Post Assignments

Each student will complete four posts. Of the four post, you must do at least one: textual analysis (close reading) posts; contextualizing research post; and a creative/artistic post. For the fourth post, you can pick from one of these three types of posts. While your post should have some relevance to the particular material being discussed in class that week, you can draw from any one of your journal entries to develop your post (i.e. your post does not have to be specifically related to your journal entry for that week).

The posts are shorter and less formal than a full paper, but they are more formal (and potentially longer) than your journal entries. The posts serve a public function, thus in writing your post, you have to consider your reading audience (our class) which for the most part you do not have to do in your journal entry. As such, you should spend time developing not only the ideas about the text that you wish to communicate but also the grammatical and formal elements that communicate those ideas. i.e. Check for clarity and accuracy in your syntax, spelling, and your citation references (including quotes, page numbers, titles, author’s names, etc. Each post will be graded based on the rubrics below. Your total post grade will constitute 25 percent of your overall grade for the course.

Guidelines for Close Reading (Textual Analysis) Posts

• Your close reading (textual analysis) post should be 250–500 words long.  You should identify the specific textual object your post is focused on in your own words. And you should posit an appropriately focused claim about that textual object. Then you should explicate how you’ve arrived at that conclusion (interpretation) of the text. Your explication should center around your analysis of specific textual examples (quotes and/or paraphrased). Remember: As much as you cannot win a trial without evidence so too you cannot win a trial by simply placing objects you deem to be evidence in front of a jury without any explanation of how the jury should read these these objects as evidence of your primary case. Your post should conclude with one or two critical discussion questions that can serve as a bridge between the analytical work of your specific post to a broader class discussion.

Guidelines for the Creative Post

• Your performative/artistic post (a critical response) should include any visual, audio, or textual media needed to share your performance object with the class. You should also include 150 -250 word description of this performance/art response. Your description should describe what the object is (the medium, genre, key formal elements, relevant contextual information, etc.); what the object does/performs (i.e. key actions, themes, moods, etc.); and how that performance relates to the class material and/or class discussion. Your post should conclude with one or two critical discussion questions that can serve as a bridge between the creative and analytical work shared in your post and a broader class discussion.

Guidelines for the Contextualizing Research Post

• As we will discuss throughout the semester, an important way of engaging and thinking through texts, especially black cultural texts, is to actively research and consider the effects of relevant contextualizing material that can deepen how we read/interpret/understand a particular aspect of the text. Relevant contextualizing material may include, but is not limited to: historical information about a figure, place, event, item (or any other historically locate-able detail referenced in the text). Your contextualizing research post; information related to the historical conditions in/under which some particular aspect of the text was produced; information about historical reception (popular, artistic, and/or academic reception) of the text; artist, author, performer, producer statements about their craft, vision, life, politics, and/or about goals, intentions, or reflections regarding the specific text you’re considering.

• For this post, you will conduct a thoughtful, but limited scale, research on some relevant contextualizing material. Your post will include a link, image, clip, audio file, and/or quote referencing the most salient part of the source material your research has uncovered; a brief description of that source material (type, medium, author, date, publisher, objective, background); an explanation of its relevance to some specific aspect of the text we’re examining and how this historical material might affect the way we think about (interpret) some aspect of the text. The post should be between 300-500 words and include full and accurate citations for any and all sources referenced.

• TITLE YOUR POST: Each post should include an original, creative title that illuminates some aspect of the post content and makes folks actually want to read and remember the post.
• CHECK RELEVANT CATEGORY BOXES: Make sure you put a check mark in any and all relevant category boxes. Using the menu on the right hand side of your post window, locate the “categories” menu. Check all relevant categories. Above all else make sure you check the category boxes that correspond to the your post group and the main text about which you’re posting. In addition to providing a quick reference for you and your peers, clicking the appropriate category boxes helps me grade. At the end of the semester, checking these boxes is equivalent to putting your paper in the correct faculty mailbox in the English Department. Even if you finish the paper and turn it in, I cannot count it if you put it in the wrong mailbox.
• PUBLISH YOUR POST. In order for us to read your post, you must publish it. To publish your post, you should click the “Publish” button in the upper right hand corner of the screen. When you click this button your post will not automatically post. Once you click this button, the site will ask you if you really want to publish your post. You must confirm by clicking “Publish” button again in the upper right hand corner. When your post has published, a message should pop up either at the top of the screen or at the bottom left hand part of the screen with the option to “view post.” You can also double check, by going back to the site, clicking on the discussion menu, and seeing if your post shows up.

• Each week you are responsible for reading your classmates’ posts BEFORE the beginning of class. As part of your participation grade, you should publish at least two comments over the course of the semester. Your comments should be dialogical and analytic rather than evaluative. (Examples of evaluative comments: “I like your post; it’s interesting”; OR “Your idea is a really smart way to look at that scene”). Your comments should engage the central object of the post; respond in some way to i’s reflection question; and develop the conversation the post puts forward.