The class is organized into three units or progressions, each culminating in a graded essay assignment. In order to build your essays, you will complete informal writing exercises, including zero, formal, and final drafts, throughout each progression.

Links to instructions for each draft are located on the Writing Process Assignments page.

Formal Assignments

Essay 1—Close Reading of a Poem

Through close reading, identify an interpretive problem in one of the poems we examined and develop a thesis that addresses it. Use at least one literary term to analyze the text and support your thesis with close reading. How do we use literary terms to analyze the meaning of poetry?

Essay 2—Lens Analysis

Through close reading of “The Starfruit Tree” by Ashwak Fardoush, in conversation with the contextual lens “The Women’s Movement in Bangladesh: A Short History and Current Debates” by Sohela Nazneen and a feminist theoretical lens, you will analyze the relationship “The Starfruit Tree” constructs in terms of culture, gender, and identity. You will use literary terms and key terms to support your analysis; define those terms precisely, with reference to the secondary texts. You should make your thesis as narrow and focused as possible and attempt to think through the contextual lens provided by Nazneen’s article and the theoretical lens provided by feminist literary theory. How do we apply contextual and theoretical lenses in order to develop our analysis of a literary text?

Essay 3—Researched Argument

Use a variety of contextual, theoretical, and argument sources to produce an insightful argument that answers an interpretive question that you raise about the ways in which Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad supports hegemonic discourse—a single story—about Africans. Support your argument with close reading, using secondary texts to define your terms precisely. Begin with the cultural/historical and theoretical texts that we study in class and refer to at least two scholarly sources that you find through original research in the QC Library Database. In order to produce your researched argument, you will also develop a complete annotated bibliography and compose a cover letter that thoughtfully reflects on the writing practices and critical faculties that you gained in the course. How do we expand the conversation and research credible academic sources? 

• • Annotated Bibliography: Produce an annotated bibliography with at least five relevant and credible sources for Essay 3. For each of the sources, you will create a bibliographic citation and write a paragraph of at least 200 words that both summarizes the source and comments on its potential usefulness for your research project. How do we place sources in conversation with our analysis and with each other?
  • Reflective Cover Letter: Re-read all of your pre-drafts, drafts, revisions, and the feedback you received. In a cover letter, reflect on the writing practice you gained through your pre-drafts, drafts, and revisions, along with the ways you’ve developed your critical faculties throughout this semester. You will quote your own writing as evidence of your development as an academic writer. This document must address all three formal assignments but can also address any other part of the coursework that you find relevant to a discussion of your writerly development. How do we evaluate our progress as academic writers?

Submitting Assignments

All drafts must consistently follow MLA formatting and citation and must be submitted according to the following guidelines. Both of these criteria are part of your assignment grade.

Submit all essay drafts as PDF files (no Google docs or links) using the following protocol to name the files you post:
[Student Last Name][First Initial]_E[Essay Number]_[Assignment Name].pdf

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