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HUM 3306: History of Ideas--The Age of Enlightenment to the Age of Anxiety
Summer 2012
ESSAY#2 INSTRUCTIONS: DUE BY MIDNIGHT
(i.e. the late evening of) WEDNESDAY June 13th
This is a Gordon Rule Writing
course, and so the writing-aspect, regardless of what is being written
upon, is taken quite seriously.
You must read and re-read (or at least re-read key passages of) the book
you are writing on, seeing how different passages/scenes/ideas
relate. You must write a draft and let it sit for a day or two, and
then go back adding more pertinent, more nuanced reflections. You
must approach essay writing not as if you are just letting the professor
know that you've read the assignments and lecture notes and more or less
understand them, but as if you are sculpting a work of art. (Yes: I know
... you are perhaps taking lots of classes; it's difficult to linger on
writing and revising. Still, I ask you to do this to the best of your
ability within the semester calendar limitations.)
If you had problems in the first essay in respect to the writing, you
should try to make an extra effort to improve in Essay#2. The two essays
are weighted equally in terms of your overall course grade (25% each), but
improvement can impact the final assessment of your course grade, when that
grade is hovering in the border b/w two grades.
● All the general
instructions for ESSAY#1 apply, except that this essay should be about 1500
words long or longer (again quality, not quantity), and it incorporates
research/secondary materials. The topic options are listed below.
● Use whatever citation
method that you have been taught in your Composition classes here at FIU or
elsewhere or which you typically use in your own discipline/major. If
you do not include a proper Bibliography page, your essay will not be read
or it will be lowered a grade or more.
●
Read the last two sentences again.
● Do not consult more
secondary sources than provided in the options below or in the
prefatory/supplemental scholarly materials in the editions ordered for the
course (an introduction in a different edition is o.k.). If I find
that additional secondary materials, other than below or in a book's
editorial introduction, have been used, the essay will likely receive an
immediately "F". If you are found guilty of plagiarism, you
will receive an "F" in the course. Please take note: I have
a pretty clear sense of your writing style from your first essay and
discussion forum entries, so it is very easy to detect plagiarism.
And, also, the "Turnitin" site filters for plagiarism.
● Read
the last paragraph again. It's a sad state of educational affairs
when I have to write the previous warning ... I do not want to distrust
students, but every semester ... well, let's put it this way: I have
a separate drawer in my office desk dedicated to student misconduct cases
or potential-to-be-discovered-misconduct cases.
● For secondary, research
materials: each option below comes with links to online
professional/scholarly journals or articles or to the ProjectMuse journal
database accessed through the FIU library system. Students sometimes
have difficulty figuring out how to get to the links. Follow the
directions closely, and you'll figure it out.
● Incorporate the supplied
(linked) secondary materials by paraphrasing their arguments or part of
their arguments, or by quoting a section of their arguments/key
points. Do this in the main body of your essay (not the introduction
or conclusion). Your goal is not to show that you've read the
secondary materials per se, but that, having read the materials, your own
argument/points have become more sophisticated and developed, because you
have consulted authoritative wisdom about the topic you are working on. It
is, of course, possible to dispute such “authoritative wisdom.”
● Definitely note that I
have not quantified how many times you should quote or paraphrase or refer
to a secondary source's argument. I'm asking you to develop your own
analytical ideas and then judiciously incorporate outside
ideas/sources. That said, no more than 20% of your paper should be
quoted material, whether from the main texts or secondary sources.
● You have to know what your
argument is and you have to know the arguments/main points of the secondary
material. Only then can you integrate secondary research.
Half-hearted tossing in of information from a secondary source--as if it's
some strange vegetable you don't have a taste for--is not
appropriate. Research typically requires reading a lot of material
that ends up not being useful: that's part of the discipline of doing
research, ferreting out the useful from the non-useful. Do it (from
the provided links)!
● If you do not incorporate
the secondary materials supplied (in a qualitative, not quantitative
sense), your essay will automatically be dropped at least a letter
grade. Get it? Pay attention to these instructions!
●
You have to take responsibility and learn how to get access to the FIU
library resources from home or from on campus on your own. Or ask
assistance from the library staff.
OPTION
ONE: FRANKENSTEIN
Focus
on the theme or issue of the family or intimate relations in the novel, and
make the scene(s) when the monster hangs out in the woodshed spying on the
impoverished family central to or important for an interpretation of the
novel. It may be that you start right off in your introduction
establishing why the monster's interaction with the cottage family is
crucial to our understanding of the novel's overall meaning; it may be that
you look almost exclusively at just the cottage scenes in terms of how the
monster's sensibility expands or grows; or it may be that you establish a
sequence/trajectory of broader or more encompassing ideas in which you use
the cottage episode or refer to it specifically only ½ or 2/3rd of the way
through your paper. It is possible, as you develop your ideas, that
the family theme becomes subordinate to another theme (e.g., Victor’s
ambition). That’s fine.
For
a more elaborate example of the last point: say you think the novel is
mainly about Victor's inability to maintain connection with his family
(because of his ambition or ego). Certainly the scenes in which the monster
wants to be part of the cottage family would be key or linked to that main
idea--but you might not review the pertinent scenes as evidence until
midway in your paper; you would, presumably, start by showing how Victor is
alienated, by his ambition, from his own family. Your paper might be
about alienation from family structure or dynamics, with a key piece of
evidence/interpretation being the cottage scene.
