Hey all,
Belatedly, here is a thread for proposing final projects! As we discussed on our call, we like this platform & we want to see each other’s proposals—so post yours in the comments. It’s an informal piece of writing, and you can think of it like thinking out loud. The goal is just to give yourself a chance to think through the project you’d like to spend some time and effort on, and make some plans to get you started.
Your proposals are due April 27.
Your final projects are due May 21.
the goals of this project
The primary goal of this project is to give yourself a chance to consider some of the important issues of our course in ways that feel like they also offer you the chance to pursue your own intellectual interests. I want you to have a lot of freedom here to do something that sounds good to you, and you should think about this project as a use of your time. What feels interesting, valuable, and sustaining to you right now? You might think about how you could connect
Your project should help you spend some time with the issues we’ve raised as the basic theoretical architecture of our course, and your proposal should explain how the project you’re proposing accomplishes that.
Your project can be done alone or with a classmate or classmates. It can be experiential (run and conduct a virtual book club with friends/family/classmates, develop and document a daily reading practice of your own, etc.—something you do that’s related to our work in class this semester), creative (a personal essay about any of the issues that have come up in our readings and discussions, an Instagram art project inspired by one of our texts or theoretical issues, a vlog series or podcast, a game, etc.), or analytical (a collaborative critical conversation with classmates documented in a form of your choosing, an essay taking up any of the ideas that have come up for you during this course, etc.). [There are more traditional essay prompts at the bottom of this post, if they’d help you get started, but feel free to propose your own—if you do, you might think about what audience you’re hoping to reach and use this as an opportunity to write for that audience—if you’d like to think about writing something you could submit for publication, I’d be more than happy to help.]
the proposal
The goal of the proposal is to do some foundational thinking for your project. Think about it like thinking out loud and thinking through, rather than as a polished formal piece of writing.
Your proposal should address the following questions:
- What form will your project take? What do you plan to do, and what do you plan to turn in?
- What are the motivating questions, interests, and goals of your project?
- How does your project relate to our course?
- Would you welcome collaboration from a classmate or classmates? (Group projects are totally okay!)
If you do a creative or experiential project, I’m also going to ask you for a critical or analytical statement to go with it. That statement should be 2-3 pages long, and it should provide some perspective on your project—what you hoped it would do, how it went, and how it relates to the issues of our course.
some questions to get you thinking
What would happen if you wrote about the same idea in more than one form?
How does literary genre pop up in our day-to-day lives?
What kinds of things defy genre categorization?
the essay option
If you would like to write an essay to conclude the semester, I’m happy to oblige. Below are three prompts. Your essay should be 5-8 pages long, and it should field your own individual answer to one of the following prompts and your reasoning for that answer. It should also make reference to at least one text and genre that we’ve read this semester, If you choose the essay option, your proposal is a chance to explain which prompt you’ll be responding to, why that prompt interests you, and where you’re going to take that prompt (topic, texts, etc.).
- Choosing one of the genres we’ve considered in class, and at least one example of that genre to use as an example, think about what a “genre” is. How does it affect the way we read and interpret a text? What information does it provide? What can you see about the particular genre and example of it that you’re addressing, and what do those observations lead you to think about genre as a categorical structure?
- Using the tools we’ve developed in class, consider a literary form we haven’t studied. What are its most important formal features and considerations? How does its form matter to the experience of reading it or the practice of interpreting it? Use a particular text from the genre you’re choosing as an example.
- We also use the word “genre” to designate categories of subject matter: romance/sci-fi/fantasy/crime/etc. Choose a genre of this kind, and, using the tools we’ve developed in class for thinking through , develop an argument about its parameters. What must something have to fit into that genre? What can’t it have? What are the most important formal elements of the genre? How does this sense of “genre” relate to “genre” in the sense we’ve primarily used it this semester?
ENG 222: Literary Genres 
(The more i try to write my proposal, the more I think and then get conflicted, and it’s late. This sounded better in my mind but this is what I thought as an independent project for myself.)
This individual project will be in an analytical form. It will be a written essay about how a genre can be defined, in this case for a short story. The genre of short stories, and the subgenres love stories and stories of societies will be chosen to understand what a “genre” is. A breakdown of how the stories affect the way we read, and how we interpret them in order to conclude a deeper analysis of genre. The familiar texts that could be mentioned are Raymond Carver’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” and/or Carmen Maria Machado’s “The Husband Stitch”, and Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and/or Octavia Butler’s “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”. I say “and/or” because one story could get the point across (if it must) better than the other since these subgenres are merely examples to prove what a genre is for short stories. This way there are two different subgenres that will separately prove the same overall gist as the other, (if needed then I could change anything).
I’m trying to explain how this particular subgenre isn’t your ordinary subgenre, in fact it’s more elaborate than that. So basically it’ll be like comparing what you thought short stories were like before you read “these” short stories. The ideas from the lectures will point out short story patterns that seem to give off the same mood/reaction every time we finish reading them. The reason for this is because, for some reason this pattern is being realized more in short stories. And that could be what defines a short story as a genre. This can even go back to when we were talking about what literature is, and it so happens we ended up deciphering too many definitions. Same can go for short stories as a genre, it can’t be just any short story, it’s more like an expert short story. Things that can be taken into consideration are the kinds of things that could defy genre categorization, so I might need to be thorough and conclude reasonable conditions of what elements a short story could have compared to what’s being portrayed within the subgenre.
(again this sounded better in my head, like potentially 3 pages better)
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The prompt that I would like to respond too is the first one asking about the meaning of genre. I feel as though it is the most dynamic of the prompts and symbolizes a large part of what our class was about. We came into the first weeks of class with our mind being secure in what a genre was, a label which we use to categorize things, but upon asking us the definition of literature a storm of confusion came about us. There is so much overlap between literature and other kinds of entertainment, media, art, etc. that if we could not put a definite description for it how would we be able to categorize anything into genres. Our class has been about breaking the genres down through these readings and reconstructing their meaning to our own understanding and finding out what makes them what they are and I feel as though this prompt encapsulates our time together as a class.
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prof if you could get back to me I’ve sent multiple emails.
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