Today’s Agenda
1) Let’s begin today by getting out our papers, which have now been drafted. We are going to talk a little bit about MLA citation today, and how it works. MLA citation is a citation method that is used by certain branches of the humanities for the purpose of standardizing how we reference our sources, both our primary and secondary sources.
2) There are two basic kinds of MLA citation, in-text and Works Cited citation.
3) I want to take a few moments about talk about what in-text citation looks like.
a. First though, we need to revisit a basic idea about how it is we use sources, namely: we do so by following a three-step process: we introduce the source, we present the source, and then we explain its significance to our argument.
b. Let’s take a moment to review our work to see if we are following that basic pattern. If not, note when and where you break it.
c. Okay, now let’s talk about in-text citation.
This is a good place to begin, if you do not have or otherwise own a writing manual:
http://library.duke.edu/research/citing/within/mla.html
Let’s look through a neighbors work to see if they are citing correctly, and offer corrections if they need them.
Okay, now that we’ve done that, I want us to take a moment to think about our work’s cited citation. Now, as we discussed last time, there are programs and websites that will do this work for you, which means there is no excuse for not doing it.
Here’s a good page on that:
http://www.liu.edu/cwis/cwp/library/workshop/citmla.htm
Let’s take a moment to see how our works cited pages stack up.
As we move towards the final exam, we need to begin revisiting some of the major ideas and concepts that we have considered this semester.
The Final exam will be:
Early on this semester, we began talking about two fundamental ideas: the wheel of fortune and humanism. Today we are going to think about how these various ideas may have been manifested in the works we have read this semester.
In terms of the wheel of fortune, we used it as a basic model for understanding the many and varied Christian sects that developed over the course of the 14, 15, and 16 centuries. The idea here was to remember that people were debating about different ways for approaching and considering God.
What I would like you to do now is get your journals and focus on the following topic for ten minutes:
What is the role of organized religion as you understand it in Jane Eyre? What function does it play? Is it a major or minor part of Jane’s life. Defend your answer by referencing specific scenes in the text that prove your point. When you are done, I want you to spend two paragraphs considering another, related question: Where is God in Frankenstein? Why isn’t God mentioned, and what might this tell us about Shelley’s thoughts on the Wheel of Fortune?
Group Discussion: What, if anything, could Dante have learned from Mary Shelley? Also answer this question, what, if anything, could Chaucer have learned from Charlotte Bronte? Be prepared to defend your answer.
Conversation on journal writing.
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