World Literature

Tuesday/Thursday 8:00 a.m.
McClurg 118

Assignment Guidelines: Short Response Papers

Assignment Goals

These short response papers are intended to provide you with prompts for thinking about the assigned readings. By writing brief discussions and analyses of the contexts, symbols, and styles of individual texts as well as the connections between different texts, you will gain practice in your ability to read closely and with purpose. These short writings are further intended to prepare you for thoughtful and engaged participation in meaningful class discussions.

Assignment Protocols

Each week, new prompts will be posted online. These prompts, which take the form of a series of questions, are intended to focus your reading on one or more specific textual or contextual issues of interest to our class objectives.

You will complete ten short papers over the course of the semester. Each paper will be two to three pages, double spaced, typed according the MLA formatting guidelines.

While these short response papers are relatively informal, you are expected to organize your thoughts effectively, cite any outside sources you might refer to (none are required, but connections and evidence are encouraged where you find them helpful in making your argument), and proofread your papers. In short, you are expected to construct short, effective, informal arguments as you learned to do in English 111 and 112.

Standards for Evaluation

In grading these short papers, I am looking to see that you have done the following things well:

Responded to the questions in the prompt. You may not address all of them, but you should address the larger question with which the prompt begins.
Demonstrated thoughtful consideration of the text. This includes demonstrating that you have read the text and its supplementary materials and understand the content and context as best as one might from an initial reading.
Demonstrated an understanding of the overarching themes and ideas we discuss over the course of the semester, including how those themes and ideas relate to the current text.
Constructed your discussion in an engaging manner, using an effective organizational structure, marshalling appropriate evidence from the text and beyond, and writing with the style and grace I expect of you.
Formatted your assignment according the MLA guidelines.