Undergraduates will prepare a factual and autobiographical report (student uses the first
person) that contains major reflection / analysis connecting the text you are reading to
other texts of the course. Although some will want to write more in order to speak from
more extensive notes, you should fit your report to the class on a two page (one sheet of
paper, front and back, unless it is more convenient to print on one side only and staple).
Undergraduate report style:
Aim to speak for 3-5 minutes MAXIMUM. There could also be a few moments taken to
clarify or re-emphasize points you make. Prepare a one to two page handout and make
copies for all students, plus two to turn in. You do not have to take up your time
speaking every line of your handout. You may want to point to or read a section of a
poem and explain or raise interpretive possibilities.
Include on your handout:
Your name and course information.
Name of writer, the work, first date of publication, and, if relevant, pages in
Norton.
Other sources you consulted and how obtained, if applicable. *
This includes critical essays found through the Library resources, on-line sites such as
Gradesaver / Sparknotes and other packaged notes sites. For undergraduates, there
is no expectation that you consult outside sources. Your report is a reading on the
primary literature. Yet you may either bump into or get desperate and look up
summaries. For instance, the book editions of Margery Kempe, Little Women, have
critical introductions and supportive essays. You also may be interested in locating a
way to place the significance of the work in a more complete context than Norton editors
provide. Responsible use of and credit to secondary sources is mandatory and
violations are considered plagiarism, so when in doubt, ask.
Clear paragraph or list of several major points, putting the work into a
biographical context. Compose in your own words a concise summary. Expand
or refer to the Gilbert and Gubar summary yet judge or remake what they say to cover a
careful reading of the full work. Do not get so detailed that one who has not read the
work cannot follow you: Aim for a comprehensive overview in three to five good
sentences.
Brief statement of analysis of the full work. Analysis is not simple summary: If you run
across simple summaries and find already done analyses, these may be cited, referred
to, but do not count as your own personal engagement with the text. In your opinion, is
the excerpt in Norton representative and adequate? What is missed when the whole
work is not included? Did the Norton editors give good information in their biographical
head note? What other writers on the syllabus can you connect to the work of your
report, and how? Alternative to connecting to another writer we have all read: you might
find a very short poem by a writer not on the syllabus which works as connecting
literature, one with a similar theme. Optional: if you located additional information about
the significance of the report, how is that useful to your own assessment?
Graduate student format for a two-page handout is expected to be more analytical /
critical and written in the style of a paper proposal or abstract with a bibliography. Think
of your proposal as a finely-honed complete summary of your fuller project, 500 words
that includes claim of interpretation, outline or overview, and conclusion.
Most of you have two texts and want to develop an interpretive thesis paragraph that
functions as a complete overview of a projected longer paper. Some of you may have
very minimal or just one key secondary critical source outside these texts. Others of you
are taking the occasion to review what is available for a certain writer or using a certain
influence.
It is also expected that you expand one major section of your projected finished paper
(about a 10-12 page total project). Make two copies of this to turn in, and keep one
yourself. (Also retain a disk copy.) For instance, your report might include in outline
form several angles comparing a work to Jane Eyre, but your submitted paper focuses
on close reading of texts to make a single major point.
*Any students who include on line resources other than the major text/s or searches at
the JSU Library databases and card catalogs are expected to prepare separately a
typed narrative of research procedure and to sit down with me for a computer
conference to show me your search strategy and sources found. Also make sure you
have a printout of all sources. This probably includes dead-ends, documents you
discovered the existence of but were unable to obtain or ones considered irrelevant after
you read them.
You are expected to be familiar with and use proper MLA style for web citations. Go to
MLA.org. Select MLA style. Select Frequently Asked Questions. Select How do I cite
documents from the World Wide Web? Follow the procedures for documenting in
sequence the 15 numbered items. Not all items will be in every web or database
document.
Other guidelines: Avoid the impersonal you, but use the I voice. ALWAYS introduce
work you are citing with effectively worded phrase of attribution or signal phrase.
(Parenthetical notation is not enough for MLA style: you commit the error of a "dropped
quotation.") Full length or separately published works get underlined or italicized; short
works have double quotations around them. Check a handbook for proper punctuation.
Use a large enough font and margins/ white space around your text. The copies for all
handout can be single-spaced.
The narrative of on-line searching and the Graduate student paper section should be
doublespaced.
