Requirements

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Class Participation:  15%

Class participation is 15 % of your final grade.  Class participation is much more than simply showing up for class.  Class participation includes doing the reading, coming to class prepared, contributing regularly and thoughtfully to class discussion, participating in small group work, debates, and role playing activities and completing all class writing activities.  Some form of class participation is required in every class.  You can find a rubric detailing the criteria for grading class participation here. Paper assignments will be drawn from in-class discussion and lecture as well as from out-of-class readings.  In class work cannot be made up.  If you miss more than two classes, your class participation grade will drop.

Group discussion Presentation:  10%

During the first weeks of class you will be assigned to a small group in which to prepare an oral presentation in which you will lead a discussion of a text in groups of three or four. In order to prepare for this, you should read the text carefully, do some research and think of questions and activities that will lead the class to an understanding of its importance within the context of European culture, as well as of its unique features. In sum, your presentation should be well-researched, informative, creative, and interesting.  It should demonstrate your ability to analyze and present the significance of your topic. The grade will be based on your performance during the discussion, as well as your participation within your group (see the rubric for this). You must submit an evaluation of the contribution other members of your group made to the presentation.  

Annotated Bibliography 15%.

You will prepare an annotated bibliography of five critical articles on the literary works read in this course for Dr. Wright and five critical articles on history for Dr. Coolidge.  The annotated bibliography will consist of one paragraph of 200-250 words for each article that summarizes the ideas and thesis of the author. It is of utmost importance that you begin to find articles right away in case you need to use Interlibrary Loan (that may take a couple of weeks). Please hand in your annotated bibliography in electronic form (that is by e-mail or on a diskette) to Dr. Wright ad in paper form to Dr. Coolidge. You must also hand in the articles to both of us. Each student will choose the article that they find most interesting or useful in order to present the main ideas to the class during finals week. For creating your annotated bibliography see the Instructions page. There is also a Rubric for evaluating the annotated bibliography that will be used for assigning the grade.  

N.B. Please post the list of your articles (with complete bibliographical information such as the name of author, title of article, and the book or journal containing the study) on Blackboard by October 20 (articles on history should be posted on Dr. Coolidge's Blackboard site and those on the literary works on Dr. Wright's Blackboard site). In order to avoid duplicate articles, the first student who posts their articles has priority. For example, if two students have one of the same articles the student who posts their article first may use it while the second student must find another article to replace it.

Four short (5-7 pages) papers:  15% each, 60% total

Throughout the semester you will write four papers (5-7 pages) on an assigned topic.  These papers are designed to help you analyze the history, art, and literature that we are studying.  Two papers will be on history for Dr. Coolidge and two on literature for Dr. Wright.  The paper topics and guidelines will be distributed well in advance of the due dates. The best papers will have a clearly stated, original thesis which will further the interpretation of the text done in class.  Please feel free to consult with us at any time.   We do not accept late papers. They are due on the day specified in the course schedule. ***Any paper found to be plagiarized, even if it's only a small fragment, will receive a grade of 0. For a clear definition of plagiarism, please see GVSU's site on Plagiarism as well as Prof. Petersen's site.  Clear here for Dr. Coolidge's Grumpy Professor Guidelines

For papers one (Dr. Coolidge) and two (Dr. Wright) you will be required to submit a rewrite of your paper. Depending on the scope and depth of your revisions, you will have the opportunity to raise you grade. You will have the option to rewrite paper three (Dr. Coolidge). Please use these guidelines for rewriting your essays.

For Dr. Wright's papers only: You will choose your own topic based on the literary works read in class (I will post ideas for topics as well) and grounded in some research. You can find scholarly articles in the JSTOR database; just search by title or author. You can also find citations to paper articles and some online texts in the MLA bibliography. If you need general information on an author or movement, do not use Wikipedia (this site falls under the "questionable websites" category in the rubric); the library has other sources, including the Johns Hopkins Online Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism. Please use MLA style for quotations and Works Cited. Please consult the updated guidelines for MLA style that The specific criteria used for grading is detailed in this page.

The following grading scale will be used:

A = 94-100; A- = 90-93; B+ = 87-89; B = 84-86; B- =80-83; C+ = 77-79; C = 74-76; C- = 70-73; D+ = 67-69; D = 64-66; F = 0-63