Extra Credit Assignment #2

Patrick Mooney, TA
Eng 122LE, Prof. Hiltner
Fall Quarter 2010

Overview: Pick any one of the following options and write on it for up to four points. Your paper should be in the general neighborhood of four pages and should meticulously conform to the MLA guidelines. Your extra-credit assignment will be graded according to the criteria on the paper-grading rubric for the class, and you will receive 4 points for an A-level assignment, 3 points for a B-level assignment, etc.

Due: No later than noon on Wednesday, 8 December 2010. No late extra credit assignments will be accepted under any circumstances. No electronic submissions will be accepted. You may turn your assignment into my box in South Hall (the Sankey Room, 2623), or give me a printed copy in section or lecture. Note that the final exam is after the due date, and I will not accept extra credit assignments during, after, or immediately prior to the exam. I do not accept handwritten work.

  1. For an entire (waking to sleeping) day, disconnect yourself entirely from all forms of electronic communication: don't check your e-mail; turn off your cell phone (and don't use anyone else's phone, or a landline); stay off of Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites; etc. Keep detailed notes on what you do with your day, and, using Thoreau's Walden as a conceptual guide, describe what you learned about what is actually necessary for achieving the real business of life. Note that you should plan ahead for this assignment to find a day where it will be possible to do without electronic communications, and you may want to give your family alternate contact information for you in case of emergency. Note also that your insights will have to, in and of themselves, convince me that you have actually avoided electronic communications all day.
  2. Pick a thematic element related to the development of the pastoral mode, and trace its development across (a selection from) the pastoral literature we have read this quarter. You do not have to deal with every pastoral work on the syllabus (in fact, it would be extremely difficult to do so in a satisfying manner), but you should deal with several, ideally spaced as far across time as is useful in outlining your thesis.
  3. What does Ruskin mean by "the pathetic fallacy"? How does this response to literary writing reconfigure the relationship to nature that we saw in earlier works?
  4. Note additional restrictions on eligibility and requirements on this option. Also note grading differences. If you received a B or lower (not B+) on paper one, rewrite your paper on the same topic, making major structural changes and taking my comments into account to write a stronger paper. You must make major changes to your paper in order to receive any credit under this option at all. Turn in your revised paper with a photocopy of your original draft showing my comments. Grading for this option: I will re-score your revised paper according to the same criteria that I used to score your original paper. For each 1/3 letter grade that you raise your score, you will receive 2/3 extra credit point. For instance, if you received a B- on your first paper and re-write it as an A- paper, you will receive two extra credit points.