495SH Requirements (Spring 2015)
Hello, students, and curious others! This is Prof. Charles Hatfield of CSU Northridge. Below are the requirements for English 495SH: The Comic Book Superhero in Spring 2015. The course's overall goal is to enable you to participate in and engage critically with scholarly discourses around the superhero genre—in other words, to converse intelligently about the genre, recognize controversies posed by the genre, and construct cogent, well-supported critical analyses of works and issues crucial to the genre. Pursuant to that goal, here is the required workload for the course, that is, the work that you will be expected to do and on which you'll be evaluated by semester's end:
Class participation. This includes attendance (in mind and body), energy, effort, contributions to discussion both in class and online, and occasional in-class exercises or homework as needed. Altogether, participation will count for 20% of your total semester grade.
Blog: Each of you will create and maintain an individual blog devoted to superhero studies. This blog will be the platform for much of your work in 495SH. It will necessarily include a number of required elements—such as weekly responses to the readings, as well as the creation of your own superhero by the end of term—but its look and much of its content and direction will be left up to you. Constant maintenance of your blog will be essential to participating in class and learning the material. Blogs should be set up by the second week of class, and running smoothly (i.e. in a regular rhythm, with technical bugs worked out) by Feb. 1. Visit the page Blogging for 495SH to read more detailed guidelines for your blog, and be assured that these guidelines and further information will be given out in class and via our full online syllabus (on Moodle). Obviously, this is something we'll be discussing, a lot. In class we'll talk through and model productive blogging methods, and spend some time early on getting any tech glitches worked out. Expect several unusual blogging tasks, as well as the freedom and responsibility of making your blog your own: a true record of your experience in the course! 30% of your grade.
Discussion Leading: Twice during the course you will be responsible for launching and directing, in partnership with a classmate, our class's discussion of an assigned reading or readings (signups will start right away). To that end, you’ll have to post discussion prompts online before class, and kick off and guide our conversation in class for the first 15 to 20 minutes or so. This means that you will be calling on your classmates and soliciting their input, i.e. teaching! Guidelines: When you are signed up to lead discussion on a certain day, plan on posting discussion prompts (i.e. observations and questions) to your blog fully a week ahead of time, meaning not less than seven days before your scheduled day, so that your classmates can read up and prepare. Work proactively to collaborate with your partner, i.e. the other student scheduled to lead on that day, so that your prompts can mesh without undue repetition and you can gracefully share the responsibility of guiding discussion. Coordinate! Further info about this requirement will of course be given out in class and via our full online syllabus. 20%.
Critical Paper: By semester’s end, you’ll produce a research-based argumentative essay that engages critically with the superhero genre in terms relevant to our course. This essay should be a self-directed project that serves as a capstone for your experience in 495SH. Guidelines: your essay's perspective may be generic, formal/technical, aesthetic, sociocultural, and/or ideological. Its focus may be comic books, films, games, and/or other superhero media—though firm grounding in the genre's comic book origins will be expected (in other words, show that you know the history). In format and length, the essay should be such as could be presented at a research symposium, for example the annual AGSE or Sigma Tau Delta conferences. That means 8 to 9 pages. I’ll expect you to blog, no later than March 30, a 300-word proposal or prospectus for the paper, along with an annotated bibliography of at least four sources (at least two of which must be critical sources from outside of our common reading list). Furthermore, I'll expect you to post a complete draft of your essay to your blog no later than April 22, for my and your classmates' critical feedback. The final, gradable draft of your paper—a complete, polished, well-edited essay reflecting your whole experience in the course—will be due in hard copy on May 13 (during finals). Naturally, we'll discuss all this in class! 30%.
Blog: Each of you will create and maintain an individual blog devoted to superhero studies. This blog will be the platform for much of your work in 495SH. It will necessarily include a number of required elements—such as weekly responses to the readings, as well as the creation of your own superhero by the end of term—but its look and much of its content and direction will be left up to you. Constant maintenance of your blog will be essential to participating in class and learning the material. Blogs should be set up by the second week of class, and running smoothly (i.e. in a regular rhythm, with technical bugs worked out) by Feb. 1. Visit the page Blogging for 495SH to read more detailed guidelines for your blog, and be assured that these guidelines and further information will be given out in class and via our full online syllabus (on Moodle). Obviously, this is something we'll be discussing, a lot. In class we'll talk through and model productive blogging methods, and spend some time early on getting any tech glitches worked out. Expect several unusual blogging tasks, as well as the freedom and responsibility of making your blog your own: a true record of your experience in the course! 30% of your grade.
Discussion Leading: Twice during the course you will be responsible for launching and directing, in partnership with a classmate, our class's discussion of an assigned reading or readings (signups will start right away). To that end, you’ll have to post discussion prompts online before class, and kick off and guide our conversation in class for the first 15 to 20 minutes or so. This means that you will be calling on your classmates and soliciting their input, i.e. teaching! Guidelines: When you are signed up to lead discussion on a certain day, plan on posting discussion prompts (i.e. observations and questions) to your blog fully a week ahead of time, meaning not less than seven days before your scheduled day, so that your classmates can read up and prepare. Work proactively to collaborate with your partner, i.e. the other student scheduled to lead on that day, so that your prompts can mesh without undue repetition and you can gracefully share the responsibility of guiding discussion. Coordinate! Further info about this requirement will of course be given out in class and via our full online syllabus. 20%.
Critical Paper: By semester’s end, you’ll produce a research-based argumentative essay that engages critically with the superhero genre in terms relevant to our course. This essay should be a self-directed project that serves as a capstone for your experience in 495SH. Guidelines: your essay's perspective may be generic, formal/technical, aesthetic, sociocultural, and/or ideological. Its focus may be comic books, films, games, and/or other superhero media—though firm grounding in the genre's comic book origins will be expected (in other words, show that you know the history). In format and length, the essay should be such as could be presented at a research symposium, for example the annual AGSE or Sigma Tau Delta conferences. That means 8 to 9 pages. I’ll expect you to blog, no later than March 30, a 300-word proposal or prospectus for the paper, along with an annotated bibliography of at least four sources (at least two of which must be critical sources from outside of our common reading list). Furthermore, I'll expect you to post a complete draft of your essay to your blog no later than April 22, for my and your classmates' critical feedback. The final, gradable draft of your paper—a complete, polished, well-edited essay reflecting your whole experience in the course—will be due in hard copy on May 13 (during finals). Naturally, we'll discuss all this in class! 30%.