Assignments

There are three types of assignments in the course.

Analytical Papers

Analytical papers will be focused on close reading and the careful construction of argument. All papers are due at the start of class on the date listed on the syllabus. All papers must be submitted in two formats: printed hard copy submitted in class and e-mailed back-up copy. The hard copy you submit will be the one read. The back-up is for emergency printing nightmares, and to keep on file.

Assignments: Paper #1, Paper #2

Creative Street Haunting Assignment

You will have the opportunity to explore the city streets of Boston and/or Cambridge (or any city you spend time in), and to produce a final creative piece. Your piece might be fictional or nonfictional, written or another type of media (documentary, short film etc). You might explore a neighborhood you’ve never been to, notice architecture, explore the history of a street or site, talk to people and gather their stories, etc. Please note that if you choose to do a project that is not based in prose, you must also hand in a written explanation of the creative choices you made as they pertain to our course discussions and readings.

Assignment: Creative Street Haunting Assignment

Re-Reading Assignments

At two points during the semester, we will slow down to catch our breaths, and you will be asked to re-read something from earlier in the semester. The goal is to notice details you might have missed the first time around, and to build in some freedom and room to reflect and contemplate without the pressure of ever-more assigned pages. This is also a golden opportunity to get a head start on potential paper topics and ideas, and to generate new questions. This is the kind of skill that will serve you well throughout the semester and in future classes, particularly when it comes to brainstorming for papers, and I want to provide the conditions that allow you to get the hang of it.

You will be a given a series of guiding questions and prompts, and asked to complete 2 tasks:

Write up a response to your re-reading, approx. 2 pages long, which you will hand in.
Choose 1 passage to print and bring to class for discussion.

These are casual, informal responses and unlike analytical papers, will not be as rigorously graded according to argument, grammar and prose quality, etc. The grade will simply reflect thoughtfulness and effort, and therefore this assignment can be a great place to boost your grade if you struggle with the technicalities of analytical writing.

Assignments: Re-Reading Assignment #1, Re-Reading Assignment #2

Requirements

Due: Class 25

Complete a creative project in a media format of your choosing (possibilities include short story, journalistic essay or diary collection, film, photography collection or collage, map, etc.).

All projects must include a short written explanation of the critical lenses and concepts from class that have informed your aesthetic choices. Depending on the project, this explanation can be embedded in the creative piece itself or handed in as a separate response (if separate: approx 2 pages).

Examples

Some basic examples of “critical lenses connections”/explanatory account:

In class we discussed X, Y, and Z vantage points which are represented in the following ways…
Building on the idea of defamiliarization, I decided to…
My flaneur experiment was similar to that described by Baudelaire because…
These images raise problems concerning “the right to opacity”…
My short story is focalized through one main character…
My story uses synechdoche…

Prompts

Consult past readings, class notes, and handouts. You can use critical lenses, direct quotations from primary texts, literary terminology, or questions raised in class. Come to final class prepared to share your project. This is not an official or graded presentation but a mandatory mode of class participation. Aside from the 2 page explanation of the critical lenses that inspired you, the creative choices are all yours.

Below I have listed some possible ideas I have in mind. Feel free to use any or to use these as a springboard. You might also want to do some preliminary city exploring with some of these approaches in mind before commiting to one.

Take images to combine with class textual quotations (either from critical or primary sources). Find creative ways to organize your pairings.
Explore Boston/Cambridge and then write a story set here, written from the perspective of one of our characters (such as Julius from Open City, Henry from Saturday, or Ifemelu from Americanah), or write the same short story/scene, from different perspectives and in different voices.
Pick a local place and explore its history. Ways of digging below the surface to discover its history might include talking to residents or experts, conducting research/reading old newspapers, reading plaques and inscriptions, analyzing architecture, etc. Or pick a place and write the fictionalized history behind it.
Attend a political event/meeting/protest/etc. Consider the ways that political and aesthetic problems intertwine, as discussed in class.
Explore local architecture and/or read about the history of local architecture. Or, visit city sites and features that we have seen throughout our literary cities, and compare/contrast.
Pick a place that you think encompasses what it might mean to call Boston/Cambridge a “literary city” or a “global city” and write up your findings and observations, including a discussion of how you define or understand the term(s).
Create an alternative kind of map or other visual representation for mapping the city or cities-within-the-city.
Visit the same location at different times and in different conditions and report your findings in a creative form of your choice.
Find a creative way to mix social media, digital media, virtual reality, and/or encounters with the “actual” city you explore.
Find creative ways to depict the same place through different “lenses” or “perspectives”, however you interpret those ideas.
Explore neighborhoods you have not been to, talk to new people, and use your observations in a creative format of your choice.
Pick a project from the City Lab and write a story that fills in the lived experience gap left open by a big data approach.
Write an analytical paper on Ben Lerner’s 10:04 or additional Amit Chaudhuri pieces. Use any of the previous prompts or propose an idea to me. Approx 5 pages.

