Unit #3 Essay Assignment\u2014Draft due FOR FULL COMMENTS on
\nFriday, December 4 at
\n11:59pm; draft due FOR OVERVIEW COMMENTS on Sunday, December 6 at 11:59pm.
\nIn the course so far, we\u2019ve been considering how social rules impact our
\ndecisions and
\nfreedoms. While we tend to think of strict social rules as antiquated, social
\nexpectations
\nstill control us today. In this final essay, we\u2019ll be looking at contemporary
\nfilms and
\ntelevision series that are set in the past, asking what they might teach us
\nabout present
\nintellectual problems.
\n
\n<\/p>\n
The final essay assignment is an 8 page research paper. In
\nit, you must use a television
\nseries or film to intervene on an
\nacademic debate (broadly conceived). Here\u2019s the process
\nyou should use to write your paper:
\n
\n<\/p>\n
1) First, choose your primary source. Your choices are:
\nFilms
\nSelma [issues: race, federal versus state legislation, religion, law and
\nsociety]
\n
\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
2) Identify an analytical question\/problem to drive your
\nresearch. Your analytical question
\ncan come from within your source text or from an academic debate on a specific
\nissue your<\/p>\n
film deals with. The location of your analytical question
\nwill help determine the kind of
\npaper you will write. While all papers must make use of
\nclose analysis, some may put the
\nmajority of their focus on analyzing the film; others may choose to carefully
\ndeconstruct
\nthe complexity of their academic debate.
\n
\n<\/p>\n
3) Once you have identified your analytical
\nquestion\/problem, you\u2019ll begin the research
\nprocess in earnest. For this paper,you will also need to incorporate at least
\nfive outside
\nsources. You are free and encouraged to use more than five sources, but be sure
\nthat your
\nintegration of outside material does not eclipse the presentation of your own
\nideas. As a
\ngeneral rule, you should aim to integrate your sources as evenly as possible;
\nyou don\u2019t want
\nto exhaust all your outside evidence on your first pages or hold off on
\npresenting them until
\nthe end. This will likely require you to find different kinds of sources
\n(supporting,
\ndissenting, contextual, etc.) to support the full progression of your argument.\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Thesis
\nWhat will your thesis look like for this paper? For this assignment, you\u2019ll
\nneed to show how
\nthe film\/television show you\u2019re writing on provides useful insight into an
\nintellectual,
\nacademic debate. It will, in fact, have to help you pick a side of that debate
\nto endorse, or
\nlead you toward an alternative that the debate has yet to consider. It may help
\nto think
\nabout your film\/television series in the context of the following questions:
\nHow does the
\nfilm\/series help you understand your debate differently? Does it provide a
\nsolution to
\nproblems raised? Shed light on unconsidered aspects of debate? Change
\nperceptions of the
\ndebate\u2019s implications? Show that one side of the debate may ultimately hold
\nmore merit?
\nAs you connect your analysis of your primary source (the film\/series) to your
\nacademic
\ndebate in your thesis, consider that there are a few ways you might do this:
\n1) You might read the primary source as offering a useful solution to the
\ndebate.
\n2) You might read the primary source as revealing an important facet of the
\ndebate
\nthat has been overlooked so far.
\n3) You might read the primary source as reinforcing or contributing to a
\nproblematic
\nview within the debate that needs correction.
\nThere are likely more ways to use your primary source, but what you
\ndon\u2019t want to do is end up saying that both the source material and the
\ncontemporary debate are \u201ccomplicated.\u201d You should be making an argument about
\nhow the primary source and the
\ndebate interact, rather than providing observations about their similarities or
\ndifferences.
\nIt may help you to think of your primary source as a \u201clens\u201d you are using to
\nread the debate,
\nand in doing so build off the argumentative skills you developed in Paper 2.
\nYour thesis
\nshould show clearly how the primary source has allowed you to take a specific
\nstance on
\nyour academic debate, just as Berlin\/Skinner helped you formulate a claim about
\nyour film.
\nAs you might imagine, then, the way you tie your primary source to your
\nacademic debate
\nwill be an important component of your paper\u2019s stakes: it\u2019s your opportunity to
\nshow your
\nreader why it was important to look at your source material at all. Just as you
\nhad to justify<\/p>\n
the comparison you made between Berlin\/Skinner and your film
\nin Unit 2, in this research
\npaper you\u2019ll want to be clear about how your chosen primary source (your
\nfilm\/series) has
\nhelped you see something new in the debate you are engaging with. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Getting Started
\nThere are two ways to get started on this paper. I\u2019ve listed next to the films
\nand television
\nshows some of the general intellectual categories they impinge on (there are
\ncertainly
\nmore than I\u2019ve noted here, though). If one of them seems like an issue you\u2019re
\nparticularly
\ninterested in or brings to mind an academic\/intellectual debate you\u2019d like to
\nexplore, you
\nmight use that as a starting point in picking a film. Conversely, you may have
\nno particular
\nissue that you\u2019re passionate about pursuing, and in this case it makes sense to
\npick a film or
\nseries that seems most interesting to you and let the material guide you toward
\nan
\nacademic debate.
