All the grades have been posted and thus the course officially comes to a close. In my comments that everyone received, I mentioned that the average in the course was quite high. In fact, that number was 87.9%. That’s right—the average grade was a B+. Dang! I might get a talking-to about being an easy grader, but really, those of you who performed “average” (for this class) or above really earned it by doing all of the things expected of you. So that’s good.

Related to the content of the course, I don’t know if you guys know this about dear overworked Dr. Orr, but he’s the editor (and a contributor) to two really good collections that you can access in Google Books:

• A Joseph Conrad Companion (you can get the majority of the content)
• Joyce, Imperialism, and Postcolonialism (only one of the articles is available, but it’s a good one)

Those of you taking 372 or 475 with me next semester should keep an eye on the respective course info pages because I’ll have the syllabi up probably by the new year. No harm in getting a head start on reading, but I promise no 500pp novels at the end of the term (no matter how good they are).

Finally, the creative projects by the students who did them and made them available can be found below:

• Things Fall Apart Choose-Your-Own Adventure, by Beau Y.
• Colonialism: a Commentary, by Dan A.
• Three Scenes of Madness, by Michael F.
• Micro-Macro Bind: Dilating 19th and 20th Century Colonialistic Portrayals Beyond Ethnocentric, Generalized Bounds Toward 21st Century Globalization, by Kelly R.
• Search for the Son: Globalization and “Meet the Natives”, by Kristine P.

The results of the poll taken in class on Thursday was 10 Yes, 5 No. Therefore, the answer is Yes. Shift to Friday, 9pm. NO LATER.

Because of the number of people who didn’t finish The Diamond Age, we couldn’t talk about it in a meaningful way. So instead I handed out some information from my composition courses regarding thesis-writing, argumentation, and fallacies, since many people are still struggling with those concepts with regards to final papers.

Using information provided by the folks who did finish The Diamond Age, we spent a good deal of time showing the process of making an argument for something in that text.

I then discussed briefly what might be a good way to organize your 2-3 minute presentation of your project, and reminded everyone that your abstracts are due on your blogs on Friday, 12/09.

Given that I’m still answering questions from people trying to find a thesis, and your final projects are due in 6 days, I’m considering extending the due date until Friday. This is against my better judgment, as it appears to cater to those who have waited until the last minute, but I will take this up with the class today.

Was going to do course evals today but we were missing key people (where “key people” means “people usually in class”). So, we’ll do those first thing on Tuesday.

People were a little sketchy on the connections between the themes of the course matching up with things all throughout The Diamond Age. I suspect that has to do with the range of success with regards to doing the reading. If you don’t read the text, you are seriously missing out on something good—literary, historical, futuristic (or not so much), and primed for some pretty intense critical thinking.

Kris made the best connection of all. And developing stuff that was once the dream of a writer is not limited to Stephenson…do you really think scientists think of things in a vacuum? So much has been developed over the years (decades and decades) because someone read the artistic musings of someone else. For real.

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I will be commenting on your blog posts (project proposals) and getting your essays back to you over the next few days as well. My comment about using my comments on those essays in your final papers had everything to do with comments regarding academic writing: organization, focus, argument, citation—things I’ve commented on in your essay #1 and midterm. I didn’t mean I was holding back some specific nugget of info. I simply meant that as with comments on the other essays, paying attention to them would be a good idea if you want to improve. Given your final written papers aren’t due until finals week, and many of you aren’t even writing literary analysis papers, getting them back within a week of the due date shouldn’t harm you whatsoever.

I thought the catch-up day went pretty well—I waxed philosophical about things in Cal that might have been moderately thought-provoking, and anyone who wanted to say something had the opportunity to do so.

But I thought the final-project brainstorming/sharing was pretty important and helped a lot of people out. I knew some people were flailing and didn’t know how to narrow their topics. Hopefully hearing the ideas of other students (who had their topics nailed down) was helpful. Remember that your proposal and some possible works cited (annotated) is due as the blog post for Friday morning. It’s very important that you are as complete and concrete as possible so that I and others can comment on the project you are proposing.

