First, let’s review the requirements from the beginning of the quarter:

The aim of your essay and its motivation/purpose,

Your research question (although it does not need to be articulated as a question),

Your research method (how you are doing what you are doing),

Your results/discovery (what you are learning),

The implications of your results/discovery (or why your project matters, and for whom), and

The trajectory of your essay (what you plan to do with it in the future).

This one should be written entirely in words.  Despite Blake’s abstract of humans (pictured above), we’re going with the academic standard here.

Your abstract should:

Be no more than 250 words.

Be one concise and exact paragraph.

Include a title for your essay, three keywords for it, and a one-sentence tagline describing it.  (The title, keywords, and tagline are not part of the word limit. See more below.)

Be written for educated, non-expert audiences (e.g., academic types who might not be familiar with our course material) and avoid jargon.

Summarize your work as it stands, instead of becoming an idea hike into unventured regions (that is, avoid speculations).

Mobilize terms and concepts (including your keyword) from the class (again, for educated, non-expert audiences).

Demonstrate, through concise language, how your essay’s motivation, question, method, results, and trajectory are related.

The abstract should appear like so:

Project Title (in quotation marks)

Your Name, Your Major/Program

Tagline (in italics)

The Three Keywords Describing the Project (separated by commas)

Body of Abstract (no more than 250 words, one paragraph)

Your abstract is due—on the class blog—before class on Thursday, May 27th.  Your abstract, together with the three keywords and one-sentence tagline, will accompany your final essay.

Want examples?  See the class blog for three of them.

Please print your abstract and bring it to Thursday’s class meeting.  Double-space, please.  (It should probably fit on one page.)  If, for Thursday’s class meeting, you have not finished your abstract and printed it, then there’s no need to attend.

Don’t forget! Every entry on the blog should be categorized and include an image and three tags. The category for this entry is “abstract″.

Did you forget how to embed a custom image? Here’s a review of how-to.

See me with questions!

Click here to start responding to this prompt.

For this prompt, let’s try picking one of those lenses and reading&writing accordingly.

In your own blog entry, please:

First, identify your lens (aesthetics, representation, or history) and just write it at the top of your entry.

Second, select at least one portion from the first half of Mrs. Dalloway and analyze it through the lens you selected.  (Here, you only need to write a paragraph or two.)

Optional: use your cluster’s keyword (or another keyword from the course) to refine your analysis.

Finally, after your analysis, please write a short bit on how you think your lens influenced your reading&writing and to what effects on your interpretation.  (If you are having difficulty getting started, then consider some of these questions:  With your lens in mind, what did you include in your analysis?  What did you exclude?  How did focusing help you articulate an observation or two?  How did the exercise inform your perceptions of modernism?  How did it help you prepare for your final essay?)

Please post your entry before our meeting on Wednesday, May 12th. And before Thursday’s meeting, please comment on a post by a peer in your cluster.

Don’t forget! Every entry on the blog should be categorized and include an image and three tags. The category for this entry is “#4″.

Did you forget how to embed a custom image? Here’s a review of how-to. & remember: There’s a protocol for commenting, folks.

See me with questions!

Click here to start responding to this prompt.

In response to this prompt, please post your own blog entry, which should include four paragraphs that:

Emerge from the research both you and your cluster have already done on your keyword.  (Pssst… Don’t forget about the Zotero group!)

For evidence, draw upon (e.g., quote, analyze) the primary sources and secondary sources you listed in your annotated bib.

Cite that evidence  (using your preferred annotation style).

Include (across all four paragraphs) the use of at least one piece of non-textual evidence.  (Put differently, only one paragraph of the four has to include non-textual media.)

Unpack some responses to the research question you wrote.

Consist of at least 250 words each. (Remember the first paragraph exercise?).

Are not articulated in sequential order.

With the exception of that last one, I think all of the above requirements should be pretty clear.  (If not, then let me know!)

As for “not articulated in sequential order,” I am asking you to please treat these paragraphs as “instances” or “snapshots” or “stress points” that might occur in your final essay, meaning they should not follow the order of, say: first-second-third-fourth paragraph in the essay.  Instead, please consider writing paragraphs that might occur on, say: page one, page four, page seven, and page nine.

Yes: such an exercise might require you to sketch out what happens, exactly, between the instances.  Nevertheless, I encourage you to refrain from writing the whole kit, especially before you workshop these four.  (More below.)

