Engl. 772-35 Period in Literature:
American Realism
Paper 1: Cultural Context Reports (written and oral)
Due: See due dates on Reading Schedule.
Length: 4 pp. (typed, double-spaced), plus Works Cited page
(about 10 sources from our Contexts webpage).
Grading: 14.2% of final grade; based on substantive content,
insight into your material, focus and organization, documentation, grammar.
Directions: This assignment requires that you bring together and
synthesize 10 or more different
online sources from our "Cultural Contexts" webpage (see
Cultural Contexts). Each student will select a different topic
and research the cluster of online links for that topic.
NOTE: It takes time to read and assimilate all that
material so
don't put off the readings and writing until the last minute.
WRITTEN REPORT:
To keep the written report well-focused, draw an overall conclusion about the
online sources
you read and use it as your thesis. Briefly expand upon that thesis in your introduction,
but remember that the introduction to a short paper should be short--several sentences long at
most.
For the body of your short report, organize it around 3-4 significant sub-points you
want to make about your topic and include significant details that the sources used to support
those points. Since you can't include everything in a short report, you need to weigh your
material carefully, deciding which information is more important, which material is less
important. Include the most important material, but write in a compressed/compact style
that will allow you to include as much information from your source as possible in a short
report. Divide this material into several paragraphs (by sub-point).
NOTE: Do not organize your material like a laundry list (source 1,
source 2, etc.).
Instead,
cluster together sources (or parts of sources) that cover one point you
want to make, and
cluster together other sources (or parts of sources) that cover
your second point, etc.
In other words, organize by the points, not by sources.
The conclusion to a short report can be very short--perhaps only one sentence
long.
Keep your quotations to a minimum in a summary paper--perhaps quote a few
particularly well-chosen words or phrases, maybe a sentence or two at most, perhaps none
at all. However, shorter quotations are very desirable in a literary analysis paper. WARNING: Since
you will be quoting and summarizing and paraphrasing throughout throughout your paper, it
is important that you remember a few basic rules that will help you
avoid plagiarism.
For your Works Cited page, list your online sources on a separate page by author, title, posted/updated date, date you
accessed the online source, and online address (see MLA directions).
However, unlike MLA, you will NUMBER each source and insert that number (in parenthesis) at
the end of all summarized/paraphrased/quoted material in your main text.
ORAL PRESENTATION:
Do not read your report to the class. Talk to them for 5-7 minutes. The purpose of
the oral report is to provide your classmates with some information about our literary period,
so try to make it understandable in terms of the students sitting there
listening to your talk. Explain your thesis and key points. Provide examples and give details
that support or illustrate your points, and be ready to explain the
connections.
You may use a short outline for this report—a couple words to remind you of each
of the key points and examples you want to remember to cover.
If you would like to show some online pictures or charts, either print off copies
of them to hand out to the class, or let me know ahead of time so that I can call up the
appropriate pictures from your online source. I will need a list of the exact URL addresses
for the web pages, in that case.
See also: Organization/Focus and MLA Documentation
and Typing Directions and
Avoid Plagiarism.
Report 2: Article Summary (written and oral)
Due: See due dates on
Reading Schedule.
Length: 4 pp. (typed, double-spaced).
Grading: 14.2% of final grade; based on substantive content,
focus and organization, grammar.
Directions: Select one scholarly article on your assigned author listed on our
Authors resource page. Write a
summary of that article and give the class a short oral summary of its key points. To do
a good job on this assignment, you may need to review the article several times and annotate
it.
Before
your oral report, review your summary paper several times so that the material is fresh on
your mind.
WRITTEN REPORT:
For the written report, the introduction should include the author and title of your
selected report and several sentences summarizing the overall thesis/point of the article.
(Essentially, your thesis will be the same as the author’s thesis.)
For the body of your written report, divide the scholarly article into about 4-5
significant points it makes in its body section. Summarize those points and some of the
evidence and reasoning the author uses to support those points. You will need to write in a
compact, concise style so that you can pack in as much information as possible in the fewest
words possible.
