Assignments: Steam, Speed, and Modernity

Take-home Essay/ Unit Test

What is Victorian?

For this take-home essay, provide a working definition of “Victorian culture,” using any of the keywords below or any additional terms or concepts generated in class or individually. What, in your view, is distinctive about the Victorian period and why? I am asking you to focus on the period from the 1830s to the 1860s (early and mid-Victorian) that we have discussed in this class.

· Due: FRIDAY, MARCH 31 by 4:30 pm. If your essay is LATE it will be graded down. Exceptions will be made only in the case of documented health emergencies.

· Support your claims with examples from at least THREE different texts.

· At least ONE of these texts should come from a media or discipline other than 19^th-century fiction by Gaskell or Dickens (e.g., visual art [Turner, Frith, Illustrated London News], cultural history [Schivelbusch, Foucault, Serres], art criticism [Ruskin], sociology/ industrial reportage [Engels, Marx, Ure]).

· Essays should be approximately FOUR (4) double-spaced pages.

· I suggest roughly TWO to THREE (2-3) hours for writing time. (This time increment does not include brainstorming or related studying.)

More instructions:

· Exams are OPEN BOOK.

· You need not quote from the texts you mention, although you should display a command of the concepts they discuss.

· Do not repeat arguments for texts made in your first paper: this essay should demonstrate the breadth as well as depth of your knowledge. I strongly encourage students to make interdisciplinary arguments.

· Follow conventional paper format: You exam should begin with an introduction and end with a conclusion. While I don’t expect your writing to be perfect, I do expect your sentences to be grammatical and comprehendible.

· Your exam should be typed and double-spaced.

Keywords: we will generate more of these:

Industrialism

Urbanism

Technology

Domesticity

Gender

“Shock”

Capitalism

Pastoralism

Class

Labor

Empire

Realism

“Progress”

Disasters/ Accidents

Space

Power/ force/ speed

Panorama

Visuality

Myth/ fantasy

Nostalgia/ melancholy

Order/ disorder

“Angel in the House”

Discipline

Education

Alienation

Paper 1

Due FRIDAY, February 17 no later than 4:30 pm at my office in WAC 112

Length: 4-5 pages (see “paper format” in syllabus)

Choose ONE option from the topics offered below:

1.) Explore the portrayal of one of the following subjects in Mary Barton and/or The Condition of the Working Class:

- Human – or inhuman – feeling (rage, sympathy, alienation, calculation, animal appetite, addiction)

- The metaphorics of the city, the country, or the environment at large

- Class relations (“contrasts”)

- The new and the old, progress and regression

- Economic logic (“improvidence” and political economy)

- Character formation

- Animality, brutality, “sensuality”

- Garbage and waste

- Violence and/or murder (“social” or individual)

- The role of the middle-class reader

Why do you believe Gaskell and/or Engels imagine these topics as they do?

2.) Explore the treatment of visibility and invisibility in works by Engels, Ure, Foucault, Gaskell, or any combination thereof. How (and why) do these texts use techniques of concealment and exposure?

3.) Compare the role of the individual in sketches of the factory (or factory town) by Engels, Ure, Foucault, and/or Gaskell? How do these works imagine the play of power, discipline, and intelligence?

4.) A topic of your own devising. You must clear it with me no later than Monday, February 13 (either at the end of class, via email, or by appointment).

You are welcome to use material from prior assignments for this class.

Other suggestions

· Please note that I offer the above paper topics as PROMPTS—as “jumping-off” points for you to make more specific arguments about your chosen text and subject matter. The topics are thus intentionally broad: I wish to leave you a fair deal of latitude for creative arguments.

· These are literary papers. The emphasis should always be on language and its various connotations. Make sure to quote from your texts and interpret those quotes.

· Your grade will be based on: 1.) the persuasiveness and originality of your ideas, and 2.) the manner in which these ideas are structured, expressed, and supported.

· Remember to document all sources with a “Works Cited” section that follows MLA guidelines.

· I encourage you to use the College Writing Center for feedback on drafts or help brainstorming.

Final Research Project and Presentation

Guidelines for Projects:

Research projects may focus on texts that we have discussed in class or on other texts and questions surrounding technology, industrial culture, Victorians, neo-Victorians, or any combination thereof. The topic should be of your own devising. I welcome comparative projects (different cultures, different texts, different time periods, different media)—as long as you can make a case for how your project resonates with the course theme. I also welcome projects in other formats beyond scholarly papers: web projects or creative writing projects, for instance.

· If you will be writing a scholarly paper, it should be 10-12 pages in length.

· Web and creative writing projects should be accompanied by a substantive explanation (5 pages) of how your work resonates with the course theme.

· Prospectuses and annotated bibliographies for these projects are due THURSDAY, MARCH 2 by 4:30 pm.

· Completed written projects are due on MONDAY, MAY 8 by 4:30 pm

· They will account for 30 % of your course grade.

· Projects must be preceded by an oral presentation/ Q & A about your topic (see below).

As you refine your topics, I encourage you to consult the bibliography for this course (on the course web page), resources at Victorian Web (http://www.victorianweb.org), and to meet with me about any questions that you may have.

Guidelines for Project Presentations:

Presentations of your research topics will occur in class from Monday, March 30 until Wednesday, May 3. These presentations are intended to jump-start your own writing and research process.

· Presentations should be at least 10 minutes in duration (15 minutes maximum).

· I am not expecting them to be highly ‘polished,’ but rather to serve as works in progress.

· I will be grading your presentations. (They account for 10% of your grade). Here are my criteria for grading. Your presentation should:

1.) show that you are already involved in researching and seriously thinking about your research topic.

2.) provide a tentative road map or abstract of your eventual project.

3.) pose questions and issues that follow from your topic. Why are you interested in this subject? What, in your view, is its greater significance? What are some tentative lines of argument you are thinking of pursuing? (Offer specific examples.)

4.) pose related questions to your classmates about the shape of your project. (E.g., “Here are some options open to me: should I pursue x or y? In what way? With what sort of approach?)

5.) discuss how your topic relates to the greater focus of the course.