Journeys to America/Spring 2010                                                                                                 Prof. Bruce Harvey

FINAL EXAM: TAKE HOME SYNTHESIS ESSAY DUE VIA TURNITIN APRIL 20 MIDNIGHT

If you do not turn this is by the due time, you need to take the alternative inclass short-answer exam.

You will not get feedback because this essay exam is being submitted at the end of the semester.  If you have a question about your grade or overall course grade, contact me early Summer A semester.  If there is some urgent and compelling reason to get in touch immediately after the due date of the Final Exam, however, please of course do so.

WHEN:
--The Synthesis Essay is due April 20 by midnight.
--Turn it in single-spaced, with your name, question/option, etc., at a top corner; no cover pages, please.

WHO:
--You write it: no Wikipedia excerpts, no snippets from a website here, a website there.  You!  No outside sources are allowed; plagiarism will conclude in an "F" for the course. 
--You can draw upon my review notes or course summary, but don’t parrot.  In Lockean/Wieland fashion, you should be influenced by my lectures, but not determinatively or passively so!

HOW:
--The essay should be about two or more pages SINGLE-SPACED. Do not pad—this is a bad strategy.  Especially do not have an opening paragraph that spins-its-tires in abstract profundity: "As long as humankind has endured, the ages have been witness to...."  Get to the point, so your orientation/focus is immediately known.
--You may include several brief quotes to show that your ideas are anchored in specific texts (showing me that you've read them!), not just a product of your generalized memory of the course's texts (or my online lectures!).  But don’t use up a lot of space quoting.
--Effective organization, a decent style and clean grammar/punctuation, & lots of thoughtfulness are expected.
--About organization: generally speaking, it is best to discuss each author/text in turn (for example, 1st 4th devoted to Shakespeare, 2^nd 4^th to Equiano, etc.), with comparative loop-backs (e.g., “unlike Equiano, Rowlandson is concerned with …").  However, you also need to show you have synthesized our readings/the issues: four separate mini-essays on four authors, strung together, will not be highly rewarded.
--To enrich your essay, you may allude to additional authors along the way, but again, not at the cost of obscuring your in-depth understanding of the main ones.
--Bottom line: I look for a complex, sophisticated understanding of a representative sample of our readings. I most definitely do not have a “right” answer in mind for any of the topics below; there are many ways of addressing each.  I do not grade looking for what points you have not made; I grade by assessing the insight demonstrated in the points you do make.

WHAT:

Here are the topic options:

1) At several different junctures in the semester, I have emphasized the big cultural-intellectual transition from a notion of essential being to fluid/malleable/mobile being.  Discuss, using three or four of our authors.

2) We’ve read a number of autobiographies or memoirs (which, for our purposes, can include the first-person Wieland, though it’s a novel not a “true” account of a life or part of a life).  Using three or four, address how these narratives exhibit a “self” or “selfhood” or perhaps deny a “self” (in some fashion) or “selfhood.”

 

3) Virtually every text we have read depicts or deals with what could be called a cultural contact zone, a zone in which different cultures and their representatives (with different philosophical, religious, moral, psychological, and/or political dimensions or viewpoints) confront each other.  Explore some of the important aspects or issues pertaining to these contact zones in three or four of our authors.