Final Essay: 25% of final grade

Resources

• Library research guide for ENGL 3630, prepared by Fred Muratori

Due

• Monday, May 13 by the end of the day

Requirements

• ~2225-2500 words (~8-10 pages double-spaced), not including Works Cited or Bibliography.
• MLA or Chicago citation style.
• Turn in essay via Canvas; doc, docx, or pdf.
• Include an AI Writing Tools statement. See the “Course Info & Policies” page under “Academic Integrity and AI Writing Tools” for more information about what this statement should look like.

Your final assignment in this class brings together your skills in close reading and in historical research and analysis, while also asking you to engage with scholarship in literary studies. In your final essay, you should develop an original argument on a topic and a course text(s) of your choosing; this argument should be supported by both historical research and research on the critical and scholarly conversations about your text(s) of choice. You may write about 1-2 different literary texts (novels, short stories, or poems) in completing this assignment. If you choose to write about 2 texts, at least one must be a text we read in this class. For your second text, you may choose to incorporate a related literary text we didn’t read in this class (or you may write about a second text we read in this class). If you elect to write about 2 texts, I encourage you to speak with me about your text selection ideas and process to ensure that your combination makes sense and will set you up for success in this assignment.

There are two ways to complete this assignment:

1. Build on and expand your historical context essay. If you select this option, you should make sure you do the following:
   • Significantly revise, rework, and/or expand on the argument you made in your historical context essay. You may include parts of that essay in your final essay, but the final essay as a whole should represent a significant revision, reworking, and/or expansion of your historical context essay. Your final essay should NOT include large portions of your historical context essay that have just been copy and pasted into it. Reworking and/or expanding your ideas might mean incorporating another literary text into your essay, whether from this class or not, and revising your argument to incorporate this new text; or, if you stick with the same text, building on your argument or otherwise complicating or expanding it with new textual evidence and/or ideas you didn’t have time or space to consider in your historical context essay or that were not fully developed in that essay. It might also mean incorporating new or different historical sources into your argument.
2. Start from scratch and write about 1-2 literary texts you did not discuss in your historical context essay, at least one of which must be from this course.

No matter which option you choose, your final essay must: 1) Include an original argument about 1-2 literary texts, 1 of which must be from this course; and 2) Incorporate both historical (primary) and scholarly (secondary) research. I ask you to provide citations for at least 3 secondary sources in your final essay proposal, but there is no magical number of primary or secondary sources that you must cite in your essay itself (as long as you are citing at least 1 example of each).

Selecting Your Literary Text

You may write about any of the literary texts we read in this class in your final essay. You should select 1-2 literary text(s) to focus on. These texts include:

• Wright, The Man Who Lived Underground
• Okada, No-No Boy
• Morrison, Home
• O’Brien, “How to Tell a True War Story”
• Any of the poems assigned for Wednesday, March 6
• Silko, Ceremony
• Butler, Parable of the Sower
• Sacco, “Trauma on Loan”
• Hassan Blasim, “The Iraqi Christ” or “A Thousand and One Knives”

While at least one of the texts you write about must be from this class, you may also choose to write about a literary text we didn’t read in this class but that is connected to our course topics and texts. Again, if you elect to write about 2 texts, I encourage you to speak with me about your text selection ideas and process to ensure that your combination makes sense and will set you up for success in this assignment.

Preparing to Write Your Final Essay

Before writing your final essay, you will submit a final essay proposal (due Friday, April 19) and complete your final essay presentation for the class (on April 29, May 1, or May 6). These assignments will give you the opportunity to receive feedback on your final essay ideas from me and from other members of the class.