ENG 202 Option 2: The Discursive Track
Instead of producing traditional written essays, each student on the Discursive Track will present a series of 8-minute Mini-Lectures to their tutorial classmates, then run an in-class Q&A/discussion following their Mini-Lecture. These presentations will happen during tutorial — check the ENG 202 course schedule for Discursive Track presentation dates.
Each Mini-Lecture will take as its subject a work of published scholarship (chosen from the lists below): the presenter must summarize the published scholar’s argument and articulate, in depth, possible disagreements with that argument, with the aim of provoking engaged, complex discussion. All lectures must involve a handout or slides that can be shared with the tutorial group.
The idea here is to multiply the number of informed voices and perspectives contributing to ENG 202: by positioning students as temporary teachers/discussion leaders, by asking each of those students to draw deep on the work of professional scholars other than the prof and TAs for this class, and by instructing presenters to provoke possible disagreements. So don’t be afraid to be contrary — nor to take a chance on being challenged, or even proven wrong — that’s the point!
Only a maximum of four students per tutorial can be on the Discursive Track at one time. Your TA will offer you the opportunity to sign up for the Discursive Track at the first meeting of your tutorial. If more than four students want in, then some students will have to switch Tracks halfway through term so everyone gets a chance. (If more than eight students in a tutorial want to join the Discursive Track, we may have to determine assignments by lottery — unless we can work out a transfer for some students to enter a different tutorial group; email Prof. Sergi if that happens.)
Course Requirements/Grading Weight/Reading Lists
Mini-Lecture and Discussion on Cavendish (due during the last tutorial session covering Cavendish — see course schedule), 10%
Present a mini-lecture and discussion on one of these four secondary sources (see prompt below): (1) Radley, “Margaret Cavendish’s Cabbala: The Empress and the Spirits in The Blazing World”; (2) Iyengar, “Royalist, Romancist, Racialist: Rank, Gender, and Race in the Science and Fiction of Margaret Cavendish”; (3) Keller, “Producing Petty Gods: Margaret Cavendish’s Critique of Experimental Science”; (4) Brataas, “‘Peculiar Circles’: The Fluid Utopia at the Northern Pole in Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World”.
Mini-Lecture and Discussion on Robin Hood (due during the last tutorial session covering Robin Hood — see course schedule), 12.5%
Present a mini-lecture and discussion on one of these four secondary sources (see prompt below): (1) Johnson, “A Forest of Her Own: Greenwood-space and the Forgotten Female Characters of the Robin Hood Tradition”; (2) Taylor, “Me longeth sore to Bernysdale”: Centralization, Resistance, and the Bare Life of the Greenwood in A Gest of Robyn Hode”; (3) Pollard, “Yeomanry” and “Political Ideology in the Early Stories of Robin Hood” (these two Pollard readings count as one); (4) Skura, “Anthony Munday’s ‘Gentrification’ of Robin Hood”.
Mini-Lecture and Discussion on Chaucer (due during the last tutorial session covering Chaucer — see course schedule), 12.5%
Present a mini-lecture and discussion on one of these four secondary sources (see prompt below): (1) Nolan, “Medieval Sensation and Modern Aesthetics: Aquinas, Adorno, Chaucer”; (2) Sobecki, “A Southwark Tale: Gower, the Poll Tax of 1381, and Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales”; (3) Lipton, “Contracts, Activist Feminism, and the Wife of Bath’s Tale”; (4) Pattison, “Ironic Imitations: Parody, Mockery, and the Barnyard Chase in the Nun’s Priest’s Tale” and Rudd’s very short “‘rather be used / than be eaten’?: Harry Bailly’s Animals and The Nun’s Priest’s Tale”.
Mini-Lecture and Discussion on Beowulf (due during the last tutorial session of all — see course schedule), 10%
Present a mini-lecture and discussion on one of these four options (see prompt below): (1) Michelet, “Hospitality, Hostility, and Peacemaking in Beowulf”; (2) Saltzman, “Secrecy and the Hermeneutic Potential in Beowulf”; (3) Pareles, “What the Raven Told the Eagle: Animal Language and the Return of Loss in Beowulf” [the link will take you to a website at which you can download the whole book of Dating Beowulf for free—when you download it, you’ll find the Pareles piece as Chapter 8 in that book]; (4) A selection of short critical reviews of the Heaney and Headley translations (read all, but focus on one or two!): Dumitrescu, “Dudes Without Heirs”, Franklin, “A Beowulf for Our Moment”, Shippey, “Beowulf for the Big-Voiced Scullions” [the only available link is, sadly, poorly formatted], Howe, “Scullionspeak”, Eder, “Beowulf and Fate Meet in a Modern Poet’s Lens”; Livingstone, “Listen, Bro”; Murphy, “Review: Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf”; Donoghue, “Beowulf, translated by Maria Dahvana Headley”.
