This is the website for Professor Martin's present and past sections of English 086: Critical Approaches to Literature. This site will contain everything related to the course except for grades.

Final exam

Here is the topic for our take-home final exam as discussed in class:

Over the last four months, we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about critical theory and how that connects to our understanding of literature. If someone were to ask you now what critical theory is and why they should bother learning about it, what would your answer be?

As part of your response, focus on three different “ways of seeing” or central ideas that critical theory might help us to understand. Make sure also to bring in some practical examples that help to illustrate your points. These might be examples of how critical theory can be applied to one or both of the two novels we’ve read or to texts from outside our class.

Your goal in this reflective, but still relatively formal essay is to pull together the threads of what we’ve been discussing all semester long and to articulate what you’ve taken away from our discussions as to the point of learning about critical theory.

ESSAY LENGTH: 1200 -1500 words (Maximum)

DUE DATE: English 086A: Friday, May 1. 12:00 PM

English 086 B: Thursday May 7, 12:00 PM

Term paper topic 2009

Imagine that you have been asked to write an article on Jacques Poulin’s Volkswagen Blues for an academic journal. What are some of the critical approaches you might apply to this text and what aspects of Poulin’s novel specifically would lead you to examine it from those perspectives? Choose a single theoretical approach or concept and discuss how that is applicable to the novel. Make sure to use specific, detailed examples from the novel to support your choice.

Essay length: 1200 words

Due date: April 23

Here are links to a couple of documents that might help you as you're writing your essay:

- Paul's tips on writing essays

- the grading rubric I'll use while grading your essays

Reading both of these documents carefully will help you avoid some of the common difficulties I see in student essays.

Blog prompt for week of March 30

Now that we have spent some time reading and discussing In the Skin of a Lion, what types of critical approaches or concepts that we've discussed in class do you think would be particularly applicable to an analysis of this novel?

Having identified a particular lens through which you would examine this book, pinpoint a couple of scenes or aspects of the novel that would be crucial to your analysis.

Assignment for extra credit

Here's the extra-credit assignment:

Choose one of the following terms and then write a 800-1000 word research paper that explains this concept. You must use at least three sources, only one of which can be an online source and you may not use wikipedia as a documented or undocumented source. You'll want to give your reader a sense of the history of this term or concept and who some of the major theorists are who have helped to develop the major lines of thought about this topic. You might also wish to include examples of how this concept might apply to a literary text you know well or to In the Skin of a Lion.

While you will be getting much of your information on your topic from the research that you do, it is crucial that this paper be more than just a summary of what you find. Make sure that your perspective on this issue is clear and that argument demonstrates that you understand the concept. You'll be using quotations from the sources you find to support your argument, not to overwhelm it.

Here are your choices of topic:

1) Intertextuality

2) defamiliarization

3) the readerly (lisible) vs. writerly (scriptible) text

4) verisimilitude

5) gynocriticism

Citing your sources: Be careful to document your sources thoroughly: If using an idea you found from a specific source that you didn't find in any of the others, you must cite the source of that idea. If you find it in three or more sources, it can be considered common knowledge and need not be cited. Make sure to familiarize yourself with what the UVM student code says about plagiarism.

Deadline: You can hand this essay in any time before the last day of class. It will be worth 7.5% of your final grade and your exam grade will be reduced from 15% of your final grade to 7.5% of your final grade. As this assignment is a significant and time-consuming one, it is likely only worth the effort if you scored below a C on your midterm.

Exam grade breakdown

Hi everyone,

Here's how the grade for your essay will be translated into a letter grade. The exam is worth 15% of your final grade, or 7.5% if you choose to do the alternate assignment, which I will describe on our blog later today.

A 85-100% Excellent

A- 80-84%

B+ 77-79%

B 74-76% Very Good

B- 70-73%

C+ 67-69%

C 64-66% Satisfactory

C- 60-63%

D+ 57-59%

D 50-56% Minimum pass

F 0-49% Unsatisfactory

Blog prompt for February 12

(Deadline for this blog assignment is Feb. 19th)

What concept covered by Jonathan Culler in Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction interested you the most? Why?

Is there anything discussed in that book that you would like us to revisit in more detail in class?

Citing your sources using MLA Style

Here are some links that will help you with MLA Style. Diana Hacker has published a number of great guides related to writing essays and documenting sources etc. It appears that her entire book is not online. Check out this section of her website for information on using MLA style

http://www.dianahacker.com/resdoc/humanities/list.html

This page at her site shows how to do "in-text citations"

http://www.dianahacker.com/resdoc/humanities/intext.html

There are many other sources online for similar information, though they are not as comprehensive as Hacker's site.

Here are a few others that might be of help:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research/r_mla.html
http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/DocMLA.html
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/cws/wworkshop/MLA/bibliographymla.htm

This site deals with how to cite online sources of information.
http://www.westwords.com/guffey/mla.html

These should answer all your questions. If you're an English major though, or still plan on taking English courses, purchasing the MLA Style Guide is a good investment.
You can purchase it online at http://www.mla.org/bookstore:

Response essay assignment

Choose one of the articles we have read so far from Falling Into Theory that you found to be interesting. In a concise, 500 word essay write a response to that article in which you can agree and/or disagree with its argument. Ensure that you use specific examples and quotations from the article to support your argument with textual evidence.

Some of the questions you might want to consider in your essay are: What are the most interesting parts of the author’s argument? How does this essay change how you think of literature or the study of literature? How do you perhaps see things differently from the author?

Paper length: 500-600 words

DUE February 12th at the beginning of class

First response assignment

Hi everyone,

Here's our first blog assignment of the semester (not including our introductions assignment):

Over the last two weeks we've read and spoken a great deal about the study of English. How, if at all, have these articles changed what you think "studying English" is all about? Which article did you find most interesting and why?

In your response you can talk about any of the articles we've read in the first three weeks of class.

Why, how, and what we read

Here's a recent article that might interest you. It touches on some of the issues we were talking about today in class and will talk about in the coming days.

People of the Screen

Introductions

Seeing as we're all going to be reading each other's comments over the next fourteen weeks, let's use the opportunity of our first blog post to get to know each other a bit better.

For privacy reasons, please just use your first name. Do, however, tell us a bit about your background and what you're hoping to learn in this course. Also, tell us a bit about your favourite writers and/or types of literature that you like to read.

I'm looking forward to our semester together and to having some great discussions with you about the books we'll be reading.

P.S. Just a reminder that to find our full syllabus for the course you simply need to click on the "Syllabus" tab at the top of this frame.

Welcome to English 086

Our syllabus will soon be posted here under the syllabus tab. Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions about the course.

Your first discussion assignment for this blog is to introduce yourself on the Discussions page. Find and click on the "Introductions" prompt and then click "comment." For your own privacy, I request that you do not use your last name in your postings on the discussion board.