Assignment Sheet: Response Papers

As you know, you are required to write at least one two-to-four-page response essay on one or two works from the "Literature of Reconstruction" unit, and at least one two-to-four-page response essay on one or two works from the "Literature of Migration" unit. These response essays are designed to be brief critical explorations of topics and questions that evolve out of the assigned readings and class discussion. You may write on any work(s) assigned for class discussion and may approach your topic(s) from any angle, so long as your essays have a coherent argument, meet length requirements, and use MLA format for citations and bibliography. Since your response paper grade (worth 20% of your final grade in the course) will be the average of all your short essay grades, you can potentially improve your grade in this area by writing additional essays beyond the two that are required. This page gives the assignment sheet for the first and second response essays; any additional essays you write may be on any texts or issues from the course, but feel free to draw on suggested topics from the Literature of Resistance unit. Click here for further advice on drafting and editing thesis-driven papers.

Response Paper #1

Due: no later than the beginning of class Monday, September 30.

Format: 2-4 pages, double spaced, with reasonable fonts, font sizes, and margins; title that indicates main argument of paper; heading that includes your name, the course name or number, and the date; bibliography and citations in MLA style (see the links page for explanations of this style of citation); proper quotation format for quotations within a paragraph: "..." (12); blockquote format for quotes five lines or longer.

Criteria for Evaluation: No matter which topic you invent or option you choose for the response essay, I will be grading your paper in terms of how well you make your case for your argument, how well you base your argument on textual analysis and interpretation, and how well-organized and well-written your paper is. Hence I will be evaluating the coherence, validity, and persuasiveness of your paper's argument, the effectiveness of your paper's structure, and the quality of your paper's prose (grammar, syntax, and punctuation).
Rationale: The response essays are your chance to practice developing a critical argument that stems from your response to the assigned texts and our class discussions of them. Treat them as an opportunity to move beyond what we do in class--developing hypotheses, opinions, and possible answers to key questions--by trying to support a hypothesis, convince someone else to accept your opinion, or persuade your audience that your answer is not only possible but is also highly plausible. The response papers are your place to pursue some of the key issues of the course in more depth, at greater length, and with more textual support than we are typically able to do in a 50-minute class period.

Suggested Topics: There are two main themes running throughout the "Literature of Reconstruction" unit, which groups American literature from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries first by topic ("Remembering the Civil War," "The Racial Politics of Reconstruction") and then by region ("Creole New Orleans," "The New West," "New England Personae," "Midwestern Trifles").

The first theme--"Legacies of Slavery, Civil War, and Reconstruction: The Significance of the American Past at the Turn into the Twentieth Century"--roughly corresponds to the grouping of texts by topic during the first four weeks of the unit and begins from the notion that writers in the late nineteenth century U.S. were often looking back to the recent past to answer new (and newly pressing) questions in the wake of the Civil War, the abolition of slavery, and the collapse of Reconstruction: who counts as American and stands for America? what are the rights of Americans (particularly the former slaves who became citizens for the first time only after the Civil War)? how, to what ends, on whose terms, and at whose cost should regional reconciliation and a new sense of national identity be engineered? how ought America and Americans act toward "others," both on the continent (particularly ex-slaves, Indians, and immigrants) and off (particularly in Hawaii, Cuba, and the Philippines)?

The second theme--"Region and Race, Dialect and Difference: American Realism in Historical Context"--roughly corresponds to the grouping of texts by region in the final two weeks of the unit and begins from the notion that the emphasis on "realistic" representations of regional, gender, class, racial, and vernacular particularities and differences in late nineteenth U.S. literature shows that American realism looks out on a nation in the throes of major transformations. What is at stake in the emphasis on American voices, vernaculars, and accents in American realism? Why are regional and national transformation so often figured through domestic, gendered, and sexual imagery, themes, and plots in American realist literature? What conclusions can we draw about the relationship between those seeking to preserve in print a sense of regional specificity and the newly national audiences who consume those preserves? How and to what ends do early twentieth-century modernists like Frost, Glaspell, and Anderson pay homage to and play with the conventions of American realism?

Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn bridges these two themes: on the one hand, it looks back to the antebellum period in order to comment on the racial politics of the post-Reconstruction U.S.; on the other, it focuses on American dialects and differences in order to comment on shifting regional and national identities. Hence, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn appears quite often in the following list of suggested topics for each of these themes. This list provides an overview of the issues and inquiries that shaped my selection of texts and topics when designing the syllabus for this course as well as a record of our emphases during our class discussions. It is meant to be suggestive rather than exhaustive. You may write on any topic that relates to the assigned readings or our class discussions in the "Literature of Reconstruction" unit--in fact, you are encouraged to pursue a line of inquiry and argument that is both interesting and important to you. Whatever topic you choose or invent, keep in mind that your job is to choose one or two works from the "Literature of Reconstruction" unit and develop an argument that you are trying to prove by using textual evidence to persuade your readers of your interpretations' validity.

