Ulysses Conversation

Purpose

The Ulysses conversation gives you an opportunity to work with me to reflect on your work in the course through the end of Ulysses and synthesize the main points you want to take away from the experience.

Task

Conduct a one-on-one conversation with me. We will talk about what you have learned, how you have progressed toward the goals of the class, and how you think of the class informing your future work and thinking. You can prepare for the conversation by reviewing your obsession document, other notes you have made on Ulysses, and your notes from class sessions.

I anticipate that the conversations will roughly follow this structure:

1. Key insight: What have you discovered about Ulysses by following your obsession that you wouldn't have understood otherwise?
2. Building on the insight: how is your insight set up in the introductory episodes (1-6), developed in episodes 7-15, and brought to its final state in the last three episodes?
3. Connecting the insight: what have you learned from your classmates that has helped you build your thinking about Ulysses?
4. Looking ahead: What will you take from your work in this class that you value?

You may have one, single-sided, standard-size page of notes in front of you during the conversation. Use these notes to help structure your thoughts and prompt your memories of key ideas or passages; in keeping with the notion of a conversation, you should not spend much time reading directly from these notes during our 30 minutes.

Criteria

I will evaluate the conversation holistically, considering the ways in which it reflects your engagement with the course's texts and your collaborations with the other members of the class. It will be graded as fully complete or as requiring a follow-up about some aspect of the initial conversation.