German 270: From the Grimms to Disney. Germanic Fairy Tales & U.S. Popular Culture. Spring 2008.
Written Assignment I: Interview (100 points)

Instructor: S. Cocalis. Herter 525. Phone: 5-6673 or 5-2350 (to leave message)
TAs: Kyle Frackman & Laurie Taylor (see contacts)

Due: Thursday, March 6. in class. In this written project, we would like you to apply what you have been learning in class in a more individualized context.

Late Policy:   If you cannot submit a paper by the due date, it is your responsibility to contact the instructor and make suitable arrangements (in advance, if possible). If there is no communication, we will assign a grade of 0 for that paper.

Description of Assignment:


General:
This written assignment will consist of an interview project, in which you are asked to interview someone with a different cultural background in children's stories or tales: i.e., the subject's experiences have to be different from the American Disney movies and videos. If she/he grew up in a foreign culture but was raised on Disney, find someone else. Do not leave the choice of a subject until the last minute, because this usually results in a low grade for the paper.

These interviews will be 7 pages of interview (see below: format) + 2-3 pages of analysis. We expect you to conduct the interview in person (not on the internet & not as written responses to a set of questions). You will be graded on the type of questions you ask, the amount of interaction and follow-up demonstrated in the interview, and the extent to which you relate your analysis to the critical essays which have been assigned as reading. We also expect individual (one-on-one) interactions: i.e., do not interview the same person as a group. If, after reading these guidelines, you are unsure of what we mean by an analytical section, please contact the instructor or the TAs in advance of the due deadline. We will be glad to look at your drafts before the due date.

Interview Questions:
Decide what the focus of your interview will be. For example, do you want to explore the issue of whether different ethnicities or races have different experiences with fairy tales? Were members of your (grand)parents' generation shaped differently by fairy tales than you were?  In other words, take something that interested you in one of the readings or class lectures and pursue it beyond one-word answers to get your subject to narrate what role fairy or folk tales (or a county's stories/myths) played in their lives. (If such tales didn't play any role in their development, find a different subject.) If you are interviewing an older woman, for example, you might ask if her idea of romance or marriage was influenced by the stories she was told as a child or follow up with asking about what happens after the marriage? How have your subject's views of "happiness"views of happiness, strength, courage, masculinity or feminity been shaped by these childhood stories? Do they relive the promise of fairy tales through their children?  Try to draw the subject out as much as possible. If your subject goes into depth on one aspect of childhood stories or fairy tales, pursue that rather than a breadth of superficial answers. In all cases, ask about how they experienced fairy tales (folk tales, myths, family stories).  If you know the person well and some of the things s/he is saying don't fit with what you have observed, analyze that discrepancy. It is more productive to ask open-ended questions: e.g., "What do you think is...?" "How do you feel about...?" or just encourage your partner to talk. (Avoid yes-no questions. If you aren't getting much response, see TAs or instructor to see what you can do differently. Follow up on points of interest and get your subject to talk to you.

Analysis: By analysis, we mean that we want you to go beyond summarizing what was said (or not said) by locating the content of your subject's interviews to the analytical context of the course lectures and readings. The various interpretations or background reading by Jack Zipes, Marcia Lieberman, Gilbert & Gubar, or Alice Miller raise questions about how childhood experiences shape our views and values as adults. Which of these may apply to what your subject is saying? Discuss how your subject's experience differs from your own/ US culture. Be explicit in your reference to these critical articles, making points agreeing, disagreeing, or taking further what the author's are saying. In this part of the assignment, we are looking for evidence that you have read these assignments and that you can locate your subject's experiences within a critical framework.

Grading & Re-doing Assignments: Because of the size of the class, we ask students to read and adhere to the specific guidelines. If you have questions as to what we expect, please consult us before the due date. We grade on a full scale: A to F.

An "A" paper will: have taken care in choosing a subject; will have thought out questions tailored to their subject; will follow up on interesting points of their subject's experience; will present the relevant parts of the interview in clear, grammatically correct English. In the analysis, we are looking to see if you have read the assignments/attended lectures and are able to examine your subject's experience within a critical framework.

A "B" paper will have a good interview (see above) but may not give the same impression of contextualizing the subject's experience within the critical framework of the class.

A "C" paper will have an acceptable interview, i.e., one which touches on the main points but which doesn't go beyond them to explore the subject's experience. There will be little evidence of analytical processing of the material or reference to the readings.

A "D" paper is one that fulfils the mechanical requirements of the interview with little or no initiative on the part of the student. Evidence of the critical framework of the lectures and readings will be minimal or lacking.

An "F" paper will show no evidence of an interaction between subject and author, and it could have been written without ever having attended a lecture or read an assignment.

We are looking for an open inquiry into the topic (pros & cons). You are free to challenge views presented in articles or in the lectures, but this must be done in a constructive manner with arguments backed up by some form of critical thinking. Avoid writing with an ideological agenda such as "all those damned feminists think..." "All scholars hate Disney..." or other loaded generalizations. Papers with an axe to grind often don't fulfill the criteria of the assignment and are not graded highly.

Format of Assignment:

Academic Honesty Policy :

We are arranging to use Turn-it-In and will provide more details.

Any form of cheating will result in a grade of zero on a written assignment and the request that the student withdraw from the course. Cheating includes copying the work of another student, plagiarizing a paper, buying a paper, or using an existing paper by modifying it slightly.  Students will be held to the standards of the University Writing Program. Cheating on papers includes using sentences directly or in a slightly modified form from books or other persons without naming the source. It also includes basing a paper on a friend's computer file. More complete guidelines will be posted on the web. The instructor reserves the right to request an earlier draft or notes for a paper if circumstances warrant this course of action. If two papers appear suspiciously similar, both students will receive a grade of zero.

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