LENGTH: Minimum 7-10 pages of MLA formatted, double-spaced essay content with Works Cited entries correctly formatted.
DETAILS:
Your main goal for your final paper will be to explore the meanings and implications of material covered in this class* using your own voice while marshalling support from various database sources and readings contained in our course files.
Toward this end, you may draw from the life of an author for its historical, biographical, and/or psychological relevance. I would not be looking for just an author bio for this assignment.
For example, you might trace the development of a key concept we’ve been working on (e.g., the use of social imagination in literature, or the literary representation of the unconscious, etc.) using relevant database articles and readings contained in our course files.
Your own writer’s voice is the manner and style in which you present your thoughts and order them according to strategies of reasoning, textual supports, persuasion, reflection, and so on.
The key thought your writer’s voice will develop, demonstrate, and otherwise speak to is your thesis. Therefore, formulate your thesis with care and articulate it with good clarity of expression somewhere high up in your paper.
As the writer/researcher/editor, you will guide your reader through to seeing the plausibility of your interpretation or relevance of your thesis. It’s possible you are importing this from elsewhere, such as a particularly convincing article you came across. In that case, you’ll simply give attribution to the author for the key idea, but you may use it for your own thesis as you develop it and explore the implications in your paper. Also, you may need to entertain competing perspectives and explain clearly how the one you’re interested differs from the others.
I will be looking for how well you maintain control of ideas in your paper, and that you don’t allow your writing to be overwhelmed by the phrasing contained in your sources. Fold in relevant source material in a manageable way, and remember to give attribution to your sources as you go. Use these three poems as referance points in your essay
Anecdote of the Jar By Wallace Stevens
Revolutions per Minute by REBECCA SOLNIT
The Port Huron Statement by Tom Hayden
