1. Analysis Paper This essay will be worth up to 100 points; papers shorter than

1.
Analysis Paper
This essay will be worth up to 100 points; papers shorter than six full pages will not be accepted. This paper does not require research, and, in fact, I am mainly wanting to see your original thinking here, but if you do draw on secondary sources, be sure to quote directly from the source(s) and use parenthetical citations this is YOU Analyzing the work(s) and using evidence from the story, poem, play to support your thinking
you must include an MLA-8/9 format Works Cited page. This paper requires you to explore a very specific topic (these are not plot summaries); be sure you understand what you are focusing on for the work you choose. For example, if you are as to explore how setting is used in a story, don’t give an author biography or a history of the story; focus the story, and focus on setting.
The straight literary analysis (on just one work) This is definitely the more conventional option. It corresponds to the portion of Lecture 3 that looks at elements of fiction.
TOPICS FOR THE LITERARY ANALYSIS:
EVEN THOUGH THERE IS A LOT OF FORESHADOWING IN WILLIAM FAULKNER’S “ROSE FOR EMILY,” HOW DOES HE MANAGE TO KEEP THE READER IN SUSPENSE, MAYBE EVEN SURPRISED AT THE ENDING?
CLUES:consider whose point of view the story is being told from (it is an unusual point of view); is it a reliable narrator? why or why not?
thinking about that narrator again, how does it affect the plot (order of events) in the story, and is it done logically/reasonably?
IMPORTANT NOTE: Regardless of which topic you choose, be firm with your claims/statements. There should be no “I THINK,” or “I FEEL,” or “I BELIEVE,” or “IN MY OPINION” statements in your writing. State something, and then back it up with examples.
You must have examples/evidence in the form of direct quotations followed by correct parenthetical citations–this is not optional. You must quote/cite from the work you are analyzing. You will have a Works Cited entry for that work. Papers should be on topic, focused, edited, and proofread/ Any paper not in standard MLA-8 format will not be graded;
About 1/3 of the paper needs to be you quoting (evidence) from the literature; all direct quotations need parenthetical citations. You’ll want to use specific examples whenever possible. Feel free to draw on personal experience if it is appropriate, but that is not enough to support your thesis. There should be lots of supporting examples (documented quotations) from the works you are analyzing. Content is most important with the essay, this is not just personal opinion papers.
2.
Discussion 4-
you are going to use this space to discuss your upcoming Research Paper with me.
Yes, that means this week, you need to post your Proposal for approval.
I attached a Student Sample. There are very specific requirements about acceptable topics, what the thesis must include, and so on. For example, if you try to write about anything that does not cover one of the following three topics, it will not be accepted:
Research an unsolved mystery (it need not be a murder, but it is much easier if it is); based on the evidence, write up a reasonable argument for what actually happened. For example, who is a reasonable murderer in the Jack the Ripper or the Black Dahlia murders?
briefly write some background introducing your topic
craft a thesis statement that must follow a prescribed format (see below)
produce a tentative Works Cited page (more on that below as well)
Is there a particular format that you need to follow?
The short answer is, “sort of.”
You will have a brief (about a paragraph) opening that introduces the topic. It will essentially give some highlights about the case or conspiracy and explain that it’s never been satisfactorily solved.
NOTE HOW BOTH BEGIN WITH THE WORD ALTHOUGH; there are certainly other ways to frame an argument thesis, but I actually explained in a lecture why I want everyone to begin with “Although…”.
If you select the unsolved murder/crime topic, follow this template:
Although police have never found the killer of _______________________, the murder was actually committed by _______________________ .
EXAMPLE: Although Jonbenet Ramsey’s killer was never located, she was actually murdereed by her brother Burke which was then covered up by Jonbenet’s mother.
A Works Cited page with at least three sources at this point. At least one of those sources must be a book source. Even though I do no expect you to have double spacing and hanging indents, be sure your list has all of the information required for MLA-8 format entries; make sure the order of information, and the punctuation (periods, quotation marks, italics, etc.) are done correctly.
At least 500 words
3.
Creative Paper
This one will not necessarily be fully in MLA format. A bit further down the page, you will see what I mean under “Presentation.”
another interruption – what is with that graphic?
