RWA7: Please re-read Wharton’s “Roman Fever” and read The Cambridge Introduction to the American Short Story.
RWA8: Please read Thomas Wolfe’s short story “Only the Dead Know Brooklyn,” which you can access here:
http://southerncrossreview.org/57/wolfe-brooklyn.htm
and be prepared to discuss the following questions. While no formal writing is assigned, I would like you to have notes prepared on the following:
1. In addition to the narrator, how many characters are there in this story?
2. What textual descriptions of the characters exist?
3. Describe the characters.
4. In terms of dramatic structure, how many sections are there to this story? What happens in each?
5. What similarities and differences exist between this story and Wharton’s “Roman Fever”?
6. Which passages in this story stood out for you? Why? Which lines? Why?
RWA9: Close Reading of Hurston
Please read Zora Neale Hurston’s story “Sweat,” which is in the Gwynn anthology and the handout on close reading that I handed out in class today. Please then write a one to two page close reading of the Hurston story following the guidelines in the handout.
RWA10: Re-Reading Hurston
Please read/re-read the Hurston short story “Sweat” and be prepared to discuss the following:
1. Hurston’s use of hyperbole and particular instances of hyperbole that may be interesting to you
2. There are several Biblical references in the story. Please choose one reference and locate the Biblical passage it refers to.
3. How should we interpret the end of the story?
I would also like you to read the Hurston essay “What White Publishers Won’t Print,” which I handed out in class today and “The Cambridge Introduction to the Harlem Renaissance,” which is posted online.
Professor Rodgers
College Writing
City Tech
BRAINSTORMING: 3/19
DRAFT 1 DUE: 3/28
FINAL DRAFT DUE: 4/4The focus of our first essay is on the presentation of a close reading and analysis of a story. The essay, which should be three to four pages in length, will be graded on the originality, sophistication, and logic of this analysis, as well as on the clarity of its presentation. The essay should include a title, a thesis statement, well structured paragraphs, and writing that not only clearly explains and presents your analysis, but also engages your reader.
Please choose one of the two options listed below to help you define the rhetorical context for the essay. If you select the first topic, please choose the publication for which you will be writing, e.g., Rolling Stone, Time, The New York Times Book Review, City Tech Times, etc. Once you have decided on which publication you are writing for, you will then be writing for a specific audience, i.e., the readership of that publication, and in a specific style, i.e., the “house style” of that publication.
1/ Review Essay
Would you strongly recommend that someone read or not read a short story? If yes, why? If no, why not? Please discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the story and why or why not it may be of interest to the readers of the publication for which you are writing. In the course of your essay, please make sure that you comment on how the story may or may not help a reader understand some of the issues related to the reading and writing of fiction that we have discussed in our course, cite textual evidence to support points that you make about the story, and offer an interpretation of both why the story is significant and how it achieves this significance. Your discussion of why the story is significant can be based on your own response to the text and why it is important to to you as a reader of fiction with your own particular background and interests; can place the story in the context of other short fiction and literature to investigate its importance; and/or can explore the import of the story in the context of various socio-cultural issues.
2/ Which Story Would You Teach?
Rather than writing a review of a story for a specific publication, please write an essay in which you explain to me and your classmates why a specific story should be taught. Please discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the story and why or why not it may be of interest to City Tech students. In the course of your essay, please make sure that you comment on how the story may or may not help a reader understand some of the issues related to the reading and writing of fiction that we have discussed in our course, cite textual evidence to support points that you make about the story, and offer an interpretation of both why the story is significant and how it achieves this significance. Your discussion of why the story is significant can be based on your own response to the text and why it is important to to you as a reader of fiction with your own particular background and interests; can place the story in the context of other short fiction and literature to investigate its importance; and/or can explore the import of the story in the context of various socio-cultural issues.
Regardless of which topic you choose, please remember that the focus of this essay is on putting together a close reading that is about the story and how it works. It is NOT a personal essay, nor is it a research essay. Instead, it is a literary analysis essay that may include some reflections on your personal interest in aspects of the story, and/or references to what you know about literary history and the short story as genre.
Please follow MLA style guidelines for the formatting of this paper and for in-text citations. You can consult our course handouts, course Bb site, the Purdue OWL (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/02/), or your English handbook for MLA style guidelines for in-text citations, as well as for additional guidelines related to how to write about texts. Also, please remember that when writing about events in a literary text (essay, short story, novel, poem), USE THE PRESENT TENSE.