Apropos of nothing, the breakdown of topics for essay #2 went like this: 10 wrote on Lahiri, 8 on Ha Jin, and 2 on Joyce. Tanner and Beau tackled Joyce, so you can pat them on the back for stepping outside of the class norm on this one.

Oops! I didn’t notice until now (11/25) that I didn’t write a little blurb post-class last Thursday.

First, I spent a little bit of time giving some background on The Troubles, since Cal (both the novel and the character) is smack dab in the middle of it all. As a side note, if you look at the Wikipedia page for The Troubles (Northern Ireland) in the media you’ll find links to some interesting things that you might or might not have known were even related to The Troubles.

When we started our discussion of Cal I knew it would be a bit difficult to talk about things when most of you had only read the first half of the book. I put the following on the board with the intention of using them as starting points for conversation: Cal, Shamie, Crilly, Skeffington, Marcella, family, loyalty, work, religion, sympathy(?). We’ll pick back up with similar things on Tuesday the 1st as we wrap up discussion of Cal and start in on the last book we’ll be discussing: the very long but quite fun and jam-packed with issues related to this class The Diamond Age. I’ve been re-reading it recently (duh!) and have marked many things that I hope you all are also marking as you read.

I hope you’re all working hard on the essay due on Monday (or were working hard and then took a break for the holiday with the intention of picking back up afterward), and are thinking about your final project. For the final project, remember that you need to make an analysis of something—not a report—and that you can’t get completely ignore the primary or secondary texts we’ve read in this class. You might only use course readings as touchstones, but something has to be there.

Not surprisingly, we did everything in class that I said we were going to do, in the Plan for Class 11/17 post.

Um. So….yes. Thursday we will talk about Northern Ireland and the Trouble more specifically, plus Cal. I expect we will want to talk more about Cal when we get back from Thanksgiving break, but I could be wrong. Going to play that by ear.

We talked about essay #2 and the final project assignment sheets—if you have questions, bring them on Thursday.

First and foremost, I’m still sick, so no hugging. Ha ha, I kid, I kid.

I will hand out the Essay #2 and Final Project Assignment sheets and explain them. You can get a sneak peek at the course website, as I’ve just posted them. I would also call your attention to another PDF I’ve made available at the course website: selections from They Say/I Say, specifically the chapters “As He Himself Puts It” (the art of quoting) and “So What? Who Cares?” (saying why it matters). “Chapters” is a generous term, as it’s not a lot of text. However, it is very important text for those of you still unsure about how to formulate an original argument and support it through quotation. In the assignment sheet you’ll find the password necessary to access this and the other PDFs for Essay #2.

I think that we will spend most of the time talking about Irish history and the aspects of Dubliners that are especially relevant to this class. However, I will note that love him or hate him, Joyce is considered to be one of the most influential authors of the 20th century, especially with regards to the modernist novel, and therefore I’m not going to spend any time defending my choice of Joyce in a 20th/21st century Global Lit class….

I expect we will not say all we want to say about Cal on Thursday, although we certainly might. You’re welcome to blog about Cal for extra blog points this week. The first day back from Thanksgiving was going to be an electronic literature discussion/demonstration, but I am unsure if that is going to happen or not. Right now I have it penciled in as a catch-up day before the final push through The Diamond Age and your final projects. There will be an extra credit blog opportunity for The Diamond Age as well.

See you tomorrow.

Still full of the flu. Do your blog post as usual for Friday, and read the assigned pages in Cal for Tuesday. We’ll catch up then.

Blech.

As you (should) know, I canceled class for tomorrow, Tuesday, Nov 10th, because I picked up some sort of crud while away at a conference this weekend.

Keep reading your Joyce, and we will talk about Ireland in general and the snippets of Dubliners on Thursday. Remember that you have a blog post due on Friday as well.

I will hand out your essay #2 prompt and your final project assignment sheet on Thursday. I’ll give you until after Thanksgiving to complete your Essay #2, but remember that doesn’t mean you have to wait until then to finish it/turn in it. If you are going to work at all over Thanksgiving break, your time would be better spent on your final project. But we’ll talk more about that on Thursday.