South Pacific: in Fiction, Film, and Culture

Bruce Harvey

Fall 2009

GUIDELINES FOR RESEARCH ESSAY: DRAFT DUE OCT. 27; FINAL VERSION DUE DEC. 8)—BOTH VIA EMAIL

Essay Draft

A good faith effort on the draft is expected.  Everybody has different draft-to-final-version habits, and so the rule about how cooked the draft should be is flexible.  It should be cooked enough so I have something coherent to give you feedback on, but not so cooked/done that my intervention becomes too after-the-fact.  You should try to give me either ½ of the paper fairly well-cooked, or the entire paper raw here and there.

Put brief comments in brackets [here I will look at…] as needed to indicate the rough/not-worked-out spots.  Secondary citations for the draft need not be in place, but do give me a working Bibliography (secondary materials you’ve used or are planning to use). 

My feedback on drafts is often ample, and revision/elaboration for the final version should be ample too.

Essay Final Version

The final version, about fifteen pages or more long (double-spaced), should be polished stylistically and, of course, correct in terms of grammar, punctuation, citations, and so on.   You may use whatever citation method you prefer—i.e., Chicago style (citations as endnotes) or MLA style (citations in text).  I will discuss the merits of both in class (as needed) and there will be two sample papers showing the differences via links at the top of the online syllabus.

The Bibliography should indicate that you have done your homework. Everyone’s topic and thus research needs will differ, but around six articles and three or four scholarly books should suffice. The secondary material may be historical-cultural, biographical, and/or critical, depending on your argument.  

Feedback on the final version will be very minimal.

Essay Texts and Topics

The key rule is that, whatever you write on, there must be a single object of attention: a particular text or film or art object or issue and so on.  There must be something that you “look” at and intensely study via pure thought, in addition to the research that informs and supplements your thinking. 

See IDEAS EMERGE FROM THE TEXT tip below.

Do NOT choose a comparative topic (as always, there are exceptions).

TIPS FOR ESSAY WRITING (examples come from a variety of classes)

1.  IDEAS EMERGE FROM THE TEXT.  Abstraction will only carry you so far.  It’s best, once you have a glimmer of an idea, to read and re-read, taking notes, circling important SYMPTOMATIC passages, and making connections with kindred passages.  It sounds glib, but in a sense ALL YOU HAVE TO DO is to find a cluster of interesting passages.  Copy them to a file, and start writing around/about the passages.  Yeah, you may read a bit of theory (on postcolonialism, for instance), to get some friction between the theory and the text; yeah, you may read a bit of history, to avoid historical bloopers and add texture/density to your argument; and of course you will consult some of the received wisdom of previous interpreters.  But the intellectual dance remains a dance around the text—and it is your dance. You always ultimately must have a main point, but if you look for a main point prematurely, you’ll end up sounding like CliffNotes. Try to avoid exclusively standing back from a text and abstractly thinking from memory "I think I want to write about the women in Frankenstein" or "I'm interested in the theme of xxxxyyy in Frankenstein."  Instead, look for the little oddities, etc., that lead you to track down a pattern of oddity/tension/'crisis' in the text.  It doesn't mean that you end up writing about trivia; it just means you avoid starting with abstract themes or issues in your brain-storming/idea-generating process. 

2.  ARGUMENTS ARE NOT DICED-UP THEMES; THEY SHOULD HAVE SOME DRAMA/CRISIS/TENSION (but don't get melodramatic).  One does not want to say "the theme of disease has three aspects in Blu's Hanging."  We are taught to think that way in high school and in composition classes.  Maybe we need to start out that way, but it leads to limited rhetorical possibilities and limited argument sophistication.  It is better to think of a text as having an issue that it is "obsessed" by and needs to find a "remedy" for.  Then you sort of play doctor/detective.  The practical way of getting tension is to take clusters of passages via TIP ONE above and get a flow chart involving three to seven clusters or idea arcs.  Maybe even start your paper with an odd quote that manifests, as it were, a symptom.  And then you uncover layer by layer the complexities of the issue/problem, and then show how the problem is resolved or not resolved.  In an ideal world, these complexities and issues resonate with something within you, which makes you want to chase down meaning.  The reader doesn’t want to know what your obsessions are, but I do believe personal connections to your “objective” material makes for stronger, more incisive and interesting arguments usually.

3.  DO NOT GO INTO CELEBRATION MODE, as if you writing an introduction to some high-school edition of the text.  But also watch for hyper-suspicion mode; above I say that analysis looks for symptomatic passages/patterns, and yet looking on the text as “diseased” can be carried too far.

