Overview
25% Participation Grade
25 % – attendance
25 % – in-class discussion
25 % – online class discussion
25 % – pop quizzes
25% Post Grades
25 % – timeliness and format
25 % – scope of discussion
25 % – engagement with text
25 % – explication of your interpretation
25 % Project Grade
25 % – pre-project assignments
25 % – project execution
25 % – project write-up
25 % – self and group evaluation
25 % Paper Grade
50 % – paper 1
50 % – paper 2
Break Down of Course Requirements
25% Participation Grade
25 % – attendance: Punctual attendance is mandatory.
absences: More than 3 absences may affect your participation grade.
punctuality: Every 4th tardy will count as an absence.
note: You are officially late if you not in the class and ready to go at the official start of the class, however I may not always take attendance at the very beginning of class. If you arrive before I take attendance, then you will be marked as present and on time. If you arrive after I take attendance, you will be marked absent. It is then your responsibility to let me know after class that you were in attendance, so I can change my record to “tardy” rather than “absent.” You have 24 hours from the beginning of class to make sure I have marked you “tardy” rather than “absent” otherwise the initial record stands.
25 % – in-class discussion: I expect you to make active, thoughtful, and sustained contributions to our in-class discussion.
Education is not passive. You cannot just expect to receive without also giving. Attendance is good (and mandatory), but it is not enough. Doing the reading is great (and mandatory) but not enough. Even taking notes (while also a fine habit) is not enough. You must be an active reader, an active listener, and an active interlocutor in the class.
As an active class participant, you will come to class ready to discuss all of the assigned reading. If you complete the readings well-beforehand, please remember to refresh your recollection of the reading BEFORE, rather than during, class.
Ready to discuss the readings means that you come to class prepared to share relevant questions, observations, and even interpretations about not only the assigned readings but also any accompanying posts written by your classmates. Prepared to share means not only that you have thought about what your questions are, but that you also have also identified specific parts of the text (think chapters, scenes, page numbers) relevant to what you want to share.
extra credit: You are encouraged but not required to post more than the required number of posts. Perhaps you post about more than one of the assigned texts for that week; or perhaps you have more than one idea you wish to share about a single text. Additionally if you find a relevant outside text that you believe is beneficial to our class discussion, you may share it with the class as a link and/or citation along with a brief description of the text and explanation of what about the text you find relevant to our discussion and why. Any such additional posts, published by 8:00 pm the day before the relevant class discussion, will be counted as extra credit towards your in-class participation.
25 % – online class discussion: I expect you to provide active, thoughtful, sustained contribution to online class discussion as well as to our in-class discussion. I will assess your online discussions based on the timeliness of all your pre-assigned posts including the ones I don’t grade (see below section on post assignments for details) and on the completion of at least 2 pop-up post challenges.
pop-up post challenges: From time to time, I will present an interactive challenge in which students are asked to find an example of X (related to our class discussion) and post it to the site along with a brief (no more than a 100 words) explanation of what they have posted and how it relates to the challenge question.
for example: In a previous course, as part of our discussion on the role of the quadroon maid and the coquettish brown girl in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, I challenged students to find a contemporary (within their parent’s lifetime) pop culture example in which the erotic/romantic material of an otherwise all or predominately white film is authorized by the sudden presence of black culture (i.e. a black song, an image of a black sexual icon, the appearance of a random wise old African american man or woman, or a reference by the white characters student option of black vernacular speech). Students then posted links and/or clips of their example (e.g. the mystic black man who opens and closes the narrative of Pretty Women starring Richard Geer and Julia Roberts or the music/dance performance at the end of Bad Moms Christmas which borrows heavily from 90’s R&B musical and performance style) followed by an explanation of how the media they are posting satisfies the post challenge, in this case how it is that some instance of black culture is inserted into the otherwise white film in such a way that authorizes an expression of white sexuality.)
extra credit: While you are required to have read your classmates’ posts and be ready to reference and engage them in class, I am not requiring that you comment on any of the posts online. However you are welcomed to do so for extra credit. I will count clear, relevant, and thoughtful responses to posts as extra credit towards your online class discussion grade.
note: Responses and comments are not grades, evaluations, or reviews of your classmates’ work. Thus, you must do more than state that your approval or disapproval of the post.
If you agree or like the post, you must state exactly what you agree with or like about the post and why. Moreover you must extend the conversation the post begins. (e.g. You might provide another salient example, which drives home the argument; or perhaps you show how your classmate’s line of reason also importantly extends to another text or another area of our class discussion).
If you disagree or dislike, you must state exactly what you disagree with and why. Moreover you should provide some sort of counter point or counter interpretation of your own. Clear, thoughtful, and relevant responses to your peers’ posts will count as extra credit towards your online class discussion grade.
