Final Writing Project: Textual Analysis Essay 1500-2000 words (6-8 double-spaced pages of substance)
Requires research component: at least two secondary scholarly sources
Assignment:
This assignment requires that you write a textual analysis essay.
These texts have been selected to offer a wide range of possible texts. Keep in mind that while these texts all raise questions about issues or ideas, the point of a literary research paper is to maintain focus on the text and the story it tells.
Question to ask yourself as you pursue writing the projects: Does this story or text matter? Why or why not? Who gets to tell stories? Who doesn’t get to tell stories? Is the text effective in communicating an idea? Does it draw sound conclusions?
You will have to frame your own research question. Email the instructor for assistance.
The paper requires:
-At least two citations of secondary sources
these should be scholarly references, from peer-reviewed journals; scholarly monographs; theory texts; scholarly websites.
-They should not be from textbooks; study sites (Schmoop, etc); references (encyclopedias or Wikipedia etc.); personal websites; aggregators; newspaper,s or magazines.
-They should be from the year 2000 or later – if you want to use an older source, please check with me – but a 40 or 50-year old peer-reviewed article about “The Lottery” is probably not much use. And certainly, at least one source should be relatively recent.
-Some of these texts will have virtually no direct references in secondary sources – or very few: “Stories of a Lynching” by Osborne; “An Indigenous Research Narrative” by Cole; “An Animal’s Place,” by Pollan; “A Class Riot Among the One Percent at Brooklyn’s Oldest Nursery School” by Pressler; “Los Angeles Against the Mountains I” by McPhee; “Rewinding” by Jia qing Wilson-yang
-Some of these articles will have their own reference lists or bibliographies.
– For some of them, you might check Google Scholar and then click the “Cited by” button
– For some, you might have to build a research question, then come at them by way of the subject, or by theory, or by genre