Lit Hist II: Monsters & Madness

Exams

We will have one exam at midterm and a final exam for the course.

The purpose of exams is to prompt you to identify and synthesize trends and patterns across each period we have studied. Exams will focus on the material for the units in the half of the course we have just completed. The final exam will also have some questions that are cumulative, looking at connections and disjunctions across all units we have studied. The format for the cumulative final exam will likely be a combination of essay, bullet points, and oral discussion, with the final arrangements to be determined by class consensus. The goal of the final exam is for you to leave the course with a clear idea of highlights from the course and dominant patterns and connections across the material we have studied.

Format. Exams are primarily in essay format, though you may request to do an individual oral exam if you prefer. You will typically have a choice among the exam questions so that you can focus your answers around your insights from that unit. Here is the typical unit exam setup:

· Section A (worth 50%): two questions, one on major genres and one on examples of literary influence

· Section B (worth 40%): two questions, your choice from 3 or more key issues central to the unit

· Section C (worth 10%): one question about what you encountered that was new in this unit

Collaboration and independent work. For each exam, I encourage you to consider buddying up with at least one other student in the class and split up the work to review material and brainstorm for the essays. You are encouraged to use electronic tools (Google Docs, Zoom, etc.) to collaborate. Your writeup must be your own, however. Essays should be written up individually and reflect your own thinking in addition to ideas emerging from collaboration.

Research and source documentation. You are not required to use research in answering essay exam questions, but if you do use material from the textbook or other print or online sources, you must quote or cite these materials and document them using MLA Works Cited format. Do this on a separate page that does not count in the page count. (Since essays are submitted through Canvas, use of source material will be automatically checked through Turn-it-in.)