Ah, the Wizard Guinea Pig is a bit unusual. He, in part, represents two things:
The Night Circus, the novel that inspired this assignment
The fact that you are guinea pigs, you are one of the first groups to attempt this feat
Now, to be fair, my past several 102 classes have had equally inventive projects relating to their novels, and, in fact, the third option here is very much like the Museum Project my students who read Station Eleven did the past few years, and those turned out excellent. If anything the Museum option below is considerably easier than what they did. Also, unlike the earlier students, you are going to get three very different options here, so if you get flummoxed by one topic, skip it in favor of one of the others.
Oh, and although their museums were different from what you will be producing if you do choose the Museum option,
Ideally, you will find this chance to be imaginative fun. Who can say?
Choose just one of the following two topics:
A lot more detailed instructions follow, but just to get you thinking, you are going to do one of the following:
Write a new chapter of The Night Circus that reveals a new “tent” that you create.
In the role of a reveur, write an account of your impressions of The Night Circus when it appears in ___________
Before you make a choice, you will want to read (below) what each project requires/involves, and don’t forget to look at the section on “Presentation.” That may change your thinking a whole lot.
Oh, and those of you who are trying to avoid reading the novel, well, you likely have no idea what any of this means. READ the novel! You need it to do this project, and you do need it to do Discussion 9, which is worth 40 points. It is a pre-writing assignment for this project.
“Presentation” – notes on some choices you have
Special Note About Length Requirement: However you choose to present the project, the text should be 1150+ words, Yes, this time, I am looking at word count rather than page count because some of the options are not going to be MLA format documents
You may present this project in several ways. Some make more sense for one topic than they do the others, and I will offer some possible suggestions in each of the expanded topic instruction sections below, but here are a few possible ways to present your project:
You may write in traditional, MLA-forma (with a Works Cited page if appropriate), though it will not be an essay, exactly. Note: MLA format is how authors are expected to submit their novels to publishers, so it would fit the “Write a new chapter” topic very well.
You may create a website (pictures are required, and you may also include audio and video if you like). NOTE: students often find this the most fun/interesting option. Be sure to use a FREE version of an easy-to-use site like Wix, or Simplesite or Weebly (there are many others); you would need to e-mail me the link. The museum option is especially good as a website.
A specialized sort of website called a blogsite (WordPress, Blogspot, etc.) can be done free and is particularly appropriate for something like a journal (so the reveur journal would work very nicely as a blog.
You may create a video walk-through (with a written script which you’ll turn in.
Consider a podcast (with script) or an Instagram “story” or ______________.
This is your invention, and you are being given a lot of freedom, so make this your own; have fun with it.
This must be a minimum of five full pages.
4.
Discussion 5
“Trying to Find Chinatown”
What, really, is identity? When people ask me, “What are you?” (I do get asked that more than you might imagine), my quick answer is, “I’m Irish,” but am I? I have never been to Ireland, do not speak the language, rarely eat the food (though I do love potatoes; is that a stereotype?), and so on. To be fair, I am (like many in the U.S.) more of a mutt with some smatterings of Scottish and English as well, but Corbally is an Irish name still known in County Limerick.
Discuss the following:
Which of the two characters, Ronnie or Benjamin, has the better claim for being Chinese (or, if you prefer, Chinese-American)and why? Don’t rush here; this one-act play is a lot more complex than it might seem (and so is the question about what makes up identity).
Also, be sure to support your position with details from the play (I certainly would not overlook the long monologue where Ronnie names a whole lot of people (you will want to look them up) or the fact that the stage directions mention he is playing his violin like Hendrix.
Some tips and added thoughts:
This particular discussion begs for a little bit of research on ethnicity/race/identity (what do sociologists think about this?). If you do include researched material, please include the Works Cited entry and/or links to other sites.
Also consider such recent events as the Rachel Dolezal controversy.
You might even want to look up and refer to Nell Bernstein’s article “Goin’ Gangsta, Choosin’ Cholita” (which is available on the internet as I type this).
5.
Discussion 6
This week you looked at sound and form–two important elements to consider in many (not all) poems. Even so-called “free” poetry, such as e e cummings’s “l(a”, often has intentional form. But we are going to work with a more-traditional, closed form, the haiku. The rules for haiku were in this week’s lecture, and you looked at examples.
