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Freshman
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Home>Senior Conference
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Freshman
Writing
Once you have decided your course load for the semester, it will be
time to start thinking about English 399b, affectionately known as Senior
Conference. Read this letter carefully and remember to keep
it for future reference; you’ll be returning to
it for help throughout the year. You can always access this document electronically by using this web
address: http://www.haverford.edu/engl/WebPage/seniorconf.html or you
can just follow the link Senior Conference on the department’s
home page on the web. It is already time to settle on a topic for your Senior Essay. It
is time as well to determine who will act as your faculty consultant
for this project. Enclosed you will find a list of faculty consultants,
with a general indication of the fields in which we specialize. In the
next few weeks, please talk to any or all of us about your topic
for Senior Essay. Do not hesitate to gather ideas from those
whose fields seem outside your chosen topic. Note that with this letter
I enclose a form asking you to express your area of interest and your
first, second, and third choice of faculty consultant, after
you have consulted with all your choices. Please return the completed
form to me as soon as possible, and no later than October 6th. Please
do not e-mail your response: put this form in the mailbox marked “Stadler”
in Woodside 100. In indicating your topic on the form I am sending you, be as specific
as possible. If you have a very definite idea already, let me know (e.g.
“Who (or What) Speaks?: Discerning the Subject in Three Stories
from La Frontera (Anaya, Anzaldua, Cisneros).” Or you
can say something less formal: “I’m interested in looking
very closely at images of windows in at least one of Virginia Woolf’s
novels, maybe Mrs. Dalloway, and I’d also like to talk
about her essays.” If you only have a vague notion, you may indicate
a general area of interest (“I want to work on ghosts in Puritan
texts”), but you should use this opportunity to focus your thinking
as sharply as you can. I cannot stress one idea enough: you
must talk to the faculty members you wish to work with before you complete
the form. You may not choose a faculty consultant who is not on the list I am
sending you. However, if you wish to avail yourself of the expertise
of someone not on the list--in another department, or teaching a departmental
course this semester, or at Bryn Mawr--and if that person is willing,
you may of course talk about the project with other faculty. And remember
to share your ideas with each other, for perhaps your peers are the
most important resource you have. We will need to assign a roughly equivalent
number of students to each faculty consultant. I will make the final
assignments as soon as the forms are in. As soon as you have
been assigned to a faculty consultant, you must arrange a meeting to
discuss your project. By October 27th, you
need to send me a two-line description of your topic, approved by your
faculty consultant. (I will send you forms for this task, by way of
reminder.) By December 8th, you must prepare a brief page or
two describing your proposed project together with a short bibliography
(5-10 titles) of relevant primary and critical sources, and submit it
to your faculty consultant. In developing this short bibliography, work
closely with your consultant, who will help to steer you away from sources
irrelevant to your project or unlikely to prove useful to you, and toward
those sources most likely to help you in shaping and sharpening your
own reading and thinking. Early in the Spring term, by February
5th , you should complete a detailed annotated bibliography
of relevant critical and theoretical sources for your project, and
submit this document to your faculty consultant. These annotations
should provide a set of working notes toward the purpose and direction
of your own essay. You should point out how certain sources will help
you to locate and to advance your own argument and you should define
positions that are unlike your own, which your own work will effectively
challenge. You might find it helpful to divide the bibliography into
two parts-- "likely to be used"/"unlikely to be used,"
or "important to my argument"/"unimportant to my argument."
What's critical here is to make this stage a genuinely helpful one.
The annotations should be engaged and productive. Please note these other important deadlines: February 16
for the outline and 4-5 pages of draft, and March
22 for the completed rough draft.
The final draft of your senior essay is due at 4 p.m., Thursday, April
12 th.
NO extensions to this final deadline will be given. The department tries to be flexible in the range of topics undertaken.
You should begin by thinking through your own interests and desires;
then, in consultation with the faculty, an appropriate project will
be determined. Try to be creative and flexible yourself: remember to
consider topics and authors from earlier centuries. You may do a “creative
writing” project only if you already have been admitted to and
will be completing the creative writing concentration. The essay should be roughly 25-30 pages in length.
Your readers are not absolute about such matters; however, this length
is normative, and any essay that is significantly shorter or longer
ought to be exceptional (in every sense). In your essay, we expect evidence of some serious engagement with secondary
materials, whether critical or theoretical. As I have said, you will
begin to develop a bibliography of appropriate critical readings with
your faculty consultant early on. While you needn’t overtly fashion
your essay as a response to this material, it is expected that you will
be writing with an awareness of your relationship to a critical community
that both predates and parallels your own interpretive performance.
