English 169 Paper 1:
Due October 22, 2007
English 169 Paper 2: Due December 10, 2007
Requirements:
• A 5-8 page double-spaced typed research paper in 12-point font
is due at the beginning of class on the day it is due. Extensions are
not possible for the second paper unless you plan on taking an
incomplete.
• You need to write on one (or more) of the texts assigned from
Native American oral literature, to Toomer’s Cane for Paper One
and Cane through Z.Z. Packer’s works for paper 2.
• You must perform and utilize some kind of outside scholarly
research. You can use it in a range of ways, including to place the
text in its historical and critical context, to act as support or
counter argument for your own interpretation, or to define the focus
you are taking in your analysis. Begin your search with the SJSU
library website academic gateway
(http://www.sjlibrary.org/gateways/academic/). I recommend the MLA
bibliography, infotrac, JSTOR, and American History and Life databases
as guides to finding appropriate articles. Refereed scholarly journals
or book chapters are what I mean by scholarly research. Do not pay for
articles online when you are already paying for our library’s
access to these materials through your tuition.
Suggestions:
• Do not take the requirements above as suggestions. If you want
more than something in the D range, be sure to have an essay of at
least 5 full pages that includes at least one outside source.
• Proofread your paper carefully. The writers you are discussing
deserve at least as much polish as the mechanical mind of a spell
checker can provide. Don’t your ideas deserve at least that?
Papers riddled with spelling, word choice, and syntax problems will not
make it above a C.
• See pages 13-19 of your reader for advice from a writer’s
handbook on common problems in student papers including how to best
integrate quotations (18), formatting quotations (14-17), and the use
of the apostrophe (13).
• Your grade will reflect the appropriateness of the source(s) you
choose and the use you make of it (them). Over-reliance on the ideas of
others rather than your own will adversely affect your grade. Lack of
proper citation will result in failure.
• A "works cited" needs to include accurate and complete
bibliographic information of all texts used. See page 20 of the 169
reader for an example of a properly formatting Works Cited page (in
MLA). If your major uses a style other than MLA, I will accept that but
it should be properly and consistently cited in that style.
• No matter how much outside research you do, an analysis of the
literary text should remain the central focus of your essay. Your goal
should still be teaching the reader of that text something new about
it, some new way to interpret it.
• Be wary of web sources like Wikipedia. It can be the equivalent
of asking anyone in the hallways of Dudley Moorehead for information on
your topic. You may get interesting info but the nature of a Wiki
(which accepts the contributions and editing from all, no matter what
their training or actual knowledge is on a subject) means that you need
to double-check your info with reviewed (refereed) sources.
• Always check your quotations for accuracy. When you put
something in quotation marks or an indented paragraph you are claiming
this is exactly what they wrote. If you haven’t taken the time to
check that you have typed up their words accurately, you are
misrepresenting the author and also destroying your ability to write an
accurate and persuasive interpretation of the text(s).
TOPICS: In the past, many of the strongest (and most in-depth) papers
have focused on a single text. Please feel free to come up with your
own topic as unique and original topics are more likely to engage both
the author and the reader. Try to link analyses of form and content.
The questions provided for class discussions or in your reader may
provide a good starting point for your research paper. Here are a few
large-scale topics which may also be useful for getting started in
thinking about research papers and also in studying for the
midterm and final:
1. How are identities “shaped by cultural and societal influences
within contents of equality and inequality?”
2. What role does place play in a text? You could look at the way home
is defined (whether that is a single dwelling, a town, or an entire
homeland), look at contrasts between depictions of old and new worlds,
north and south, rural and urban, etc.
3. Human Agency: To what extent do social/historical/cultural forces
outside of individual characters’ control shape their lives? To
what extent are individual characters able to shape their own
destinies?
4. To what extent is oppression internalized by those
oppressed? How does the text depict this? Does it offer any models of
ways to resist oppression?
5. To what extent do you find cultural hybridity being produced by the
mixing of cultures (and languages, values, faiths) in the communities
depicted in the text you are examining?
169 research papers will be graded based on
1. Clarity of expression:
sentence and paragraph structure, word choice, and overall
organization. (All papers will be typed, double-spaced, with 12-point
font, stapled and with pages numbered.)
2. Textual support: appropriate and accurate citation of textual
evidence such as quotation or plot summary (in appropriate amounts)
with page number or (for poetry) line number.
3. Cohesion and
persuasiveness of the argument: the essay does not merely recount the
text but teaches someone who has read the original text more about a
specific aspect of that text; the essay takes contradictory as well as
supporting information into consideration and asserts the most
persuasive reading of the text(s) as a whole; the essay also maintains
the reader’s interest with the subtlety, originality, and
complexity of its thesis and support. And 4. How appropriate and
well-utilized is outside research in the project as a whole. Are all
sources clearly cited and does the student's voice remain clear and
distinct from his or her source? The grading rubric is explained in
detail on your 169 syllabus.