American Romanticism/Fall 2010                                                                                                 Prof. Bruce Harvey

FINAL EXAM: TAKE HOME SYNTHESIS ESSAY DUE DECEMBER 8 MIDNIGHT

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 Spring 2011 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 December 8 by midnight, via email, to harveyb@fiu.edu.
--Turn it in single-spaced, with your name, question/option, etc., at a top corner; no cover pages, please.
--If I do not reply within 24 hours, “Got it,” it means I didn’t get it.

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. 
--Do not directly rely upon my online lectures; you will not succeed if you just mimic or paraphrase the lectures.

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 5th devoted to Emerson, 2nd 5th devoted to Poe, 3rd 5th devoted to Douglass, etc.), with comparative loop-backs (e.g., “unlike Poe, Douglass is concerned with literal liberty …").  However, you also need to show you have synthesized our readings/the issues: four or five separate mini-essays on four or five authors, strung together, will not be highly rewarded.
--Whether you deal with four authors only (1/2 single-spaced page per author, roughly) or deal with more depends upon what insights/connections you provide. You might discuss four authors a fair amount, and just throw in references here and there to several others.  Some of our authors/texts might more complexly explore/reflect an issue than another, and so it is up to you to determine the proportions of your essay devoted to this author or that author.
--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 questions; there are many ways of answering 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:
--Choose four or more of our authors, distributed more or less from the beginning to the end of the course, to answer one of the following questions. Note the open-ended first question:

1) If you have a self-selected theme/issue that you feel adequately and importantly encompasses four or more of our authors, you may pursue it as long as you, via email, get an “ok” from me ahead of time.

2) Is it accurate to divide American Romantic authors up into "light" (optimistic") ones and "darker" or "gothic" ones? 

3) Would you say American Romanticism celebrates the individual?

4)  Does American Romanticism typically wall-out the political or social?

5)  Is American Romanticism (given its metaphysical tendencies) capable of addressing racial conflict? (Note: this is a variant or subset of question #4… so if you respond to question#4 decide whether you want to embrace aspects of this question#5).