Senior Conference
Getting Started
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. Please view the 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 the letter you have received I have enclosed 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 2nd. Please do not e-mail your response: put this form in the mailbox marked “McInerney” 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” or “I’d like to write on the Canterbury Tales”), 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. 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 23rd, 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.)
Use our Library
Each senior is required to attend a meeting with Michelle Oswell, the Humanities librarian. You should contact her to schedule this (moswell@haverford.edu or ex. 1169); she will be available to meet with you between November 2 and November 18. To take full advantage of that meeting, you will want to come with well-formed questions about your topic.
By December 4th, 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 January 29th, 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 12th for the outline and 4-5 pages of draft, and March 18th for the completed rough draft. The final draft of your senior essay is due at 4 p.m., Thursday, April 8th. NO extensions to this final deadline will be given.
The Essay
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 3rd and 4th. 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.
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.
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.
English 399B: 2009-2010 Calendar
October 2 - Deadline for submission of essay topic and preferences for faculty consultant to Maud McInerney. Deposit form in box marked “McInerney” in Woodside 100.
October 23 - Two-line description of project, approved by faculty consultant, submitted to Maud McInerney. Deposit TYPED or NEATLY PRINTED form in box marked “McInerney” in Woodside 100. Please also e-mail this two line description directly to Carol Henry. Use subject heading “Sr. Project” for the mailing and remember to give your full name.
November 3 - 18 - Each senior is required to attend a meeting with Michelle Oswell, the Humanities librarian. You should contact her to schedule this (moswell@haverford.edu or ex. 1169); she will be available to meet with you between November 2 and November 18.
December 4 - 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.
January 29 - Detailed annotated bibliography due. (Directly to your advisor)
February 12 - Full outline and 4-5 draft pages of essay due.
March 18 - Thursday, immediately after Spring Break, due date for completed rough draft.
April 8 - Final draft of essay due, 4 p.m. Please Note: this date is an absolute deadline.
April 19 - Oral Exam lists are due – Woodside 100
April 28 and 29 - Senior presentations.
May 3, 4, 5 - Oral Comprehensive Examinations.