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Projects: Close Reading Essay

Overview

You will write a 750–1,000-word essay that articulates an argument about a work we have studied and supports that argument with specific textual evidence. One week prior to the due date, you will bring to class a completed Close Reading Essay worksheet.

This is a fairly conventional assignment, and may be similar in form to essays you've written in other college or high school literature classes.

Essential criteria are detailed below. Recommendations on identifying an developing your argument are towards the bottom of this page.

Gateway Criteria

The following minimum criteria must be met for the project to be considered submitted:

• The essay is 750–1,000 words long.
• The essay focuses on one of the following works: "The Golem," American Zombie, Severance
• The essay mostly follows MLA 9th Edition formatting and citation style.
• The essay includes a Works Cited page.

If this criteria is not met, I will notify you via a submission comment in this project's Canvas Assignment. Late penalties will be incurred until a version meeting this criteria has been submitted.

Evaluation Criteria

Your project will be evaluated based on the following criteria:

1. Organization
2. Argument
3. Evidence
4. Correctness

The criteria is explained in detail in this grading rubric.

Topic and Argument Selection

You can choose any topic and argument broadly relevant to the course and its focus. While you can choose a topic named in a course keyword if you wish, note that this is the only assignment that doesn't require you to do that. So you can use this opportunity to explore broadly and follow your instincts and interests.

The argument should be:

1. Something someone could reasonably disagree with.
2. Something that can be proven through your citing and interpreting narrative and textual evidence.

A good way to generate an argument is to first identify a challenging question to try and answer. A well-supported answer to such a question will likely be an argument.

Here are examples of two questions you can answer. Your argument can answer one of these, or you can develop one of your own:

• What is one genre or subgenre that your work engages with (that is, apart from magical realism)? What conventions of that genre does it use or subvert? What does it do this, and how does this effect how you understand the work?
• In our discussions of this work, what is one aspect (an idea, character, concept, event, theme, etc.) that we have overlooked? What is important about it, and why is understanding that essential to our work in this course?

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about possible topics or arguments.