Topic notification due: Thursday 17 November, hard copy in class
Paper due: Thursday 8 December, 1 p.m., hard copy under my door at 534 Watson Hall
Weight: 10% of your year’s mark
Length: 3000 – 3300 words (10 - 11 pages in standard formatting)
“The hardest thing in the world is to study one object.”
C. Wright Mills, Afterword to The Sociological Imagination (1959)
The essay will be a discussion and comparison of two works from the syllabus in the light of one of the issues listed below. In a case where the works are very short, you may address three works.
1. What does ‘freedom’ or ‘liberty’ mean within your chosen works? (Tip: don’t limit yourself to the texts about slavery, and don’t assume that explicit declarations about the topic or uses of the words themselves are the only evidence.)
2. How is relation to land an issue in your chosen works? (Tip: think about farming, claiming, escaping, owning, naming, etc… also perhaps read ahead to Thoreau & Kirkland on this.)
3. How is beauty a significant category in your chosen works? (Tip: it could be physical human beauty, or it could be beauty of style and language, or any other sense of the word.)
4. How do your chosen works represent relationships between men? (Tip: you could include relationships asserted with readers if it seems appropriate, or relationships mediated by women. You could also consider texts where men seem to reject such relationships in favour of self-reliance.)
5. How is class or social distinction represented or considered in your chosen texts? (Tip: I'm mainly thinking of distinctions within a given group -- ie, among whites, or among blacks. What are the markers of prestige or power? Are they changeable, or fixed?)
Whichever of these issues you choose, understand that you are to append “so what?” to the questions asked above. Or, to be less confrontational about it, “why might this be?” or “to what effect?” Your thesis statement will essentially be an answer to the question, what did I learn about each text and about the issue in question by intensely studying these works in tandem?
You do not have to give equal time to your chosen works, but explain what the weighting will be, and why. For long works, you will have to be very specific about your focus; again, just explain your choices. It is OK to say, “despite the fact that this phenomenon can be amply seen in major character Y, I will focus instead on minor character X” – or, “although it is an exception in the novel, event Q makes the most thought-provoking comparison with text P.” In this way, your essay will be more specific than the general prompts above, and it should have an informative title that fits the actual focus you develop.
I encourage you to make unexpected matches to begin to think about connections and contradictions across different spheres of discussion and different literary genres. Don’t settle too quickly on the texts you wish to compare. Maybe pick one text you KNOW you want to think about, and then cast about for a while about productive matches, considering criteria beyond “similar” and “opposite,” or finding similarities and opposition where you didn’t expect them.
If you come up with another basis of comparison you would like to pursue beyond those I’ve listed, I will consider it. See below.
Consultation and Topic notification:
Consultation is optional but I highly recommend it. In addition to regular office hours, I will hold extra office hours in the last two weeks of classes, TBA.
The topic notification will consist of a) your chosen works; b) the issue you will take up; c) a short paragraph indicating your main focus or proto-thesis. You may hand it in early if you like. You may end it with questions for me, and if you do I will try to answer them promptly.
The topic notification is not optional: I will not consider your paper “submitted” until one week after I receive the topic notification, so if your topic notification comes too late, you will incur late penalties for the paper.
Also: if you find your topic straying too far from the prompts above, before or after you send in your topic notification, I want to know about it BEFORE you hand in your paper.
Secondary Sources and Academic Integrity:
You are not required to use secondary sources for this essay. However, if you do, you must list every one in a Works Cited, and follow MLA formatting for in-text citations. While we all look up some basics on wikipedia and shmoop and so on, and I don’t want you to hide that, I’ll be more impressed if for intellectual input you use recent and reputable sources, which may be located via the MLA International Bibliography or America: History and Life (both of these are databases searchable through the Queen’s library portal). Or perhaps you may want to draw in an idea or term from a theory course or a course in another discipline. Just remember: your essay should not merely repeat and report on secondary sources, but build on them. You might say, “X says that Y is Z; this suggests to me that B may also be Z” or “While I agree with X that Y is Z, I am not so sure that A is B.” See here for further information.