Important Things to Know

Each one of the 6 papers in this class is meant to be exploratory and NOT comprehensive. (Otherwise each would be a book!!) The outcome for this class is to encourage you to think about what it means to be a scholar in the field of your choice and how you are going to contribute to the Major Debates in your field. We will build resources through the PAB. We will interview scholars in the field. We will have lovely guest lecturers. Hopefully by the end of this class, you will be able to begin to answering this question for yourself.

Quick Breakdown of Project Values

• Paper #1 History   10%
• Paper #2 Major Questions 10%
• Paper #3 OoS  10%
• Paper #4 Theories and Methods  10%
• Paper #5 Epistemological Alignment  10%
• Paper #6 Being a Scholar of _______ 15%
• Oral Presentation  10%
• PAB Blog Entries   15%
• Class participation 10%

Submission Guidelines

• Submit your Papers and PAB Entries in your blog.
• Categorize them with “ENGL810” and “Paper#X” or “PAB EntryX.”
• You will be responsible for tagging your entries based on the content covered in the Papers and PAB entries. Ideally this tag cloud will be come its own network.

  Grading Rubric

• Paper – addresses each of the questions /includes quotes with discussion – required (-1 point)
• PAB – connects to other readings/papers/class w/discussion (-1 point)
• reading citations–required (-1 point)
• cursory proofreading–required (-1 point)
• 7 points = 4 content options, 3 format options
• 5 points = 3 content options, 2 format options
• 3 points = 2 content options, 1 format option
• 1 point = 1 content option, 0 format options

  Content Options: Papers

• uses key terms/concepts from class
• questions w/discussion
• something very new/exciting w/discussion
• connections to other readings/papers/class w/discussion
• connections to examples w/discussion
• connections to experiences w/discussion
• connections to course outcomes
• connections to personal course outcomes

Content Options: PAB Entries

• brief summary
• key terms/concepts w/definitions and/or descriptions
• quotes w/discussion
• questions w/discussion
• something very new/exciting w/discussion
• connections to examples w/discussion
• connections to experiences w/discussion
• connections to course outcomes
• connections to personal course outcomes

Format Options

• hyperlink to resources and/or discussions
• detailed font formatting (style, color, size, etc.) that engages with content/meaning
• embed resources
• representative image and citation
• annotated image/screencapture
• provide adequately descriptive alt-text for images
• providing adequately descriptive alt-text for links
• provide captioning or scripts for multimedia
• embed poll that teaches and engages readers with the material

Scholar Interview Requirement

For either paper 2, 3, or 4 you must conduct a short interview (2-3 questions) with one the department’s scholars. It can be via video or email, if you wish. You can select anyone; you needn’t interview one of our guest speakers. Be certain to give yourself plenty of lead-time to negotiate schedules, and if they decline (they might be inundated with requests), please be gracious and move on to another person.

Paper #1 History (approx. 750 word blog post) – Summarize a short history of English Studies from a disciplinary perspective.

1. When did your discipline (or subdiscipline) emerge?
2. What universities did it emerge from?
3. What were the exigencies for its emergence?
4. What was its relationship to the university system as a whole?

Follow up: Respond to two of your fellow students’ posts with your thoughts upon what the different perspectives tell us about approaches to understanding the how/why of English Studies?

Paper #2 Major Questions (approx. 750 word blog post) – Define one of the major questions in the field.

1. What are 1 or 2 major questions asked by the field?
2. What is the history of the question?
3. What research has been done in the past few decades (some will have a longer trajectory than others)?

Follow up: Respond to two of your fellow students’ post with your observations on the questions as well as suggestions for other questions that you find of interest (and explain why).

Paper #3 Objects of Study or OoS  – rhymes with Moose! (approx. 750 word blog post) –

1. What are the generally accepted OoS in the discipline?
2. What do people analyze and why?
3. How does it fit into some of the Major Questions?
4. Based upon what you have learned of the history (if you didn’t research this particular discipline, feel free to use your fellow students blogs as cited sources) how did they come to be accepted?

Follow up: Respond to two of your fellow student’s posts with your observations and further suggestions for OoSes in the field.

Paper #4 Theories and Methods Used (approx. 750 word blog post) –

1. What are some of the common theories and methods (name 1- 2; don’t go crazy) used in the field to generate knowledge?
2. Are there some that are considered more authoritative or accepted than others?
3. Do there seem to be trends?
4. How are they connected to the history? major questions? chosen OoSes?

Follow up: Respond to two of your fellow student’s posts with observations about the theories and methods described, connections between them, and suggestions for further theories and/or methods that are related or vastly different.

Paper #5  Epistemological Alignment (approx. 750 word blog post) –

1. How do YOU align yourself theoretically and epistemologically? Why?
2. Is it connected to your preferred OoS? and/or
3. To personal agendas linked to things such as Feminism and Marxism? and/or
4. To personal/professional objectives?

Follow up: Respond to two of your fellow students’ posts with discussion about relationships between the various epistemological alignments. Very seldom does someone have a foot in just one camp, and seeing cross over can be useful to thinking about developing methodologies.

Paper #6 Being a Scholar Of_____ (approx. 2,500 – ish word blog post) – There are two approaches you might take: the personal, this is what it means for me to be a scholar of ____ discipline or more generally this is how I would identify someone as a scholar of _______ discipline. You will want to draw on your previous papers heavily, but you will be creating a through narrative/description using one of those two approaches, which is going to change things. You can also nuance and add to your previous discussion because you see yourself putting the discipline you examined in conversation with another. If you do this, you will have to do some basic research in order to support your argument they work together. But don’t go crazy, use this to help you think through things — an invention piece if you will.

The personal approach:

1. Based upon everything you’ve learned this semester, how do you see yourself contributing to the Major Debates in your chosen discipline?
2. What types of genre, theoretical, and professional knowledge does it take for you to be a scholar in the field?
3. Do you see yourself working at the intersection of this and another discipline(s)?

The general approach:

1. What types of genre, theoretical, and professional knowledge does it take to to be a scholar in the field? How would you identify a scholar in the field if you looked at their vitas and a representative sample of publications?
2. What types of genre, theoretical, and professional knowledge does it take  to be a scholar in the field?
3. Concluding question: Based upon everything you’ve learned this semester, how do you see yourself contributing to the Major Debates in your chosen discipline? (Use this to start poking and prodding. Again, its an invention question.)

Your  15 – 20 minute oral presentation will be an accumulation of what you have learned in this class. You will bring together all of what you’ve learned through the readings, through writing your first 5 papers, and through what we discuss both on the blogs and in class to outline what it means to be a scholar of _____.  Consider this a test run of your final project for the course, a form of oral peer review.

Progressive Annotated Bibliography Entries (approx. 500 word blog post for each entry) First the first 4 papers, you will write two annotated bibliography entries. See the Blog Basics for parameters and grading rubrics. These are meant to operate as a class resource.  Copies of the articles you write on will need to be added into the 810 PAB Student Readings folder in Google Drive.

Blog Post Follow Up

• Papers 1 – 5 have a follow up prompt. You are expected to provide comments to two of your fellow students by the class meeting following the post date. (So if Paper 1 is due on Sept. 16, you will comment by Sept. 23.)

Guest Lecturers

• For each guest lecture (excluding Jackie from the Office of Research), you will need to have 2 questions prepared from the readings.