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HUM 3306: History of Ideas--The Age of Enlightenment to the Age of Anxiety
Summer 2012
ESSAY#1 INSTRUCTIONS: DUE BY MIDNIGHT
(11:59PM) WENESDAY May 23rd
General instructions:
--The paper should be
double-spaced, 1000 words long or longer (but not too much longer; quality,
not quantity!).
--Follow the Blackboard internal “Dropbox” instructions for how to submit
your paper within Blackboard (which then gets shuttled automatically to
Turnitin; you don’t need to register in Turnitin per se).
--Remember to verify that your paper has been correctly submitted.
Excuses days later about problems will not be accepted. If you have a
problem, you must notify me before the due date.
--Once the entire batch of essays are assessed, you will be able to go back
into your paper--within the system—and see your score and feedback in
bubble-comments. My colleague in the History Department, Dr. Jeremy
Rowan, will be grading the papers; however, all matters about the papers
should be directed to me, not him.
--You may draw upon information/perspectives gleaned from the
"Prof" lectures and associated links, but the main ideas and
particular approach should be yours. Do NOT use web sample papers,
SparkNotes, etc. to get ideas or for phrasing. Do NOT do secondary research
via the internet or elsewhere. Turnitin flags down papers that may
have plagiarized phrasing or sections.
--Use
whatever citation method for the primary text(s) that you have been taught
in your Composition classes here at FIU or elsewhere. Or the one that
you use in your own discipline/major. Be consistent in the
method. For this first essay, there should be typically no other
citations than for the primary text or author him/herself.
--Refer to the
Checklist at the end of this file; you are expected to take care, to the
best of your ability, to meet the criteria established on the
Checklist. Note the grading scale.
--Do not provide a
cover page; put your name/classname/date turned in/option#/your title at
the top of the first page.
--Be prepared,
should it be requested, to supply a draft stage of the essay (if you're
wondering; this helps discourage plagiarism!). This means you must remember
to permanently save a draft at some point as you are composing.
--Organization,
quality of analysis, and style will all be factors in determining your
grade, worth 25% of the course grade. Be sure to make a computer-disk
backup.
--Students sometimes ask what the “rubrics” are in respect to grading: go
to the end of this file, and you will see a Revision Checklist.
Those, in effect, are the rubrics for assessment, but it would be
impractical and counter-productive to give you a break-down score in the
four categories and subcategories: comments and overall feedback are, thus,
“holistic.”
Choose one of the options below for the topic of your
essay. These options are not intended to box you in, but to provoke
insightful and original analysis. Do not just "answer" the
questions below—they are intended to help you discern complexity, tensions,
and even inconsistencies in our authors:
OPTION ONE: One
might make the argument that the most key passage in Locke is section 50,
near the end of Chapter V, in which he concludes his discussion of gold
(money) and the obtainment of a "disproportionate and unequal
possession of the earth." Read this passage very
carefully. Do you agree that "men have agreed to a
disproportionate and unequal possession of the earth" through
"tacit and voluntary consent"? Or was this imposed upon most men
by the strongest among them? Can "a man fairly possess more land” than
he can use “without injury to anyone"? Does money (i.e. gold and
silver) represent real wealth in goods and services? What is, or
should be, the role of government in securing the right to and protection
of “disproportionate” wealth? To what extent is this, indeed, the key or
core of Locke’s Second Treatise? This option invites,
perhaps, critique of Locke or discussion of wider political-philosophical
issues raised by or in the Second Treatise. (Remember: just don’t
answer the previous questions … use them to brainstorm, not to organize
your essay!!!)
OPTION TWO: A
careful reading of Locke’s notions about property development, spoilage,
and so on, might lead you to conclude that he would be opposed to
"excessive" capitalist development of real estate (i.e., say a
Donald Trump tower on Miami-Dade wetlands), or perhaps the reverse. Explore
to what extent you think Locke’s ideas in The Second Treatise are
significant for arguments for or against large-scale real-estate
development. This option provides an occasion to apply Locke’s ideas
(especially in Chapter V) to the contemporary reality of land development
that we see all around us in South Florida. Is development always
"industrious and rational," as Locke seems to imply, or can it
sometimes represent "the covetousness of the quarrelsome and the
contentious"? (Section 34). Does development always serve the common
good or does it sometimes, or often, serve only the wealthy? (As with
Option One: do not answer these questions per se; they are offered as
brainstorming cues.) If you have some facts about Trump or South
Florida real-estate from the internet, you may use them (in which case cite
your source): this is an exception to the “no research” instructions above,
and in general you should not be taking up much paper space with such.