Requirements

Due: Class 13

Format: 11–12 point type; 1.5 or 2x spaced; standard margins. Please just don’t do anything weird.

Length: 4–5 pages

Citations: Use MLA citation guidelines (parenthetical page numbers for quotations within the body of the text). At the paper’s conclusion cite the text edition of all works cited in the body of the text. If you consulted outside works which shaped your thinking in any way (not required!), please also include a Works Consulted section. You must give credit to any ideas that are not your own.

Prompts

You may devise a topic of your own so long as you run the idea by me (either in office hours or by e-mail) at least one week before the deadline.

Pick a sense (sight, hearing, touch, etc.) to trace throughout one of our readings. Develop an argument about the significance of the way that sense functions and the way that you interpret that sense in the context of the work’s larger themes or concerns. Possible questions to address:
- How does this sense collide or conflict with other senses?
- How does reading through the lens of this sense make us aware of something new or different or surprising about the text that we might not otherwise notice?
- How does your reading go beyond the obvious or what we might expect of that sense?
- What aspects of the city does this sense provide access to and what aspects remain untapped? How does the author address this?
Develop an argument about how one of our primary texts challenges, revises, or does not fit with Baudelaire’s model of the flaneur or de Certeau’s model of walking in the city (voyeurs versus walkers). Please note that if you choose this topic, you must develop an argument that is substantially distinct from the class discussions we have had. Possible questions to address:
- What passages might at first glance seem to fit one of these models well, but upon closer inspection suggest additional problems or nuance?
- Where and how do the novelists use language or metaphors in a different way than the essayists, and to what effect?
- How do the novels shed new light on the essays rather than vice versa?
Choose prompt A or B about city sites and features.
1. Compare a single scene or city site from Open City and Saturday and develop an argument about the significance of the differences between them. How are the authors doing something different with this site (use of language, role in the text, problems raised, etc.)?
2. Trace one of the following city features throughout one primary text and develop an argument about its function.
  Possible city sites to look at from one or both novels:
  - City streets (alleys, roads, highways, bridges)
  - Architectural features (doors, windows, barriers/blockades, balconies, stairs, elevators, houses, parks and green spaces, institutions – clinical, cultural, etc.)
  - Squares and plazas
  - Modes of transportation
  - Spaces that span the threshold between public/private domains
  - Urban temporalities: scenes from early morning, late at night, etc.
  - Virtual spaces/spaces mediated by technology
  - Forms of violence, variously defined
Using examples we have not focused on in class, and focusing in on a manageable section of one text, develop an argument about how one of our authors grapples with problems of scale at the level of both form and content. Scales might be temporal or spatial or a combination of the two. Possible avenues:
- How does a specific scene balance different scales? Where is there tension? How does the author accommodate conflicting scales?
- Are there differences in how the author approaches problems of spatial scale versus temporal scale? How do you interpret the significance of this?
- How do the issues of scale you are interrogating in one section of the text mirror (or possibly conflict with) the novel’s larger thematic and philosophical concerns with scale?
Choose a (seemingly) minor/peripheral character from one of our texts and develop an argument about that character’s significance and function within the text. Thoughts:
- How is this character essential to the work and how would the novel be different without that character?
- How do you account for the character’s peripheral status?
- What is the significance of the author’s precise choices of language regarding this character?
- Are there passages where the character does not make an appearance but continues to shape the story or its language in some critical way? How, where, and why?
- Why does the character appear when (s)he does in the novel’s overall structure?
In one our primary texts, choose 2 scenes or passages that, upon first glance and in the novel’s larger plot/structure, seem completely unrelated. Develop an argument for how and why we should read these two passages together. Thoughts:
- How does each passage change in the context of reading the other one?
- What ways do the two passages challenge each other or create new tensions for the reader to face?
- What new complexities arise when you put these two passages together and what is your argument regarding the significance of this newfound complexity?

