On the days a Reading Assignment is due, you'll write a short (1-3 pages) exploration of an idea offered about the natural world in a brief text or passage from the week's assigned reading. I would like this to be as focused as possible in the amount of text it addresses. Where I have assigned several short texts (poems, for instance), please limit yourself to one, offering as close a reading as possible; in weeks where I assign longer texts, choose an important passage and explain why it is "critical" to the larger text's presentation of a narrow issue involving nature.
As to subject, I would like you to offer a claim about what your short text or passage has to say about the representation of nature. One way you might approach the task of building a claim (and I use "claim," "thesis," "idea" and "argument" more or less interchangeably) is to consider your text to be offering a specific answer to one of my general discussion questions. Once you have a sense of what the text is presenting along those lines, write up a short introduction, and then map out a few paragraphs that will closely read (that is, analyze) evidence from the text in support of your claim. If you're dealing with a longer text, you might see your passage as a particular embodiment of the larger text's general presentation of nature; alternatively, you may see your passage as presenting one idea in a larger "debate" about nature carried on throughout the work, or raising a particular conflict that is or isn't resolved elsewhere. You'll likely need to refer to other places in the larger text, but I'm hoping your analytical focus will be on one passage.
Finally, please begin by giving a real (if brief) introduction to the work in question ("In Shakespeare's comedy As You Like It, Orlando's poetry suggests the artificiality of conventional expressions of love..."); use MLA citation format; include a "Work(s) Cited" list at the end.
I'm going to evaluate these with the following table:
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Impressive
(A range; 3 pts)
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Satisfactory
(B range; 2 pts)
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Unsatisfactory
(C range; 1 pt)
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Clear Thesis
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Manageable Focus
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Choice of Evidence
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Closeness of Analysis
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MLA citation / Works Cited
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15-14=A
13-12=A-
11=B+
10-9=B
8-7=B-
6=C+
5 and below=C and below
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