Assignments

Overview

25% Participation Grade

25 % – attendance 

25 % – in-class discussion

25 % – online class discussion

25 % – pop quizzes

25% Post Grades

25 % – timeliness and format

25 % – scope of discussion

25 % – engagement with text

25 % – explication of your interpretation

25 % Project Grade

25 % – pre-project assignments

25 % – project execution

25 % – project write-up

25 % – self and group evaluation

25 % EPAP Paper 

25 % – contextualizing intro

25 % – analyses 

25% – conclusion 

25% – language % style

 

 

Break Down of Course Requirements

25% Participation Grade

25 %  –  attendance:  Punctual attendance is mandatory.

absences: More than 3 absences may affect your participation grade.

punctuality: Every 4th tardy will count as an absence.

note: You are officially late if you not in the class and ready to go at the official start of the class, however I may not always take attendance at the very beginning of class.  If you arrive before I take attendance, then you will be marked as present and on time. If you arrive after I take attendance, you will be marked absent.  It is then your responsibility to let me know after class that you were in attendance, so I can change my record to “tardy” rather than “absent.” You have 24 hours from the beginning of class to make sure I have marked you “tardy” rather than “absent” otherwise the initial record stands.

25 % – in-class discussion:  I expect you to make active, thoughtful, and sustained contributions to our in-class discussion.

Education is not passive. You cannot just expect to receive without also giving.  Attendance is good (and mandatory), but it is not enough.  Doing the reading is great (and mandatory) but not enough.  Even taking notes (while also a fine habit) is not enough.  You must be an active reader, an active listener, and an active interlocutor in the class.

As an active class participant, you will come to class ready to discuss all of the assigned reading.  If you complete the readings well-beforehand, please remember to refresh your recollection of the reading BEFORE, rather than during, class.

Ready to discuss the readings means that you come to class prepared to share relevant questions, observations,  and even interpretations about not only the assigned readings but also any accompanying posts written by your classmates. Prepared to share means not only that you have thought about what your questions are, but that you also have also identified specific parts of the text (think chapters, scenes, page numbers) relevant to what you want to share.

extra credit:  You are encouraged but not required to post more than the required number of posts.  Perhaps you post about more than one of the assigned texts for that week; or perhaps you have more than one idea you wish to share about a single text.  Additionally if you find a relevant outside text that you believe is beneficial to our class discussion, you may share it with the class as a link and/or citation along with a brief description of the text and explanation of what about the text you find relevant to our discussion and why.  Any such additional posts, published by 8:00 pm the day before the relevant class discussion, will be counted as extra credit towards your in-class participation.

25 % – online class discussion:  I expect you to provide active, thoughtful, sustained contribution to online class discussion as well as to our in-class discussion.  I will assess your online discussions based on the timeliness of all your pre-assigned posts including the ones I don’t grade (see below section on post assignments for details) and on the completion of at least 2 pop-up post challenges.

pop-up post challenges:  From time to time, I will present an interactive challenge in which students are asked to find an example of X (related to our class discussion) and post it to the site along with a brief (no more than a 100 words) explanation of what they have posted and how it relates to the challenge question.

for example:  In a previous course, as part of our discussion on the role of the quadroon maid and the coquettish brown girl in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, I challenged students to find a contemporary (within their parent’s lifetime) pop culture example in which the erotic/romantic material of an otherwise all or predominately white film is authorized by the sudden presence of black culture (i.e. a black song, an image of a black sexual icon, the appearance of a random wise old African american man or woman, or a reference by the white characters student option of black vernacular speech). Students then posted links and/or clips of their example (e.g. the mystic black man who opens and closes the narrative of Pretty Women starring Richard Geer and Julia Roberts or the music/dance performance at the end of Bad Moms Christmas which borrows heavily from 90’s R&B musical and performance style) followed by an explanation of how the media they are posting satisfies the post challenge, in this case how it is that some instance of black culture is inserted into the otherwise white film in such a way that authorizes an expression of white sexuality.)

extra credit:  While you are required to have read your classmates’ posts and be ready to reference and engage them in class, I am not requiring that you comment on any of the posts online. However you are welcomed to do so for extra credit.  I will count clear, relevant, and thoughtful responses to posts as  extra credit towards your online class discussion grade.

note:  Responses and comments are not grades, evaluations, or reviews of your classmates’ work. Thus, you must do more than state that your approval or disapproval of the post.

If you agree or like the post, you must state exactly what you agree with or like about the post and why.   Moreover you must extend the conversation the post begins.  (e.g. You might provide another salient example, which drives home the argument; or perhaps you show how your classmate’s line of reason also importantly extends to another text or another area of our class discussion).

If you disagree or dislike, you must state exactly what you disagree  with and why.  Moreover you should provide some sort of counter point or counter interpretation of your own.  Clear, thoughtful, and relevant responses to your peers’ posts will count as extra credit towards your online class discussion grade.

