On the Research-based Revision

What It Is

As you know, you must choose a paper from your portfolio, use Lentricchia and McLaughlin's Critical Terms for Literary Study and the on-line MLA Bibliography to help you decide what research you want to pursue in developing your paper, do that research and bring a first revision of the paper to an in-class peer review session, and turn in your final revision of the paper along with its earlier incarnations (original paper, portfolio review forms, first revision, reviewer's comments/suggestions) and a reflection on your revision choices.

What For

This assignment is meant to fit with the "Looking Back" section of the course. Think of this project as your last chance to do a serious English research paper as an undergraduate. This will allow you to polish your research skills, substantively revise the goals, approach, and arguments of an older paper and thereby work on your writing and revision skills, and develop a paper you always wanted to do more work on. The end result could be a writing sample you might want to incorporate into your application project (particularly if your post-graduate plans include or might include graduate school), but it will certainly be a paper you can be proud of and point to when someone asks what you've been doing the past four years. The purpose of this assignment is for you to show off what you've learned over the course of your time in the major about researching a topic, developing an argument that's in dialogue with others on that topic, and persuading your audience to accept your arguments as valid and interesting.

How To

The first thing you need to do is decide which paper from your portfolio you want to revise into a research paper. Using the comments from your portfolio reviewers, you should decide on a paper already in the portfolio to research and revise, or add a paper to the portfolio that you would rather develop further and choose that one. The paper you choose does not necessarily have to have been the result of prior research; in fact, given that the purpose of the assignment is to look at the original paper in a new way and do a "re-vision" of it that could substantively change its goals and arguments, it's entirely within the bounds of the research-based revision project to, say, turn a close reading of an individual passage in Homer's The Odyssey into a historicist/comparative analysis of the use of epics in creating a sense of group identity and destiny in Homer's Greece and Milton's England. This example is meant to be illustrative, not prescriptive; if you have any questions about what constitutes a permissible research topic or "re-vision" of a prior paper, ask them in class, post them to the listserv, or come see me to discuss your ideas.

The next thing you need to do is use Lentricchia and McLaughlin's Critical Terms for Literary Study and the on-line MLA Bibliography to help you decide what research you want to pursue in developing your paper. We will devote a significant amount of class time on T 2/5 to using on-line sources to pursue your research; hence, we will be meeting in Fenton 2162, the Giambrone Humanities Lab, and working with the MLA Bibliography in particular to help you explore research possibilities. Your research, of course, should not be limited to this session! Basically, you should use Critical Terms for Literary Study to help remind you about the kinds of things you learned in ENGL 345 and to point you toward major arguments, theorists, and texts on subjects that are relevant to your research. And you should use the on-line MLA Bibliography and other information sources to get specifics about what's out there beyond the major works that Lentricchia and McLaughlin's contributors focus on, to get a sense of how many other people's work overlaps with yours, and to figure out how to get a hold of the most likely to be useful critical essays and other secondary sources that you want to be in dialogue with.

The next step is to communicate your research plans to your peers. No later than 7 pm on F 2/8, you must send an email to the course listserv in which you (1) describe the paper you chose to revise and explain your reasons for choosing it ("the paper" section), (2) describe the process by which you chose a research focus and explain why you chose it ("the research" section), and (3) describe specific works you plan to use in revising your paper and why you chose each ("annotated bibliography" section). Please be sure to indicate when your plans are firm and when they are tentative--this first email doesn't have to be perfect, but it should represent your best sense of your research plans and be the result of prior research and consideration. So although you will not be required to treat this email as a blueprint or contract (it's not written in stone!), and will probably change your plans as you proceed with the actual research, you should do the best you can in the time you have. Any major changes to your research plans should be sent to the course listserv along with a rationale for the change.

Your next step is to get your hands on the sources you'll need to develop the paper and begin drafting revisions to the paper. You don't have to wait until your research is complete until you begin the revision process; ideally, the two work hand-in-hand: you revise until you hit something you need to research; you research what you need to proceed with your writing. Obviously, this is also a time when you can draw on help from peers who may be doing a similar topic or using a similar critical approach, seek advice from other professors than me (I'll be writing each of you in response to your initial emails), pester reference librarians, and see me during my office hours to help you overcome any obstacles that crop up along the way. You should be working on this process until Th 3/14, when a complete first draft of your revision is due in class for a peer review session.

For the peer review workshop on 3/14, you should come to class with your revised essay, your reflection on your revision process and choices, and questions for your peer reviewer on writing/research issues you are wrestling with or unsure about. I will provide a peer review form to everyone to provide a framework for response, but you don't have to limit your discussion to the topics covered in the form.

Depending on your partner's comments, you may need to do follow-up research, develop a line of argument more persuasively, restructure the paper, and/or polish the prose and punctuation of the piece. Your job in these last days of working on the project is to use your partner's comments to approach your revision as if you didn't write it but were instead reading it for the first time. How to make the paper as persuasive as possible to a first-time reader? The final draft of the revision is due before you leave for spring break--see the assignment sheet for details.

Assignment Sheet

Due: Thursday, March 21, 2002, no later than 5 pm, in my mailbox in the English department main office (277 Fenton) or in the envelope outside my office door (240 Fenton).

Format: The paper itself should be double spaced, with reasonable fonts, font sizes, and margins; have a title that indicates main argument of paper; a heading that includes your name, the course name or number, and the date; a bibliography and citations in MLA style (see links page for explanations of this style of citation); use proper MLA quotation format for quotations within a paragraph--"..." (12)--and for quotations five lines or longer. Along with the paper itself, you must turn in a reflection on your revision process and choices (in which you explain and justify them), along with the paper's earlier incarnations (original paper, portfolio review form, print-out of email[s] on research plans, first revision, form with reviewer's comments/suggestions).

Criteria for Evaluation: I will not grade this paper until it has no more than one typo, grammatical error, or punctuation error per page. I will read, making marginal comments as I go, until I come across a page with more than one such error. Then I will stop commenting and return the paper to you. Based on the comments I have made, you must revise the paper not only to correct surface errors but to address any substantive issues I have raised as well. You will have three chances to revise the paper to reach this "no more than 1 typo per page" criterion. If on the third revision errors persist, you will be penalized according to the following system: -2 points for every page with two typos or errors, -3 points for every page with three typos or errors, -4 for every page with four typos or errors, and so on. Your base grade will be determined by your performance on the following criteria: (1) coherence and persuasiveness of the reflection on your revision process and choices: how well do you explain and justify your revisionary work? (2) quality (not quantity) of research done: how well has your research helped you develop your paper from its original scope, focus, argument, and evidence? (3) the coherence and validity of the paper's arguments, the effectiveness of the paper's structure in conveying your ideas and persuading your audience of your views, and the quality of the paper's prose: how well does your revised paper stand on its own as a research-based persuasive essay?

ENGL 400: Senior Seminar, Spring 2002
Created: 2/5/02 11:58 am
Last modified: 4/11/02 12:33 pm