• Legacies of Slavery, Civil War, and Reconstruction: The Significance of the American Past at the Turn into the Twentieth Century
  • Legacies of the Civil War: Consider how and to what ends a writer might choose to write about a war that took place decades earlier and that an older generation actually experienced, and then focus your analysis on one or two works that allude to the Civil War from among Ambrose Bierce's "Chickamauga," Stephen Crane's "A Mystery of Heroism," Booker T. Washington's Up from Slavery, W.E.B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk, and Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Examine what aspects of the war are emphasized and hinted at and consider the author's purposes for referring to the war in that way. Then generate an argument about the intended effects of such a representation of the Civil War, and support it using textual evidence drawn from the work(s) in question. (If you choose more than one work, your argument must be about the significance of the contrast in intended effects.)
  • Legacies of Slavery: Consider how and to what ends a writer might choose to write about an institution that was abolished decades earlier and that an older generation actually experienced, and then focus your analysis on one or two works that allude to slavery from among Booker T. Washington's Up from Slavery, W.E.B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk, Charles Chesnutt's "Po' Sandy," and Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Examine what aspects of slavery are emphasized and hinted at and consider the author's purposes for referring to slavery in that way. Then generate an argument about the intended effects of such a representation of slavery in the work's own time period, and support it using textual evidence drawn from the work(s) in question. (If you choose more than one work, your argument must be about the significance of the contrast in intended effects.)
  • Legacies of Reconstruction: Consider how and to what ends a writer might choose to write about the legacies of Reconstruction decades after it ended with the Compromise of 1876, and then focus your analysis on one or two works that allude to this subject from among Anna Julia Cooper's A Voice from the South, W.E.B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk, Charles Chesnutt's "Po' Sandy," Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Alexander Lawrence Posey's "Fus Fixico's Letter Number 44." Examine what aspects of Reconstruction are emphasized and hinted at and consider the author's purposes for referring to Reconstruction in that way. Then generate an argument about the intended effects of such a representation of Reconstruction in the work's own time period, and support it using textual evidence drawn from the work(s) in question. (If you choose more than one work, your argument must be about the significance of the contrast in intended effects.)
• Region and Race, Dialect and Difference: American Realism in Historical Context
  • Dialect: Consider the use and avoidance of dialect in the works that we have read in the first five weeks of classes, and choose two to compare and contrast on one of the following grounds: choose a work that embraces dialect and one that avoids it and make an argument about why this choice may have been made and what is at stake in it; choose works that focus on the dialects of different regions and consider how and to what ends the writers represented the dialect of each region; choose works that focus on the dialects of different ethnic groups and consider how and to what ends the writers represented the dialect of each region.
  • Gender: Consider the ways in which works such as Anna Julia Cooper's A Voice from the South, Charles Chesnutt's "Po' Sandy," Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, George Washington Cable's "'Tite Poulette," Kate Chopin's "Désirée's Baby," and John Milton Oskison's "The Problem of Old Harjo" broach issues of gender roles and expectations (for both men and women), and choose one or two to use to address the significance of patterns in the representation of gender and gender issues. How are gender issues used as a code for addressing broader changes in U.S. society?
  • Sexuality: Consider the ways in which works such as George Washington Cable's "'Tite Poulette," Kate Chopin's "Désirée's Baby," and John Milton Oskison's "The Problem of Old Harjo" broach issues of sex and sexuality, and choose one or two to use to address the significance of patterns in the representation of sex and sexuality. How are sex and sexuality used as a code for addressing broader changes in U.S. society?
  • Traditions/Conventions/Assumptions: Analyze either Charles Chesnutt's "Po' Sandy" or Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in terms of the author's goals for having his audience look critically at influential literary conventions, cultural traditions, and political assumptions of his time.

Response Paper #2

Due: no later than the beginning of class Monday, November 11.

Format: 2-4 pages, double spaced, with reasonable fonts, font sizes, and margins; title that indicates main argument of paper; heading that includes your name, the course name or number, and the date; bibliography and citations in MLA style (see the links page for explanations of this style of citation); proper quotation format for quotations within a paragraph: "..." (12); blockquote format for quotes five lines or longer.