If you wish, then you can revise that one paragraph you already wrote.  Or you can write four new paragraphs.

Suggestion: for approaches to academicky paragraphs, review my blog entry on e.g.’s, boxes, flips, and litanies.  [Fun!]

The purpose of this exercise is for you to:

Starting writing your final essay. <<< practical

Think strategically and holistically about your argument. <<< methodological

Give your peers a chance to read samples of your essay. <<< feedback

Experiment with non-sequential writing (if you have not already).  <<< creativity (!?!)

Sketch a plan for the overall trajectory of your final essay, without committing to it. <<< adaptability

Get meta! <<< thinky par for any humanities course!

Please post your entry before our meeting on Monday, May 17th. During that meeting, you will share your instances in your clusters.  That said, please print all four of them and bring them to class on the 17th.  Thanks!

On the 17th, your peers will comment on your four instances.  Perhaps more interestingly, they will also let you know what kind of paragraphs/information/arguments might precede and follow the instances you’ve already written.

Don’t forget! Every entry on the blog should be categorized and include an image and three tags. The category for this entry is—surprise!— “instances”.

Did you forget how to embed a custom image? Here’s a review of how-to.

See me with questions!

Click here to start responding to this prompt.

Now’s the time to start gathering some materials that should help you unpack that question, re-think that paragraph, and enrich the initial research on your cluster’s keyword.

In response to this prompt, please:

Locate ten sources that might be applicable to your final paper.

Those sources must include:

(1) At least two primary sources (e.g., novels, poems, paintings, films, photographs, or audio recordings).  Odds are, you’ve already selected these.  Or at least one of them. I advise no more than three primary sources for a ten- to fifteen-page paper.  Two, really.

(2) At least two peer-reviewed journal articles that inform/contextualize your primary sources (e.g., see Project Muse or JSTOR).

(3) At least two non-text media (e.g., paintings, films, photographs, audio recordings) that inform/contextualize your primary sources (e.g., try the MJP, YouTube, UbuWeb, or Flickr’s LoC project).  If non-text media are included in your primary sources, then these two non-texts should be different from the two you list for #1 above.

(4) At least one blog entry by a peer, on the class blog, that informs/contextualizes your primary sources.  This entry does not have to be by someone in your cluster, but—since you are collaborating with your cluster—it’s not a bad idea to privilege and support their writing and research.  Yep?

If you add up all of the “at leasts” listed here, then I do believe you get seven.  Those other three sources are your choices.  Feel free to follow the categories listed above, or create a new one.

But wait!  It’s an “annotated” bib, right?  So for each source, please:

(1) Include (at least) a title/description, author/artist, journal name (if applicable), medium, and date of publication.   If you can’t locate all of that information, then lib.washington.edu is a great source.  (And it’s Zotero-friendly!)

(2) Write 25 to 50 words on why/how you are using the source for your paper, with specific references.  Here, be strategic and keenly reductive.  In a mere 50 words, you cannot speak to every aspect of a novel, poem, article, or photograph.  So what, exactly, are you attending to?

Put differently, these 25 to 50 words do not need to be eloquent.  For example:

1.  Primary Source: James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain (Print novel, 1953)

Intersections of whiteness, sexual violence, and gender in the U.S. South – p. 106.  Interested in how Deborah embodies these dynamics and how they are perceived differently by Gabriel and the other ministers.  Compare with Esther p. 132: “it takes a holy man to make a girl a real whore.”

(3) Add it to your cluster’s shared Zotero folder (which should be named after your keyword).   With each, please include your annotations/notes.  (The class blog will be Zotero-friendly very soon, before the bib is due.)

(4) Optional: Provide a link to the source or embed it in your entry.

In the post itself, please number your sources (1-10), and, after the number, categorize your source as “primary source,” “journal article,” “non-text media,” “course blog,” or “[enter your new category here]“.  (See the Baldwin example above.)

Please post your entry before our meeting on Thursday, May 6th.  During that meeting, you will share your bibs in your clusters.

Don’t forget!  Every entry on the blog should be categorized and include an image and three tags.  The category for this entry is “bib″.

Did you forget how to embed a custom image?  Here’s a review of how-to.

See me with questions!

Click here to start responding to this prompt.

Indeed, for this entry, all you need to do is compose a single question.  However, the question should:

Ideally begin with “how.”

Include a reference to one or two of your primary sources (e.g., a novel, painting, film, audio recording, poem, ad, or short fiction you are studying).

