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Keywords Overview

In the English discipline, scholars frequently produce arguments about how works change our understanding of a term or concept. We will do a version of that in this course by preparing essays, and later presentations, that focus on certain keywords—terms that serve as focusing topics for us to think and talk about a work.

These keywords include:

• America
• History
• Home
• Identity
• Labor
• Story
• Technology

Project Overview

You will write one mini-essay (500–600 words) and one medium-length essay (1,000–1,200 words). You will submit a 500-word rough draft of either essay before the start of the Project Workshop listed on the Course Schedule.

Rough Draft

The rough draft submission will be evaluated primarily on completion and it counts as 5% of the final project grade (see rubric linked at the bottom of this document for evaluation criteria). Because the purpose of the rough draft is to incentivize bringing material to the workshop, late rough draft submissions will earn 0 credit.

Essays

Each essay will make an argument about a work we have studied, and it will support that argument with specific textual evidence and close reading analyses.

Each essay will focus on one of the above keywords, in terms of how they are represented in the work, or how the work changes our understanding of what that keyword means.

I will assign one keyword (your assigned keyword can be found on this groups page in Canvas). You will pick the other keyword.

You will also pick which keyword to use for the mini-essay and which keyword you focus on for the medium-length essay.

The goal of this project is to both develop your skills as a writer and literary critic and to generate material that you can use in the Keyword Presentations project. You'll ideally be put into a presentation group with the same keyword that you chose, but if that doesn't happen, you'll at least have written some material on your group's keyword.

For example, one could write a medium-length essay on labor (their chosen keyword) and a mini-essay on home (their assigned keyword). If I can't fit them into the labor group, I'll at least put them in the home group so that they have some amount of work that they can contribute to the group.

Generative Artificial Intelligence Component

You are permitted to use generative Artificial Intelligence tools to assist you in the writing process. To help ensure that you are critically engaging with these tools, some class time will be devoted to in-class writing work and discussion about the effective use of these tools and their role in literary analysis and essay writing.

While it's difficult to put a number on it, the expectation is that, through revision and rewriting, most of the final work submitted is something that you can proudly call your own (i.e. as opposed to mostly AI-generated and left untouched). Such is nearly impossible to validate, though, so I ask here that you make a good faith effort, and candidly discuss your use of these tools during the in-class writing work and discussion.

Gateway Criteria

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

• The submission includes a mini-essay that is 500–600 words long.
• The submission Includes a medium-length essay that is 1,000–1,200 words long.
• One essay focuses on a keyword of your choosing.
• One essay focuses on the keyword that I have assigned to you.
• Each essay focuses on a single work studied in this course.
• The submission mostly follows MLA 9th Edition formatting and citation style.
• The submission includes a single Works Cited page for both essays.

Evaluation Criteria

Each essay will be evaluated on the following criteria:

1. Organization
2. Argument
3. Evidence
4. Connections to Other Work in the Course
5. Correctness

The criteria is explained in detail in this grading rubric.