Dr. Gates EH 420 G.
REPORTS DIRECTIONS
Graduate level Report topics:
It is very important that the report be clearly approved by the professor and that the rest of the class
know what you have signed up for. I will also need to know that you have access to the materials
expected. In some cases I can supply them or direct you to on-line sources.
1) ______________Charlotte Brontë's Villette and its parallels and contrasts with Jane
Eyre.
2) _______________Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey and its parallels and contrasts with Jane
Eyre.
3) ____________ Charlotte Brontë's Shirley & Eyes were Watching God.
4) ____________ The biographies: Elizabeth Gaskell on Charlotte Brontë and Judith
Barker on the Brontës. [or see below, last item.]
5) ____________ The autobiographies of women's suffrage. Doris Stevens' Jailed for
Freedom and Way Stations by Elizabeth Robins
6) ____________ Aurora Leigh by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and its parallels and
contrasts with Jane Eyre.
7) _________________ The New Moon by Elizabeth Robins (also Milly's Story) and its
parallels and contrasts with Jane Eyre
8) ____________ Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier and its relationship (parallels to and
contrasts with) Jane Eyre
9) ____________ Emma Brown and Female Mentorship (with V. Woolf, Gilbert and
Gubar
10) ____________ The Bondwoman's Narrative by Hanna Crafts and Jane Eyre.
11) ____________ Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Culture: study the text in the context of
how it is presented on the UV web site.
12) ____________ Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea and Brontë's Jane Eyre.
13) ____________ George Eliot's Mill on the Floss [as an alternate to Wuthering
Heights] as a male / female double bildungsroman.
14) ____________ The Open Question by Elizabeth Robins as an alternate to Wuthering
Heights as a male / female double bildungsroman.
15) ____________ A Dark Lantern by Elizabeth Robins: how it relates to Emily Brontë's
Wuthering Heights, what relationship does it have to Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper.
16) : ____________ Scholarship on Emily Dickinson.
17) ____________ Scholarship on Sylvia Plath, focus on Complete Diaries, The Bell
Jar, Letters and Janet Malcolm biography.
18) ____________ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl I. Combined with scholarship
by Jean Fagan Yellin.
19) ____________ Juliet Barker's Lives of the Brontes and other Brontë Scholarship could
include Primary Source Media disk on Library 2nd floor.
Dr. Gates EH 420.
REPORTS DIRECTIONS
UnderGraduate level Report topics:
Complete text of a work that is only excerpted in the Gilbert and Gubar anthology:
1) ____________
Julian of Norwich
2) ____________
Margery Kemp
3) ____________
Tragedy of Mariam
4) ____________ Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (bio sketch by Elizabeth Robins)
5) ____________
Narrative of Captivity and Restoration of Mary Rowlandson
6) ____________
Phillis Wheatley complete poems at Renascence Editions
7) ____________ Vindication of the Rights of Woman
8) ____________
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
9) ____________
Our Nig
10) ____________ Little Women
11) ____________ Woman in the Nineteenth Century
12) ____________
Fanny Fern
13) ____________ Narrative of Sojourner Truth
14) ____________ Women and Labour by Olive Schreiner
15) ____________ Cassandra (context and other Florence Nightingale)
16) ____________ Diary of Alice James [no text on line]
17) ____________ A Room of One's Own [no text on line]
OR one from these projects. These can easily be shifted to a grad level paper. Student
should check with instructor about possible shape and need to include secondary
sources.
1) ____________
The Convert (novelization of Votes for Women) by
Elizabeth Robins
2) ____________ Anne Brontë's Tenant of Wildfell Hall
3) ____________ Beloved by Toni Morrison
4) ____________ Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
5) ____________ Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry and its relationship to
Votes for Women
6) ____________ The New Moon by Elizabeth Robins –links with Mills of the Gods,
and includes a fire and desperate attempts to rescue in its climax. Connections invited to
Jane Eyre.
7) ____________ Women and War Literature: The Messenger by Elizabeth
Robins
8) ____________ Women and War Literature: A Son at the Front by Edith
Wharton
9) ____________ Women and War Literature: In Country by Bobbie Ann Mason
10) ____________ Wendy Wasserstein evaluation, focused on The Heidi
Chronicles
11) ___________ Evaluation of Betty Friedan: Focus on The Feminine Mystique.