RWA11: Essay 1 Brainstorming and Using Textual Evidence
Please begin thinking about which story you may want to write about for the first essay. To do so, please read over the Essay 1 guidelines. Choose a topic and decide on which essay(s) you will be writing on. Then, please write SOMETHING about your topic down on a piece of paper or a napkin and bring it to class on Monday . You can write many pages, a list, or just a short note, but please spend anywhere from a half hour to an hour thinking about this. If you prefer to bring in an audio file or video file of yourself talking about your topic, that is also fine.
Please also take a look at the worksheet I handed out today in class and try filling it out in reference to the Hurston story. What do you observe about certain characters or situations in the story? Can you cite textual evidence to support your observation?
RWA12: Writing Inventory
Please review the Tan essay that I returned to you. Look at the grading rubrics, the comments that I wrote, and the marginal comments that I made and do the following:
1. Make a list of what you did well. Write down one or two of your excellent sentences.
2. Write down some of the sentences that are not working. Can you revise them?
3. Make a list of all of the categories circled on the grading rubric.
4. Make a list of 3 WRITING ISSUES from the grading rubric that you plan to work on.
IMPRESSIVE SENTENCES:
NON-WORKING SENTENCES:
EXAMPLES OF SENTENCE FRAGMENTS:
EXAMPLES OF VERB ISSUES:
Final Project
Intro to Fiction
Professor Rodgers
Presentations: May 14
Essay/Report: May 21
Part One
The first component of this project is to work in groups of 2-4 people to do one of two things:
1/ respond creatively to a selected reading and present your project to the class, OR
2/ explore relationships between fiction, literary studies, and your discipline and present your findings to the class
Presentations should be between ten and fifteen minutes. This is a very open-ended project, as long as you take the work you are responding to seriously, and engage with it in an original manner.
For the creative project, you can write, sing, paint, dance, make a video, invent a game (video or non-video), create a website, put on a play . . . the options are limitless so long as the work is original and engaged with the text.
For the second option, you can write, sing, paint, dance, make a video, invent a game (video or non-video), create a website, put on a play . . . the options are limitless so long as the work is original and engaged with doing two things: helping the class understand how and why the study of literature, and specifically fiction, is related to your discipline and to develop an artifact (essay, song, painting, dance, web site, etc.) that either shows us the intersection of the two disciplines via a specific text, or develops an assignment around a specific text that would bring the two disciplines together.
For both options, if you have any concerns about whether your project sounds like a good idea, please consult with me.
In terms of how to do the research for this project and what to include in your bibliography, traditional sources of literary research include journal articles from databases like JSTOR, Project Muse, and EBSCO, as well as book-length studies of specific authors and works. You can also do primary research for this project by interviewing professors or professionals in your discipline to ask why reading fiction and literary study may or may not be of importance to your discipline, as well as research and read materials related to this question from a range of disciplines.
Part Two – Due on the day of your presentation: Handout for the class
Include a handout for the class to accompany your presentation. This may be a visual or graphic aid, a summary, a questionnaire, a map, a bullet point guide to your presentation, or any other imaginative supplement that might intrigue, inspire or aid your audience.
Parts Three – Essay or Report and Bibliography
Each of you must respond to the project and your experience of creating it on an individual basis. Please write approximately 2-3 pages evaluating the project as a whole.
This essay or report must also include a BIBLIOGRAPHY of the sources you consulted for your project. If you would like to try writing in a genre specific to your discipline, e.g., a project proposal or report, please feel free to do so. While the response should be written form, here are some questions to consider and guide your thoughts. These questions are by no means comprehensive, so you should feel free to address ideas not mentioned here:
- What was your specific role in creating the project?
- How many hours of work did you spend on the project?
- What was your inspiration for the project? Specifically describe the thought process which led you to your project and your rationale for responding to the piece.
- What was your reading and interpretation of the piece?
- What was your rationale for using the particular medium you chose?
- How well did your group work together?
- Did you all agree on an interpretation?
- If yes, describe the collective opinion of the work which prompted you to craft your project as you did.
- If no, describe the conversation and negotiations which ensued before and during the project’s construction.
- What did you learn about your piece from this project?
- What did you learn about yourself from this piece?