25 % – pop quizzes: Through out the semester, I will give at least six short pop quizzes based on the readings. These quizzes are designed to assess how closely and how thoroughly you have completed the readings. They are also designed to set the tone for our class discussions. Answers will be discussed in class after the quizzes have been turned in. Quizzes cannot be made up.
note: To account for difficult readings and to avoid double penalties for absences and tardies, only your top 4 quiz grades will count towards your final quiz pop-quiz grades. SO: assuming there are only six pop quizzes, you can receive a 0 on two of the quizzes and still retain the possibility of receiving a 100 on this portion of your participation grade.
25% Post Grade
Our online discussion is a big part of this class. It’s both a way that we prepare for and the make the most of our in-class discussion time and a space in which we can extend our experience inside the class to deepen the connections between individual readings and between the course material and other aspects of our histories, cultures, and everyday lives.
Each student will be assigned to one of six post groups, which will post at various times throughout the semester. Click here to find out which post group you’ve been assigned. Please check the course schedule for when your group should posts. In order for the class to read the posts, you should post 24 hours before class. Posts are assessed based on the following four criteria: timeliness and format; scope of discussion; engagement with the text; and explication of your interpretation. Remember that I expect you to read all the posts even when it’s not your group’s week to post.
25 % timeliness and format: A large part of this class is the online discussion. Posts are great ways to not only share ideas that we may not have time to discuss in class but also for you to practice writing and argumentation and exercise your close reading and interpretive analysis skills in a focused and low stakes arena. Low stakes means that I do not expect posts to be as long and developed nor as stylistically clean as I expect papers and final project assignments to be. However I do expect you to you to take the posts seriously and to challenge your self to focus on in on a particular aspect of the text and clearly present your thoughts about how that portion of the text is working. I will demonstrate how to post to the WordPress site the first week of classes. If you miss this demonstration or find you need additional help, please meet with me BEFORE your post is due, so that I can assist you.
timeliness – All posts should be posted by noon the day before the post is due. This means if you are scheduled to post for Tuesday’s class, your post is due at noon on Monday. Punctual posting is necessary to allow me and your peers time to read the posts before class. As noted above, late posts can affect both your post grade and your online discussion grade.
format – 1) Posts should be 200-350 words long. 2) Each posts should include a relevant and creative title that signals something of the content or ideas your post addresses. 3) Similarly you should include one or two relevant tags to your post. As the semester progresses, you may also use tags that others have used. Tags are not the same thing as subject categories. Tags are easy ways for you to index your work and make creative links to other’s conversation.
important: 4) Before submitting your post you should check any and all relevant category boxes. These boxes are essential to my ability to locate your posts and track your progress as the semester progresses. I will not go hunting the site looking for your late and/or improperly categorized posts. If you do not click the appropriate category boxes, and I am unable to locate your post, I will consider the work incomplete.
25 % – scope of discussion: The post assignments are meant to help you practice close reading (close looking, close watching, close listening) a text. As such your posts must focus on a very small and discrete aspect of the text.
By small and focused, I mean that you should identify a particular passage (i.e. no more than a page or 10 seconds of a recording) or specific formal detail (e.g. the small but twice occurring mention of soup in The Awakening). The object of your consideration should be something you can point to in the text using time stamps; spatial coordinates; page, paragraph, or scene numbers; or some other concrete measure for distinguishing the parameters of your object of analysis from the whole of the text and/or its overarching topics, themes, and symbols.
Accordingly your posts should not be an analysis of a main character, a recurring trope, a major symbol, or an overarching theme. It may be that the stakes of your interpretation (i.e. why your reading of this part of the text matters) has something to do with the way we might read a main character, recurring tropes, major symbols, and/or overarching themes, but such a connection (while you may state it early on) should be discussed towards the end of your post. The bulk of your post should focus on making a very small claim about some very small aspect of the text you are examining. You will be graded on how clear and appropriately focused your object of discussion is. Overly broad or vague points of discussion will not receive full credit.
remember the extra credit: If you find you don’t have enough room to say all you want to say in the post, hurrah, that’s excellent! I hope you will have more to say than the very focused analysis this assignment asks of you. If you find yourself in this wonderful position, you have many options: 1) If these additional thoughts still feel fuzzy or indistinct, you may just want to index them after you finish relaying your more thought out idea. Perhaps you conclude your post with a “Further Thoughts” note. These further thoughts may be presented in prose or simply in bullet points. 2) If your additional thoughts are more flushed out (or if you’d like to try to flush some of them out), you can always make additional posts examining these additional ideas. And/or 3) you may choose to continue this line of exploration in one of your papers and/or the final project.
25 % engagement with text: Posts are not as extensive as writing a paper, so you should use them as opportunities to practice focusing your attention and consideration of the form and content of the text (i.e. both on what the text says and also on how it says what it says and why that matters). Posts are not free-for-all opportunities to use texts as spring board to otherwise unrelated, or very distantly connected, ideas about other topics, texts, or personal experiences. If the texts inspires a wealth of associative connections, you should feel free to explore them in additional posts. However your assigned post must focus on engaging the actual text.