Criteria for Evaluation: No matter which topic you invent or option you choose for the response essay, I will be grading your paper in terms of how well you make your case for your argument, how well you base your argument on textual analysis and interpretation, and how well-organized and well-written your paper is. Hence I will be evaluating the coherence, validity, and persuasiveness of your paper's argument, the effectiveness of your paper's structure, and the quality of your paper's prose (grammar, syntax, and punctuation).
Rationale: The response essays are your chance to practice developing a critical argument that stems from your response to the assigned texts and our class discussions of them. Treat them as an opportunity to move beyond what we do in class--developing hypotheses, opinions, and possible answers to key questions--by trying to support a hypothesis, convince someone else to accept your opinion, or persuade your audience that your answer is not only possible but is also highly plausible. The response papers are your place to pursue some of the key issues of the course in more depth, at greater length, and with more textual support than we are typically able to do in a 50-minute class period.

Suggested Topics: The "Literature of Migration" unit focuses on literary representations of and responses to a variety of migrations to and within the U.S. roughly between the 1880s and the 1940s. It posits that American literature was participating in a wider cultural debate over issues of migration--the causes of migrations and motivations of migrants; the processes of migration and experiences of migrants; and the effects on, consequences of, and legacies of migration for migrants, natives, and national identity--in the early twentieth century. The unit, then, seeks to put into relation to each other such varied migrations as the westward expansion of settlers from the east and south to the western U.S. after the Civil War; the forced migrations ("removals") of American Indians in the midwest and west during the same period; the "great migration" of African Americans from the rural south to urban centers in the south, midwest, and north in the early decades of the twentieth century; the movements of various immigrant groups from Asia, eastern Europe, and southern Europe during this entire period; the travels of Americans abroad, whether as soldiers during WWI, as tourists in Europe in the 1880s, or as expatriates in the 1920s and 1930s; the migrations caused by the environmental and economic crises of the 1930s (the Great Depression); and the effects of technologies like railroads on social mobility and movement in American society. It does so by encouraging students to explore relations between developments in literary history--the emergence of new styles, new genres, and new literary movements in the multiple modernisms of the early twentieth century; the mutation and development of more established movements like realism and naturalism; and the shift from a regional to a national or even international scope and subject matter for American literature--and the political, economic, and social issues facing the United States in a period characterized by increasingly rapid movements of peoples, goods, and ideas, by sharpening class and international conflicts, and by the great "shocks" of the early twentieth century (World War I, the Communist Revolution in Russia, the 1929 stock market crash and worldwide crisis of capitalism). How did the literature of this period register and respond to these forces transforming American society and identity? How and to what ends did writers attempt to represent and intervene in the world around them?

William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, like Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn before it, is a bridge text here. It both looks backward to the regionalist and realistic writings of the nineteenth century and participates fully in the modernist challenge to inherited conventions of representation, narration, plot, and character. The journey of the Bundren family functions as a metaphorical migration that can be related to many of the more literal migrations of this unit.

What follows is an overview of the issues and inquiries that shaped my selection of texts and topics when designing the syllabus for this course as well as a record of our emphases during our class discussions. It is meant to be suggestive rather than exhaustive. You may write on any topic that relates to the assigned readings or our class discussions in the "Literature of Migration" unit--in fact, you are encouraged to pursue a line of inquiry and argument that is both interesting and important to you. Whatever topic you choose or invent, keep in mind that your job is to choose one or two works from the "Literature of Migration" unit and develop a debate-able argument that you are trying to support by using textual evidence to persuade your readers of your interpretation's plausibility and validity.