OPTION THREE: To what extent does Equiano’s awareness of his lowly status
as a slave impel him to turn to a European religion; adopt European
(capitalist) business practices; and become an ‘individual’ in the European
and/or Enlightenment sense of that term? Do you think Equiano abandoned his
‘roots,’ by participating enthusiastically in European wars, religion, and
commerce (including the slave trade), etc? Did he ‘sell out’ to some extent?
Obviously, Equiano is a complex character. He was an abolitionist but he
also participated in the slave trade and advocated the colonization of
Africa (at the end of his memoir). Try to explain some of the tensions or
contradictions in his character, by looking both at his psychology and at
some of the social forces at work in the Eighteenth Century or
Enlightenment era. It's up to you to devise a main point about
Equiano that gets at his complexity without being meandering! (Again:
don’t just answer the questions!)
Tips for analytical essay writing:
TITLE: Your title
is the first chance to make an impression. A vague title (e.g., "John
Locke's Ideas" or “Locke’s Second Treatise”) that could fit any
other paper written on the same author or text gives a vague impression,
indicating that the essay to follow likely lacks a focused main
point.
AUDIENCE: Assume
an audience much like your fellow students--familiar with the work, but
unfamiliar with your particular approach, and therefore requiring specific
examples (textual evidence, i.e., quotes) to understand, appreciate, and
accept your analysis and argument. Avoid plot summary or tedious repetition
of an author's points without higher level analysis, however. It
is very easy, especially with the Equiano topic, to end up just summarizing
his life rather than analyzing the way he presents himself and the context
within which he presents himself.
IDEAS: Good ideas
come not from your abstract memory of a text, but from your close reading
and paying attention to details that might radiate out into larger patterns
of meaning. I do not expect you to come up with something "new"
from my perspective, but something "new" from your perspective.
If you don't make a discovery in the process of drafting the paper, it
probably will not be very satisfactory.
THESIS/DEVELOPMENT:
Good essays unfold a major, focused idea or argument (your thesis)
stage-by-stage, in a manner that will be compelling and convincing to the
reader. This means that the old, boring high-school strategy of breaking
down your basic idea into three (more or less disconnected) sub-points may
not be the most suitable arrangement. Instead, for example, an essay
(depending upon the thesis, of course) could in the first fourth highlight
some intriguing contradiction or tension in a text (note that in the topic
options # 1, #2, and #3 above I’m directing you to investigate complexity,
perhaps even inconsistency, in Locke or Equiano); the next fourth might
frame the tension in terms of a larger moral, literary, philosophical,
religious, or historical debate or issue; and the last two fourths would
illustrate the ramifications of the tension for the text you're exploring
(tensions resolved? and if so, by what means? tensions not resolved? and if
so, how does the author/narrator cope with irresolution?). An essay can be
thoughtful and well-organized, and yet still be confusing to the reader.
Most often this occurs because the essay writer needs to provide clearer
sign-posts to the overall argument. At crucial junctures (the topic
sentence for a paragraph introducing a new stage of your argument), try to
foreground analytical points rather than just something about character or
the plot or the page-by-page sequence of a text's ideas.
There are two
basic patterns of development:
Deductive: here,
you state the thesis of your argument (your main point) directly up front
(i.e., by the end of your introduction) and proceed to provide evidence for
your main point. For example: you could make your main point
"Equiano's obsession with status is not defensible" or
"Equiano's obsession with status is justified." And then
the subsequent paragraphs would present aspects of your position and your
evidence for those aspects.
Dialectical/inductive:
here you proceed to make successive more complex discoveries through a
thesis--antithesis--synthesis pattern. For example: the first third
of your paper would explore how "Equiano is obsessed with
status"; the second third would explore "how Equiano is in fact
filling in a void with status seeking"; and the last third would pull
the two ideas together through a more complex observation, that
"Equiano fills in his grief of being exiled from his native country by
seeking to emulate the status values of European culture" (note how
what seems to be a negative point about Equiano--that he is a sell out by
seeking status--ends up to be a more complex positive point).
