WRIT 510 Take-home Final Exam Fall 2008

This exam is an open-book, open-note, open-web exam; you may use whatever resources you wish to answer the questions, but you are required to document them correctly using MLA documentation style and to attach a Works Cited page to the end of your examination.

I’m feeling old-school, so please format your answers as a traditional Word document; you may either give me a hard copy at the scheduled exam meeting or can e-mail the document as an attachment to me in advance of the final exam.

The task here is simple yet will require (I hope) reflection, review, and assessment. There are four essay prompts below. Answer three of them.

I will leave the length up to you, but since this is 10% of your final grade in a 500-level writing class, I am expecting you to develop each answer in appropriate depth and breadth. Good luck and enjoy.
 

I.  To what extent do you agree with Landow’s arguments (plural) about reconfiguring literary education in chapter 7 of Hypertext 3.0? Please use concrete examples, especially those you’ve encountered in this class, to support your answer.

II. In Avatars of the Word, Jim O’Donnell describes (pp. 133-35) “what we can expect of traditional humanistic scholarship in an electronic age.” Jim is a traditionally-trained literary scholar, like I am, and his point of view is firmly rooted in his position as a digital immigrant. Your point of view, as students always raised in a digital world, may be very different. Based on the materials—both primary and secondary—you’ve encountered in this class, how accurate do you think O’Donnell’s description is? If it’s lacking, in what areas particularly is it lacking and why?

III. In short takes 1 and 2 and in your poetry explication, you subjected traditional literary practices to an examination in the light of new technologies. Now, after fifteen weeks of practice, in what way(s) has this class influenced your perspective(s) on literary study? You may want to talk about ways you read, research, document, write, share information, or other practices, as well as talking about your perspectives on form, theme, content, and other aspects. 

IV. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “cyber” as a combining form, chiefly prefixed to nouns, meaning “Originally: forming words relating to (the culture of) computers, information technology, and virtual reality, or denoting futuristic concepts. Later also: spec. forming terms relating to the Internet.” 

The scholar/philosopher Kenneth Burke (1897-1995) defined rhetoric as “The use of words by human agents to form attitudes or induce actions in other human agents" and as "the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols."

Much of what we have done this semester has been connected to an investigation of how “cyber” influences “rhetoric” in literary terms. By now, you’ve undoubtedly come to an answer for the first question in our class rhizome: What the heck is cyber rhetoric? So how do you now answer that question? Feel free to bring materials and ideas you’ve encountered in this class into the discussion.