25 % – pop quizzes:  Through out the semester, I will give at least six short pop quizzes based on the readings.  These quizzes are designed to assess how closely and how thoroughly you have completed the readings.  They are also designed to set the tone for our class discussions. Answers will be discussed in class after the quizzes have been turned in.  Quizzes cannot be made up.

note: To account for difficult readings and to avoid double penalties for absences and tardies, only your top 4 quiz grades will count towards your final quiz pop-quiz grades.  SO: assuming there are only six pop quizzes, you can receive a 0 on two of the quizzes and still retain the possibility of receiving a 100 on this portion of your participation grade.

25% Post Grades

While there are posts for almost every reading, you will only be graded on four posts of your choosing.  Before midterms you will select two posts from the first half of the course that you wish to have count towards your grade (excluding the Intro Post).  And then again before finals, you will select two posts from the second half of the course that you wish to have count towards your grade (excluding the Outro Post).  Remember that the timely and thorough completion of ungraded posts still count towards the online discussion portion of your participation grade.  All graded posts will be assessed based on the following four categories:

25 % timeliness and format:  A large part of this class is the online discussion.  Posts are great ways to not only share ideas that we may not have time to discuss in class but also for you to practice writing and argumentation and exercise your close reading and interpretive analysis skills in a focused and low stakes arena. Low stakes means that I do not expect posts to be as long and developed nor as stylistically clean as I expect papers and final project assignments to be.  However I do expect you to you to take the posts seriously and to challenge your self to focus on in on a particular aspect of the text and clearly present your thoughts about how that portion of the text is working.   I will demonstrate how to post to the WordPress site the first week of classes. If you miss this demonstration or find you need additional help, please meet with me BEFORE your post is due, so that I can assist you.

timeliness – All posts should be posted by noon the day before the post is due.   This means if you are scheduled to post for Tuesday’s class, your post is due at noon on Monday.   Punctual posting is necessary to allow me and your peers time to read the posts before class.  As noted above, late posts can affect both your post grade and your online discussion grade.

format – 1) Posts should be 200-350 words long.  2) Each posts should include a relevant and creative title that signals something of the content or ideas your post addresses. 3) Similarly you should include one or two relevant tags to your post.  As the semester progresses, you may also use tags that others have used.  Tags are not the same thing as subject categories.  Tags are easy ways for you to index your work and make creative links to other’s conversation.

important:  4) Before submitting your post you should check any and all relevant category boxes. These boxes are essential to my ability to locate your posts and track your progress as the semester progresses.   I will not go hunting the site looking for your late and/or improperly categorized posts. If you do not click the appropriate category boxes, and I am unable to locate your post, I will consider the work incomplete.

25 % – scope of discussion:  The post assignments are meant to help you practice close reading (close looking, close watching, close listening) a text. As such your posts must focus on a very small and discrete aspect of the text.

By small and focused, I mean that you should identify a particular passage (i.e. no more than a page or 10 seconds of a recording) or specific formal detail (e.g. the small but twice occurring mention of soup in The Awakening).  The object of your consideration should be something you can point to in the text using time stamps; spatial coordinates; page, paragraph, or scene numbers; or some other concrete measure for distinguishing the parameters of your object of analysis from the whole of the text and/or its overarching topics, themes, and symbols.

Accordingly your posts should not be an analysis of a main character, a recurring trope, a major symbol, or an overarching theme.  It may be that the stakes of your interpretation (i.e. why your reading of this part of the text matters) has something to do with the way we might read a main character, recurring tropes, major symbols, and/or overarching themes, but such a connection (while you may state it early on) should be discussed towards the end of your post.  The bulk of your post should focus on making a very small claim about some very small aspect of the text you are examining.  You will be graded on how clear and appropriately focused your object of discussion is.  Overly broad or vague points of discussion will not receive full credit.

remember the extra credit:  If you find you don’t have enough room to say all you want to say in the post, hurrah, that’s excellent!  I hope you will have more to say than the very focused analysis this assignment asks of you. If you find yourself in this wonderful position, you have many options:  1) If these additional thoughts still feel fuzzy or indistinct, you may just want to index them after you finish relaying your more thought out idea.  Perhaps you conclude your post with a “Further Thoughts” note. These further thoughts may be presented in prose or simply in bullet points.  2) If your additional thoughts are more flushed out (or if you’d like to try to flush some of them out), you can always make additional posts examining these additional ideas. And/or 3) you may choose to continue this line of exploration in one of your papers and/or the final project.

25 % engagement with text: Posts are not as extensive as writing a paper, so you should use them as opportunities to practice focusing your attention and consideration of the form and content of the text (i.e. both on what the text says and also on how it says what it says and why that matters).  Posts are not free-for-all opportunities to use texts as spring board to otherwise unrelated, or very distantly connected, ideas about other topics, texts, or personal experiences.  If the texts inspires a wealth of associative connections, you should feel free to explore them in additional posts.  However your assigned post must focus on engaging the actual text.  

Engaging the text often includes providing quoted material and/or clear descriptions of what exactly in the text you are asking readers to focus on. If you can write your posts without looking at the text at all, you are probably straying too far from the text. Similarly if you can write the exact same post word-for-word about some other part of the text or about an entirely different text, you are most likely not engaging enough with the specifics of this particular text.