• Manifest Destinies?: Writers from this section focus on interactions between white settlers heading westward into newly purchased or conquered territories, with their notions of new beginnings, economic opportunities, and the 'manifest destiny' of the United States to spread liberty and democracy across the continent, and the prior inhabitants of those territories--American Indians and Mexican Americans--who suddenly find themselves under the jurisdiction of the United States.
  • Consider what's at stake in a writer's (or pair of writers') take on the westward migration of European-Americans. This can be in terms of what it reveals about political or other issues at the time, what relevance it has to our own time, or any other issue that would lead you to making a debate-able, argue-able claim and trying to support it persuasively.
• The Great Migration: Writers from this section focus on the practice of lynching between the Civil War and World War II and its influence on the "great migration" of African Americans from the rural South to urban centers in the South, Midwest, and Northeast.
  • Analyze the ways a pair of writers represents the causes of the Great Migration and what's at stake in similarities and differences between their representations.
  • Compare and contrast any two writers from this section in terms of the narrative strategies they use for conveying the impact of lynching and moving their audiences. Go beyond description to analysis by arguing what's at stake in similarities and differences between their narrative strategies and intended effects.
• Immigrant America: Writers from this section are interested in the significance of the "new immigrants" coming to the United States in the late nineteenth century from places where few had come before--from southern and eastern Europe, from east Asia--and in the responses to their presence by more established immigrant groups, particularly the politically and culturally dominant descendants of English settlers. They are interested in exploring how American identity was changing at the turn into the twentieth century.
  • Compare and contrast any two writers from this section on any single issue or debate on which they seem to be taking a position. Be sure to go beyond describing their positions by analyzing what is at stake in the similarities and differences between the two writers' works.
• The International Story: Writers from this section are concerned with the experience of Americans traveling and living abroad in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. They use encounters between Americans and Europeans to shed light on assumptions about American identity between the Civil War and World War I.
  • Consider how and to what ends a later writer revises and transforms an earlier writer's version of "the international story," and make an argument trying to prove your claim about what the later writer is trying to achieve in this "re-vision" of an earlier text.
  • Many of these writers use the "foreign" setting to reexamine the most "domestic" of domestic issues--the question of gender and sexual relations between Americans travelling abroad. Compare and contrast two writers who do this and develop an argument about what's at stake in the similarities and differences between their reexaminations of American relationships.
• The Great Depression and After: Writers from this section put issues of class, poverty, wealth, status, and economic opportunity in the foreground of their poetry, fiction, and essays that deal with the reasons for, experiences of, and effects of migration within the United States between World War I and World War II. Choose one of the following options, or develop one of your own, that uses a writer or pair of writers from this section to help you develop and support your argument.
  • Compare and contrast any two writers from this section in terms of the narrative strategies they use for conveying the impact of the Great Depression. Go beyond description to analysis by arguing what's at stake in similarities and differences between their narrative strategies.
  • We considered the idea in class discussion that Faulkner's As I Lay Dying portrays a kind of metaphorical migration, that his focus on the Bundren family's journey is a kind of veiled commentary on larger issues of American history and identity. Make an argument about how and to what ends Faulkner uses the Bundren family to comment on migration and American identity.
  • How and to what ends does a given writer (or pair of writers) interlink class issues with issues of gender, ethnicity, religion, or race? Alternatively, what light does the literature of the time shed on issues of exploitation between the wars?
• Legacies of Migrations: Writings from this section are concerned with the long-term consequences and effects of migrations to and within the New World, and help put in a larger context the nineteenth- and twentieth century migrations to and within the United States we've focused on in the unit. Consider how any writer or pair of writers helps us answer one of the following questions, and use that work or works to develop a persuasive answer to it:
  • What has been the most important legacy of migration in and to America?
  • How useful is the "melting pot" metaphor for characterizing American identity? (Marti and Bourne from the "Immigrant America" section may also be relevant here.)
  • How useful is the "nation of immigrants" idea for characterizing American identity? (Some of the readings from the "Manifest Destinies" section may also be relevant here.)
  • How might this writer (or this pair of writers) help us understand or rethink another current debate over American identity?

Additional Response Papers

Due: any time before the last day of classes

Format: 2-4 pages, double spaced, with reasonable fonts, font sizes, and margins; title that indicates main argument of paper; heading that includes your name, the course name or number, and the date; bibliography and citations in MLA style (see the links page for explanations of this style of citation); proper quotation format for quotations within a paragraph: "..." (12); blockquote format for quotes five lines or longer.

Criteria for Evaluation: No matter which topic you invent or option you choose for the response essay, I will be grading your paper in terms of how well you make your case for your argument, how well you base your argument on textual analysis and interpretation, and how well-organized and well-written your paper is. Hence I will be evaluating the coherence, validity, and persuasiveness of your paper's argument, the effectiveness of your paper's structure, and the quality of your paper's prose (grammar, syntax, and punctuation).
Rationale: The response essays are your chance to practice developing a critical argument that stems from your response to the assigned texts and our class discussions of them. Treat them as an opportunity to move beyond what we do in class--developing hypotheses, opinions, and possible answers to key questions--by trying to support a hypothesis, convince someone else to accept your opinion, or persuade your audience that your answer is not only possible but is also highly plausible. The response papers are your place to pursue some of the key issues of the course in more depth, at greater length, and with more textual support than we are typically able to do in a 50-minute class period.