Tips and Important Considerations:

Consult the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) for the etymology and multiple meanings of words that are important in your discussion.
Consult the list of themes provided in most class sessions and try to link something small and specific to those large thematic concerns.
Be sure to focus on the HOW—in other words, not just WHAT the author describes or conveys, but HOW the author does that, and HOW you interpret it.
Go for quality over quantity. Limit yourself to focused, specific examples, or a handful of scenes you can take apart in great detail.
Be sure that every claim has a piece of direct, textual evidence to back it up.
Show your reader your thought process and logic in action: walk me through the steps that lead you from observation to interpretation and argument.
Make sure that you are advancing claims and interpretations that could potentially be countered, questioned, disagreed with, and debated.
No matter which topic you choose, your paper should be focused on the novel as a work of art and its language—it should not read like a case study of individual characters’ psychology as if they were real, or like a history report on the events featured in the text. These aspects are important, of course, but you must consider how we get to them through the medium of language.

Requirements

Due: Class 19

Format: 11–12 point type; 1.5 or 2x spaced; standard margins. Please just don’t do anything weird.

Length: 6 Pages

Texts Used: You may write about one or two of our primary texts. All papers must include Adichie’s Americanah. You are welcome to use any of our secondary critical texts, but this is not a requirement. If you choose to write a comparison paper including a second text, you can choose any of the following as your second text, provided you did not write your first paper on this text:

Poe, “The Man of the Crowd”
Woolf, “Street Haunting”
Cole, Open City
McEwan, Saturday
Thien, “A Map of the City”
Chaudhuri, Calcutta and other excerpts

Prompts

You are enthusiastically encouraged to devise your own topics. Please run the idea by me (either in office hours or by e-mail) at least one week before the deadline. Regardless of topic, all papers should be based on focused close readings of the primary text(s). Originality and creativity should be prioritized. If you do not devise your own topic, you may choose from the options below.

