fall19Essay4 x
A college paper not ″college but collage″
Dr. Clarke
ENGWR 300 (online)
Fall 20
1
9
Essay #4 (175 points)
The Finished Essay:
The final version of the essay is due at 11 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 11. Submit the essay to the Essay 4 dropbox in Canvas in a or x file. Canvas will not accept any other file formats. (Do NOT submit the essay through email UNLESS you cannot get the dropbox to work.) Use the following naming convention for your document: LastnameFirstnameEssay4 (without a period).
Essays will be accepted late only until 11 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 15, and late essays will be penalized. (See the syllabus for details on the late paper policy, though the late period for this essay is only one class period.)
Follow the format given on the syllabus and the MLA format regarding placement of your name, the professor’s name, the course number, the date, and the page number/header (see MLA format instructions on pp. 662-63 in Chapter 57a in the Bedford and the MLA sample paper on pp. 666-73 in Chapter 57b). Be sure to give your essay a title that reflects its topic or thesis.
The Topic:
Using Susan Griffin’s “Our Secret” as a model, you will be writing a collage paper. Though your collage paper will probably not have an explicit thesis, you will use 3-5 “threads” to create an implicit thesis. In most cases, the thesis will provide insights or understanding to the reader rather than an argument. (A collage paper doesn’t work very well to create an argument.) This paper comes in two parts.
Part 1 (a minimum of 1200 words):
Once you have determined your topic and thesis, you will need to think about the threads you will use to illuminate the topic and lead the reader to an understanding of your thesis. Think about the stories and ideas you wish to present. Some of these stories/ideas may be from your own life and observations, but many will be stories and ideas you gather not only from those you know but from scholarly works. Arrangement will be very important, so think carefully about the order in which you want the threads (or pieces of the threads) to appear. You may occasionally also wish to speak in your own voice (yes, you can use “I”!), offering your own experiences or reflections on the material (just as Griffin does). You may wish to use materials from history, science, art, literature, and popular culture (like songs, television shows, video games, or films).
It may be helpful to think both in terms of theme and metaphor, asking yourself what brings the various threads together. For instance, Griffin plays with the idea of the cell. The nucleus of the cell is important, and that idea permeates her threads about the nuclear family and its influences on the child, the nuclear bombs (the missiles developed during World War II), and the accident at the nuclear plant at Chernobyl. These ideas are echoed in terms of what is “inside” the cell and “outside” the cell, “inside” the person (like his/her feelings and secrets) and “outside” (like the social and historical influences).
Almost anything can provide a topic for this essay. You might, for example, look at a disease, or a place, or an institution (like school or the family), or a concept (like the Outsider), or a life event (like childbirth, marriage, adolescence) or race, or gender. Just keep in mind that you will be helping a reader to an understanding of your topic; in other words, a thesis will be formed by the various connections you invite the reader to make (you probably won’t make those connections explicit in the paper, except in Part 2).
As a general rule, the more successful theses will reflect a tension or complexity that allows for the layering of a collage paper. Say, for instance, that you decided to write on Sacramento. A thesis like “Sacramento is a diverse and vibrant city” probably won’t work well; there isn’t much tension there. However, a thesis like “Sacramento is a city that masquerades as cosmopolitan but reveals its cow town origins” works; there is a tension between potentially discordant ideas (cosmopolitan/cow town). So it may be helpful to think in terms of paradoxes, contradictions, and ambiguities.
You should have at least two threads that are NOT explicitly about the topic. For instance, if you are writing about a disease, you might have a thread that is a case study of a patient and a thread that explains scientifically the physiology of the disease—but then you will need at least two indirect threads that don’t seem related to the disease but lead a reader to an understanding of it. You will want to avoid having all your threads do the same things, essentially telling the same kind of story. The collage works best when a reader doesn’t immediately see the connections; the surprise element deepens the reader’s understanding of the topic and makes the reader a kind of collaborator in terms of making connections. (Again, think of what Griffin does.)
To help a reader see the difference between the threads, you should consider using different fonts and/or colors for the different threads.
Part 2 (a minimum of 300 words):
By juxtaposing ideas from very different fields (like science and art) and events, Griffin allows us to see those ideas in new and startling ways. In your collage paper, you should try to do the same thing. In Part 2 of the paper, you will explain to your reader what you were attempting, discussing how the threads and their connections lead a reader to your thesis. You might, for example, discuss how you decided to arrange the threads and why you broke them where you did. You might discuss underlying themes and images (like Griffin’s use of nuclear) and how/why they are important to an understanding of your thesis.
Research Requirement:
You will be doing research for this essay, but it will be up to you to determine how much. As you write, be certain that you are letting your reader know where you are quoting others and where the words are your own. For the most part, except where you are quoting poetry or song, the wording will be your own. Make sure that the dominant voice in the paper is yours.
Though Griffin does not do this, you should include a Works Cited page, following the MLA guidelines. You should also include parenthetical references, in your text, where appropriate.
Additional Requirements:
On a separate page, state an explicit thesis and include a list of the “threads” that you have created. (You may wish to use this list to organize your Works Cited, as the student writers did.)
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The criteria for evaluation of this essay will be slightly different than those for the first three essays. As always, the quality of the writing and the correctness of the bibliographic forms will “count.” For this essay, however, your organizational strategy will also be very important, as will the content of the various threads. Though you do not want to choose material just for the sake of eccentricity, the most effective papers will move beyond the obvious, creating unusual juxtapositions and patterns that allow the reader to see the ideas in a new light.