Give your reader a sense of context (e.g., geography, historical time frame/period, and/or a specific modernist movement/scene).

Tacitly or explicitly mention the perspective you are taking on your topic (e.g., aesthetics, history, or questions of representation).

If you wish, then—in your post—you can replicate the exercise from Monday’s class and move, step-by-step, from an “if/does” to a “what/who” to a “why” to a “how” question.

Please post your entry before our meeting on Monday, May 3rd.

& once again: every entry on the blog should be categorized and include an image and three tags.  The category for this entry is “research″.

Did you forget how to embed a custom image?  Here’s a review of how-to.

See me with questions!

Click here to start responding to this prompt.

As we switch scenes, I’ll keep the prompt for this change log simple.  Here goes:

During the first few weeks of this course, we’ve highlighted a few keywords in literary modernism, including “crowds,” “new,” “culture,” and “crisis.”  On top of those, there are also your cluster keywords: “noise,” “anonymity,” “consciousness,” “class,” “mechanism,” and “alienation.”

In your own post, pick up one of the above keywords and articulate how it functions in the first 100 pages (or so) of Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain.  As you do, draw upon at least one quote from the text and mention how Baldwin’s work has changed, supported, or otherwise intersected with your ongoing impressions of the keyword you selected.  (Of course you can select your cluster’s keyword.  However, don’t hammer it onto the text, either.)

Please post your entry before our meeting on Wednesday, April 28th.  And before Thursday’s meeting, please comment a post by a peer in your cluster.

Don’t forget!  Every entry on the blog should be categorized and include an image and three tags.  The category for this entry is “#3″.

Did you forget how to embed a custom image?  Here’s a review of how-to.  & remember: There’s a protocol for commenting, folks.

If you have not already, then I also recommend checking out YouTube’s collection of videos including Baldwin.

See me with questions!

Click here to start responding to this prompt.

During our workshop last week (on Thursday, April 15th), I hinted at an exercise for writing a complex, persuasive paragraph, and I’d like you to give it a shot.

First, please pick a source that—ideally—was something you included in your keyword blog.  (If you are not exactly keen on what you selected and wrote about in that blog entry, then you can feel free to select something new.) It can be a text, video, audio recording, or image.  However, at least for this exercise, please make sure it’s dated somewhere between 1880 and 1940, ok?

Once you have the source selected, in your own blog entry, please compose a paragraph that:

Is between 250 and 300 words in length,

Focuses on your source and its intersections with your cluster’s keyword,

Within the first 50 words, makes a claim about your source,

Concretely explains the source to your audience, giving them some basic details and context (e.g., date of publication, quote, setting, and/or history),

Analyzes the source in a way that, while keeping your keyword in mind, supports your initial claim (e.g., by attending to questions of history, aesthetics, or representation),

At some point between words 175 and 225, shifts perspective to articulate an alternative vantage on your initial claim (hint: consider a snappy transition, like “however,” “granted . . . nevertheless,” 0r “yet”),

Supports that new claim (0r alternative vantage) with additional evidence and analysis, and

Concludes (in the final 20 to 30 words) with a suggestive or speculative remark about what the dynamics between your two claims suggest.

As I mentioned on the 15th, you are more than welcome to use “sign-posts” in your writing.  Moves like “What this argument suggests is…,” “This sentence implies that…,” “Here, Stein’s style is…,” “Of course, Sayers is assuming that…,” or “From the perspective of…” are all well and good, especially in a first draft.  They might help you organize your ideas.  After you re-read your paragraph, you can always go back and cut what seems unnecessary.

And indeed!  This exercise is admittedly formalist in character.  If you wrote every paragraph of a ten- to fifteen-page essay in the same way, then it would read like a template.  But humor me.  The primary aims of the exercise are for you to:

Get a head start on your paper,

Beginning exploring how to write about modernism, with your cluster’s keyword as a critical lens,

Produce some rough material that you can circulate for feedback,

Determine what else you need to know in order to expand your line of inquiry, and

Experiment a bit with language, approaches to argumentation, and evidence.

A response to this prompt is due on the blog before class on Monday, April 26th.  As always, please categorize your entry under “paragraph,” include a custom image at the top, and provide three tags (one of which should be your cluster’s keyword).

See me with questions!

Click here to start responding to this prompt.