Rhetorically, in your introduction you would still need to state your
overall point as (for example) "Equiano fills in his grief..." or
you might want, without being vague, to state the thesis as a problem that
your paper in effect solves, but without giving the solution immediately:
"Clearly, Equiano's eagerness to obtain status makes his character a
vexing one if we assume he should remain consistently loyal to his native
country or identity."
Here is another example from Locke. Say you had to write a paper on
Locke’s chapter on property/money, but were given broad latitude by your
professor. Your ultimate thesis might be something like “Locke
advocates equality politically, but in the process allows for inequality in
wealth acquisition”. Notice how the argument/stages of argument below
get unfolded:
1--Locke begins with anti-hierarchy and a labor theory of value; nobody
subordinated/everybody has an equal chance to obtain property.
2--But problem of irrational punishment etc. and spoiling/hoarding: so
consent to gov’t and money.
3--1
and 2 come together in your entrepreneurial freedom for a contract b/w
employee/employer, based not on labor value but on “market” value (Locke
implies, but does not directly make these points).
4--No longer a “fair” correspondence between labor and the fruits of one’s
labor results.
INTRODUCTIONS: Keep us focused on the text or author or main idea. Do not
start off with weighty generalities about morality, the human condition,
and so on. Avoid the "funnel" opening paragraph if
possible. If your introduction is more than a single paragraph (it
might be two paragraphs if, for instance, you were setting up an author in
terms of especially pertinent historical or cultural background), give an
extra line space between the introduction and paper proper.
QUOTES: Depositing
too many long quotes in a paper wastes space. Too few or no quotes, however,
suggest inattention to the text or texts. You should probably have one or
two longer, inset quotes, which you set up and analyze; the purpose here is
to indicate that there are especially key or symptomatic passages that
warrant lingering over because they are so revelatory. Quotes,
besides helping to anchor/prove your points, often lead to analytical
discoveries as you ponder/unpack them.
Grading scale (Turnitin will indicate your numeric—100-0—grade score;
the grading scale is the traditional equivalents: A- = 90+; B- = 80+; and
so on):
A = Focused,
interesting main idea suggesting that you read, re-read, and probed around
the text at hand. Prose is not merely correct: it is compelling and
sophisticated. Organization makes sense given the topic and argument of the
paper. The paper is of sufficient quality that it could be put online as a
sample paper.
B = Main idea and
development are clear, but the organization is weak in a section or two, or
there are a few sentence or punctuation glitches that suggest careless
editing.
C= Paper has a
main idea, but not thought through by attending to the text or author
actively. Organization falls apart at key moments. Sentence construction,
although usually correct, is often imprecise or wordy. Nearly every page
shows signs of careless editing.
D = The thesis is
vague, and the organization is very chaotic. The paper indicates
little insight about or basic understanding of the author/text. Or the
prose/grammar suggests the need to go to the Writing Center.
F = The paper was not turned in. Such will receive (on a 0-100 scale)
a “0”.
Use the checklist--“Rubrics”-- below
to help you edit/revise your paper before you submit it:
Three tips for effective revising:
-- Revise with "fresh
eyes": revise at least a day after you've completed a substantial
draft.
-- Use a printed copy and
revise at a different locale than your computer.
-- Revise in four
"loops," using the revision checklist below.
Yes
No
CONTENT
____
____ sharply focused: no extraneous material
____ ____ complex aspects of issue
thoughtfully examined
____ ____ judicious use of supporting
specifics/quotes
ORGANIZATION & DEVELOPMENT
____
____ unified paragraphs, with clear topic sentences
____ ____ transitions between ideas and
sections of essay
____ ____ essay unfolds stage-by-stage,
no unnecessary "back-tracking" or repetition of sections
PROSE STYLE
____
____ straightforward and precise phrasing, without
sentence fragments or run-ons
____ ____ few boring "is"
verbs
____ ____ appropriate use of transition
words
____ ____ varied sentence length and
patterns
CORRECT GRAMMAR, ETC.
____
____ correct use of possessives and punctuation
____ ____ correct match between verbs
and subjects
____ ____ no typos/misspellings
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