Develop an argument about the role of the body in one or two of our primary texts (you will probably want to focus in on a few key scenes to compare). How you interpret “the body” is up to you; you could look at the body as a whole, or a part such as hair or hands, corporeal language and metaphors, etc. How does language pertaining to the body resonate with or open questions pertaining to sexuality, gender, race, age, narrative, city-dwelling, national belonging, spatial orientation, aesthetics and beauty, or any other major concerns of the text? What is the nature of the relationship between the body and its environment? The body and other bodies? The body and text? The body and the passage of time? The body and the acts of reading and writing? The body and social or cultural institutions?
Pick one specific word that our text(s) use to characterize spatial navigation, and discuss its significance, either in a single work or in a comparison of 2 works. You can trace the word throughout a work, or focus in on a few key scenes. What is particular about the way the author(s) use this word? Where and how does it take on different meanings or connotations or functions? What does a contrast between different uses reveal? Does part of speech shift the meaning (verb in one place and adjective in another)? How does this word resonate with the major concerns of the text? Here are a few that I have noticed but you are welcome to choose your own:
- “drift”
- “haunt”
- “wander”
- “map”
- “float”
Read Glissant’s essay “For Opacity” (on “the right to opacity,” as previously discussed in class) and develop an argument about the way problems of opacity vs. transparency function in one of our primary texts. As we have touched upon in class, there are many ways to interpret what is transparent or opaque (visual, linguistic, moral, psychological, technological, scientific, etc). How does the text challenge the way you think about opacity and transparency? What different kinds of opacity and transparency operate in the text or across different texts? How do technologies or different forms of media or urban spaces stucture transparency and opacity? What aesthetic or moral values attach to these terms?
Pick a sense (sight, hearing, touch etc.) to trace throughout Americanah or to compare/contrast between Americanah and an earlier primary text. Develop an argument about the significance of the way that that sense functions and the way that you interpret that sense in the context of the work’s larger themes or concerns. What aspects of the city or nation or race or gender does this sense provide access to and what aspects remain untapped? How does this sense collide or conflict with other senses? How do different authors use the same sense in different ways? How does your reading go beyond the obvious or what we might expect of that sense? What does reading through the lens of one sensory modality achieve or reveal or conceal?
Develop an argument based on close reading of scenes involving different kinds of transportation in our primary texts (trains, subway, cars, planes, motorcycles, ambulances, walking, running, etc.). What are the similarities or differences in terms of vantage point, pacing, mood, spatial and temporal dimensions, etc.? What is surprising or counterintuitive? What questions or problems (philosophical, ethical, aesthetic, political) does this engagement with modes of transit raise? What different versions of the city or space come into view? What techniques must an author employ to narrate that which is in motion? How do these modes of transit bring people together or tear them apart? How do they enable access to knowledge (of others, of the city, etc.) and how do they prevent it?
Choose A or B on city sites:
1. Compare a single scene or city site from Americanah and one other primary or secondary text and develop an argument about the significance of the differences between them. How are the authors doing something different with this site (use of language, role in the text, problems raised, etc.)?
2. Trace one of the following sites or spatial features throughout one primary text and develop an argument about its function. Possible sites to look at from one or two works:
  - City streets (alleys, roads, highways, bridges)
  - Architectural features and sites (doors, fire escapes, verandahs, rooftops, bedrooms, bathrooms, windows, barriers/blockades, balconies, stairs, elevators, houses and apartments, offices, parks and green spaces, institutions— educational, clinical, cultural, etc.)
  - Squares and plazas
  - Stations
  - Bureaucratic spaces
  - Spaces that span the threshold between public/private domains
  - Urban temporalities: scenes from early morning, late at night, etc.
  - Virtual spaces/spaces mediated by technology/imagined or artificial or fictionalized spaces (such as stories within the story, films, books, artworks, or news stories)
  - Forms of violence, variously defined
  - Stores/bookstores/other sites of commerce
  - Social gatherings/parties
Develop an argument about different kinds of frames and framing techniques in our primary texts. Possible considerations: narrative frames, window frames, door frames, picture frames…

Tips and Important Considerations [this list was provided for Paper 1 as well]:

Consult the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) for the etymology and multiple meanings of words that are important in your discussion.
Consult the list of themes provided in most class sessions and try to link something small and specific to those large thematic concerns.
Be sure to focus on the HOW—in other words, not just WHAT the author describes or conveys, but HOW the author does that, and HOW you interpret it.
Go for quality over quantity. Limit yourself to focused, specific examples, or a handful of scenes you can take apart in great detail.
Be sure that every claim has a piece of direct, textual evidence to back it up.
Show your reader your thought process and logic in action: walk me through the steps that lead you from observation to interpretation and argument.
Make sure that you are advancing claims and interpretations that could potentially be countered, questioned, disagreed with, debated.
No matter which topic you choose, your paper should be focused on the novel as a work of art and its language—it should not read like a case study of individual characters’ psychology as if they were real, or like a history report on the events featured in the text. These aspects are important, of course, but you must consider how we get to them through the medium of language.

Requirements

Due: Class 11

Hand in an approximate 2 page reading response. The response will be informal (no need for thesis statement or developed argument; you’re free to narrate your own personal re-reading experience) but should be written in full sentences, thoughtful and analytical, and provide specific quotations from the excerpt chosen. The most important criteria is evidence of serious grappling with the text/class concepts.

Choose one passage to share with the class.

Part I

Choose one option:

Re-read 25 pages from Saturday. The only portion you may not choose is the last 25 pages of the novel.
Re-read any 25 pages from Open City.
Re-read Woolf’s “Street Haunting.”
Re-read Poe’s “Man of the Crowd.”

Possible prompts to guide your re-reading response. Not exhuastive and not necessary to address all.

