Conference Paper
Organizers of academic conferences typically specify presentations of 20 minutes (8-12 pages, depending on font, "density" of the material you're presenting, and your oral style. Presenters at literature conferences typically read their papers from a full text, breaking from the text to make the occasional off-the-cuff comment. (In other fields, including composition studies, audiences may expect a more casual style with the presenter elaborating from notes; you may want to ask what's expected of you before you prepare for and attend a scholarly conference.)

For your presentation in this class (Wednesdays, March 20 and 27), plan to make a relatively formal presentation of 20 minutes at most (practice reading your paper aloud, preferably with an audience, in order to time yourself and to insure that your reading is clear and effective). Think about using handouts of short extracts of poems or using overheads or slides of images if they will help make your presentation more understandable and impressive. Your presentation will be followed by 10 minutes of discussion in which you will field questions from the audience. You will turn in the written version of your conference paper. It should represent in essence what you read or presented to the class plus a bibliography (NOT annotated) and perhaps some skeletal notes.

This portion of the assignment counts as 30% of your class grade altogether: 10% for the presentation and 20% for the written portion. The oral presentation will be graded on clarity and completeness of presentation, adherence to time limit, and your engagement with the audience in the Q/A session that follows your presentation. The written portion will be graded on complexity of thesis, completeness of research, argumentation, organization, style, and mechanics. It is assumed that the "conference paper" represents an initial articulation of your thesis and that you will elaborate and sharpen your argument and expand your research as you continue to work on the project. Grading of the conference paper will take into account the preliminary nature of the essary.

Journal Article
After you have completed work on the conference paper and received comments from your peers and the professors, continue work on the project, continuing to gather materials and to sharpen your argument. Your work should result in a 20-30-page essay with a substantial bibliography on the topic represented in the notes to the paper. This article is due on May 1, the final day of class.

As part of this assignment, choose one journal to which you would like to submit this paper, and follow the editors' instructions regarding style (i.e., MLA, Chicago, etc.). Write a cover letter to the journal and include it in what you turn in on May 1. Such cover letters are typically formal and very brief, doing little more than naming title of the article you enclose for consideration and including your contact information, including email address. Do note that some journals ask for blind submissions. In that case, your name should not appear on the essay at all.

The Journal Article counts as 40% of your grade. It will be evaluated on the basis of complexity of thesis, completeness of research, argumentation, organization, style, and mechanics (including citation form).