| Instructor: Dr. Andrew
Leng |
Paper One Assignment: Close Reading
Format. 2-3 pages in length. Please follow the formatting guidelines listed under manuscript form.
Draft Due In class for peer review 21/1/02
Final essay Due 4/2
Description. Since 2-3 pages is not very long you should limit the scope of your topic accordingly, and be aware that staying within the assigned length is evidence that you are in basic control of your material! You will be penalized for exceeding 3 ½ pages.
- Select a key passage from any of the essays we have read about Disney
- This extract should be crucial for a reader's understanding of the rest of the essay, and present interpretive difficulties. The choice of passage you make will itself indicate how well you understand the whole essay and are able to recognize what its most important features are
- Perform a close reading of the extract in which you annotate-and perhaps highlight/underline-key examples and quotes from the extract. These examples and quotes are the essential textual evidence that you will refer to in your assignment. Without such specific evidence your analysis will be vague, too abstract, and probably inaccurate because it will be based on assumptions. Remember: even if what you assert is true, if it is unsubstantiated it is less convincing! A good test of the adequacy of your evidence is: can my reader understand what I am saying without having to refer to the extract?
- If you put your notes on a PC then you can reshuffle them into a sequence of connected points and examples more easily
- Write an exegesis (an analysis and explication)-but not a summary- of the extract
- Relate the extract briefly to relevant aspects of the rest of the essay from which it comes
- You may be able to expand your analysis (again briefly) to include other relevant texts for purposes of comparison and contrast and further explication. Possibly this could be done in your conclusion
On the draft attach a short covering letter (one paragraph maximum) addressed to me in which you explicitly state:
your thesis
your motive
identify your essay's main strengths and weaknesses.
Your grade will be based on your ability to:
- explain key details of the extract's language
- to reason your way systematically-and with adequate evidence-to a conclusion (which may well take the form of a precisely formulated question)
- introduce your argument in a way that foregrounds what is at stake. The introduction should
- preview what you will be arguing-in the "thesis"
- contextualize that statement by providing enough information to orient the reader.
- Indicate why the argument/your essay matters. This is what Gordon Harvey refers to as an essay's "motive." Every successful piece of writing has a motive, an important reason why the essay was written and needs to be read.
- Finally, your sentences should be clear and your paragraphs should be logically organized, with strong transitions (sometimes using connectives such as "therefore", "however", "consequently", and so on) between them.
Rhetorical Resources. Please refer to Style
Guidelines for my take on what constitutes clear writing for first year
students. For more on style, see Mechanical
Matters -- Punctuation and Diction and Some
Easy Ways to Strengthen Your Writing by George Landow. For handouts on all
aspects of writing, visit The
Harvard Writing Center. Finally, Bedford/St. Martin's has a resource page
for readers of Diana Hacker's A
Writer's Reference that includes interactive exercises.
Resources
Paper Two Assignment
Format. 3-4 pages in length. You will be penalized for exceeding 4 ½ pages. Please follow the formatting guidelines handed out. When you cite sources, please use either MLA or Chicago style documentation formats. See Diana Hacker, A Writers Reference, fourth edition (New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999), 324-360 and 386-399.
Due Dates:
Draft Due In class for peer review 21/2
Final essay Due 11/3
Description. Your assignment is to develop an interesting problem suggested by 2 or 3 of the texts we have studied in this unit (IE choose from: chapter 12 of Lady Chatterley's Lover and the 6 critical essays about it), and to offer a solution to it using textual evidence or inferences from textual evidence. (You can mention more than two or three texts, but it would be impractical to try to do justice to more than three texts.)
If you can make comparisons and/or contrasts between your texts this will greatly enhance the quality of your assignment, giving it a strong focus and critical edge. Such connections are important because the making of links entails analysis and evaluation on your part, rather than simply writing: "this essay says…", and "this other essay says…" Indeed if you have noticed an important difference-or similarity-between essays this connection may well provide you with a motive for your essay, and a thesis too.
