Close Reading Posts
By the end of the semester, every student will be responsible for having completed three posts and one comment on someone else’s post. The purpose of the posts are 1) to practice the strategies for close reading based textual analysis used in the study of literature and other forms of rhetoric 2) to help facilitate our in-class discussion of the text and 3) to get you writing about the novel your History Presentation assignment and your Monster Paper assignment will focus on. All posts should be published on the class site 24 hours before the class day your Group is listed to do a post. (ex. If you are in group A and there is an A listed for March, 1st, then you should have your post up by Tuesday, February 28th at 4pm). You should check all appropriate category boxes for each post you publish. Usually that will be the box indicating the novel you’re focusing on and the box indicating which post assignment you’re publishing. You are encouraged to include at least one tag of your own making to the post. The specific instructions for each post assignments are below.
Article Analysis: Each group will post on one of the secondary sources (the historical and critical writing) that are not novels. In your post you should do three things. You should give a solid summary of the reading in which you identify the main point, the key sub points and/or lines of argument by which the author illustrates the main point. 2) Offer some thoughts about a specific part of the reading (i.e. perhaps you discuss why you think the author’s ice metaphors are odd given the discussion is about passion in the south. OR Maybe you discuss how the author’s last example really illuminates exactly what the author was getting at when they said “sociality”). 3) Ask 2 pointed discussion questions. IMPORTANT: For numbers 2 and 3, it is important that you narrow your focus to something specific, so that your discussion and your question are substantive. Hint if you can write it without looking at the text, you are probably being too general.
Frankenstein Close Reading Analysis: Everyone will post for the Frankenstein reading. Using one of the three close reading methods mentioned in class and posted on the site, your post should identify and discuss a specific passage or a very specific recurring detail that you want to focus on. While you do not have to write a full out thesis or think of this post as a paper, you should attempt to posit some claim about what you’re analyzing. Try answering the question, how does the way this specific part of the text affect the way we understand the whole scene or the overall chapter or some larger theme that seems to be at play.
Your Novel Close Reading Analysis Post: Each group is responsible for posting before our discussion of the novel on which they will present and write a paper. You should think about this post as a way of trying out a particular idea that you might have for your close reading paper on the novel. In this way this post should follow a similar format as the Frankenstein post. Identify a specific passage or a very small recurring detail that you want to analyze. Your post should properly identify the novel and author you’re focusing on and provide context about the portion of the text you’re going to focus on that your reader can follow you. Using one of the close reading methods, you should analyze the way many formal elements are working together in a small passage or the way one specific element works across a longer passage. You should posit a claim about how your analysis affects the way we understand one of the larger themes, ideas, or characters in the novel.
NOTE: The purpose of these posts is to push you attend to the details of a text even as you work to understand how the details speak to the text as a whole. These posts should be 150-350
Grading Rubrics
Timeliness: Is y our post published on time and with the appropriate category boxes checked. Note if you don’t check the category boxes I might not know that you have done the posts. I will not go wading through all the posts at the end of the semester to look to see if you turned in your post.
Following the Instructions: (does your post meet the requirements of the above assignments including word length and inclusion of accurately cited quotes).
Depth and Scope: In this class, scope is everything. I am looking to see that you have identified a very specific aspect of the text (a word, or a moment, a tiny image etc.) I would rather see you offer a focused and in depth consideration of a tiny thing rather than a general and surface level about a huge thing or a lot of things.
Originality: Posts should not repeat the exact same arguments of the posts before. I will read the posts in the order they are published. You should should read the already published posts before you post. If your post is basically the same argument about the same passage using the same or very similar examples as a previous post, this will affect your grade.