Deanna Stover's Courses
Deanna Stover is an Assistant Professor at Christopher Newport University. This website is a compilation of her syllabi since starting at CNU in Fall 2020.
Fishbowl Prompt
Fishbowl: Week 7
Percentage: 10%
General Overview
A fishbowl discussion is smaller group discussion observed by the larger group. Four to five of you will sit in the center of the class, and everyone else will sit in a larger circle (or whatever we can figure out in the room). Only people in the inner circle are supposed to contribute to the discussion for 15 minutes. I won’t be speaking or answering questions during that time, so the conversation will be entirely student-led.
There is one loophole: if someone from the outer circle wants to ask a question or respond to the discussion, they can briefly visit the extra-credit seat. Each student is only allowed one point of extra credit per fishbowl. Each point is worth 2% of your overall fishbowl grade, so you can get a total of 6% extra credit on the fishbowl grade.
Ideally, the set up will look something like this (but obviously not exactly, given the constraints of the room we are in):
After the fishbowl, the larger circle (who have been listening carefully!) will discuss the inner circle’s conversation. More than anything, this portion of the class will be about further refining the art of talking about literature and scholarship.
We will have two fishbowls each day (again ~15 minutes per fishbowl) on Wednesday, February 23rd and Friday, February 25th. You can sign up for whichever reading you’d like to discuss based on the list below (but first come, first serve!). However, you are still responsible for reading both readings for the day. That said, you will have extra components assigned for the fishbowl you participate in (this is explained under “Evauation Criteria” below).
Fishbowl Dates
Wednesday, February 23rd:
Fishbowl 1: Snyder, Carey J. “Introduction.” Ann Veronica, Broadview Press, 2016, pp. 9-38.
Fishbowl 2: Montz, Amy L. “‘Now she’s all hat and ideas’: Fashioning the British Suffragette Movement.” Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty, vol. 3, no. 1 & 2, 2012, pp. 55-67.
Friday, February 25th
Fishbowl 3: Smith, Angela K. “Writing Suffrage Before 1914.” Suffrage Discourse in Britain During the First World War, Taylor & Francis Group, 2016, pp. 1-19.
Fishbowl 4: Murphy, Cliona. “H.G. Wells and Votes for Women.” The Wellsian, no. 10, 1987, pp. 11-19.
Evaluation Criteria
I will grade fishbowl participants based on two components:
1) Your participation in the fishbowl. Note that this doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to talk the entire time–in fact, it’s really important to listen carefully to other participants. However, you should be offering substantial contributions (questions or responses) that you can support with textual evidence.
- Quick tip: Don’t worry about being “right” during this discussion; that’s not at all what I’m evaluating. While you should be thoughtful when it comes to your questions and responses, this exercise is about growing as readers and speakers. Over the course of the discussion, everyone’s opinions will likely change in some way, so think of the fishbowl as an opportunity to work together to gain a more nuanced understanding of both the scholarly article and the primary text we’ll be discussing.
2) Your notes. Everyone is responsible for doing the reading, but as a fishbowl participant, you should come prepared with materials that will help you participate and facilitate a scholarly conversation. After the fishbowl, I will collect the following:
- An annotated copy of the article
- The questions/notes you brought with you for the discussion
- Any notes you took during the discussion (this might be especially helpful for those of you who are less vocal)