Final Assignment - The Term Paper

The final paper will be a more developed, somewhat longer paper that builds on all the skills we have practiced so far: focusing on a narrowly defined topic, locating and entering a conversation, and supporting a strong claim. For this final paper, we will be increasing the number of peer-reviewed sources to 5. The purpose of this added research will be to allow you to more fully develop the conversation you are joining, and to allow you to more authoritatively address the relationships between your sources and your position within the conversation.

For paper four, you might think of yourself as in a similar position to that of a journalist who is investigating a specialized issue and attempting to translate it into terms understandable by the general public. Talking to experts and reading their work will not only help you first grasp and understand the terms of the conversation, but it will allow you to clarify what you think is most important about the issue for your own readers, and to do so with authority. Comparing and contrasting the different scholarly views will let you clarify assumptions that one scholar relies on but that another scholar either disagrees with or articulates in a different form.

Once again, you are free to write on any topic that is related to our course materials and discussions over the semester. If you are feeling stuck, remember that we have discussed two major types of papers so far: those that apply theories and research to specific pieces of comedy, and those that analyze an issue in comedy theory. You can focus on either of these or produce some combination of the two; you can also use any prompt from the earlier paper assignments as a topic for this essay (though do not write on a topic you have already written on and make sure to fulfill the requirements of this assignment). The most important thing, regardless of topic, is to focus the majority of your paper (70-80%) on explaining/justifying your central claim and analyzing your evidence.

The final paper should be 2000-2500 words long (not including works cited page) in Times New Roman, 12 point font, with 1 inch margins. If you want to have a chance to submit an early draft for a grade and full comments, you will need to submit it by Monday, November 25. The final paper is due Friday, December 13, by midnight.

In praise of bad writing

Another great thing about comedy is that it teaches us to love our flaws. But unlike the positive thinking or self-esteem movements, comedy doesn't just teach us to overcome our imperfections--it shows how our flaws are always already our strengths. The worst things about us are already the best things about us, simply in an inverted form. And our bad writing is already our good writing, just in a distorted form. The key task of a writer is to transform the anti-genius of the bad into the the genius of the good. It's like learning to recognize the great things about movies that are so bad they are good.

Here's a few things to ponder today as we free ourselves to "write bad."

First, consider how bad first drafts are the gateway to good ones. 

Second, consider how embracing our bad writing can be freeing.

Finally, consider the ways that bad writing is not all that different from good writing. What makes bad writing bad often has to do with the attitude of the writer. The writer is not communicating to others, but having an internal dialogue. There is nothing wrong about this. It simply suggests that we need to start having a dialogue with others, rather than giving a monologue. Even though the other person is silent, we should think of all writing as a conversation. The essence of a conversation is to see every statement as serving to bring the other person deeper into the topic, to entrance them, to wow them.

Bad writing is common. Very bad writing is uncommon for the same reason that very good writing is uncommon: it does something impressive. It fails in a way that is spectacular and risky.

As a wise man once said...

Essay Three: Participating in the Conversation

For essay three, we will continue to build on the work we have done in the first two papers. We will still focus on rooting the paper in significant details. The majority of the paper will still offer detailed explanations and justifications of your main claim, based in analysis of the specific details of your sources. We will also again use scholarly sources to help build more significant and refutable claims. 

While paper three still will use all these same major skills and tools as the last paper, it will aim to further challenge you by asking you to incorporate more sources into your argument. Using one source is relatively simple as you can simply apply its insights to whatever you are analyzing. In using more than one source, however, you must not only explain your relationship to your sources but explain the relationship among the different sources. This creates a significantly more challenging task.

To tackle paper three, you will need not only to understand and apply your sources but quickly to establish how they fit together. This will require offering your own sense of what the consensus on an issue is. Find the three scholarly sources on your topic that seem most authoritative, insightful, and helpful. Look for sources that are cited by other sources and that other scholars consider influential and important to understanding the issue. For this assignment, picking good sources will be just as important as developing a clear, refutable, and significant thesis, and it will be much easier to develop a good thesis with the assistance of good sources.

