Close Reading Posts
Every student will be responsible for three close reading posts throughout the semester. 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) (in the case CR Post 3 to get you writing about the novel your History Paper & 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. You should check the appropriate 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.
CR Post 1: Apply one of the close reading strategies discussed in class to any of the primary text readings for Feb 11 (this means any of the readings except the Washington Post article by Stacey Patton). The purpose of this close reading post is to practice the reading and analytical skills we discussed in class and which I expect you to hone throughout the semester. This post should be 100-200 words. It should focus on a sufficiently small aspect of the text. It should include accurately cited textual evidences (i.e. quotes). For this post, you do not necessarily have to have a definitive argument or interpretation. You might only have an observation that’s moving towards an interpretation and argument.
CR Post 2: Apply one of the close reading methods discussed in class on a specific aspect of Frankenstein. The purpose of this post is to push your practice of the close reading skills beyond the point of observation and to the point of positing an interpretive claim. This post should be 100- 300 words. It should focus on a sufficiently small aspect of the text. It should include accurately cited textual evidences (i.e. quotes). For this post, you should use the close reading methods to help you posit some interpretive claim about a very specific portion of the text. This claim is not necessarily a thesis or a full out argument per say because your claim should not be about the entire novel (or about any big concept or all of humanity). You are focusing on a very small part of a text; you should however be making a small interpretive position about what you (based on your close reading method) think is going on with this aspect of the text.
CR Post 3: Your third CR post should follow the same instructions used for the above CR Post 2. The differences is that you should be writing about the text associated with that week. Each group will take one novel to post on; it will be the same novel they are doing their history presentation and paper on.
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.