4. DO NOT RUN TO THE LIBRARY IMMEDIATELY (BUT DEFINITELY GO LATER).  You must think through some issues before you go to the library.  If you "own" an idea initially, your research will have direction and focus and you will be less likely to get lost in the morass of other scholarly perspectives.  But ultimately you must be in dialogue with other specific interpretations.  Good scholarship assumes an audience that is engaged in ongoing dialogues about authors or texts or issues.

5. EACH ARGUMENT IDEA OR ARC IS NEVER DONE IN TERMS OF REVISION.  Everyone's draft-to-completion process works differently.  But usually you have to go through a draft over and over and over again, heaping on layers of complexity, twists and turns, more "But this is not the real malaise the family suffers from.  If we go back to the first scene, the real problem turns out to be...."s.  The obvious problem with this is that you may not have time to slowly cook the paper.  But that, nonetheless, is what I am asking of you.

6. PLAY WITH TITLES AND SUBSECTION TITLES early on in the process.  This may seem to go against the "don't think abstractly" rule, but trying to come up with clever titles in fact can work as a good way of brainstorming, as long as you see them as being provisional.  You might not even know what your title means initially!  Vice-versa: sub-headings can help control some of those wacky ideas that get too wacky, because you know whether sub-contents fit the sub-label.

7.  WE MUST KNOW YOUR THESIS/MAIN POINT BY THE END OF YOUR INTRODUCTION.  But don't think of a thesis as capturing the entirety of your argument.  All that is needed is a nomination of the main issue/question in play (not the answer).  This allows for an inductive rather than deductive approach. (Most of my tips are suggesting an inductive method of getting ideas and composing.)  Definitely have an extra line space between your introduction and the rest of the paper.  It is OK, and probably desirable, to have introductions that are several paragraphs long, but the reader in such cases needs to know where the introduction ends. 

8. FIRST REAL SECTION OF YOUR ESSAY MIGHT BE HISTORICAL.  After your introduction, depending upon your topic/text, you might have some background information about the author, the era, the place, etc.  This is reassuring to the reader because it makes you seem knowledgeable.

9. OR YOU MIGHT SITUATE YOUR ISSUE/TEXT WITHIN THE SCHOLARLY TRADITION/DEBATE ABOUT IT.  This also gives your voice authority.  I myself don't do this, or rather save such placing-of-my-argument for long, long endnotes.  I don't like to hear my own argument, as I'm making it, bounced against others.  However, most essays do the bouncing. Example: "A number of scholars interested in postcolonial Asian-Pacific fiction have focused on how indigenous populations or authors can return the 'gaze' of the imperialist.  Not surprisingly, this has been noted in Blu's Hanging, particularly by scholar x and scholar y in respect to the haole school-teacher...."  You will have other professors who will expect you to be upfront in this fashion, and that is fine, too.  I want you to do your homework, but you can show you did your homework in the endnotes, at least in respect to specific interpretations by other scholars.

10.  IF YOU DON'T, DO READ YOUR OWN PROSE ALOUD for a better style.  It is easy (especially if you use theoretical terms) to start getting pompous sounding and lost in verbiage.   

11.  PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT WORKS FOR YOU IN THE SCHOLARSHIP YOU READ.  This may mean specific rhetorical maneuvers (i.e., how to write an introduction), or just words that you've never used before and that have a lot of critical-theoretical possibilities packed within (I don't mean the obvious ones such as "gaze", but less obvious ones such as "syncope" or "scopic" or "aphasia").  It sounds dull, but you should start keeping a list of such words.

12  DO NOT BE AFRAID OF BEING THEORETICAL, BUT DEMYSTIFY THEORY BEFORE YOU BEGIN USING IT.  Applying theory can be the direct, self-conscious application of a theoretical perspective (and perhaps querying the utility of the perspective at the same time); or the theory can mostly be in the sort of issues/content you focus on (gender issues, sexuality, body stuff, imperialism, othering); or it can be the use of a certain vocabulary (gaze, other, compulsory heterosexuality, and so on).  The extent to which you actually cite theorists in your essay, if you are so inclined, is going to be highly variable according to your topic, personal style, background and so forth.  Theory (to me) is best used as a brainstorming device--a lens that helps you see things you might not already see.  Your own idiosyncratic interests and the need for a cogent, coherent argument that YOU believe in will do the rest.  That's why I repeat the mantra of "listen to the text" AND "listen to your response."  You want to avoid the ventriloquy effect of many contemporary scholarly-interpretive essays, which often all sound very much alike, all making the same moves, all citing the same theorists, and so on.