Suggested Topics: The "Literature of Resistance" unit begins from the premise that one prominent problematic in American literature between 1910 and 1990 is an exploration of what is at stake in various kinds of resistance to certain American traditions, conventions, and institutions. By putting writings from "literary" movements like modernism and postmodernism alongside writings from "social" movements like the Civil Rights movement and feminism, the "Literature of Resistance" unit challenges us to reconsider the assumptions that would separate the literary from the social, the aesthetic from the historical, and poetics from politics. By linking modernists with writers of the Harlem Renaissance, Beats with writers of the Civil Rights movement, postmodernists with writings on Vietnam and feminism, the unit invites us to explore the relations between various forms of resistance, to evaluate the ways in which writers resist social and aesthetic conventions, traditions, and institutions, and to consider what light these resistances shed on our present.

Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, like William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying and Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn before it, is a bridge text here. Like Twain and Faulkner, Morrison looks closely into the experiences and listens to the voices of those marginalized in and by American society. Just as Twain's novel combines romanticism and realism, and Faulkner's realism and modernism, Morrison's novel draws on and transforms several American literary traditions, including realism, modernism, and postmodernism. The Bluest Eye, moreover, illustrates clearly the connections and relations between history and aesthetics, between politics and poetics, that the "Literature of Resistance" unit is engaged in exploring. Unlike many of the writers in the unit, however, Morrison has us consider what happens to a character who offers little or no resistance to the forces and institutions that are both shaping and destroying her. Her novel poses the challenge of how best to resist a racialized aesthetics, an aestheticized racism.

What follows is an overview of the issues and inquiries that shaped my selection of texts and topics when designing the syllabus for this course as well as a record of our emphases during our class discussions. It is meant to be suggestive rather than exhaustive. You may write on any topic that relates to the assigned readings or our class discussions in the "Literature of Resistance" or any other unit--in fact, you are encouraged to pursue a line of inquiry and argument that is both interesting and important to you. Whatever topic you choose or invent, keep in mind that your job is to choose one or two works from the "Literature of Resistance" or any other unit and develop a debate-able argument that you are trying to support by using textual evidence to persuade your readers of your interpretation's plausibility and validity.

• Critics have argued there are multiple modernisms rather than a single movement and have championed various writers for various reasons. Which of the writers that we read do you think is the most exemplary modernist and why? How is the way that writer resists basic assumptions of his or her culture better than other modernists' resistances?
• During the Harlem Renaissance, several issues were hotly debated--among them, African American identity, the role of the artist in society, the political uses of artistic forms, the relation between writer and audience, and the use of folk materials. Choose one of these issues and a pair of writers with different takes on that issue, and make an argument as to which take offers more significant resistance to the basic assumptions of American culture at the time.
• Compare and contrast a modernist writer and a Harlem Renaissance writer on the kinds of resistance they offer to American cultural assumptions, conventions, traditions, and institutions between World War I and World War II. Be sure to go beyond description by analyzing what's at stake in their different forms and modes of resistance.
• Choose a post-WWII poem and identify what about Cold War American culture it appears to be resisting, how, and why. As you do this, make an argument about what's at stake in its "postmodern" forms and modes of resistance to aspects of Cold War America.
• During the Civil Rights era, several issues were hotly debated--among them, African American identity, whether America was irredeemably racist or potentially egalitarian, strategies for social change, and changing gender roles and relations, among others. Choose one of these issues and a pair of writers with different takes on that issue, and make an argument as to which take offers more significant resistance to the basic assumptions of American culture at the time. Pairing a poet and an essayist would be particularly interesting on this topic.
• Write an essay in which you analyze a specific aspect of Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye in greater depth than we were able to in our class discussions.
• Compare and contrast the poetic techniques/rhetorical strategies of a postmodernist poet and a Civil Rights-era writer on the kinds of resistance they offer to American cultural assumptions, conventions, traditions, and institutions between World War II and the Vietnam War. Be sure to go beyond description by analyzing what's at stake in their different forms and modes of resistance.
• Analyze the use of language, form, structure, and style of a Vietnam-era writer--how and to what ends does that writer transform the conventions of the genre(s) he or she is working in and playing with?
• Compare and contrast a Vietnam-era writer with a feminist writer on the ways they represent America's role in the world and what's at stake in the similarities and differences between their approaches.
• Trace the development of American feminist literature by comparing and contrasting either Rich's poem or Kingston's autobiography chapter (each from the '70s) with one of the poems from the '80s or '90s. What's at stake in the similarities and differences between the earlier and later works?

ENGL 206: Survey of American Literature, Fall 2002
Created: 9/9/02 7:04 pm
Last modified: 12/13/02 4:50 pm