Here is your task:
Choose either one of the following two topics
Write a suite of haiku. 14+ for 20 points. They should all be somehow related (six sports haiku, twelve haiku on family, fifteen haiku relating to a backpacking trip to Yosemite, etc.). Just follow the syllable rules in this week’s lecture. To make them easier to read, I recommend putting some extra spacing between each haiku.
If you would like to tell a story, then you can mix genres and can re-tell any of the short stories or plays (not poems) on our reading list in a handful of haiku in half a dozen haiku (For 14+ haiku, trying for 20 points). Reducing a longer work to so few lines should be quite a fun challenge.
6.
This goes with question 2, Discussion 4. The topic you choose for that Proposal.
It must be in MLA format and must include an MLA-8 format, including a Works Cited page with at least three
sources. This paper has to be nine full pages.
There are different sorts of research papers. The ones that students often do in elementary and secondary schools are informational; those are called explanatory research papers, and they amount to little more than simple copy/paste fact files, almost like theme-based shopping lists or Wikipedia articles. They do not involve actual thinking, logic, argument. We will not be doing one of those.
The other sort of research paper is called exploratory (which means it explores some significant issue that requires both expansion and proof), and it involves looking at a subject that is more open-ended, often controversial, and taking a side based on the research evidence you uncover.
You will be developing an essay on a subject that is open to investigation or speculation. For your paper you are going to do one of the following:
Research some unsolved crime (possibly a cold case), and based on the evidence you discover, argue what likely actually happened and why,
You will be doing this in three major steps: 1. pick a topic that fits the assignment and make sure there is sufficient, detailed evidence available to make your case, 2. put together a complete research proposal and get it approved, 3. develop the final paper. Those first two steps are explored in more detail on the Research Proposal assignment page. What follows here is more detail on what the final paper will contain.
The final research project: a sort of checklist: The finished paper must be at least nine full pages to earn any score;
If you include pictures (and I strongly recommend you do; it will help your score), then your paper will need to be longer than nine pages; pictures do not count as pages of text; they do not count towards your page limits).
Since this is a research paper, be sure there is sufficient documented secondary source material supporting and illustrating your claims throughout the essay; about 1/3 of your paper must be direct quotations followed by parenthetical citations. Yes, I DO KNOW there are other ways to use sources, and there are other ways to frame quotations. The lecture on Research explained in detail why I want to see direct quotations and parentical citations, SO DO NOT just summarize or paraphrase.
The last page of the paper will be your Works Cited page, which must be done in standard MLA-8 format. The Works Cited page always starts on its own page, and it does not count towards your page count.
ANY entry on the Workd Cited page must be a work you directly quote (followed by a parenthetical citation) in the body of your paper at least once.
For the Research Proposal, you were also required to follow a very specific thesis template (basically filling in the blanks). That same thesis (starting with the word “Although…” remember?) MUST be your thesis in this paper.
However, your sources can have changed (that is normal); you might have more sources now, and you might have found stronger sources and swapped a few weak ones out. That’s actually a good thing!
Faq, tips, hints, and further things I am looking for
If you are wondering how you can possibly write nine full pages (not counting the pictures and the Works Cited), remember that 1/3 of the paper needs to be EVIDENCE–direct quotations (followed by the required parenthetical citations) taken directly from your sources. You are NOT the expert on this topic. You are consulting experts, and their findings are what you will use to make your case.
Alongside that last point, this paper is in no way about you. There should be no “I think” or “I feel” or “I believe” statements or any other “I/me” statements. Be objective. Make the argument based on what you have read in your sources.
OK, finally, and this is also really important: use good sources. Yes, good is an abstract word, but here it means you want rich, detailed sources with a lot of thought and information. As a general rule (not always true, though) a book is a better source than an article; a long, detailed article is much better than a short one. And, of course, the authority of the writer is often important (so an article published in The New York Times is generally more credible than on a personal blogsite.
“Finally.” Let’s soften things a little. REMEMBER you do not have to PROVE BEYOND SHADOW OF A DOUBT that your position is correct. You can’t. History either has no idea what happened, or it has accepted a different version of what happeneed. All you need to do is provide reasonable doubt that __________ was the actual Black Dahlia killer or that __________ and __________ conspired to have Marilyn Monroe killed because _______________. Argument, after all, is not about difinitive proof; it is about making a “reasonable” case based on evidence 🙂