Engaging the text often includes providing quoted material and/or clear descriptions of what exactly in the text you are asking readers to focus on. If you can write your posts without looking at the text at all, you are probably straying too far from the text. Similarly if you can write the exact same post word-for-word about some other part of the text or about an entirely different text, you are most likely not engaging enough with the specifics of this particular text.
25% – explication of your interpretation: As practice for your papers, I expect you to not only bring our attention to some focused aspect of the text and to posit some idea/interpretation about that aspect of the text, I also expect you to clearly explain to your readers how you arrive at that interpretation. Think of your self as the teacher explaining to the class how this X part of the text can be (ought to be) understood in Y way because if we read and understand it in Y way we will be able to grasp this important Z interpretation of what the text is doing. Even if you think your ideas are obvious or simple, you must take the time to spell out every part. You must teach your ideas!
25 % Paper Grade
50 % – paper 1 – Text-Based (Close Reading) Analysis Paper (4-5 pages): You should think of this paper as an extension of the posts and opportunity to further develop the close reading analysis and argumentation skills practiced in the posts. Indeed you may even choose to use one of your post assignments as a starting point for your paper. I will assess the paper based on how well you clearly posit and substantiate an interpretive claim about a portion of the texts using close and sustained textual analysis. While the paper provides a little more space to develop a claim than the post, a 4-5 page paper is an extremely short paper. You must make sure your object of analysis and your claim are narrow and specific enough to be thoroughly illustrated within the 4-5 pages allotted. As with your posts, your claim (your thesis) should be about how you understand some small, specific aspect of the text working; it should not be about the major symbols, primary motifs, or overarching themes, moods, nor about the entire plot. Remember you may (and indeed you should) illustrate the stakes of making such a claim by later explaining how your analysis may affect the way we ultimately understand something about the major characters, tropes, motifs, themes, and/or symbols of the text, but the actual object of study (or object of consideration) about which you will make a claim should be very focused.
50 % paper 2 – Material History Research & Textual Analysis Paper (5-6 pages): The purpose of this paper assignment is for students 1) to consider in greater depth the material history at play in black texts; 2) to conduct research on a specific historically locate-able material detail in one of the black-authored texts on the syllabus; and 3) to posit an interpretive claim that answers the question: How does knowledge about the historical context of the material referenced in this part of the text affect the way we can read and interpret this part of the text (and subsequently how that interpretation affects the way we understand some overarching aspect of the text as a whole)?
As such for this paper, students should: 1) Pick one of the black-authored texts on the syllabus they wish to research and write about. 2) Conduct initial research about the general historical context of this text. Such general research should cover historical background relevant to the story’s setting or main characters as well as information relevant to the text’s publication history: in terms of place, time, and condition of publication, author background, audience, reception, etc. 3) Choose one specific historically locate-able detail about this text (i.e. a place, an object, a person, an event) to conduct further research. As with the posts and paper 1, the more focused and narrow their object of consideration is the better. 4) Research this historically locate-able material from a variety of angles using at least four reputable sources, at least two of which must be a peer-reviewed scholarly source. 5) Use the knowledge from this research to posit a clear and focused interpretive claim. This interpretive claim should still be based on textual analysis (as with the first paper). However the students understanding of the text should be expanded based on the information they gain from their research. 6) Draft a paper in which this claim is both clearly posited as a text-based thesis statement and then illustrated using both relevant information from the research and close analysis of the text’s content and formal element. 7) This paper should include an MLA formatted bibliography as well as in-text parenthetical citations (according to MLA guidelines).
Note: Students may choose to use Paper 2 to extend or continue a line of exploration begun in Paper 1. While you may include similar version of the readings from Paper 1, ultimately Paper 2 should stand as its own paper, for if your readings in Paper 1 are essentially unchanged even after your research, you have not made a claim that is fundamentally about how the historical context of this aspect of the text enriches our understanding of how we can read and interpret the black material referenced in this text.
25 % Project Grade
25 % – pre-project assignments:A quarter of your project grade is based on the timely and thorough completion of all pre-project assignments (i.e. project check-ins 1 and 2; the group meeting with the professor; and the final in-class project presentation).
25 % – project execution: All members of the group will share this grade.
25 % – project write-up: A 1- 2 page group-authored write-up [double spaced, 12 point Times New Roman Font with 1 inch margins]. The write-up should provide a rationale for some of the choices made in your project by discussing how those choices relate to the group’s goals and organizing principle(s). The write-up should also make clear how the group’s goals, content, and formal choices connect to or make some significant contribution to at least one of our primary course discussions.
25 % – self and group evaluation: I will pass out a questionnaire the last week of classes, which you should thoughtfully and thoroughly complete by the date listed on the syllabus.
Black Matter 