As noted above, there will be meetings with Michelle Oswell, our college
librarian, to discuss resources and research methods on either November
7th and 8th. She has asked me to give her your topics before the meeting,
so that you can be assured that her introduction to the materials will
be directly relevant to the concerns of this year’s essays. To
take full advantage of that meeting, you will want to come with well-formed
questions about your topic. Those of you doing a creative writing project will be asked to produce
a critical introduction to your work of c. 10-12 pages, for which a
bibliography will also be prerequisite. The English department
has on file a packet of materials related to this requirement (contemporary
writers on writing). Contact Carol Henry in Woodside Cottage for the
material. Your completed essay will be read by two faculty members, your consultant
and one other department member. They will agree on a grade for the
essay. Your final grade for senior conference is based on the essay
grade and the oral examination. By “works” we mean a novel, play or long poem (e.g. Paradise
Lost); or, if you are assembling material of a small scale, we
suggest you include at least three short stories or four reasonably
complex lyric poems as the equivalent of one “work.” A film
course would be represented by two films, each paired with a relevant
piece of film theory or criticism would represent a film course. If
you are choosing material from a creative writing course, you should
be able to include literary material in the public domain that was the
basis for class discussion of craft, style, etc. The list is to be typed. Preparing this list should be fun. Remember to ask yourself why you
have selected the particular works in question (or better yet, why have
they chosen YOU?). Try to group titles under two or three topics, or
themes. Your examination is likely to be a more rewarding experience
for all concerned if you--and we with your help--have thought in these
terms. You will be examined by three faculty members: your faculty consultant,
your second reader (whenever possible), and one other member of the
department. These exams are not designed to trick or to intimidate you,
but to help you to realize how much you have learned. Often the most
exciting exams are really conversations that help you to see the creative
power you can generate through the knowledge you already have. Please
don’t worry: your faculty consultants and other members of the
Department will be able to answer any questions you have about this
process next term. October 6: Deadline for submission
of essay topic and preferences for faculty consultant to Gus
Stadler . Submit form in box marked "Stadler"
in Woodside 100. October 27: Two-line description of
project, approved by faculty consultant, submitted to Gus
Stadler . Deposit TYPED or NEATLY PRINTED form
in box marked "Stadler" in Woodside100. Please
also e-mail this two-line description directly to Carol Henry,
chenry@haverford.edu. Use subject heading "Senior Project"
for the mailing and remember to give your full name. Nov. 7& 8:
Meeting for all seniors with faculty and Michelle
Oswel, reference librarian, in the Philips Wing of the library,
6:00 p.m. Sign up for a date by sending an e-mail to chenry, or stop
in the office at Woodside and put your name on the sign up sheet. December 8: 1-2 page description of
topic and thesis statement due, with short bibliography (5-10 titles)
of relevant primary and critical sources. Note: This Bibliography
goes directly to your advisor. Jan. 29: Detailed annotated bibliography
due. (Directly to your advisor) February 16: Full outline and 4-5
draft pages of essay due. March 22: Thursday, immediately after
Spring Break, due date for completed rough draft. April 12: Final draft of essay due,
4 p.m. PLEASE NOTE: THIS DATE IS AN ABSOLUTE DEADLINE. April 25: Deadline for handing in
your typed Reading List to C Henry - Woodside 100. May 2nd & 3rd: Senior presentations. May 7th, 8th & 9th: Oral Comprehensive
Examination After choosing among the faculty consultants
below, please complete and submit the form for the essay
topic. The form can be
printed here.
Arthur Bahr Old and Middle English Literature Steve Finley The Bible & Literature Laura McGrane Restoration and 18th C Literature and Culture Marxist and Feminist Criticism Gus Stadler American Literature to the First World War Theresa Tensuan American Literature (emphasis on 20thC
Senior
Conference
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After
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Home>Senior
Conference
GETTING STARTED
USE OUR LIBRARY
There will be a required meeting for seniors, at 6:00 p.m. in
the Philips Wing of the library, either on November 7th and 8th. You
must attend one of these meetings. Please stop by Woodside 100, or send
an e-mail to “chenry” to sign up for the evening you wish
to attend.
THE ESSAY
ORAL COMPREHENSIVE EXAMS
At the end of the year, you will take a one-hour oral exam covering
your experience of the major. I tell you about this now not to alarm
you but to help you build toward that experience throughout the year.
The first half hour of the exam will concern your essay; the second
half hour will concern your course work in the major. To refine the
latter part of the exam, we will ask you to produce a list of works
for which you will be responsible. This will happen toward the close
of second semester, but it might be useful to begin thinking about this
now. (Hopefully you began this process over the summer after receiving
my letter in the spring.) The following criteria apply: two works from
each of seven courses taken for credit in the major, two literary works
and two critical works from each term of Junior Seminar. This amounts
to 22 works, at least four of which will be critical texts. Sounds like
a lot at first, but you will discover as you begin to look over your
course work how many more works you might be able to choose.
Essay Topic - Due October 6th, 2006
Woodside #203
ex 1156
Early Modern Drama and Poetry
Literary Translation and Adaptation
Epic and Romance
Woodside #201
Ex. 1154
Archival Research/Manuscript Sources
Non-Fiction prose; Autobiography
Romantic and Victorian Literature
Early Modernism, Literaature of the Great
War
Woodside 202
Ex 1155
Early American Literature/Conversion Narratives Transatlantic
Studies
South African Literature and Politics
Theories of the Novel/Historiography
Raji Mohan
Hall Bldg. 204
Ex. 1064
British Modernism
Critical Theory
Postcolonial Theory and Literature
Woodside 102
Ex 1278
.
Queer Theory and Gender Studies
Literary Theory
History and Theory of Mass Culture
Woodside #302
Ex. 1268
Autobiography
Feminist and Gender Studies
Writing by Women of Color
Visual Culture