behn and swift

While I’ll give you more specific topics for your exams, I’m going to leave these weekly discussion postings rather broad in the hopes that you’ll address whatever is interesting to you in the texts we read. Some weeks I may generally suggest you look more at a theme or symbol, and in other weeks I may ask you to focus on things like characterization. How you choose to focus things more specifically or what you would choose to focus on would be up to you.

Keep in mind that your initial post needs to be at least 250 words in length (you may want to type it in a word processing program to keep track of the word count and then paste things over), and the initial post should be posted before Friday at midnight (Central Time) of each week. I know that you’re often working folks and that can be a difficult deadline, so I’m open to an occasional week when you might be a bit off, provided you give me advance notice. Otherwise, I am firm on that deadline, only because you need to write classmate responses, and it doesn’t work for all students if everyone is logging in at 10 p.m. (or later!) on Sunday night to meet the weekly deadline. You do need to also respond to two classmate postings each week, with a minimum of 50 words for each of those postings, by Sunday at midnight. I can only post one deadline in Canvas, so the Sunday one is what you’ll see even though we work on a Friday/Sunday schedule each week.

Because some students have plagiarized from other students in the past, you won’t be able to see your classmates’ postings until you’ve made your own original post. If that causes any of you anxiety because you’re wondering if you’re on the right track with your comments, I’m happy to review things via email if you’d like some reassurance.

Also, this should hopefully be obvious, but please try and be respectful of your classmates. I love to see some debate or differing opinions, as it shows you’re actually engaging with the texts, but I do want people to be respectful and polite and will intervene accordingly if necessary.

I won’t weigh in heavily during the week on these, as I’d like these to be your own interactions, and I find if I post that students then tend to read my comments as the “right” reading and won’t always post their own original perspectives. I will weigh in while grading regarding ideas I think are particularly strong or which are weaker and need more development.

And finally. . . your topic for Week #1: Oroonoko and “A Modest Proposal” both contain social commentary for their time. Based on your reading, what’s the most important theme or idea to take away from the texts? You do need at least one specific example from each text. It doesn’t need to be the same focus for the two–you can focus on two different themes or ideas. But what overarching idea or ideas are Behn and Swift focusing on?