Lead the Class, twice – 20%:
First due date: Thurs., Jan. 9.
It might help to think of this as an oral presentation, but in truth that's not really what is required of you.
You will take up a position at the front of the class. You will not remain in the seat you usually occupy. Once in front of the class you can stand or sit as you please.
You can use your or the professor's computer to display anything you think will help you (make your point{s}, maintain your train of thought, get people involved, gird your loins). But you are not required to or even expected to make use of anything other than The Broadview Anthology of Seventeenth-century Verse and Prose.
Do not plan to say much about the author of the text because the professor will already have introduced the author, and because our emphasis should always be on the words on the page in front of us. People who don't know what they're talking about often mischaracterize English (the discipline of) as being concerned with nothing but opinions. They are wrong. English is a very empirical branch of learning, and texts, the words on the page, are the objects of our study.
Primarily, you will be responsible for one assigned reading, and the expectation is that you'll occupy centre stage (as it were) for at least 10 minutes. Help us understand the reading. Feel free to ask questions about it, but avoid wholly subjective questions like "did you like it?" and impossible to know hypotheticals such as "what do you think the author meant when she wrote . . .?" or "if the author had done x instead of y, . . . ?" Stick with the evidence: the words on the page.
As with any English essay, your concern is with the words on the page: not with maybes, what ifs, or how abouts. Show us how you read the text. Literally: read some of the text aloud. Then explain why you chose that text, or chose to read aloud that portion of it.
Connect the assigned reading to its historical context. Connect assigned reading to another text we have read, or one we will read. Connect it to something you've read or studied in another course (need not be an English course, although it can be). Feel free to express confusion, or to tell us you don't understand something you've read (i.e. some portion of the assigned reading).
Try to get the class talking. Invite challenges. Ask people for help. Ask people to read some part of the text that you will then explain or comment on.
You should always feel free to speak to the professor well in advance of the day you lead the class. Well in advance; not just a few days before. "Well in advance" shows commitment; just before shows panic and / or poor planning.
The first thing you need to do is to choose two texts from The Broadview Anthology of Seventeenth-century Verse and Prose. You need to do this prior to class on Thursday, January 9. On Jan. 9, submit a piece of paper with each of your choices clearly indicated. Also, rank them. "My first choice is . . . " and "My second choice is . . ." will do fine. Add two more choices to these two, just in case everyone in the class zeroes in on the same text. Use the course syllabus to help you narrow down the choices you might make, but you are not constrained by the syllabus. If you find a text in the Anthology that you really want us to look at, feel free to propose it to me. In such a case, provide a brief rationale explaining why you think the class would benefit from reading and discussing that particular text.
If both your choices fall within the scope of the outline provided on the course syllabus page, then no rationale is needed for your January 9 submission. But on the day you lead class plan to explain why you chose that particular text.
You are not required to submit anything on paper the day you lead the class. Your grade for the assignment will be based on your classroom success.
This shouldn't have to be said, but I once had a student . . . Dress appropriately, which really only means, for example, don't wear a T-shirt that says something that could reasonably be interpreted as being offensive to others in the classroom.