Assignments

[The Compleat Diarist]

Assessment:

This paper is 100 percent internally assessed.

Submit assignments either in the Assignment slot on level 2 of the Quadrangle building, or else to me directly during the workshop.

The work you hand in should adhere to the following guidelines:

• Typed
• Double-spaced
• Written on one side only of A4 sheets
• Margins at least 2.5 cm (1 inch) all around (including top and bottom)

The marks will be divided up as follows:

Description: Creative Response
Length: up to 3 pages
Worth: 20 %
Due in: after session 6 [Friday, 22nd August]

• This is the first piece you will be handing in. I invite you to take off on a creative tangent from one of the authors or diaries presented in the course. Your own piece might take the form of a poem or set of linked poems, a piece of fiction, a script, or even a picture or pagework. Let me know what you have in mind, and we can discuss it further.

Description: Seminar
Length: 4-5 pages
Worth: 20 percent
Due in: before session 12 [to be arranged with your tutor]

• You will be asked to give one seminar in the course of the semester. Your presentation should be roughly 20 minutes long, with an additional 10 minutes set aside for questions, making up a full half-hour.
  
  The seminars will be assessed in terms of content and presentation, but you will not be required to present it in written form.
  
  In the seminar you should: aim to interest other students in the text and topic, outline the issues raised by your topic, indicate some interesting ways of looking at the question, and find ways to engage your audience in active exchanges concerning the topic.

Description: Course Journal
Length: up to 4,000 words in final form
Worth: 30 %
Due in: after session 12 [Tuesday, 28th October]

• There should be two major components in your course journal:
  
  
  
  1. On the one hand, you should aim to include at least some of your responses to the course exercises.
  2. On the other hand, you must include thoughts and reactions to the materials and ideas covered in the course over the semester. We expect some reaction to each of the ten authors.
  
  Your journal can be presented either as a series of discrete pages or in the form of an online blog.
  
  The selected journal entries you choose to hand in will not be formally assessed until the end of the course, but you are welcome to show portions of it and ask advice on it as the semester proceeds, both in class and in office hours.
  
  You ought, in any case, to aim to complete and read out at least half of the in-class exercises, which should form a substantial part of your work.

Description: Research essay
Length: up to 4,000 words
Worth: 30 %
Due in: after session 12 [Tuesday 28th October]

• This can be an extended literary-critical examination of one (or more) of the authors, works or themes discussed during the year.
  
  If you wish, you can present your research essay online – on the model of one of the essays linked to author pages on the nzepc – and link or attach it to the course website.
  
  Alternatively, you might like to take a more creative approach and do a piece of writing (perhaps in the manner of Susan Howe or Anne Carson) which incorporates research and innovative form.
  

= 100 %

There will be a lot of demands made on your organizational abilities in this course. Think ahead, and always come prepared.