J155 Assignments & Tests

Spring 2012 Midterms

The midterms in this course focus on the information we cover that supports our understanding of the authors covered and the short stories they have written. Throughout the term we have had presentations on various aspects of each author. The midterms ask you to work with this information, developing on your own an understanding of the authors, their works, and things that help understand the specific short story in question.

I sometimes augment this information either at the time of the presentations or later. While that, too, in theory, should be available to use for this test it raises the concern of whether I will be more pleased if you select from my comments rather than others. Therefore, for the exam, you are limited to the presentations of your fellow students.

Midterm 01

Cancelled however for future iterations of this class it will look like Midterm 02 below unless instructed otherwise. (Spring 20120: Newly created homework assignments, in their totality, substituted for the grade on this exam.)

Midterm 02

Given the last day of class. 40 or 50-minutes. Closed book. Covers Mishima, Abe, Yoshimoto. PREPARATION FOR THIS TEST MUST BE DONE ON YOUR OWN. The answers will be graded against a basic standard that I have for what would be appropriate as an answer and in comparison to other answers in the room on the same topic. Since the presentations were sometimes multimedia, the answer can be as well. If you select a graphic, please describe it. Same for sound or video clips.

The test will look like this:

Answer the below questions, using:

(ONE title of the three you have prepared will appear here)

1. In terms of ___________ (title of short story is written by you into this blank), list the three things from the student presentations that you consider the most useful in helping you understand the story itself. List the items, numbering them 1A, 1B and 1C, explain how this is helpful to you, and give the source (student presentation) for each.

2. In terms of ___________ (author of one of the short stories on the above list is written here), list the three things from the student presentations that you consider the most useful in helping you understand the author in terms of his or her intellectual context (what s/he was grappling with or what writers if his/her time were grappling with), important and persistent writing themes, major works (not just titles but when and how they fit into the bigger picture of the author's work as a totality). List the items, numbering them 2A, 2B and 2C, explain how this is helpful to you, and give the source (student presentation) for each.