J. Werner - English 102 (and ENG 102 H) Fall 24: Home

PAPER 2: CASE STUDY IN LITERARY CONNECTIONS

CONTENT:

We began this semester asking questions like “What good is literature to us today?” “What good does literature do?” and “What’s literature good for?” And as we’ve read the texts on our reading schedule, you’ve been asked to think, write, and talk about not only what those texts might mean, but also how works of literature might meaningfully apply in your own life particularly, and in our lives generally. 

For your Final Research Essay, you’ll be asked to bring this conversation to a culmination, by answering that question – “What good is literature to us today?”—at first generally, but then more extensively and concretely by focusing on an example or “case study”: ONE of the texts we read this semester (after Paper 1) that has connection to your own personal life and experience, and has helped you to understand a current social, cultural, or political issue more fully and deeply.  That issue should be important not only to you, but others as well. 

Use your introduction to focus your reader briefly on this topic (the value of literature) overall, on the work of literature and what it has to say on that topic, and to articulate a thesis about how that text and its meaning(s) relate to the current status of that issue today. 

The main tasks you will perform in the body of this essay are as follows:

• Discuss why this issue is important for you personally, based on your own past personal experiences, thoughts, and feelings you had regarding the issue (experiences you had before reading your literary text).
• Analyze your literary text as it relates to the issue you’ve chosen, making an argument for what you think its central messages might be, based on the author’s use of the 1-3 literary elements (character, conflict, setting, style, figurative language, voice, symbolism, etc.) that you connect to most strongly.  Be sure to provide key quotes to support your interpretation.
• Explain how your interpretation of the text relates to other readers’ interpretations of the text.  Use at least two scholarly articles about your chosen text, summarizing their main points, providing key quotes, and critically evaluating their arguments.
• Discuss why this issue is relevant and important for a wider audience to consider today, and the current status of this topic in society, based on three reliable and relevant articles about the issue that you find using the College’s databases, summarizing what they have to say about this issue overall, and providing key quotes.
• Discuss how reading this text and doing the research associated with it has confirmed, changed, clarified, or expanded your thinking about this issue.

Finally, provide a conclusion to wrap up this discussion, evaluating the relevance, usefulness, and value of this particular literary text in light of your own personal experience and your research, and ultimately connecting back to your initial claims about what literature can do.

As you can see, this is intended to be an assignment that is accomplishes several things: it is personal/reflective (you’ll be discussing your own personal experiences relating to your chosen issue, and how one work of literature has shaped your personal perspective on that issue); it is thematic and analytical (you’ll be analyzing the writer’s use of literary elements; and it is research-oriented (you’ll contextualize your experience and your interpretation of the text within a larger written conversation among experts who have written about the text, and about the issue broadly). At its heart, though, this is intended to be an articulation of your perspective—your HUMAN intelligence brought to bear on the personal experiences you bring to a specific reading experience, and the questions, research, and thought that have resulted from it.  As such, your voice should be thoughtful and intelligent, as befits a college-educated audience, but also engaging and genuine.  Find something worth saying to your audience, and say it as clearly as possible. (And yes, it’s okay to use “I” where appropriate—for instance, in discussing your experiences, your responses to the text, etc.)

As indicated above, for this assignment you are expected to do research on your issue, finding appropriate articles by searching our library’s databases.  You’ll want to ensure that they are of high quality (in terms of their currency, reliability, accuracy, and objectivity).  They should NOT be encyclopedia-type pieces (like Wikipedia), or superficial commercial (.com) sites, and they should not be purely informative in nature; in other words, they should argue a position about the issue or text.  You should also NOT draw on sites like SparkNotes or 123EssayHelp.com (even “just to get ideas”) in analyzing your literary text.  And you should DEFINITELY NOT use ChatGPT or other artificial intelligence services (or a friend or relative) to write this essay; the words and ideas in this paper should be YOURS, except when you are quoting, summarizing or paraphrasing your literary text or your research articles.  It will be important for you to indicate clearly when you are doing so, by citing your sources using MLA format (BOTH parenthetical citation AND Works Cited page), and to integrate those words and ideas smoothly into your paper. 

PLEASE NOTE: If you wish to write this paper on a work of literature not on our reading list, you may do so IF AND ONLY IF you discuss your idea with me well in advance (no later than November 4).

MECHANICS AND GRADING:

This paper should be a minimum of nine to ten (9-10) FULL pages long (but can be longer).  The paper must be submitted by midnight on Thursday December 12 to the BrightSpace page as a PDF or MS Word for PC document (no GoogleDocs please!), double-spaced, with one-inch margins all around, and in a type font between 11 and 13.  Please be sure to put your name, class title, my name and semester on the top left of your first page.

Your essay will be evaluated based on your success in meeting the following standards:

1. Focus: The essay focuses directly on the assignment, clearly articulates an interesting main point about your experience of reading the text(s), and is sufficiently developed with specific elaboration about both the text and your own personal experiences (details, examples, quotes, etc.), and explanation of how these support the main point.
2. Organization: The essay is generally unified and coherent.  Ideas are organized logically in paragraphs, presented in an order that makes sense to a reader, and connected with transitions that clearly move the essay’s ideas forward.
3. Language: The essay shows strong command of the English language, especially in diction and variety of sentence structure.
4. Grammar and Mechanics: The essay demonstrates the writer’s facility with conventions of standard written English (though there may be a few minor flaws).  Please note that you are required to use MLA documentation style in citing material from the text, including a Work Cited List on a separate sheet at the end of the essay.

• An essay that exceeds these standards will earn a grade in the “A” range.
• An essay that meets these standards solidly will earn a grade in the “B” range.
• An essay that only meets these standards minimally, will earn a grade in the “C” range.
• An essay that approaches but does not meet these standards will earn a “D” grade.
• An essay that does not approach these standards will earn an “F” grade.

PLEASE NOTE: As stated above, the minimum length for this paper is NINE TO TEN (9-10) FULL pages (NOT including the Work Cited page).  Essays that do not meet this minimum requirement cannot be seen as representing an “average” response or as meeting the “sufficiently developed” aspect of Standard 1 listed above, and are therefore not likely to receive a grade higher than C.