"Placing" Romanticism will mean working to incorporate its subject matter into your literary and cultural vocabulary. The best way to learn about literature is to write about it. Hence, this class will be organized around our writing and thinking, and will develop with our classroom discussions.

THE WAYS WE'LL DO THIS:

Over the course of the semester, you will assemble a PORTFOLIO which will be assessed at term's end and will consist of the following:

1. Weekly response papers--On Mondays of your choice, you will bring a single-spaced typed one-page paper which responds to the reading, class discussions, your own writing or experience. The writing need not be formal, but it must show your reading and writing. Response writing should strive to interpret your reading in some depth, and should privilege your personal reactions. These guidelines are purposefully vague, because the response papers will work best if you give your own thought and creativity free reign. Response papers will be assessed with a check, check plus, or check minus according to effort and ingenuity. You are required to complete eight (8) response papers.
2. In-Class Writing Assignment--These will take various forms, usually to exploit writing's uncanny ability to get you thinking about what you've read. If I feel you are not keeping up with the reading, these will include quizzes on what you should have read. Depending on class size, in-class writing may include a midterm exam to ensure that everyone is processing the material in a satisfactory and comprehensive manner.
3. Essays--Three of these will be described in handouts throughout term, will entail your own critical thinking, and will receive letter grades (very tentative due dates: 2/19, 4/2 and 5/12). Unlike response papers, essays are double-spaced and follow guidelines set out in the MLA Handbook. Among these will be a final term paper (around ten pages) whose proposal you will generate well in advance.
4. Final Project--You'll notice that vast expanses of our anthology will have gone unexplored by the end of our term together. Here is your chance to exploit the anthology's selection for yourself as you expand your understanding of a "Romantic" theme of your choice.
   First, spend some time exploring the anthology for writings which you find intriguing. Start by "shopping" through the table of contents. You can choose entirely new authors/writings or continue reading in authors we've covered. Explore your interest in this/these writing(s) and develop a reading which elaborates on how/why your choice intrigues you. Choose enough writing for an in-depth essay, but not so much as to make your argument too broad or unwieldy. Focus closely on your material to wring all you can out of its language.
   Since you'll be dealing with alternative selections, the essay--which will be the culmination of your project--will in many ways be a comparative one. It will be a kind of introduction to "new" writings which finds some kind of inspiration (whether "good" or "bad," or somewhere in between) in those concepts we have explored in class. And it will inevitably shed new light back on these more familiar writings. Introducing "new" texts and rediscovering "old" ones will essentially point you toward a thesis.
   At least as a "jumping off point," sometime during your own writing you'll want to ground your choice in an understanding of familiar themes: compare your selection(s) to one or two selections/conceptualizations of "Romantic" writing we've covered in class. Now, you need not write an essay on "Romanticism" per se, nor should your essay make blanket statements about Romantic writing--in fact you'll most likely do best to leave the concept of "Romanticism" entirely out of the picture and develop terms entirely specific to your subject matter. But you may find that your choice challenges how Romantic writing has been conceived.