25% – explication of your interpretation:  As practice for your papers, I expect you to not only bring our attention to some focused aspect of the text and to posit some idea/interpretation about that aspect of the text, I also expect you to clearly explain to your readers how you arrive at that interpretation. Think of your self as the teacher explaining to the class how this X part of the text can be (ought to be) understood in Y way because if we read and understand it in Y way we will be able to grasp this important Z interpretation of what the text is doing. Even if you think your ideas are obvious or simple, you must take the time to spell out every part. You must teach your ideas!

25 % Extended Performance Analysis Post (EPAP) Paper Grade

This paper is a chance to extend the performance analysis skills you’ve been practicing all semester to a live and contemporary black performance text.

Choose from the list of contemporary black performance texts in the Boston area. Students may choose an event not on the list as long as they receive prior approval from the professor.

Write an extended post on this text (700-950 words), to be posted on an official online arts magazine, blog, or other appropriate social media forum.

This extended post essay will consists of three Sections.   (Please note that sections may consist of more than one section.  While I provide detail instructions for each section, and I will primarily assess the post based on these categories, the best essays will not read as essays or fill in the blank exercises.  The best essays will read as an essay in its own right, one you could publish on Facebook or to a Arts Blog reflecting on that performance.)

 

25% CONTEXTUALIZING INTRO

Date, Time, Duration, Venue, Director, Artists and/or other contributing authors. General Medium.  Specific Genre within the Medium.  Setting, Background, Overarching concept, or any other information a reader who has not seen or witnessed this performance might need to understand the performance and particularly to understand the particular performance elements your essay will focus on.

Explanation of the part(s) of the performance your extended post essay will focus on.

Brief overview of what your interpretation (claim) is about those parts.

Statement about why your essay is focusing on this element and why your interpretation matters (aka. How your interpretation affects the way we might consider some overarching aspect of the performance)

25% ANALYSES OF YOUR SPECIFIC OBJECTS (PERFORMANCE ELEMENTS) OF STUDY

Object of Study: Analysis of Performance Element 1

Object of Study: Analysis of Performance Element 2

Object of Study: Analysis of Performance Element 3 [Optional]

25% CONCLUDING CONNECTIONS:

In this section you will reflect on how your performance elements and your claims about them work together (ESPECIALLY IF NOT ALREADY APPARENT IN YOUR ANALYSES]

Reflection on why your claims matter. How do the interpretative analyses you put forward affect the way we understand the performance as a whole and/or its overarching themes.

Some discussion about how the performance and particularly the elements you analyze are in conversation with the larger tradition of black performance in America.  (Meaning you will bring the performance text and your analysis of the performance text into conversation with one of  the major questions and themes we have discussed throughout the class).

25% LANGUAGE & STYLE

The remaining 25% of your grade will be determined based on language mechanics; clarity of language; appropriateness of style for your chosen audience; accuracy of citation and formatting.

25 % Project Grade

For the final project you will work in small groups to create a digital annotation of one of the black performance texts on the syllabus.  Your annotations will include a mix of visual, sonic, film, and traditionally scripted annotations. Your annotations, especially your scripted ones, will be based on your group’s well-researched findings about both the general history of this performance text (including, but not limited to: author, performers, crew, venue, promotion, audience, reception, etc.) and specific historical context relevant to at least two aspects of the performance text (i.e. a reference to a famous figure that one of the characters makes; the setting of a particular place at a particular time; or the historical associations with a particular gesture made in a dance) .   Your group should keep in mind that while annotations provide objective references rather than interpretive claims, what and how annotator’s choose to annotate do in fact guide or help shape what readers pay attention to and regard as important.  Thus your group should think carefully about what they annotate and how.  How does your presentation of what is otherwise objective reference material encourage certain connections and discourage other connections?  Similarly the group should consider how their individual annotations work as a whole: How do your different types of annotations (i.e. visual and scripted) work together? Do they echo each other or complicate one another?  As a whole, what do your annotations seems to focus on?  What do they ask the reader to focus on and what might they keep the reader from noticing in the passage?  While the annotation do not make explicit interpretations for your reader,  what kinds of interpretive arenas might they encourage your reader to enter?

25% – pre-project assignments:  A quarter of your project grade is based on the timely and thorough completion of all pre-project assignments (i.e. project check-ins 1 and 2; the group meeting with the professor; and the final in-class project presentation).

25 % – project execution:  All members of the group will share this grade.

25 % – project write-up:  Your project must include a 1- 2 page, group-authored write-up [double spaced, 12 point Times New Roman Font with 1 inch margins].  The write-up should provide a rationale for some of your group’s project choices by discussing how those choices relate to the group’s goals and organizing principle.  The write-up should also make clear how the group’s goals, content, and formal choices connect to or make some significant contribution to at least one of our primary course discussions.

25 % – self and group evaluation:  I will pass out a questionnaire the last week of classes, which you should thoughtfully and thoroughly complete by the date listed on the syllabus.