ENGL 347 (Section 001, Schedule #33397)
Virginia Commonwealth University
Spring 2016
TTh 11:00am-12:15pm :: 264 Hibbs
Prof. David Golumbia
Office: 324D Hibbs Hall
Spr 2016 Office Hours: Tues 1:00-3:30pm

Contemporary Literature

Paper Assignments Prompts & Guide

The paper assignments are listed on the course syllabus as follows:

• Papers (3 papers of 25% each, for 75% total). Students will write 3 papers of approximately 7 pages (1750 words) each on topics related to the class. These are expected to be analytical papers that make a strong argument, supported with properly-cited sources where necessary. These papers will be about the text we read in class each day. Early in the term students will be randomly assigned to three dates on which papers are due. The papers are due at the beginning of class period on each of the assigned days. Papers may be submitted in hardcopy or via email to dgolumbia-at-vcu.edu.
  

Prompts

In all cases, your goal is to develop an analytical thesis about the meaning of the work. Your paper should be trying to develop an argument about what the work means and how it means. In many cases, you will want to explore how the form of the work (the way the material is arranged and given structure, which includes elements like point of view, timing/pacing, plot, writing style, organization) relates to the content of the work.

You are welcome and encouraged to run topics by me either in person (after class or during my office hours) or via email. You can run a brief topic by me, or send a paragraph or two, & I'll let you know whether I think it's a promising argument and/or whether I have suggestions for modifying it.

For all papers you are welcome to compare another work to the one you are assigned.

For all books

• Research the author of the book, looking especially for biographical information and interviews, particularly about the work we read for class. What are the author's goals in writing this work? How does it fit into the rest of his/her body of work? How does knowing the author's goals affect your reading of the book?

For novels

• Who is the main character in the novel? What major change does he/she experience over the course of the novel? How does this change relate to the themes of the book?
• Focus on one or two minor characters (characters other than the protagonist) and explore how their presence in the book relates to the larger structure/point of the book, and/or other characters.

For books of poetry

• How would you characterize the form in which the poet writes--meaning not just basic facts like "free verse" vs "rhymed couplets," "sonnet" vs "prose poem," etc., but the specifics of what logic or rules the poet uses to craft his or her poems? How does that form relate to the content of the poems? Choose a small number of poems to explicate clearly in support of your argument.

For short story collections and poetry/fiction combinations

• If you think the book has an overall shape (a narrative, a shifting set of themes or concerns), how do individual poems or stories fit into it? Describe what you think the overall shape is and then explicate a few poems or stories to show how the overall form of the work relates to some of the specific stories or poems.

General Instructions

The essay should be about 7 pages in length, but please use your word processor to count the number of words; word count and not page length is the official metric for the assignment. Short quotations DO count toward the total word count for the essay. Long quotations (of 50 or more words) should not generally be counted toward the 1750 word total for the assignment.

This is not primarily a research paper, and you do not need to consult outside sources except for the primary book or piece of media you choose to interpret. However, you are also very welcome to include secondary and primary sources of any kind that relate to the assignment and the course material. Any sources, including that primary source, should be properly cited in your paper, using any acceptable bibliographic citation format. One very simple format is to use a list of Works Cited at the end of the paper, and indicate by author, work and page number in parentheses the exact quotations within the paper itself.

For convenience, here are some citations from readings for another course. For works other than movies, articles, or books, just do your best: the point is to indicate where you got material that is not written by you; I am less concerned with the exact form your citation takes than I am with the attempt to provide a citation. This includes Wikipedia entries, one of which is included below.

Within the paper, you would cite things this way:

One critic says that "surveillance is always at work, whether we know it or not" (Andrejevic, "The Work of Watching One Another," cp. 34).

A Wikipedia entry might be cited like this:

Morrison "went to Howard University graduating in 1953 with a B.A. in English; she went on to earn a Master of Arts from Cornell University in 1955" ("Toni Morrison," Wikipedia).

Works Cited

Mark Andrejevic, "The Work of Watching One Another: Lateral Surveillance, Risk, and Governance." Surveillance & Society 2:4 (2004). 479-497.
Julia Angwin, "It's Complicated: Facebook's History of Tracking You." ProPublica (Jun 17, 2014). http://www.propublica.org/article/its-complicated-facebooks-history-of-tracking-you.
Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, "The Californian Ideology." Mute 3 (Autumn 1995).
Adam Curtis, dir. All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace. Three Parts. United Kingdom: BBC, 2011.
"Toni Morrison." Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toni_Morrison. Accessed Feb 2, 2016.

Other standard forms of citation (such as footnotes) are also acceptable, but failing to properly indicate sources technically constitutes plagiarism.

Last updated February 16, 2016.