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ENG 106 Spring 2023

Writing Project 2: Historical Context Essay

  • WP 2 first draft for peer review workshop due: Wednesday, March 8 by class
  • WP 2 due: Wednesday, March 22
  • ~1500 words (~4-5 pages double-spaced)
  • MLA citation style
  • Turn in via Blackboard
    • If you participated in the peer review workshop, please also turn in the peer review worksheet your reader(s) completed

Your second major writing project in this class is about exploring the historical context of Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God by investigating additional primary sources from around the time when it was written. You will write an essay in which you describe an archival object that sheds light on this historical context, explain how this object relates to the novel, and make a claim about what this object allows us to understand differently about the novel.

You’ve already started your historical context essay by completing journal entry 4 and journal entry 5. In those journal entries, you described an archival object and discussed how an archival object related to Their Eyes Were Watching God. You will now expand on those skills to write your historical context essay. You may use the archival object(s) you wrote about in journal entries 4 and 5 in your historical context essay, but you are not required to.

What is a Historical Context Essay?

In your first writing project in this class, you practiced close reading, an essential skill for researchers in the humanities and for literary scholars in particular. But literary scholars don’t only analyze works of literature in of themselves; they also seek to understand these works within the historical context in which they were written. This often means working with primary sources from that time, which are often housed in archives maintained by university or government libraries. Writing project 2 introduces you to some of the skills involved in conducting research in archives and in writing about these sources in relation to a literary text. For this writing project, we will focus specifically on some of Hurston’s anthropological writing and research from the late 1920s and 1930s and on materials related to this period in her life.

Selecting Your Archival Object

First, you need to select which archival object you will write about. For the purposes of this assignment, any of the materials assigned for class on the following days will work: Wednesday, Feb 22; Friday, Feb 24; Monday, Feb 27; Wednesday, March 1. You may also choose to further explore materials included in the digital collections of the Zora Neale Hurston Papers at the University of Florida or the Zora Neale Hurston Collection at Yale Archives and to select an object(s) from these collections that I did not assign for class. Finally, the Library of Congress holds a collection of ten plays written by Hurston between 1925 and 1944; most remained unpublished and unproduced during her lifetime. You may select a play from this archive to focus on for this assignment if you wish.

An “archival object” can mean one discrete thing, such as Hurston’s essay about turpentine workers in Florida. However, for the purposes of this assignment, an “archival object” might also mean a small collection of very closely related things, such as a series of photographs of Hurston, a series of related letters, or a small group of related recordings.

How to Write Your Historical Context Essay

This essay has 3 parts, which are described below. You may wish to organize your historical context essay into these 3 parts, keeping each one separate; alternatively, you may wish to organize your essay in such a way that you move seamlessly between and/or back and forth among the 3 parts. No matter how you organize your historical context essay, it should include the below 3 parts.

Part 1: Describe your archival object

Your historical context essay should include a description of your archival object. You practiced writing such a description in journal entry 4 (see that prompt for more information about writing a thick description of an archival object). You may use a revised version of this description in your historical context essay, or you may select a different object to write about. The description of your archival object in your historical context essay should total no more than about 500 words.

Part 2: Explain how this archival object relates to Their Eyes Were Watching God

Your historical context essay should also include an explanation of how this archival object relates to Their Eyes Were Watching God. You practiced writing such an explanation in journal entry 5 (see that prompt for more information about what such an explanation can entail). You may use a revised version of this explanation in your historical context essay, or you may rewrite it. This explanation should include an analysis of at least 1 specific passage in Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Part 3: Make a claim about what this object helps us to understand differently about Their Eyes Were Watching God

Finally, your historical context essay should include a claim about what your archival object helps us to understand differently about Their Eyes Were Watching God. What potentially new (at least to you) light does this object shed on your understanding of this novel? What specific aspect(s) of the novel does this object cause you to reconsider? In other words, what is the “payoff” or the “takeaway” of understanding your archival object in relation to the novel?

The claim you make in this part of your essay should provide an answer to this question: What do we learn from associating your archival object with Their Eyes Were Watching God?

Writing Project 2 Requirements

In order to be considered “satisfactory”, your historical context essay must do the following:

  1. Include a description of your archival object that is specific, thorough, and correct, but that totals no more than about 500 words.
  2. Make a claim about what your archival object helps us to understand about Their Eyes Were Watching God. This claim should attempt to answer the following question: What do we learn from associating your archival object with Their Eyes Were Watching God?
  3. Include an explanation of how your archival object relates to Their Eyes Were Watching God in which you analyze at least 1 specific passage from Their Eyes Were Watching God. Remember, “analyzing” a passage means you explain to your reader how that passage provides evidence for the claim you are making.
  4. Meet the minimum word requirement (around 1500 words) without significant filler.
  5. Attempt to communicate your ideas in a focused, clear, and well-organized way. If I have drawn your attention to specific issues related to clarity, style, surface conventions, and/or organization in previous writing in this class, I must see evidence of a good-faith effort to try to make progress on resolving these issues in your writing.
  6. Include properly formatted citations of any sources, including archival sources and Their Eyes Were Watching God, making sure to cite the page numbers on which any quotations you use appear (if applicable). This also includes a Works Cited page with correctly formatted citations of each source cited in your paper.
  7. Include, at the end of the essay, the following statement: “I upheld the Honor Code.” Including these words at the end of your essay functions as your digital signature of academic integrity.
  8. Include, at the end of the essay, a list of the assignments you have completed in this class, including all journal entries, writing projects, and peer review workshops to date.