Assignments
1) Weekly Reading Posts: Informal notes analyzing/exploring key issues in the readings on the class wiki. One or two people will be responsible for writing the opening post for each reading, to which others will respond.Opening posts due on the wiki by the Monday before the class in which we discuss the text. Substantial responses will be due before the class begins. Whether you’re responding to a classmate’s post or offering your own read, these "substantial responses" should offer a real engagement with the material that takes us into the text, using quotes and page numbers, and posing questions and/or offering reflections on passages or ideas.
2) Three Summary/Response Papers: Formal, one-page, single spaced, beautifully polished, and terribly insightful papers that are interested less in opinions than in relationships and that are to be read aloud in class and then handed in to me .Margins are optional, but no smaller than 11 point font and no more than one letter-sized page. The first half of each paper should be a concise but thorough summary of the assigned text. The second half should be your reading of that work "across" another text we have read in class. Please don't be fooled; these one-pagers are hard as hell—they demand a higher level of reading/writing savvy than a traditional essay. Until you get the hang of the process and the style-cramping format, expect to rewrite at least once, maybe several times. The grading will be rigorous; excellence will be required. The hope is that when you leave this course, these short, dense papers will offer you a base for one or more publishable papers and also provide you with some valuable study resources for your comprehensive exams.
3) One short seminar paper, 10-ish pages, double spaced, in which you accomplish one of the following:
- define the significance of performative language for rhetorical studies, writing studies, or English studies
- read an issue, a cultural event, a philosophical approach, or a literary (or other) text through the lens of performative theory (ex: Felman, Butler, Ronell)
- do something I can’t imagine right now (must be approved: make me an offer)