American Realism and Naturalism: The Final Project, Fall 2004

The final assignment in this course is of your choosing: it could be an 8-to-10-page research-based critical essay or pedagogical essay, a creative writing project with author's note, an analytical web site, or some other format of your invention. It's your call--in terms of what topic or issue you choose to focus on as well as what format you present your findings in--so think carefully about which texts, questions, and modes of analysis have been most interesting to you and feel free to invent your own line of inquiry. You should either stop by my office during the last two weeks of classes or drop me a line over e-mail so I can give feedback on your ideas.

Final projects are due by the close of the academic day on Friday, December 17, 2004. NO LATE PROJECTS WILL BE ACCEPTED; if you don't complete your paper or website by this date, you will automatically get an incomplete as a final course grade.

Possible formats (meant to be illustrative, not comprehensive or prescriptive!) for your final project include:

• Critical Essay option: write an 8-to-10-page critical essay in which you advance an argument based on analyses of a work or pair of works from either the "Literature of Migration" unit or one work from that unit and one from a previous unit. The goal of this option is for you to incorporate research into secondary sources into the development and support of an argument on a work or works from the course--and hence to hone your analytical and persuasive skills by entering into an interpretive dialogue with other readers/critics of the work(s) you have chosen to analyze. I will be grading this essay 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 (diction, grammar, syntax, and punctuation).
• Pedagogical Essay option: write an 8-to-10-page pedagogical essay on how you'd organize a high school class period (or set of meetings) devoted to one (or more) of the works we read in the course and on your reasons for teaching the work in the way you described, drawing on at least three secondary sources to help you develop and support your teaching plan. The goal of this option is to show what you've learned in the course about the analysis and teaching of postbellum American literature by making a case for the best way of teaching a particular work (or works) in a high school classroom. Your essay, in other words, should not simply describe what you want to do with your class; it should explain why and justify your choices. Your essay should explain and justify your goals, methods, and modes of assessment--it should make a case for why it's important to teach students what you want them to learn, for why the teaching strategies you plan to use will help you achieve your goals, and for why the assessment methods you have chosen will enable you to tell to what degree students have met your goals. I will be grading this essay in terms of the quality of the lesson plan itself, how well you make your case for your pedagogical goals and strategies, and how well-organized and well-written your essay is (including diction, grammar, syntax, and punctuation).
• Creative Writing option: write a story, poem, play, or other work that is in significant intertextual dialogue with an author, work, genre, movement, or issue that we've studied this semester, along with an author's note of at least two pages detailing the critical issues you are addressing and the thought process that went into your composition. The goal of this option is to show what you've learned about postbellum American literature by writing a work of your own and analyzing it in relation to works and issues in the course. Rather than, say, analyzing how someone else's text works, or arguing for how you'd teach students to do this sort of analysis, as in some of the previous options, you'd be showing what you've learned about creative writing in the period by "doing it yourself." By entering into an intertextual dialogue with other writers--by relating your text to theirs using any of modes and devices of narrative fiction (setting, character, plot, point-of-view, theme, figurative language, form, and so on)--you will be able to get across your "take" on the other works, on the critical issues they engage, and the narrative/poetic/dramatic strategies they enact. I will be grading your project on the quality of the fictional work and of the author's note, the inventiveness with which your work engages the work or works and critical issues it is responding to, and the quality of your writing (including diction, grammar, syntax, and punctuation).
• Web Authoring option: create an analytical web site devoted to a specific aspect of postbellum American literature that hasn't been treated well on the web (see the links page for an introduction to what's out there, and to help you figure out what needs to be done) that includes an essay of at least two pages detailing the critical issues you are addressing and the thought process that went into constructing the web site, and a bibliography of all your sources (both electronic and print). The goal of this option is for you to provide an educational/critical resource for other readers. Your site should go beyond the usual moves (providing biographical and bibliographical information on an author, selecting quality links for further information) to fill a need/niche that is unfilled or undeveloped or not yet well done on the world-wide web. I will be grading your web site on the quality of its content and design, on the originality and thoughtfulness of approach to the topic you have focused on, and on the quality of your writing (including diction, grammar, syntax, and punctuation).

Possible topics (meant to be illustrative, not comprehensive or prescriptive!) for your final paper or project include:

• choosing a topic to research that you didn't already address in your previous course work from one of the critical essay assignment sheets--and using that research in the format of your choice;
• writing a paper in which you analyze one of the works from the second or third units of the course on its own, in historical context, or in relation to one of the works from earlier in the course;
• writing a paper in which you compare and contrast the Heath anthology we used with the Norton anthology for the perspectives and organizing schemas on postbellum American literature they offer;
• writing a paper in which you analyze a literary work from a later period of American literature for what's at stake in its relations to one of the works from the postbellum period that we read in the course: the obvious example is Toni Morrison's Beloved and Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but many writers have written works that are in direct intertextual relation with postbellum American literature, which you may have encountered in other courses or wish to explore for your final project, including:
  • Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera
  • Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
  • William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! and Go Down, Moses
  • Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
  • Caryl Phillips, Crossing the River
  • Leslie Marmon Silko, Almanac of the Dead