Honors 250 Spring 2010 Assignments

Honors 250: Honors Composition II
Section 10615
Spring 2010

"Shakespeare and Composition"

M. G. Aune
Office Hours TTh 8.00 – 9.30, W 2.00 - 4.00 and by appointment
724.938.4341
223 Azorsky Hall
aune(at)calu.edu

Assignments

Quizzes

There will be ten, brief, ten-item unannounced quizzes. They will consist of short answer and identification questions. They will cover the reading for that day (Shakespeare and other readings) and any terms and concepts discussed in previous classes. The quizzes will be handed out at the beginning of class and collected after fifteen minutes. Quizzes may not be made up.

Writing Narrative

This is to be a one page, double spaced account of your writing process. In narrative style, describe how you set about writing a paper for a college course. Imagine the paper is due on a Thursday. Describe when you start the paper, how you start it, and when you finish it. Include where you work (computer lab? in your room? Library?), how you save your work (on you computer? N drive? flash drive? other?), where do you print? Be sure to include any specific strategies you use such as brainstorming, outlining, asking a peer to review, proofreading, the Writing Center. This is to be an accurate description of what you do, not what you think you should do or what you want me to think that you do.

This paper will count for twenty of the fifty possible points in your portfolio.

Paper 1 Review

For this paper, you will write a four to five page review of the Pittsburgh Public Theater’s staging of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This will not be an informative or descriptive review. Based on your knowledge and your interpretation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, you will present a critical analysis of the interpretation the production presents.

The paper will have two parts. The first part should begin with a brief paragraph that communicates basic information about the play: the date you saw it, the location, the company, the director and other crew, the lead actors, and anything else that your reader needs to know to understand your review.

The second, and longest, part of the review will present your analysis of the director’s interpretation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. There are several strategies for doing this. One is to begin with the themes of the play and ask how the production treats these themes. Does it prefer one more than another? Does it ignore one completely? (For example, imagine a version of Macbeth that emphasizes the role of the Weird Sisters and makes Macbeth seem like a puppet without free will. How would this fit with your own view of the play?) A second strategy is to look at the performance cruces within the play. Compared to your own idea of a particular moment or element, how did the production portray it? (Imagine a Macbeth that has the Weird Sisters played by old men. How would you evaluate that decision?) A third strategy is to look at what the production leaves out and/or what it adds. How does this affect the play? Productions will sometimes change the setting (Macbeth in Brooklyn in the 1970s) or emphasize certain characters by giving them more lines. It is generally best to think about how the performance cruces and any changes affect the themes of the play, in other words, use a combination of all three strategies.

As a part of this analysis, your paper should acknowledge and identify your audience and show your authority by quoting from the play.

Your thesis statement for this paper will present your evaluation of the director’s interpretation. Avoid writing about acting style or quality. These are important, but very difficult to quantify.

This assignment is designed to demonstrate your ability to interpret a performance of a Shakespeare play, to establish and support a thesis, to establish a sense of authority, and to utilize quotations from Shakespeare. It will be scored on these criteria as well as how well it follows directions and format rules.

As with all papers, this paper should follow all the usual rules of format. The day the paper is due, you must bring a paper copy of your completed paper, an electronic copy, and the rubric. If your paper is not complete at this time, ten points will be deducted from the score. The process of this paper will include a first draft, a side shadow, and a peer review (these last two done in-class). Failure to complete one of these elements will result in the loss of ten points from your final score, up to a total of thirty.

Paper 2 Source Analysis

As did his peers, Shakespeare was not concerned with what we might consider factual history when he wrote his history plays. He used the same sources for nearly all his plays. In some cases, he stayed so close to his source that we might consider his plays plagiarized. In other cases, he freely constructed events and characters, rearranged chronologies, and ignored geography. For this paper, you will locate Shakespeare’s sources for King John, locate an instance where he deviated from his source, and present an explanation as to why he did so. In simplest terms, you goal in this paper is to help your reader understand why Shakespeare made a particular choice. The paper will be a researched, argumentative paper.

The paper will be four to five pages long, use quotations from the play and its sources to support its thesis. These quotations are to be cited in-text following the rules for quoting Shakespeare. The paper must have an MLA-style bibliography (works cited page) that lists the text or texts that you used. Rules for MLA style are in A Pocket Style Manual (sec. 28-33, esp. 32).

As with Paper 1, the process of this paper will include a complete first draft, a side shadow, and a peer review. Failure to complete one of these elements will result in the loss of ten points from your final score, up to a total of thirty. The day the paper is due, you must bring a paper copy of your completed paper, an electronic copy, and the rubric. If your paper is not complete at this time, ten points will be deducted from the score. As with Paper 1, you will sideshadow, peer review, and revise your paper during the class period.

Paper 3 Shakespeare’s Biography

For this paper, you will research and analyze one aspect of Shakespeare’s life that has caused disagreement, if not controversy over the years. Topics might include, Shakespeare’s Catholicism, the lost years, the authorship of a particular play, the claims of the anti-stratfordians; autobiographical elements of his sonnets, or why, in his will, Shakespeare left his second best bed to his wife. The research will necessarily be secondary, though much primary material, such as Shakespeare’s will, is available on line. Your paper must pose a clear research question, answer the question and support the answer to that question with evidence from your research.

The paper will be five to seven pages. It is designed to demonstrate your ability to establish a thesis, support it with researched evidence, locate and evaluate information in the library and on-line, establish your authority as a writer, quote, paraphrase, and summarize, and use MLA style consistently and clearly. It should use at least five sources, no more than two of which can be on-line.

Editing Journal

This is to be kept in a blue book. I will make comments on each paper you turn in. After you receive a paper back, make an entry for that paper in the blue book. The entry should be divided into four parts. First it should describe any grammar/spelling/punctuation/usage/format errors and their corrections. I will note these with check marks in the margin of your paper and as a category on the rubric. Second, it should note any problems with MLA citations or the bibliography page. Third, you should write two or three sentences describing what you would do differently if you were to re-write the paper. I expect you to refer to your writing narrative and to the side shadowing you have done on that paper. The more specific these sentences are the better. Do not write that you need to avoid there/their/they’re errors. Describe how you will do this. For your second and third papers, I expect you to refer back to your previous entries. Fourth and last, write two or three sentences about how the peer review process did or did not help you improve your paper.

The goal of the editing journal is to create a critical record of your own writing so that you can better address your strengths and weaknesses. You will have an entry for each of the three papers this term. Your score will be determined by the comprehensiveness and organization of your journal. I will collect and check the journals periodically so be sure to bring it to class every day.

Portfolio

This is due on the last day of class. It should contain each of the three papers that you wrote, with my comments on them and the rubric. It should also contain your writing narrative, completed editing journal, and all of the quizzes. Most importantly, it should have a one to two page personal statement, following the format rules, in which you describe how your writing has progressed from the first paper to the last. You must cite specific examples of improvement or lack of improvement from your papers. Your editing journal and writing narrative will be helpful in composing this. Please assemble this in a paper folder, do not use three ring binders. Except for quizzes, points will be deducted for any missing items.

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This website was created using Microsoft SharePoint Designer at the English Department of California University of Pennsylvania, by M. G. Aune for use by the students enrolled in Honors 250 Spring Term 2010. All images and text, unless otherwise noted are copyright 2008 by M. G. Aune.
This page was created January 2010.