About the Prompts

This morning I have given you at last, the last minute gift of some added prompts for the final due so soon. I will admit that I am hoping that nearly all of you are already so well along in your writing that you will have no need or interest in taking up these new prompts, but I also suspect that at least some of you will turn to them, whether because you are are stymied or uninspired by the already available topics, or perhaps because you have been putting things off to the last minute. But whether you actually write about these topics in your finals or not, I do hope that everybody will give some thought to them, because taken together they also function as a kind of preliminary map of the terrain to which the last lectures of the course will be devoted. It seems to me that it is only now, in the end, that it makes good sense for you to be turning your thoughts to these connections in particular as a way of beginning to take stock of the texts, themes, and problems of the course as a whole.