A Multipurpose Assignment

Here is an example of an on-line Just-in-Time Teaching exercise designed to model and to give students practice at identifying relevant evidence and demonstrating that relevance to their readers.  As indicated in the accompanying blog post, it also serves a number of other strategic purposes.

Here are two different interpretations of the material we have been studying 

A) The art and the life styles of the avant garde represented a rejection of modern capitalist society and its values.
 
B) Avant garde artists often presented their art and lifestyle as a revolt against modern capitalist society and its values, but on a deeper level it was just another expression of that society.
 

Choose to support one of these interpretations.  (You may feel that each of these is partly right are that both of them are wrong, but for the purposes of this assignment pick one and defend it.)

 I will be supporting position A  or position B

Find a short passage from The Banquet Years about Rousseau, Satie, or Jarry that might be used to support the position you are defending
 
Type the passage here
 
Give the page number from The Banquet Years here:
In this space explain very briefly why the material in this passage makes the position you are defending seem more convincing 
 
 [If you are uncertain how to proceed, click here for a example of how this is to be done.]
[Here is the example available to the students.]
 
Week 2 — Assignment — Example

1) Choose to support one of these interpretations.  (You may feel that each of these is partly right are that both of them are wrong, but for the purposes of this assignment pick one and defend it.)

A) The art and the life styles of the avant garde represented a rejection of bourgeois
    capitalist society and its values.

B) Avant garde artists often presented their art and lifestyle as a revolt against bourgeois
    capitalist society and its values, but on a deeper level it was just another expression of that
    society.

I will be supporting position A  or position B [“B” is checked indicating that you would be supporting that interpretation. If you chose “A,” you would need to find appropriate evidence to support that position.]


2) Find a short passage from The Banquet Years about Rousseau, Satie, or Jarry that might be used to support the position you are defending.

 a) Type the passage here:

“This single performance [the opening of Ubu Roi] assured Jarry’s celebrity far beyond literary circles.  The following morning, and for weeks after, the papers discussed the play.”
  b) Give the page number from The Banquet Years here:
          p.209

  c) In this space explain very briefly why the material in this passage makes the position you are defending seem more convincing

The newspapers, which were part of “bourgeois capitalist society,” publicized radical cultural events, like the opening of Ubu Roi and thus increases their influence.