Paper #3

For this paper, we would like to help you develop your own topic.  Below you will find a few different ways you might get started.  All topics, regardless of approach, should be discussed and approved in advance with your preceptor, whom you may also consult for additional suggestions.

1. Design your own topic, using one or two of the texts from our final unit—Middle Passage, Lone Star, or The Middleman and Other Stories—or using one of these texts in conjunction with a text from earlier in the course.  You'll want to zero in on an aspect of the text(s) that particularly fascinates you and that also offers a space for argument and analysis.  In framing your topic, you might start with a particularly compelling scene or image and move out from there.  Or you might start with a moment that puzzles you: why does this happen this way?  What might this mean?  If you do include a text from earlier in the course, be sure to avoid repeating arguments you have made in a previous essay.  If you would like additional help in how to frame a topic, or suggestions on how to keep it from being too broad or too narrow, explore the links on the course web site to the electronic writing handouts from NutsandBolts.com and/or the Harvard Writing Center.

2. Write an essay that involves not just a primary text (or texts), but that also incorporates pertinent secondary or contextual information—perhaps material from your history course, or from your knowledge of philosophy, or from essays by other critics on your chosen text(s).  As in option #1, you will design your own topic, zeroing in on an aspect of the text that particularly fascinates or puzzles you.  But you will also bring non-literary material to bear on your observations and your argument.  Perhaps, for example, you would like to examine the role of gender in one of our final texts.  Or the influence of particular philosophical traditions.  Or perhaps you would like to argue for or against the persuasiveness of another critic's argument about your text—entering a particular debate about the book, as it were.  If you are interested in this approach, you might consider using a book review, a film review, or a critical essay.  We have put a selection of links to a few such reviews and essays on the course web site—see the pages for Middle Passage and Lone Star, for example.  You are also welcome to find your own in Firestone.  In all cases, you must provide full and accurate citations for any secondary source that you use.  Consult the Hacker handbook for details on citing sources accurately (see the section on "MLA" style).
 

Length:  5 pages: typed, double-spaced, standard font and 1" margins
Due dates: Final draft due by 4:00 p.m. on Friday, August 24, in your preceptor's mailbox
 

For useful electronic handouts on writing, click here

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