Background: The paper is an opportunity to explore a particular aspect of the material we are looking at this semester in significantly greater detail than is possible within a given module. You should choose an aspect of the course that appeals to you and then fashion a crisp and coherent essay that conveys a clear argument and is well supported by material from the text(s). Your essay should adopt a particular position and then argue in favor of it. It should not be a generalized discussion of the topic. Read the text(s) closely, work out what you think the author(s) is/are doing, and then explain your position. Be clear before you start on the final draft about what you are arguing, and then make the best case you can for it.

Prompt & Tasks:A good way to think about this assignment is to ask a critical question of one or more texts and answer the question(s) in a sustained argumentative essay. Your thesis statement, then, should be a concise answer to your critical question and the body of the essay will serve to prove/support your thesis using textual evidence. You will also need to include some discussion about an applicable literary theorythat we have studied so far: Marxism, feminism, New Criticism, Gender Studies, Postcolonialism, New Historicism, or Ethnic Studies. Specifically, how does one or more of these theories contribute to your interpretation of the text and answer to your critical question? You should also have some relevant discussion of the literary genreof your chosen texts. So far, we have covered: Romanticism, Gothicism, Realism, Naturalism, Modernism, and Postmodernism. How do your texts align with the tenets of one or more of these eras/genres? How does the genre contribute to your interpretation of the text and answer to your critical question? otes: o You CAN USE a critical question from one of your Critical Response Papers if you’d like! o You CAN USE any of your OWN reading activities for this paper. Your peers’ work, however, is off limits.o For every essay project assignment that isnot passing or not submitted by the end of the term, the course grade will lower one letter.otes: o You CAN USE a critical question from one of your Critical Response Papers if you’d like! o You CAN USE any of your OWN reading activities for this paper. Your peers’ work, however, is off limits.o For every essay project assignment that isnot passing or not submitted by the end of the term, the course grade will lower one letter.

Notes: o You CAN USE a critical question from one of your Critical Response Papers if you’d like! o You CAN USE any of your OWN reading activities for this paper. Your peers’ work, however, is off limits.o For every essay project assignment that isnot passing or not submitted by the end of the term, the course grade will lower one letter.

Critical questions (choose one of these or create your own!): •Choose one or two applications of confinement (physical space, fate, gender, age, class, race, sickness, madness, etc.) and explain how one or more texts exemplify confinement. How does the theme of confinement influence your reading of the text(s)? •How do writers like Gilman and Dickinson and/or others conceptualize madness? How closely is it related to sanity? Can mad people teach us anything? •What does Hawthorne’s conceptions of beauty teach his readers? Do the lessons change depending on whether the reader is contemporary or modern? •Pick 2 or more characters from the first half of the semester. Are they sympathetic or not? In answering this question, explain why viewing a character as (un)sympathetic influences your reading of the text(s). •What role does narration play in one or more of our texts? How does the narration influence your interpretation of the text(s)? •What does one or more of authors teach us about women’s issues? Women’s rights? Perhaps consider how one or more of our authors discuss female empowerment and what implications this discussion has on their readers. •How do Keats and Wordsworth define beauty? How do these authors differ in their understanding of Truth and Beauty from previous literary eras? •What is Rebecca Harding Davis’s larger message about the human condition? What is she aiming to teach her readers through her characters Deb and Hugh? •You are also welcome to devise your own essay topic. If you choose to do this, you need to submit your question to me for approval. In general, it should deal with a clearly-defined issue and respond to a clear critical question or questions. A successful paper will: •Explain your interpretation of one or more of the texts in a clear and thorough manner. •Explain how you arrived at your interpretation using textual evidence and close reading to support your points. •Have a debatable, arguable thesis statement at the end of the introduction which isoriginal and contains your interpretation of the text(s). •Include thoughtful discussion of at least one literary era/genre and at least one literary theoryand explain how your interpretation is shaped by both the era and theory. •AVOID simply summarizing the text(s). •AVOID simply paraphrasing when using textualevidence. •Use textual evidence to support your points and include sufficient ANALYSIS of thequotations used. Do not simply drop a quotation in your essay just for the sake of using the quotation. Make the quotations WORK FOR YOU. •Have a CREATIVE title for your essay but do not bold, italicize, or use a different font for the title. •Remember: the grade is assigned after the final paragraph. Don’t tail off at the end of your paper. Give yourself enough time to finish with a flourish. •Adhere to MLA guidelines:
Include a Works Cited page.•Cite all in-text quotes in the following format: “quote” (author’s last name page number). Please note there is no comma or “p” or “pg” or paragraph number in the parenthesis and there is no punctuation before the citation (except if the quote includes a question mark or exclamation point), and the period goes after the end of the citation. •Example: “like a raw wind that gets to the bone” (Glaspell 4).•Be 2-3 pages in length.

Intro: a. Context of your chosen topic (madness, women, empowerment, children, death, race, etc)b. Introduce the text(s) you will talk about. Include author’s name, title of the text, year it was written, and a short statement of the text’s argument.c. Your thesis: here, you will have an argument. A good way to think about this assignment is to ask a critical question of one or more texts and answer the question(s) in a sustained argumentative essay. Your thesis statement, then, should be a concise answer to your critical question and the body of the essay will serve to prove/support your thesis using textual evidence.

Textual Analysis Body Paragraphs: a. Assertion: this will be a topic sentence defining the first reason to support your thesis.b. Evidence: pull a quote to illustrate your topic sentencec. Explain: explain the quote in your own words using close reading skills (define some words in the quote and explain how you arrived at your interpretation of the quote)d. Significance: explain how the quote supports the assertion and your overall thesis statementi. In the significance section of each body paragraph, you could explain how the literary theory and/or genre contribute to your interpretation of the text(s) and answer your critical question/support your thesis. With this approach, you will need a quote for the theory/genre material and a discussion of how the quote illustrates the theory/genree. NOTE: If you have more than one quote in a paragraph, the order of your paragraph will be Assertion, Evidence 1, Explanation 1, Evidence 2, Explanation 2, Significance)

Literary Theory/Genre Body Paragraphs: Here, if you choose not to discuss genre and theory in the previous body paragraphs, you may choose instead to have entire body paragraphs dedicated to that purpose. You could have this section at the beginning or end of your essay. In that case, here is what it would look like:a. Assertion: this would be a statement of how the genre/theory helps you to interpret the text(s)b. Evidence: include a quote from the genre/theory material to illustrate your assertionc. Explain: explain the quote in your own words and explain how the quote illustrates the genre/theoryd. Significance: discuss how the theory/genre helps to support your overall thesis—specifically, how does the genre/theory help you to interpret the overall text(s)?e. NOTE: If you have more than one quote in a paragraph, the order of your paragraph will be Assertion, Evidence 1, Explanation 1, Evidence 2, Explanation 2, Significance)

Conclusion: This will be a statement of the significance of your argument. What will your readers gain from reading your paper? How would you like them to think differently, or what would you like them to do with the information you presented?