Attendance and participation

This course will be run primarily by discussion, and a high level of responsibility for what happens in class devolves on all participants. You’ll be expected to show up regularly—having not just read the texts, but read them thoughtfully, so that you can participate fully. Miss more than three classes over the term, and your karmic score will begin to plummet.

Chatty is good. Chatty is critical. Don’t feel like you have to know all the answers in order to open your mouth—queries, half-formed ideas, etc., are welcome. But you need to be an active intellectual participant not only in your own mind (something that is also, admittedly, cricial), but also in our community. Simply filling a chair every day will not get you an A—or even a B.

Discussion questions

Each day that you’re not turning in a prep paper, you’ll be asked to prepare two discussion questions for class, e-mailing them to me no later than 11:00 a.m. Your grade will depend both on your regular completion of this assignment, and on the thoughtfulness and relevance of the questions you pose on the selected texts. Everything doesn’t have to be a gem, but I’ll be looking for a pattern of serious engagment with the assignment.

Prep papers

Each week (on different days—check the schedule!), you’ll be asked to write a short (500-800 word) essay due at the beginning of class. These prep papers are designed to get you thinking in a more focused way about what you’ve read, and while they don’t have to display the polish of a term paper, they should still be reasonably intelligible. Paragraphs, rather than bulleted lists of ideas. No late papers will be accepted. On the other hand, you’re allowed to skip any three you want, for any reason—no advance warning needed. That’s 10 papers for the term, out of a possible 13. I’ll give you an informal grade on your prep work by mid-term, but your final grade will be a reflection of the term’s work as a whole.

NB: some of the papers may have assigned topics; if so, they’ll be announced the Friday before. Otherwise, feel free to write on anything that grabs your attention: the role of a particular character; a symbol; a particularly meaty passage in the context of the text as a whole, etc.

approx. 40% of grade

End of term essay

This paper, due near the end of the semester, will be an articulate, intelligent, finely-honed analysis (3500 words [10 pp.], +/- 10%) of one or more of the primary texts we have studied in class—or, with instructor’s permission, of another relevant work. You will be expected, in this essay, to demonstrate your familiarity with some (not all) of the ideas and issues raised by the critical and theoretical texts we have read over the course of the term; no additional research is required, although it is certainly permissible. Possible topics might include: the idea of “home” in aboriginal Australian and/or Maori texts; gender (male, female, or both) and national identity; the role of education in postcolonial childhood; mythic motifs in contemporary literature; land and landscape in one or more of the texts; the figure of the exile; race and the postcolonial subject; language; etc., etc.

You may notice on the syllabus that I’m requiring a draft of this paper several weeks before the end of the semester. This is to give you a chance to get feedback for a rewrite, and to encourage you not to cram all your work into the last weeks of the semester. I’m also happy to talk to you about ideas before you write your draft.