Syllabus Guidelines for Blog Posts!

All students enrolled in this course will be required to maintain a reader's log on the Blackboard forums of their reactions to the authors assigned throughout the semester.  Journal writing, which provides students with an opportunity for discursive, speculative writing within a non-judgmental context, may take several forms, including free-writing, reader-response impressions, textual annotations, double entry notations, and the refinement of thesis statements. Moreover, during the first several minutes of any class, students may be invited to respond in writing to some issue or topic relating to the assigned readings. These responses should also be included in the student's journal. The purpose of maintaining a journal is to encourage a habit of writing about literature on a daily basis and to generate a wide range of individual responses which students later can clarify and develop into more formal essays. Journal entries also will help students to refine their understanding of the works of literature they are asked to read throughout the semester.

Since journal writing by its very nature is speculative, however, journal entries should be considered more of a writer’s resource or a learning tool rather than a polished piece of prose. Consequently, the reader’s log will not be graded qualitatively, but on a satisfactory/unsatisfactory basis. Students are expected to submit at least one entry per week, excluding the week of the Midterm. For each film viewed for class, students must submit one reader’s log discussing the film examined that week. Students should likewise post at least two responses to two different classmates’ posts each week.