ASSIGNMENT 1;



SYLLABUS: FALL 2008

CL 390

ASSIGNMENT 1: Your Profession's Profile

This assignment will require you to work on a locally hosted Wiki site. The Texas Theory Wiki is found at . The password to edit pages is "theoryedit" (no "", but it is case sensitive); the password to upload pictures, etc., is "theoryupload". You will have training on how to use it, and you will connect your work to a pre-established page with your name linked to the class page on the left-hand navigation bar on the homepage. This personal page will also be where you link your final portfolio.

PART I: Write a paragraph introducing yourself and your major interest area. Be sure you situate yourself and that interest area within the context of an academic discipline and the department it finds itself in on this campus. This is the reference point from which the validity and completeness of the subsequent sections of your wikipage will be evaluated.

PART II:

We have discussed the origin of humanistic studies out of positivism and various forms of historical reconstruction (philology, etc.) , and have read accounts of the origins of comparative literature

For this assignment, you are to trace the equivalent genealogy for your primary field of interest.

That is, find and describe in a coherent series of paragraphs:

• the philosophical roots of your discipline (e.g. poetics, aesthetics, rhetoric), usually from prior to the nineteenth century. Where does your discipline start, who is the "first" is the study of your national literature, etc.? What question/issue prompted the rise of your field as independent?

• your area's version of positivist and nationalist-historicist studies (the names and key words for each of those)

• the first or first landmark history produced by your discipline

• the current history of record produced by your discipline

• the current national sites determining your discipline (which are not always identical with the nation studied -- for example, German feminist criticism originated in the US, fueled by female Germanists mostly of German birth)

• your major professional organization (the one where the job searches are conducted), and your major specialty professional organization (if necessary). Provide links, and describe their purview in relation to your specialization.

If the names and topics exist in Wikipedia (including non-English Wikis), please link them to the appropriate articles. The resulting wiki page should look like a standard wiki page (see the handout on the "Successful Wiki Page" attached to this set of assignments); please add annotations to bibliographic items, indicating why these are listed (usually as the source of information or as completing the information on titles cited in your entry).

Overall, the result will provide a map for your professional world: the issues, groups, resources, and requirements that will mark you as a credible, engaged scholar.

Full marks will be given for this assignment only if all sections are addressed and annotated. If you do not know how to do annotations on bibliographies, consult Harner's Compiling an Annotate Bibliography, included on the class CD.

ASSIGNMENT 2:

Four analytic précis, due as indicated on the syllabus, on essays of your choice from the clusters represented. Directions as indicated on the handout attached to these assignment descriptions.

ASSIGNMENT 3:

4 of 6 short objective online quizzes (who/what/where/when of major schools), taken off the class' Blackboard site (reachable over UTDirect). These will be single login tests consisting of short identifications of terminology, names, and events associated with the clusters of readings attached to the syllabus, lasting no more than one hour apiece. FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS ON THE BLACKBOARD SITE, AND TAKE THE TEST FROM A STABLE INTERNET CONNECTION. If you lose your connection or otherwise accidentally log out, you will have to take another exam. There will be a practice login provided.

These tests will presuppose knowledge of the schools equivalent to that in standard reference books like the Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism, and the Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory -- summaries of the main theories, definitions of terminology, origin points, and what kind of research and writing work is implied by each. These tests must all be completed by the START of the final examination period; they will not be accessible thereafter.

It is your responsibility to portion out the work throughout the semester according to your own schedule.

ASSIGNMENT 4: FINAL PORTFOLIO

The final portfolio for the class must present TWO distinct areas of theory that will be of interest to your work and/or within your major field. They must represent theory not in the abstract, but as applied within your disciplinary locus.

PART 1:

The first part of the portfolio will consist of two separate wiki pages as linked to your personal wiki pages, which should again follow the description of a "Successful Wiki Page" and contain links to existing presentations, both on the Theory wiki itself and beyond.

For the most part, pages exist on themes like "Structuralism" in the existing Wikipedia (but not always in its other-than-English variants). Your project is to create a page on, for example, "Structuralism in Slavic Studies," or "Phenomenology in Art History" or "Feminist Challenges to English Eighteenth-Century Studies." This will require you to take up the general presentations of such movements and to specify them for your own working context.

Among the issues you will have to address are:

• how that type of criticism got into your field

• where, and by whose hand (and often, in what location -- national, institutional, etc.)

• what this did to the state of the field

• with reference to which source theorists (Marxism, for example, can be acquired over many different reference points)

• exemplary studies in book and article form that conform to these theoretical premises

• challenges to this criticism/degree to which it is represented in the field, and how one gauges that.

This will require you to do research using bibliographic data bases like the Modern Language Association and probably to consult reviews and/or conference programs of relevant professional organizations. Link to appropriate publications, associations, etc., and make sure all bibliographic data is provided in either MLA (3rd edition), Chicago, or APA Style.

PART 2:

Hand in on the final date two interpretive précis, applying the type of criticism you have chosen to research to either Joyce's Dead, or a canonical work in your area. Follow the directions on the Précis Handout, and assume that each précis runs between one and two pages long, with quotations from the text (with correct in-text citation styles), and with a proper bibliographic citation as its header. Citations in the original language of the text, and translations to be provided in the case of languages other than English, French, German, or Spanish/Portuguese.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download