PAPER 2: CASE STUDY IN LITERARY CONNECTION
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 thought, written, and talked about what those texts might mean, but also how they might meaningfully connect to your own life particularly, and in our lives generally.
For your Final Research Essay, you will now bring this semester-long conversation to a culmination, by answering that question – “What good is literature to us today?”— 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 led you to understand more fully and deeply a current social, cultural, or political issue that’s important not only to you, but others as well.
Use your introduction to focus your reader briefly on this 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 you read the text).
Analyze your text thoroughly, making an argument for what you think its central message(s) about the issue might be, based on the author’s use of the 2-3 literary elements (character, conflict, setting, style, figurative language, voice, symbolism, or narrative point of view) that you connect to most strongly. Be sure to provide key quotes to support your interpretation.
Discuss what question(s) about this issue emerged from your reading of this text, how and why such questions are important for a wider audience to consider today; then answer the question(s) based on your research-- at least five reliable and relevant articles (including a minimum of three scholarly articles that you find using the College’s databases).
Conclude by reflecting overall how this experience of reading this text and doing this research has impacted (confirmed, changed, clarified, and/or expanded) your thinking about this issue.
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 and how one work of literature has shaped your own perspective); it is thematic and analytical (you’ll be analyzing the writer’s use of literary elements to support a claim about the text’s meaning); and it is research-oriented (you’ll use the text as a springboard to ask a question about an important social, political or cultural issue raised by the text, one that can only be answered through research, and then provide answers to that question based on the research you do).
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. 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 (including translation services) or a friend or relative to write this essay. You are being graded on YOUR ability to communicate effectively in English; the words and ideas in this paper should be YOURS, except when you are citing 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 and receive my approval well in advance (no later than Tuesday April 1).
MECHANICS AND GRADING:
This paper should be a minimum of ten (10) FULL pages long (but can be longer). The paper must be submitted by midnight on Thursday May 8 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:
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.
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.
Language: The essay shows strong command of the English language, especially in diction and variety of sentence structure.
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 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.
