Source Essay

For this assignment, you will write a 1000 word essay that comprehensively describes the argument that is made in a scholarly article of your choosing. You should think now about what is really drawing your interest in our readings thus far, as ideally you would choose a text or author now that would sustain your interest over the course of other future assignments.

The article can be focused on any text or author that we have read or will read for class. If you would like to choose another author outside of our syllabus, please let me know as soon as possible. In the final draft of this essay, I will want to see the following elements clearly and comprehensively explained:

1. We should have a clear sense of the article’s logistical details. Who is the author? What is their role and their home institution, if they have one? In what journal or essay collection (or other venue) does the article appear? What is the purpose, focus, or significance of that journal or collection?
2. Next, you should communicate a clear idea of the problem, issue, or exigence that the article is answering. What is the debate the article is intervening in? What problem, lack, or gap does the author perceive in the scholarship on the text in question?
3. Following from this problem or issue, what is the argument the author is making? You can think of the argument as the thesis of the article, and sometimes that thesis is relatively plain and straightforward. But many times the argument is built in such a way that only by taking in the essay as a whole can you rightly articulate the author’s main point.
4. Next, tell us a bit about how you would describe the methodology the author employs to build, defend, and explain their argument. Are they focused only on a close reading of the text in question, or do they incorporate historical or cultural context into the body of their essay? Do they use a specific theoretical or critical framework to help make sense of what is going on in the text?
5. Finally, we should see a brief evaluation of the article. This means that you write a bit about what you find valuable about the article, problems you perceive with its ideas or conclusions, and particularly striking insights or revelatory points you feel the author makes.