Final Exam
Saunders
English 202-004
Take-Home Final Exam
Please complete this exam and upload it to the appropriate turn-in on the class Blackboard site no later than 11:59 p.m. on Monday 5/11. You may take up to 3 hours to complete the exam.
I expect your essay will be c. 3-5 double-spaced pages (900-1500 words) long. While I don’t expect you to produce a fully-polished piece of prose in the available time, please do save 15-30 minutes at the end to go back and revise key spots: the introduction (especially the thesis, which should be the last sentence of the first/introductory paragraph), and topic/transition sentences at the beginnings of paragraphs. You may also have a brief conclusion, but that isn’t as important as the introduction. If, as is often the case, you gain a clearer sense of what argument your evidence and analysis support in the course of writing, go back and revise the introduction to match what’s in the body.
You should write on one of the two prompts below. Whichever one you choose, you should refer to the Omeka/Neatline exhibits for at least two of the texts we read this semester (3 is also okay; 4 is allowed, but may be difficult given space/time constraints; it might work if you choose a very focused topic), and should incorporate references to at least 4 Omeka items (preferably spread more or less evenly over the texts/exhibits you discuss), as well quotations from the text, into your essay (the test is both open-book and open note; Omeka items and exhibits and prep worksheets count as notes). If you make reference to another student’s description for an Omeka item, please include a lead-in phrase giving the student credit (“As Jane Lee argues in her description of an advertisement for a girls’ school in Susex. . .”). Since this is an informal essay, you don’t need to provide “works cited” entries for Omeka items, or for the novels we read.
Keep in mind that your essay should focus on answering one of the specific questions below, not on more general ideas about the novel. You generally should not refer to secondary sources in planning or writing your essay. However, if you feel you absolutely must make use of ideas from such a source (including a critical introduction to one of the novels we read), you must cite it, using a lead-in phrase as in the example above, employing quotation marks if you have borrowed any language directly from the source, and providing a “works cited” entry at the end of the essay. Uploading the essay to the Bb turn-in will also run it through SafeAssign, Bb’s built-in plagiarism checker, and plagiarized essays will result in an honor charge (and, most likely, failure of the course as a penalty), so please resist the temptation to use outside sources, or, if you feel you must, make sure to cite any words or ideas taken from them completely and accurately.
1. Compare and contrast the overall patterns seen in 2 or more neatline exhibits’ wide-zoom maps (the ones seen when you first open the exhibit, and/or accessed by clicking on “Navigation Notes”). How do the similarities and/or differences in these maps reflect similarities and/or differences between/among the texts represented by the maps, and the significance of places/spaces in those texts? Be sure to support your argument with references to specific items and details of the text as well as to the exhibit map.
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2. Compare and contrast the significance of a particular geographical place (e.g. a city such as New York) or a particular kind of place (e.g. a building with a particular function) in 2 or more of the novels we read, making reference to details of items/exhibits, as well as details of the text itself, as appropriate to support your argument.