Provide the topic sentences of your body paragraphs
• End with your thesis or overarching argument – this will be the answer to the question of what the poet is asking us to think differently about and perhaps why

• Provide textual evidence to illustrate your argument
• Introduce and contextualize quotes
• Close read the quotes – explain how details in the quote relates to the meaning
• Use in-text citations for all quotes
• Tie details back to argument

• Tie everything together
• Make connections to your own experience, broader issues

Warning: These poems are very popular, and they are widely discussed on the Web. I know about these sites and I will know if you get information or, more importantly, analysis from them. Be sure that you are reading the poems in isolation and basing your paper on your own interpretation.

Due Date: 04/05, (deposit your paper in this Google Drive Folder)

Format:

• 1000 words
• double-spaced
• Typed