Critical Essay I

If you've come from the critical essay overview page, you'll know what the critical essays are and what they're for. This page gives the assignment sheet for the first critical essay.

Critical Essay I Assignment Sheet

Due: Monday, September 15, 2003, at 5 pm, either in the envelope outside my office door (Fenton 240) or in my mailbox in the English Department office (Fenton 277).

Format: 4-6 pages, double spaced, with reasonable fonts, font sizes, and margins (be warned that barely getting on to the fourth sheet of paper does not a four-page paper make!); title that indicates main argument of paper; heading that includes your name, the course name or number, and the date; format, bibliography, and citations in MLA style (see the links page for explanations and examples of MLA style; the basic template is Author. "Title of Poem, or Essay, or Story." Title of Book from which It Comes. Editor of Book (if any), ed. Place of Publication: Publisher, Date of Publication. Page Numbers.); proper quotation format in body of paper: "..." (Franklin 12). for quotations within a paragraph; blockquote format for quotations five lines or longer.

Criteria for Evaluation: No matter which option you choose for the critical essay, I will be grading your paper in terms of how well you make your case for your argument, how well you base your argument on textual and other analysis and interpretation, and how well-organized and well-written your paper is. Hence I will be evaluating the coherence, validity, and persuasiveness of your paper's argument, the effectiveness of your paper's structure in advancing your arguments, and the quality of your paper's prose (grammar, syntax, and punctuation).

Audience: In general, think of your immediate audience as those who have taken and are taking this class; hence, you can assume that your readers have read the texts you're writing on and you don't have to include the kind of background that someone not taking this course would need.

Rewrite Policy: I will not grade rewrites of the first critical essay; rather students who are dissatisfied with their grade will have a chance to write an extra essay, the grade on which will replace their lowest previous critical essay grade.

Options: Here are your options for the first critical essay. In each of these options, your job is to come up with an argument that you seek to support by using textual and other evidence to persuade your readers of your position's validity.

• Reading Independence Day I: Using American Studies Methodologies [application essay]. Consider your viewing(s) and our discussions of the film Independence Day, the essays from Week Two ("Identities") that identify concepts and enact methodologies from cultural studies, critical theory, history, geography, anthropology, sociology, and psychology (all of which contribute to and have influenced American Studies), and the relations between what you viewed and what you read in the first two weeks of classes. Then write an analytical essay in which you interpret Independence Day using the American Studies methodologies from the first two weeks of classes that you believe best help you analyze the meaning, significance, and stakes of the film. Part of your job in this essay is to convince your audience of the relevance and utility of your chosen methodologies. The goals, arguments, and interpretive approaches of your essay are up to you, but you might consider focusing your analysis on the function of representations of American identity/identities or difference/otherness in the film.
• Reading Independence Day II: Film as American Studies [comparative essay]. Consider the film Independence Day not simply as a cultural "text" to be analyzed but as itself contributing to debates within American Studies that we've surveyed during the first three weeks of classes. Then write a comparative essay in which you situate the implicit and explicit assumptions, values, and arguments of Independence Day in the context of debates within American Studies over the meaning of "America" and "American" identity/identities or the functions of difference/otherness in American culture.
• Reading America I: Contesting American Identities [persuasive essay]. Consider the ways in which the readings for Week 3 ("Visions") relate to each other and identify for yourself some of the debates that are being enacted in and between these readings. Then choose one of these debates and write a persuasive essay in which you carefully identify and thoughtfully take a position on the debate (you might consider supporting one side or another, or showing how both "sides" are wrong and proposing a position not yet considered or articulated, or reframing or redefining the terms of the debate, or...).
• Reading America II: Your America [hybrid personal/analytical essay]. Consider the various visions of America that have been offered in the readings for Week 3, which may be broken down into competing "monoculturalist" or "multiculturalist" camps but which don't have to be (remember the concepts of "interculturalism" and "polyculturalism" that may also be showing up at times in these readings). Then offer a vision of your own in a personal/analytical essay on the theme, "My America." Be sure that your essay engages, responds to, revises, or otherwise transforms, whether directly or indirectly, the visions of others that we've read thus far in the course.
• Reading Migration/Mobility I: American Dreams and Nightmares [hybrid analytical/persuasive essay]. Consider the meaning, significance, and stakes of social and spatial mobility within American society and culture and the different ways in which it is theorized in the readings for the first three weeks of classes. Then respond to the proposition that Americans define the American dream in terms of unlimited social and spatial mobility while they define the American nightmare in terms of restrictions on social and spatial mobility--in an analytical/persuasive essay, either agree and explain why, disagree and explain why, or revise and explain why your revision is a more accurate analysis of American ideologies.
• Reading Migration/Mobility II: MYgration and MobIlity [hybrid personal/comparative essay]. Consider your own and your ancestors' experiences of spatial and social mobility, the migration narratives that have been passed down in your immediate family, and their relations to what we have been reading in class. Then write a personal/comparative essay in which you assess the representation of spatial and social mobility in America in one or more of the readings from the third week of classes in light of your family's experiences and stories, and vice versa. How ought we to understand migration and mobility in America?

ENGL 200/AMST 202: Introduction to American Studies, Fall 2003
Created: 9/8/03 5:55 pm
Last modified: 9/12/03 9:25 am