{"id":83,"date":"2005-09-28T14:03:07","date_gmt":"2005-09-28T18:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/mid-semester-essay\/"},"modified":"2005-09-28T14:03:59","modified_gmt":"2005-09-28T18:03:59","slug":"mid-semester-essay","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/mid-semester-essay\/","title":{"rendered":"Mid-Semester Essay"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Texts are places where power and weakness become visible and discussable, where learning and ignorance manifest themselves, where the structures that enable and constrain our thoughts and actions become palpable. <\/em><\/p>\n<p> &#8211; Robert Scholes, <em>Textual Power <\/em>(New Haven: Yale UP, 1985), p. xi.<\/p>\n<p> <strong>General Guidelines<\/strong> <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Focus on a reading of a specific text<\/li>\n<li>Take a critical stance toward the text<\/li>\n<li>Incorporate some scholarship on postmodern theory and show awareness of issues relevant to &quot;postmodernism&quot;<\/li>\n<li>Includes proper MLA citations in the paper and a Works Cited page<\/li>\n<li>6-8 pages long<\/li>\n<li>Due in class Tuesday, October 18<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p> <strong>Specific Suggestions<br \/> <\/strong> <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Use any one of the texts we have encountered so far this semester (<em>Lot 49<\/em>, <em>Lathe<\/em>, <em>Intuitionist<\/em>, <em>Memento<\/em>, <em>Female Man<\/em>)<\/li>\n<li>By &quot;critical stance&quot; I mean producing a reading of the text that goes beyond the obvious or simply describing the text and avoids personal judgments (e.g. &quot;this sucked&quot; or some&nbsp; more sophisticated version of the same idea)<\/li>\n<li>Consider the text on its own terms, putting aside what others (including the author) think the text &quot;ought&quot; to do or &quot;ought&quot; to be<\/li>\n<li>It often helps to begin with an aspect of the text that troubles you, or with a question you have of the text<\/li>\n<li>If you know what you&#8217;re going to write before you write it, you probably shouldn&#8217;t write it.<\/li>\n<li>For critical sources, you may want to refer to Jameson, Harvey, hooks, Haraway, as well as books I&#8217;ve placed on reserve and the MLA Index (available online)<\/li>\n<li>I will be happy to discuss essay topics with you, and I encourage you to run your ideas by me<\/li>\n<li>Late papers are unacceptable, or, only acceptable to the point that for every day a paper is late, the grade for that paper will automatically drop one step (A becomes A-, A- becomes B+, and so on)   <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Texts are places where power and weakness become visible and discussable, where learning and ignorance manifest themselves, where the structures that enable and constrain our thoughts and actions become palpable. &#8211; Robert Scholes, Textual Power (New Haven: Yale UP, 1985), p. xi. General Guidelines Focus on a reading of a specific text Take a critical &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/mid-semester-essay\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Mid-Semester Essay<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-83","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/83","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/83\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}