As for the first paper, you should make no interpretation that does not come from textual evidence.
- The early part of your draft should acquaint the reader with your motive: the question (and possible comparison/contrast) you wish to pursue and the 2/3 texts you will be discussing.
- The body of your paper should investigate precise evidence from the texts as you search for your answer.
- The final part of your paper should sum up your findings apropos your initial question, even if you have not been able to answer the question completely. It is all right to emerge from your discussion with a partial answer.
On the draft attach a short covering letter (one paragraph maximum) addressed to me in which you explicitly state:
- your thesis
- your motive
- identify your essay's main strengths and weaknesses.
Paper Three Assignment
Format. 6-8 pages in length. Please follow the formatting guidelines listed under manuscript form. When you cite sources, please use either MLA or Chicago style documentation formats. See Diana Hacker, A Writers Reference, fourth edition (New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999), 324-360 and 386-399.
Draft Due In class for peer review 4/4
Final essay Due 19/4
Description. Your final assignment is a research paper about an aspect of Singaporean culture. It has 4 objectives:
- to write an original and extended research essay about a key feature/aspect of Singaporean culture. This paper should include a qualified definition of Singaporean culture. (A qualified definition is a definition that is aware of what aspects of Singaporean culture it does not include)
- as in the second paper, you must develop an interesting problem suggested by two or more of the texts we have studied in this unit. Remember: Culture's Critical Conditions is a course that examines the hypothesis that crisis and conflict are defining features of "culture". Therefore you may wish to select as your topic an aspect of Singaporean culture that is regarded (EG by the government, local scholars or the Singapore media, or international commentators such as Gibson) as problematic.
- you must offer a solution to this problem, using textual evidence and inferences from textual evidence
- your solution must also be based on materials from you own research. (This is where the third paper differs from the second paper)
For this paper (besides responding to two of the essays studied in Unit 3) you are required to locate at least two other, relevant source materials from:
- the library
- the internet
- Singaporean cultural life as you define it (See my Suggested Topics below)
We will be discussing in class how to conduct research and evaluate sources. As with your previous assignments, in this paper you should make no interpretation that does not come from textual evidence and/or your own experiences and knowledge of Singaporean cultural life.
The early part of your draft should of course acquaint the reader with:
A. the question you wish to pursue and why it is worth pursuing
B. the texts/and or experiences from which the question has arisen for you, and to which you will return in your search for an answer.
The body of your paper should investigate precise evidence from these texts as you search for your answer, and respond to counterarguments and reader's possible objections. The ending part of your paper should express what you have been able to find apropos your initial question.
On the draft attach a short covering letter (one paragraph maximum) addressed to me in which you explicitly state:
- your thesis
- your motive
- identify your essay's main strengths and weaknesses.
Some Suggested Topics
Having read and critically assessed essays about such ambiguous Singapore/an icons as Raffles and Dick Lee, you may wish to write research papers that respond to, and develop these commentaries. Or, you might want to write about other iconic figures-such as the Merlion, Mr Kiasu, or Gurmit Singh (?)-instead.
Alternatively you might consider abstract phenomena such as Singaporean heritage, multi-culturalism, kiasuism, or `the 4 Cs'. However even if you choose to write about abstract phenomena such as these-or something as general as "shopping in Singapore"-you would still need to pinpoint a specific example to focus, to exemplify, and to act as tangible evidence for your ideas EG an essay about Singaporean consumerism might examine the marketing here (and around the world) of: Pokemon; Manchester Utd PLC; Hello Kitty; branded goods, and so on. Such a discussion could develop Jameson's ideas about postmodernity, and the `placeless' Bonaventure hotel, thus putting your essay about Singaporean culture into a global context.
Or you could consider more institutional/ised aspects of Singaporean culture, such as: any sort of society, or more informal groupings, such as a gangs; the "culture" of a specific school or JC (yours?); the S League; National Day.
FINALLY: Your are free to choose whatever aspect of Singaporean culture you choose as long as you can convince me that it is a workable topic.
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