The Theories Forum

The class forum is designed to give you the opportunity to discuss the texts and issues of the class at your own pace and in your own way. Although I may occasionally suggest a topic for discussion, and although your postings must be relevant to the class (i.e. you should discuss issues that are pertinent to one or more of the texts we read in the class and/or to general issues of literary theory) you are not constrained with respect to either the issues you discuss or the approach you take to these issues. Constructive yet irrelevant postings (social chat, notices of interesting events, etc.) are welcome on the forum, but do not count towards the contract (see below).

How to sign up for the forum:

Go to <http://courses.iwu.edu> and log in to Moodle. Once you're on, go to "Literary Theories - Fall 2011," then click on "The Theories Forum." The rest should be familiar and/or self-explanatory.

How the forum will be graded:

To give you as much flexibility and freedom as possible, I will grade your forum contributions by a contract system.

To get a B or higher, you must fulfill your forum contract:

• You must write at least 12 substantive, relevant postings over the course of term (in general, 1 or 2 postings per week, although of course you might have several postings or none in any given week as conversations ebb and flow). Additional postings are welcome and may help your grade (see below).
• At least half of your postings must engage with one or more previous postings in some substantive way. I will determine this by the content of the posting, not merely its location; although it makes sense to respond to a previous post by replying to it, I will count new discussion topics which engage with old postings as responses, and I won't count replies which do not engage with the previous posting as responses.
• You should spread out your postings over the course of the term (or at least not fall far behind a one posting/week schedule).

To get an A, you must fulfill your forum contract, as specified above, and your contributions to the forum, taken as a whole, must

• maintain a high standard of intellectual rigor, insight, and originality,
• significantly advance the forum discussion, and
• help the group get along as a social entity (e.g. by demonstrating respect for the opinions of others).

Borderline grades (A-, B+) are possible.

If you write more than 12 postings, I won't automatically raise your grade, but I will base my assessment of the quality of your contributions on your best 12 postings.

From these two baseline grades, I will make three kinds of deductions, if necessary:

• If you do not write a sufficient number of substantive, relevant postings, I will deduct 5 points for each missing posting. Writing fewer than 7 postings will merit an automatic F.
• If some of your postings are so insubstantial as to not seem to merit counting, I will deduct as much as 3 points for each insubstantial posting. I will make less severe deductions for multiple postings that are barely substantial enough to count. Conversely, if you have more than the minimum 12 postings, but several are quite short, I am willing to combine multiple short postings to count as a full posting.
• If you fall significantly behind a 1 posting per week schedule, and especially if you clump your postings together in such a way that it seems you did not enter into a genuine discussion but simply got your postings out of the way at the last minute, I will deduct up to 10 points.

Argument is encouraged; harassment and "flaming" are prohibited.

Assignment for Short Paper

This paper is designed to get you started writing theory (as opposed to criticism).

Choose an original theoretical article, written during the twentieth century, from The Critical Tradition. (By "original" I mean "not secondary," i.e. not one of Richter's overviews of theoretical schools.) Isolate an argument from the text, summarize it for an audience that is generally well-read in literary study and critical discourse but that has not necessarily read the article you're writing about, and then disagree with, qualify, extend, or show the assumptions or implications of the argument in order to make an original theoretical point of your own. (By "theoretical point" I mean one which could apply to a large number of literary or critical texts or to some aspect of reading and writing literature in general, as opposed to a point which applies only to a particular work.) Reading and/or using in the paper other sources besides the article you're working with is neither forbidden nor required; just be sure that you understand the article on its own terms and that, if you do use an idea from another source, you cite it properly.

Papers should be approximately 4-6 pages long and should be documented correctly in MLA parenthetical format.

A reasonably polished summary of the argument that you're writing about and a brief, rough description of what you're going to do with it is due by email on 9/14; the paper itself is due on 9/23.

Assignment for Long Paper

Develop and defend a theoretical argument on a literary topic of your choice, based upon a survey of relevant theoretical writings on that topic. Your argument may focus on a broad theoretical issue (such as the canon, authorial intention, determinacy of meaning, and so forth) which leads you through a number of different theoretical schools, or on a narrower topic which leads you into a deeper investigation of a single school (such as subjectivity in reader response criticism, ideology in Marxist criticism, etc.). In either case, however, your paper must be focused around a specific, original claim.

Length: 10-15 pages. Due dates:

• W 10/19: Brief statement of topic due by BY EMAIL. Try to be as specific as you can within a short to middling paragraph.
• M 10/31: Bibliography and survey of sources due. By "survey of sources" I mean a summary of what your relevant sources have to say about the issue you have chosen. As much as possible, you should shape this discussion to suit your purposes in the final paper as you envision it (as opposed to simply summarizing lots of individual sources one after another with no attempt to connect them or bring them into dialogue). The bibliography you attach to the survey should include not only the sources you summarize but all the sources you have found on your subject, in any non-handwritten medium (email, typed sheet, annotated computer printout, etc.).
• M 11/14: First full draft due.
• W 11/30: Final paper due.