Remember that this assignment has changed, as per our experience with it in the first two weeks of class!

You'll still be doing 2 blog posts, but one will be a post of your own, on your blog, and the other, a substantial response to a peer's post. You need only do one reply per week, but as noted, it's important to try to make more comments if you're able to do so. Your blog post will be due by Friday at 8:00pm, and your reply by Sunday.

Each blog post should be approximately 500 words long, though you may write more if you choose to. In each blog post, I would like you to identify and respond to the central claims or key concepts in one or two of the assigned readings of your choice. Each blog post should make some effort to illustrate that central claim or key concept with reference to a literary or cultural "text" that your peers will be aware of--it could be Bishop, or something else!

Each week, you will be reading many different authors, and I don't expect you to respond to all of them in your blog posts; however, you will be responsible for reading everything, making every effort to understand it, and apprehending the relationships between each different approach. So, you should carefully choose which authors or concepts on which each post will focus. You might find it helpful to frame your responses with reference to the introductory materials from Richter and Rivkin & Ryan, as the primary theoretical sources themselves can sometimes be difficult.

Your tone need not be overly formal; these are blog posts, not formal essays. However, you should carefully edit your work, as it is possible that others on the web may find and read it. It is not necessary, but if you include references to other helpful web sources, be sure to make them clickable hyperlinks, like this. You should be drawing attention to specific concepts or textual moments from your reading; include parenthetical citations, so you can find these key points later when you work on your essays.

Finally, blogs are not useful unless they are read by others. So, be sure--for your own purposes--that you tag your posts relevantly and appropriately; this will make it easy for your peers to read your blog. Most importantly, part of your participation grade for this class includes the extent to which you read and comment on your peers' posts. I am also teaching an undergraduate version of this class, and you may comment on their blogs as well--I am asking my undergraduate students to comment on yours!