That said, here’s the reading for Tuesday the 13th and Wednesday the 14th:

Tuesday: Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” Williams’s “The Red Wheelbarrow,” and Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro”

Optional for Tuesday: I’ve also included Pound’s “Portrait d’Une Femme” and Williams’s “Portrait of a Lady,” if you would like to read more.

Wednesday: Loy’s “Gertrude Stein,” H.D.’s “Oread,” and selections from Stein’s Tender Buttons.

Download all of these readings (as a PDF).  (The ID and password are the same as for the class blog.)

For Tuesday’s class, please post your second Change Log.  In it, respond to the reading (Eliot, Williams, and Pound) by addressing the following:

There was a desire for something new in modernism, and these three poems might demonstrate what “new” was doing—what it looked like, what poets were after.  Other than “new,” please provide one word that you think best describes at least two of these poems (but ideally all three), and explain your answer in a paragraph or two.  (Drawn upon the poems for concrete examples.)

When you are finished, in a few sentences, explain why, for Anglo-American poets in the first half of the 20th century, you think writing “new” poetry mattered.

Don’t forget that every entry on the blog should be categorized and include an image and three tags.  The category for this entry is “#2″.

Did you forget how to embed a custom image?  Here’s a review of how-to.

For Wednesday’s class, you should comment on one post by a peer in your cluster.  In so doing, please draw quotes from Loy, H.D., and Stein.  You might specifically focus on how your understanding of “new” changed after reading the work of these three other poets, post-Pound, Eliot, and Williams.  Remember: There’s a protocol for commenting, folks.

See me with questions!  And three cheers for poetry week!

Click here to start responding to this prompt.

Before we begin, let’s consider something Raymond Williams writes in the introduction to Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society:

The questions are not only about meaning; in most cases, inevitably, they are about meanings. . . . The original meanings of words are always interesting.  But what is often most interesting is the subsequent variation. . . . [I]mportant social and historical processes occur within language, in ways which indicate how integral the problems of meanings and of relationships really are. (16, 20-21, 22)

As a primer for your paper, this prompt asks you not only to define a word.  It also asks you to privilege variation and to start highlighting where and how variation occurs.  As the class progresses, you’ll  gather more materials (e.g., through an annotated bibliography and Zotero) that allow you to better determine how, exactly, social and historical processes happen within the keyword your cluster selected.

That said, the first step is having a keyword shared between everyone in your cluster (of six or seven people).  Got that word?  Ok then.  Below are the next steps.

In your own blog entry, please:

Embed a custom image from or related to the modernist period that correlates with your cluster’s keyword.

Next, in just a few sentences, explain why you selected that image.

After that response, look up your keyword in the OED, copy the definition(s), and include them in your entry.  (Try a block quote! Once you’ve copied the definition into your entry, highlight it.  Next, in the toolbar above your writing pane, click the quotation mark icon just to the left of the left-align icon. Your highlighted text should now be indented.  Neat!)

Once you have provided an image and the OED definition(s), you should then turn to modernist literature and quote your keyword in action.  This quote can come from something we’ve read in class, or it can come from something you’ve read on your own time.  The only hitch?  The source must be a novel or a poem.

In just a few more sentences, explain why you selected the source and quote.

Now, please find one more modernist source for your keyword.  The source medium (e.g., film, book, audio recording, magazine, or image) can be whatever you choose.  (Need ideas?  See me for resources.  We’ll cover some in future classes, but I can offer suggestions now, if need be.)

Once again, explain your selection.

Finally, write a paragraph on your keyword thoughts at this juncture and, more specifically, respond to the following:

• Right now, what don’t you know about your keyword that you need to know?
• Thus far, what’s the single most interesting thing you’ve learned about your keyword?
• How does your keyword help people better understand modernism (be it historically, culturally, and/or aesthetically)?

As you research, I recommend using Zotero to gather and store your materials.  That way, you can find them later, and you can easily share them with your peers.  Another bright idea is to create a folder for your keyword within our Zotero Modernist Studies Group.  (Some folders, like “poetry” and “novels”, already exist.)

A response to this prompt is due on the blog before class on Monday, April 19th.  Please categorize your entry under “keyword” and provide three tags (one of which should be your actual keyword).

Very soon, you’ll take one of the sources you provide here and elaborate on it by writing a detailed, complex paragraph.  That said, choose your sources wisely.  They could come back to haunt you.

See me with questions!

Click here to start responding to this prompt.