Final Test, 15%
A very short and simple test, delivered during Finals Week, that will assess your retention of the basic terms and dates that we have been using all semester. Click here to learn more.
Engagement and Participation in tutorial sessions, 15%
All ENG 202 students are required to participate in TA-led tutorials. You’re encouraged to speak up in our full-class meetings, too (and doing so can improve your grade here)! If, by the end of term, your tutorial classmates have a pretty good idea of how you approach class material, you’ll do well. Click here to read my full policy on Engagement and Participation.
Real-Time Comprehension Questions, asked at the end of each class session, 15%
Two quick short-answer questions, asked and answered in the final 2-3 minutes of each class meeting. Click here to read full instructions for Real-Time Comprehension Questions.
Actual Attendance at the minimum number of class sessions (including full-class sessions and TA-led tutorials), 10%
You earn ten points of your course grade just for showing up. You lose those points if you miss too many classes, regardless of the reason. See the main course page under “Class Meetings” to learn the exact numbers this term for how many class sessions you can miss without losing points.
Your Mini-Lectures/Discussions: Instructions
Take a quick look through the list of published scholarly articles provided above — all are available for free online through the U of T Library.
Based on your quick look, choose one published scholarly article that you’d like to focus on. Every presenter must choose a different article, so work with your TA and fellow students to make sure there’s no doubling up.
Read and re-read your article, following up on any difficult concepts, and taking the time to understand it as thoroughly as you can (academic writing can be dense). As you do so, generate notes for your 8-minute mini-lecture: half your time should be dedicated to summarizing the article’s argument; the other half to articulating one or more possible disagreements with that argument. Prof. Sergi will also have drawn on these articles somewhat in his lectures: be familiar with what he has already covered, in order to innovate beyond (and, ideally, provide a counter-position to) what has already been said. Remember, your aim is to provoke interesting discussion among your fellow students.
Practice your presentation to make sure it doesn’t go over 8 minutes. Create slides or a handout that you can share with your fellow students during the presentation.
During the final tutorial meeting covering each of our long-form texts (i.e., Cavendish, Robin Hood, Chaucer, Beowulf) each student on the Discursive Track must present their 8-minute mini-lecture, and then co-run the Q&A/discussion that will follow all presentations that day.
If this sounds intimidating, remember that the work required for two Mini-Lecture/Discussion assignments should be equivalent to the work required for one traditional essay—since you’ll be freed of the time-consuming task of essay writing, we expect you to redirect the same energy, time, and deep thinking into your slow investigation of the scholarly article, your mini-lecture, and your handling of subsequent questions.
The assumption is that all Discursive Presentations will happen in person (unless you’re in an online-only tutorial, of course); however, in a pinch, if you are scheduled to do a Discursive presentation but find you cannot attend as planned, ask your TA or a fellow student if they’d be willing to bring a laptop or tablet to Zoom you in.
How Your TA Will Evaluate Your Work
Keep in mind that your TA — just like the other members of your tutorial — will likely not have read, or not have read deeply, into the article you chose (though your TA will, as part of the grading process, check your presentation briefly against its source). So make sure that the first half of your presentation, the summary of your article’s argument, gets the thrust of the article across in a way that everybody will understand, while avoiding too-reductive treatment of the complexity of the scholar’s work. Summarize the whole thing in brief, then flesh out the particular parts you’re focusing on in more detail.
The success of your work will rely most on the second half of your presentation, in which you articulate one or more possible disagreements with that argument. Your TA will be looking for a complex, in-depth, clear, focused understanding of the subject. Your TA will take into consideration (1) how well-organized and informative your presentation is, (2) how effectively you bring new perspectives into discussion, (3) the quality of the subsequent discussion you provoke — meaning that you must craft the second half of your presentation in a way that will provoke a lively, engaged subsequent discussion, producing multiple questions from your peers — and (4) how well you answer questions asked of you. After that, your TA will (5) spot-check your presentation against a brief review of its source, to determine how well you seem to have grasped it. Your numerical score will take each of those five criteria into account.
About a week after your present, your TA will email you a document that breaks down your presentation grade, on which they will offer brief commentary — if you’d like your TA to expand on that commentary, meet with the TA in Office Hours.