OPTIONS FOR GRADE IMPROVEMENTS, MAKE-UPS, ETC.:

To improve your grades and also review for the exam, you can take any of the reading quizzes you did not take during the semester. This must be done by Friday, December 10th and before you take the final. (I've gone back to re-open them based on the people who did not take them at the time, which is different for each quiz, so please let me know if there is one I've missed that still needs to be re-opened for you.)

There were a few more videos planned, including watching a live lecture from "The Great Courses" series, that I didn't have time to add to the course, so a "perfect grade" would be 968 instead of 1000 this semester. That adjusts the final grade percentages in this way.

To earn an A, you'd need 871-968 points

To earn a B, you'd need 774-870 points

To pass with a "C" and fulfill the Humanities B requirement, a total of 675-773 points are needed

(Students with a "D" would earn an elective course credit instead, but let's all go for a grade in the A through C range if possible.) If you look at your grades in Canvas, you'll see your raw points total, and that's all we're looking at in the end (the Canvas system tries to estimate a "letter grade" for you, but ignore that because there are various flexible options in these last two weeks -- just look at the points). Since this course is graded based on your raw total of points earned, taking an older quiz to study and get a little more learning out of the class before the exam can only improve your grade, so please take advantage of this and then check your feedback on that quiz.

Please participate in the remaining few assignments to earn as many points as possible. A couple of students still need to submit the "guided reading notes" assignment as well. All of the guided reading notes assignments will be posted in that module for others to read. Some of these might help with exam review because they discuss the ideas and trends of the era.

There is also a 12-point exam review assignment. This can be done at any time through Friday December 10th, but it must be posted before you take the exam.

These are the instructions for the final discussion board (DB-14) combined with the list of texts for week 12.

This week's discussion (our last one!) is officially due by Thursday, December 9th.
Also take the 10-minute video quiz on Wole Soyinka's poem "Telephone Conversation" posted in that module.
I will accept DB posts and the video quiz through Saturday the 11th, but you may not do them after you have taken the final exam, which is open Friday Dec 10 - Monday Dec 13.

Choose two or three of the texts (some poems and some essays) listed here for an integrated response of 250 words. Use direct quotation & proper citation.

This is the final discussion, so students can "ask and answer" their own questions about this material instead of responding to a prompt. Whichever direction you take it, you should connect the texts to important issues, to one another, or to Death and the King's Horseman, to Orwell, to Kipling, to Yeats, etc. Posts should show both an understanding of the texts you're writing about and a meaningful curricular connection.

Use the table of contents to find these texts in the NAEL (the dates of publication are in parentheses) or access some of them on the pages in the postcolonial literature module.

Recitations of some of the poems from Claude McKay, Louise Bennett, and Linton Kwesi Johnson can be found on the "3 Jamaican Poets" page -- these three writers show a wide range of responses to questions of postcolonial identity, the English language, and the place of England in the lives of Jamaicans after the end of the empire.

Claude McKay (1890-1948) "Old England" (1912); "If We Must Die" (1919) -- McKay lived the first part of his life in Jamaica, where the first poem listed here was written, and later moved to the United States, where the second poem was written.

Louise Bennett (1919-2006) "Colonization in Reverse" (1957); "Jamaica Language" (1979-80)

Wole Soyinka (b. 1934) "Telephone Conversation" (1960). * watch the video quiz on this one to get the poem and some other information.

Ngugi Wa Thiong’o (b. 1938) selection from Decolonising the Mind (1986) *please make sure you do read this one before the exam*

Salman Rushdie (b. 1947) selection from "English is an Indian Literary Language" (1983)

John Agard (b. 1949) "Listen, Mr. Oxford Don"; "Half-Caste" (1992) -- these are not in the 10th edition of our text, but please watch Agard's great readings of his two short poems through the links on the John Agard page.

Linton Kwesi Johnson (1952) "Inglan is a Bitch" (1980)