The poem that will be used "We Wear the Mask" by Paul Laurence Dunbar

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173467

For this activity, you will write an approximately 1-page, double-spaced assessment of a scholarly article that is about one of the poems (or another work by a poet) we have studied this semester. Refer to the course calendar for a list of poems and poets we have read. Your response will require you to evaluate the argument or a part of the argument in the article you select. You must take a stand in which you agree or disagree with the critic and explain why. Your article MUST be found using the Hunt Library and its databases, which you can access via the homepage (see the Hunt Library link under "Tools" in ERNIE). Do NOT use Sparknotes, Wikipedia, or any other similarly non-scholarly sources. The goals of this activity are to 1. familiarize you with the library's resources and the method for finding articles and 2. help you become more comfortable acting as a literary critic yourself by engaging with the work and ideas of other critics. Both of these will be required in the final essay for the course, so this should be helpful practice.