NOTE: If the first part of your article has a
long review of previous studies that have
been done on that novel, probably skip most of that
information unless you see
something very interesting or helpful mentioned there. In that case,
mention it only
briefly. We want to get to the meat of the article, so don’t get bogged down
in the
opening sections, thus leaving no time to cover adequately the
rest of the
article.
Make sure you give the second half of the article the same attention that is devoted
to the first half of the article. If the article also covers some literary works beyond the
scope of this class, you can skip most of that digression, simply noting that the article
includes a long discussion of novel X.
For the conclusion of your written report, summarize your article’s conclusion,
which may be mostly a brief restatement of the author’s overall thesis or what significance
the author emphasizes in his/her conclusion. You may not need more than one sentence to cover
this.
Possibly no quotations will be needed in your summary, or perhaps quote a few particularly
well-chosen words or phrases, maybe a sentence or two at most. WARNING: When quoting, paraphrasing,
or summarizing, it
is important that you remember a few basic rules that will help you
avoid plagiarism.
Remember that “summary” does not include making personal responses or evaluative
judgments on the article. The main goal is to be factual, accurate, and informative.
ORAL PRESENTATION:
Do not read your report to the class. Talk to them for 5-7 minutes. The purpose of
the oral report is to provide your classmates with some additional information or ways of
reading our novels, so try to make it understandable in terms of the students sitting there
listening to your talk. Explain the article’s thesis and key points. Refer the listeners to
several key scenes or passages that illustrate those key points, and be ready to explain the
connections.
You may use a short outline for this report—a couple words to remind you of each of
the key points and examples you want to remember to cover.
See also: Organization/Focus and MLA Documentation
and Typing Directions and
Avoid Plagiarism.
Paper 3: Literary Analysis
Due: Wed, April 29.
Length: 8-10 pp. (typed, double-spaced), plus Works Cited page consisting of
three secondary sources (scholarly articles) and your primary source(s).
Grading: 28.4% of final grade; based on substantive content,
insight into your material, focus and organization, documentation, grammar.
Topic: In two of the following writers (Dreiser, Chopin, Wharton),
discuss one of the topics listed below. If you want to compare-contrast a different
aspect of your selected novels or a different author, get your instructor's permission first.
As part of this assignment,
read a scholarly article on each selected novel, plus a third scholarly article of your choice, and incorporate that information into your paper.
You can find links to online scholarly articles on our class web page: Authors.
If you need additional articles, use the library's
databases by title to locate an appropriate article.
I recommend "Academic Search Premier" or "Article 1st" or "MLA."
- How is the city portrayed in Dreiser and Wharton?
What are its major characteristics? How and why does it dominate and shape the lives of
Dreiser's and Wharton's protagonists? Does it have the same impact on all
the major characters? Is the city "reality"?
- Compare-contrast Lily's and Hurstwood's declines. Which one seems more "trapped"? By what?
Consider a variety of determining causes,
social and psychological. To what extent are they the agents of their own
downfalls? What role does chance play? Are the characters tragic or pathetic?
- Compare-contrast the women protagonists in Dreiser and Chopin. How do the authors'
conceptions of women/women's roles differ? How do their social environments/constraints
differ? Why can Carrie "succeed" in society, but Edna cannot?
- Compare-contrast Selden and Robert in Wharton's and Chopin's novels. Why do they fail
the heroines of their respective novels? Is the failed love story due to a flaw in these men, or
are they victims of some social/psychological determining cause?
You will develop and support your own thesis/argument in this paper, but it must be combined with--or better yet, in dialogue with--
the arguments advanced in the scholarly articles. Combining the two while advancing your own argument is the challenge. There are two basic ways to do this:
- Agree with the thesis in the articles and show how it can be extended to your novel or in ways not fully developed in the articles.
- Disagree with some aspect of the thesis or its application in the articles and develop an alternate reading of your novel that "corrects" the problem.
Either way, make sure you weave your secondary sources smoothly and effectively into
the introduction and body of your paper. Typically, a number of those secondary sources are
briefly covered in the introduction to your paper. Use them to show your reader that you are
aware of other work that has been done on the novel and to clarify how your thesis differs
from or adds to those studies. However, the details and examples that support and develop your
thesis should come from your primary sources (the novels you are discussing). Remember to
discuss, analyze, and explain the significance of your examples.
