Purpose: To employ a critical perspective that helps develop the trajectory for the analysis of your chosen artifact(s) in your final project.
Skills: This assignment will enable you to practice the following skills:
Selecting among and providing a rationale for the critical perspective that you believe may yield the most fruitful interpretation of your artifact(s);
Drawing on and expanding the research from your first two papers in order to explain your choice of critical perspective;
Reading and summarizing scholarly research that pertains to your artifact(s) and/or your chosen critical perspective(s);
Constructing a tentative thesis and supporting claims about how these contexts illuminate your artifact(s).
Knowledge: This assignment will help you deepen your knowledge about prior critical work pertaining to your artifact(s), as well as the existing scholarship that relates to your chosen critical perspective(s).
Task: In this short (roughly 2-3 pages) paper, you will begin to advance the core claims and ultimate thesis of your final project. You have described your text and examined it within its historical background and context; now you must formulate what you will specifically analyze or argue in your final project. Drawing on your research and analysis in the descriptive and contextual analysis papers, you will tentatively (but not arbitrarily) select a critical perspective(s) that best enable you to develop an interpretation and evaluation of your chosen artifact(s). Subsequent readings over the semester may shift the focus of your paper somewhat, but this paper should advance the core questions that you will address concerning your text. These questions should eventually serve as the major points of your final project. These questions should be a combination of things that arise from the text itself (perhaps hinted at in your descriptive analysis) and the theories that we have read in class. You must also provide preliminary answers to your questions or identify the current holes in your theoretical knowledge so you can work toward filling in these gaps when processing subsequent readings and performing additional research. If you already know what your overall thesis is, you should identify this and then provide the questions or categories that you will examine in order to develop your argument. If you have not settled on a thesis that will guide your final project, use these questions to help you develop a tentative thesis. In this paper, it is fine to identify your thesis as “tentative,” as long as you have one. Instead of formulating a thesis to guide your final analysis, you may develop a thesis for this paper that identifies and explains your use of a certain critical perspective(s).
A successful paper will advance a compelling thesis, articulate two or three research questions, and develop its argument using clear claims supported by sufficient and reliable evidence. Most importantly, this paper should identify and fully describe the critical perspective(s) you find most compelling and explain why this perspective(s) is especially appropriate for analyzing your artifact(s). In order to accomplish this, you should research prior criticism on your topic and the rhetorical concepts/theories that seem especially pertinent to you following your work on the descriptive and contextual analyses. This research should be used to develop your own interpretation and, thus, should be referenced in the paper. Although it is your decision about which perspectives to feature, you must employ or substantively reference at least two concepts or methods of rhetorical criticism that we have discussed in class (e.g. dramatism, persona, ideology, genre, etc.). Keep in mind that the most effective analyses apply these concepts and theories in a focused fashion that yields detailed insights about an artifact(s). At a minimum, you must substantively incorporate and cite at least five reliable external sources.
Criteria for Success: The grades for each paper will be assessed based on:
the quality and insight of the tentative thesis (6 points)
the identification and description of your critical perspective(s) and a rationale for selection that specific critical perspective(s) (6 points)
the summary and analysis of prior research that pertains to your artifact(s) and/or critical perspective(s) (6 points)
effective use of research and evidence (6 points)
clarity and appropriateness of writing style, usage, and formatting (6 points)
