Reminder About Our Symposium Tomorrow

This is just a quick note to remind everybody that because I am directing a dress rehearsal of the MA Thesis Presentations tomorrow morning ni the auditorium on the Chestnut campus from 9am to 12.30pm we cannot have our regularly scheduled class tomorrow. However, we all decided last week that we would still like to have our informal final Symposium together anyway and so we voted to meet tomorrow at roughly half past noon in the open-air theater space on the roof of the Chestnut campus building. Just to give you a firmer idea of what I expect from the Symposium, the idea is that each of you in turn will present to me and to your colleagues an overview of the final project/paper you are working on for the class. Some of you, I hope, will have written portions of your papers that you can share with us. Everybody should have a clear idea of the texts they are focusing on, the argument they are making, the kinds of textual evidence they are marshalling in their work, and I would also like everybody to be prepared to say a little about how their individual projects connect to the larger themes of the class as they see them. Although I will be commenting and offering advice to each of you (I can't help it if I have a big mouth), I really envision this as a time when you take the class from me and take it into new places I have not, I envision this as a comfortable and informal discussion among colleagues in which you have as much or more to say to one another than I have to say to you, and I think it should be enjoyable and enlightening for us all. By all means, feel free to bring drinks or snacks to tide you over as each of you presents and discusses their work for the class over the afternoon. This class has been a real pleasure for me, and tomorrow should provide a lovely end to it. As for the formal deadline for getting your papers to me, I can talk about that at the beginning or end of the symposium, and we should also briefly do evaluations at some point tomorrow, too, since we'll all be together. Best to you all, see you tomorrow! d