\nFrom there, you have a good deal of freedom as to how you proceed. Some of you
\nmay have
\nchosen your particular film\/series because it allows you to wade into the
\nintellectual
\ncomplexity of how academics are approaching issues of the present moment.
\nOthers may
\nbe more interested in performing the kind of close analysis of texts that we\u2019ve
\nbeen doing
\nin class so far, and will consequently want to engage with scholarly debates
\nthat have a
\nmore literary or philosophical focus. Both approaches are equally valid, but
\nthey will
\ninvolve different kinds of research and writing. Whatever approach you choose,
\nyou mustperform close analysis in your paper, of the film\/series and the debate
\nit intervenes on.
\nA note on choosing your academic1 debate: while it\u2019s important to pick a topic
\nthat you\u2019re
\ninterested in (and hopefully passionate about) for this paper, it\u2019s equally
\nimportant that
\nyou choose a debate on which you do not already hold a fixed opinion. If you
\nalready
\nbelieve that the other side of a particular debate has no worth, the likelihood
\nthat you will
\nwrite a strong paper on the subject is small (in such cases, authors often
\nmisrepresent or
\ndisregard opposing views or have chosen debates that don\u2019t have equally strong
\nvoices on
\nboth sides). This doesn\u2019t mean you have to ditch a topic that you have strong
\nopinions
\nabout, but that you may need to get more nuanced in your approach. This often
\ninvolves
\nfinding a matter of disagreement within the side of the debate you already lean
\ntoward. For
\n1 Why does this assignment keep specifying that you need to intervene on an
\n\u201cacademic\u201d
\ndebate? What does the word \u201cacademic\u201d signify here? It probably won\u2019t surprise
\nyou to
\nhear that on issues where there is a good deal of academic consensus, there is
\nlittle
\nscholarly literature to engage with, even if that issue is still treated as a
\ndebate in the public
\nsphere. A good example of this is the debate surrounding vaccination and its
\ncorrelation
\nwith rises in autism that occasionally crops up in the news. Though this is an
\nissue that
\ncommands attention the popular media, it\u2019s not something that academics are
\ndebating
\nbecause the evidence is seen to point in one direction (as we\u2019ve talked about,
\nwhat counts
\nas evidence in academia might be different than in other places). Even if you do
\nchoose an
\nissue that is debated in both the public sphere and in academia, it\u2019s important
\nto know that
\nthe parameters of the debate may be different in academic sources than in the
\npublic
\nsphere.<\/p>\n
instance, perhaps you\u2019re interested in debates about the future
\nand dangers of A.I., but
\nthink the side asserting that A.I. is harmless is na\u00efve. This particular debate
\nwould make a
\npoor focus for your paper, because you already believe one side lacks merit.
\nHowever,
\nthere are numerous debates within the side you already agree with that you
\ncould tackle
\ninstead. You could, say, consider the possible solutions to this problem that
\nhave been
\nposed and ultimately assert a stance on them. By doing so, you would avoid
\nengaging with a
\ndebate that you didn\u2019t see
\nas a debate, and would instead let the evidence you found in your
\nresearch determine your argument.
\nAs always, keep in mind that your paper should be:
\n1) Driven by a strong analytical question or problem.
\n2) Supported by an argumentative claim.
\n3) Made of up close analysis (attention to language, structure, imagery, etc.).
\n4) Replete with citations and concluded with a works cited page (please use MLA
\nstyle).
\nA note on the draft: For Unit 3, the draft always comes on a tight timetable.
\nFor most
\npeople, it will not make sense to churn out 10 pages of draft material, since
\nyou are still
\ngetting a feel for your thesis, evidence, or argument. Therefore, you should
\nfeel empowered
\nto turn in something much shorter\u20146 pages have started to look like a workable
\nideal\u2014at
\nthe draft deadline. Your goal in the draft should be to set out your present
\nthesis, the two
\nsides of your debate, and some sense of how your primary source helps you
\nintervene on it.
\nOf course, the more realized your draft is the more we\u2019ll have to work with in
\nthe following
\nweeks, but you should not just write pages in order to fill them; this tends to
\nbe
\ncounterproductive and may make you feel tied to ideas that aren\u2019t sophisticated
\nor
\ndeveloped enough<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Unit #3 Essay Assignment\u2014Draft due FOR FULL COMMENTS on Friday, December 4 at 11:59pm; draft due FOR OVERVIEW COMMENTS on Sunday, December 6 at 11:59pm. In the course so far, we\u2019ve been considering how social rules impact our decisions and freedoms. While we tend to think of strict social rules as antiquated, social expectations still […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"disciplines":[140],"paper_types":[],"tagged":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writemyessays.app\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/questions\/25238"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writemyessays.app\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/questions"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writemyessays.app\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/questions"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writemyessays.app\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writemyessays.app\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.writemyessays.app\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/questions\/25238\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writemyessays.app\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"disciplines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writemyessays.app\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disciplines?post=25238"},{"taxonomy":"paper_types","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writemyessays.app\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/paper_types?post=25238"},{"taxonomy":"tagged","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writemyessays.app\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tagged?post=25238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}