What new connections were you able to make to other parts of this text, and to other texts we have read?
What is something you did not notice the first time around?
What is something you noticed the first time around, but now interpret differently or have a different reaction to?
How is your reading of this excerpt different knowing what you know about the rest of the text?
What interesting uses of figurative or descriptive language did you notice?
Take the time to look up unfamiliar words, names, allusions, dates, historical events, etc. Record them. Does this knowledge help or shift your reading at all?
Where do you see something that could be read in more than one way?
Without having to worry about plot or what is going on, what do you notice about the formal and stylistic choices made by the author?
Do you see any other connections to current events, your experience of Boston/other cities, or other discussions we have had in class?
What questions does the passage raise for you (ongoing or new)? Did anything become more problematic in your view? Does anything continue to bother or confuse you?
What observations do you have about your own personal reading experience and what was different (environment, mood, time of day, stress level, schedule, interest in or engagement with the text, etc.)

Part II

Re-read at least 5 pages from Baudelaire or de Certeau. You can provide answers/notes to the following questions on any piece of paper; you do not need to write up full sentences for this section.

You must provide notes for all of the following:

List and look up any words (or allusions) that you do not know or would like a more precise definition for. Record the definitions. If there are no words you did not already know, choose any 3 and record their basic Oxford English Dictionary (OED) etymology.
Jot down figurative uses of language or interesting rhetorical devices. These are critical pieces, but the authors still make creative choices. What are they?
Choose 1 sentence that could provide a good quotation in a paper, or could connect to one of our primary texts.
Paraphase or jot down notes on the main point(s) made by the author (about 1–3 is fine).

Requirements

Due: Class 24

Choose one passage to share with the class.

Prompts

Choose one of the following prompts for this assignment.

Re-read selections from primary and/or secondary texts that have informed (or will inform) your aesthetic choices for the final creative project. Write about the key passages and/or ideas, why they are compelling to you, how you see them in relation to your own creative work and lived experience of the city, what you noticed when you returned to them, how exploring an actual city altered your engagement with such ideas, etc.

Note: I am fine with you using this as a kind of first-draft or brainstorming exercise for the final creative piece and its explanation of class-informed concepts and critical lenses. In fact, I want the assignments to feel linked and helpfully generative in both directions, and encourage you to use this as a chance to deepen your project. However, the final explanation you hand in must also show signs of substantial revision, development, and additions. You may re-use up to 2 paragraphs from this response in the final explanation, if you so choose.
Re-read approximately 25 pages of 10:04 and write up your new analytical findings, using the re-reading questions below as possible inspiration.
Pick two texts you have not gotten a chance to compare in a paper, and revisit key scenes. Write up a two page comparison including textual evidence from both texts.
Pick a term or “critical lens” (a few possible examples of many: “precarity,” “focalization,” “opacity,” “uncanny,” “palimpsest”) from an earlier class discussion and apply it to a different text(s), citing at least two substantial passages. Explain how you are revisiting this concept in a new context.
Read or check out any of the optional reading resources and connect this new resource to at least one or two passages from earlier class readings.

Possible prompts to guide your re-reading response. Not exhaustive and not necessary to address all.

What new connections were you able to make to other parts of this text, and to other texts we have read?
What is something you did not notice the first time around?
What is something you noticed the first time around, but now interpret differently or have a different reaction to?
How is your reading of this excerpt different knowing what you know about the rest of the text?
What interesting uses of figurative or descriptive language did you notice?
Take the time to look up unfamiliar words, names, allusions, dates, historical events, etc. Record them. Does this knowledge help or shift your reading at all?
Where do you see something that could be read in more than one way?
Without having to worry about plot or what is going on, what do you notice about the formal and stylistic choices made by the author?
Do you see any other connections to current events, your experience of Boston/other cities, or other discussions we have had in class?
What questions does the passage raise for you (ongoing or new)? Did anything become more problematic in your view? Does anything continue to bother or confuse you?
What observations do you have about your own personal reading experience and what was different (environment, mood, time of day, stress level, schedule, interest in or engagement with the text, etc.)

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Contemporary Literature: Street Haunting in the Global City

Assignments

Analytical Papers

Creative Street Haunting Assignment

Re-Reading Assignments

Requirements

Examples

Prompts

Requirements

Prompts

Tips and Important Considerations:

Requirements

Prompts

Tips and Important Considerations [this list was provided for Paper 1 as well]:

Requirements

Part I

Part II

Requirements

Prompts

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