Literary analysis requires a shaping idea or theme or thesis, spelled out
or implied in your opening paragraph or opening paragraphs (an introduction
can be longer than one paragraph!). But unlike some other forms of
analysis, the KEY scene that the analysis hooks around, if there is one key
scene, might not be trotted out in your analysis until midway
through. Interpretation of literature--that is, somebody reading YOUR
interpretation--can become fun because it is a process of discovery, an
inductive argument that builds complexity upon complexity, rather than a
deductive argument by which you state the main point, and then follow up
with subpoints and evidence. (See a review of inductive and deductive
analysis in the instructions for the first essay: the first “builds up” an
argument, the second “breaks it down”.)
Here is a sample organizational roadmap for a hypothetical essay on Frankenstein, using the topic above:
--intro.
--1st 5th: author's anxieties about family/mothering/nurturing
--2nd 5th: translates into a narrative about education and family
structures needed for education/development of a sensibility
--3rd 5th: Victor's alienation from his family; seeking of knowledge at the
cost of sacrificing relationships
--4th 5th: what other critics have said on these issues + monster's take on
education (cottage scene)
--5th 5th: the consequences of a bad or interrupted education for the
monster
Please
do not overly rely (i.e. you can rely somewhat) on above to structure your
paper if you elect this option. I'm offering it so that you see the
pattern of how analysis can proceed in stages.
Secondary
material links:
Go
to the main online page for FIU Libraries, click on the link to connect
from home (if you are working from home), click on "Find Articles and
Do Research" link, find the "A-Z" list of electronic
journals/resources, find the electronic journal database "Project
Muse," do a search using the terms (without quote marks)
"Frankenstein family" or "Frankenstein parents," and
choose what seem to be the most pertinent two articles, for your purposes,
from the among the first 10 or so listed.
OPTION
TWO: DARWIN
Darwin--a
moderately devout man himself, although increasingly doubtful as he grew
older--well knew that Origin of Species would be attacked upon
various grounds, especially for its supposed impiety. In what ways do
you see Darwin anticipating a less than receptive audience, an audience
that will feel its traditional beliefs are being challenged? You
might consider not only the sequence of chapters (why does he begin with
domestic or artificial selection?), but also specific passages (e.g., the
famous "Tree of Life" passage on page 74 or the concluding
passage on pages 120-121). How do you account for Darwin's fairly
frequent recourse to adjectives such as "wonderful" or
"beautiful" when speaking of adaptations? Do not simply answer
these questions one after another; I’m offering them as brainstorming tools
to help you get ideas, not as paint-by-numbers questions that you “fill in”
in your actual paper. You need to devise your own thesis about
Darwin’s book (not just Darwin himself or evolutionary theory), and select
suitable quotes. Ideally, your paper should show that you understand
1) the relationship of Darwin's theory to the intellectual currents of the
historical period in which he was writing (read the lecture notes!), 2)
Darwin's basic argument in his book, and 3) the strategic or rhetorical
ways in which he conveys his argument in his book. Again, do not just
mechanically “answer” the previous 1,2,3: the basic goal is to show you
understand how Darwin’s specific book—the content of the treatise and the
way he presents that content--relates to and responds to its
intellectual/cultural context.
Again, ponder stages of analysis, including historical context. Your
paper might not even begin talking about Darwin or his book per se (except
for your intro., until page three or so).
Secondary
material links:
Link
#1. Go to the main online page for FIU Libraries, click on the link to
connect from home (if you are working from home), click on "Find
Articles and Do Research" link, find the "A-Z" list of
electronic journals/resources, find the electronic journal "Project
Muse," and do a search to find this essay: Cosans, Chris
Was Darwin a Creationist?
Link
#2. Also use "Project Muse" to find this essay: Campbell, John
Angus
Why Was Darwin Believed? Darwin's Origin and the
Problem of Intellectual Revolution
OPTION
THREE: LOCKE, ADAM SMITH, AND MARX
Locke,
Adam Smith (in the Wealth of Nations excerpt/e-text link), and Marx
are concerned about the value of our laboring activity. Write an
essay on labor’s value, which substantially uses and analyzes Locke’s,
Smith’s, and Marx’s notions. This is NOT a comparative paper per se,
but rather an essay focusing on an ethical, political, and/or philosophical
issue that requires you to consult, as it were, three great thinkers on the
subject. If you wrote on Locke previously, you may still do this
topic—but do not repeat major portions of your previous essay. This essay
gives you more latitude to inject your own ideas (as it were) but be
sure to convey your knowledge of Locke, Smith, and Marx as you do so;
please note that you aren’t required to devote 1/3rd of your paper to
Locke, 1/3rd to Smith, and 1/3rd to Marx—the percent
will vary depending on your topic. Please note, also, that you don’t
have to be pro-Marx; if you want to argue against Marx, or more
specifically against the “surplus value”=”accumulated labor”=”exploitation”
concept, you are welcome to do so—you do not need to follow the prof’s
avowed take on this issue (the prof. does expect a well-argued paper,
though).
Secondary material links:
#1.
Go to this link and use some aspect of its analysis or data:
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
#2.
Use the Bibliography (in the essay it's called "Further
Information") at the end of the above link/article to find another
relevant link/article.
Alternatively, or if links#1 and#2 above have died, use the link
immediately below:
http://www.rogerwendell.com/wealth.html
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