Use standard MLA style for your in-text citations and works Cited page. Consult the links
below for directions on Focus and Organization, Avoiding Plagiarism, and MLA Documentation.
See also: Organization/Focus and MLA Documentation
and Typing Directions and
Avoid Plagiarism.
Focusing/Organizing Your Paper
- Introduction: Introductions in short papers should be short--maybe
3-4 sentences long. Begin with some general statement about your topic. If you are going to
write about a novel, include the author and title somewhere in the
opening sentence. Or if you are writing about race issues during the Realistic Period, actually
use those words in the opening sentence. Other information in the introduction might include
a one-sentence statement of what the text is about, or some pertinent
background, or a brief explanation of why there have been problems with the topic or even disagreements about
it, or why that topic is a significant approach to understanding the Realistic Period. End
the paragraph with your thesis (your thesis will be the overall conclusion you have drawn about
your topic). Remember that your thesis is what the rest of the paper will be about.
NOTE: Most or perhaps all of the introduction will be your own
writing,
but it is OK to include a short paraphrase/quotation, properly cited.
- Body of Paper: Since you can't talk about everything at once,
sub-divide your thesis/conclusion into 4-5 sub-points. Those sub-points will form the topic
sentences for the body paragraphs--the point that you want to make in that paragraph. Each
topic sentence should be followed by lots of specific details and
examples and short quotations
from the texts, as well as your explanation/analysis of that information.
WRITING TIP: Arrange your sub-points according to the Order of Climax--begin with your
second-best sub-point followed by your weakest sub-point and then work your way up to your
best sub-point at the end so that the paper finishes on a strong note.
For quotations, include a page number (in parenthesis) directly after the quote. Avoid long
quotations in short papers. It is often more effective to work a quoted word or short phrase
into your own sentence. Put quotation marks around quotations, or the reader won't know they
are quotations.
NOTE: I hate skimpy body paragraphs that are only 1-2 sentences long;
put some meat on those
bones--another 6-8 sentences of details
and examples and explanations, please!)
- Conclusion: Conclusions in short papers should be short--maybe 3-4
sentences long. Begin the concluding paragraph with a re-statement of your opening
thesis/conclusion--but in language very different than was used in the introduction. In a
couple more sentences, refer to your topic as a whole-- why it is significant and worth
studying, for instance, or finally, what it all adds up to.
NOTE: In a short paper, do not repeat your
sub-points--much too repetitious!
See also: MLA Documentation
and Typing Directions and
Avoid Plagiarism.
Avoiding Plagiarism
WARNING: Whenever you need to use material from another source in your paper, it
is important that you remember a few basic rules that will help you avoid plagiarism:
- Summarized/paraphrased material must be in language very different from the original.
- Quoted material must be in exactly the same language used by the original.
- Quotation marks must be inserted around all quotations. If you have a quote-within-a-quote, use a combination of double
and single quote marks (see me for assistance).
- Cite a source for ALL summarized and paraphrased and quoted secondary
material
(articles on your topic, etc.).
MLA Documentation
See this summary of MLA style:
Using Modern Language Association (MLA) Format,
created by the Purdue University Online Writing Lab. Scroll down near the bottom of the page to find
the appropriate links for in-text citation and bibliographies, including
how to list
Electronic Sources.
See also MLA Style: Frequently Asked Questions.
Put all documentation on a separate bibliography page (labeled "Works Cited") and
follow MLA directions.
A sample paper, properly formatted, can be seen here--scroll
down the page.
For more detailed information on MLA style, consult a hardcopy of the "official"
MLA Handbook.
See also: Organization/Focus
and Typing Directions and Avoid Plagiarism.
Typing Directions
Use Times New Roman font, size 11 or 12. Double-space everything--no exceptions. One inch margins on all sides.
Page number in top-right corner (1/2 inch from top).
On the first page, in the top-left corner, put your name, your instructor's name, the class name and number,
and the date. Below that, in the center of page, add a title.
See an MLA example (scroll down the page):
Paper Format--Example
Put all documentation on a separate page and follow MLA directions.
See also: Organization/Focus and MLA Documentation
and Avoid Plagiarism.
Return to Nichols Home Page