Establish your own sense of how these all fit together. Then situate your own argument within this conversation. What does the current scholarly consensus seem to agree on? What does it not agree on? What areas have the existing scholars overlooked? Rather than attacking or simply dismissing the existing scholarly consensus, focus on building on it and entering into the conversation it sustains. Look for ways in which you can contribute to the conversation by extending insights in ways that the existing research has not considered. Look for ways in which you can push the conversation into new territory that it has not yet discussed. Situate your own argument in the debates and concepts that the existing scholarship employs. Show how your own argument is significant in light of the existing research.

Once again, you have freedom to write on any topic connected to the class that fits the paper assignment. You can use topics we have talked about in class, or choose your own topic. If you are having trouble getting started, consider the following prompts:

1. Find a work of comedy that there is significant scholarly disagreement about. Provide your own interpretation of the work in light of this research. Focus on identifying key details that can address the issues that other scholars have raised, and explain how your position relates to the existing conversation. 

2. Examine a social or political issue that scholars have tried to understanding using comedy. For example, we have talked about the way that political views line up with tastes for different types of comedy. Research this or another topic. Then write an essay showing why it is that comedy allows us to have a better understanding of this issue. What makes comedy a particularly good way of approaching this issue or topic? What does comedy allow us to understand about the issues that we wouldn't understand otherwise? 

This essay should be 1500-1700 words long, formatted in the standard Times New Roman 12 point font with 1 inch margins. Include at least three peer-reviewed sources. Bring a rough draft to class Friday, November 1. The final essay is due Friday, November 8, at 5pm.

Sample essay - Debunking three truisms about comedy

Here is a sample essay that illustrates some of the writing tips I highlighted the other day. Keep in mind that this is written in the style of a blog post, not a formal essay. As a result, the language it uses is more informal than what I would use in an essay of the type we write for this class. Nonetheless, it works as a model of a few things: 1. subordinating examples to driving the argument forward; 2. using the comedy theories in selective ways to advance your argument, rather than simply running through the list of theories sequentially; 3. getting to your thesis quickly (not in the first sentence, but within a few sentences); 4. using transitions to connect your different points together and back to the central thesis; 5. situating your arguments within a few select pieces of evidence, a few debates, and some key concepts; 6. connecting your points together in a way that drives toward an answer to the "so what?" question.

Here's the essay:

As we all know from improv classes, comedy comes in threes. There's the three theories of comedy. There's the rule of three: including something unusual as the third element in a list or series of "normal" things makes it funnier. And then there's what I'll call the three truisms of comedy analysis:

1. explaining humor kills it
2. comedy = tragedy + time
3. comedy is culturally specific

I think they are malarkey.

Let's take the first truism: explaining humor kills it. The problem with this assertion is that, as with anything involving comedy, context is so crucial that it is difficult to say that anything isn't funny in all situations. A classic comedian trick is to explain a joke whenever they believe that the audience didn't fully get it and that they were owed a bigger laugh. One might object: well this is just the exception that proves the rule. You aren't explaining something that is funny in this case; you are explaining something that isn't funny, which makes it funny. But that's not true, because the joke could have gotten a bit of a laugh in the first instance. The point of explaining the humor is not just to do the opposite of what a comedian is normally supposed to do. That's certainly part of the fun, but doesn't totally explain it all. The real purpose of this exercise is to actually point out the fun of the joke. The same holds true for footnotes that explain jokes in works of literature: they often make it possible to laugh at a joke that wouldn't have gotten a laugh otherwise. In all of these cases, the joke is being explained in advance, and if anything it increases rather than decreases the humor.

As with truism one, the problem with truism two is that it underestimates the way that comedy allows us to take a cold, analytic attitude toward the world. Truism one assumes that comedy cannot take place in an environment where critical thought occurs. However, I think that comedy and critical distance have a similarity. When someone cites truism two, that comedy is tragedy plus time, I always call to mind another truism about comedy, one that I think is more accurate: tragedy is when I cut my finger, comedy is when you fall down a well and die. The point of this saying is, of course, that there is some selfishness in comedy. "It's funny cause I don't know him," to quote Homer Simpson laughing at a video of people getting injured. This is the essential truth behind superiority theory: if we feel above something, it is easier to laugh at it.

I think, however, the more important insight here is really one about tragedy: tragedy is the original genre of "first world problems." Everything seems tragic when you have no perspective. The smallest little things take on world-historical importance. The attitude of comedy is a different one. Of course, this is not to knock Hamlet as a play about a selfish little brat. But isn't Hamlet kind of a selfish little brat? His tragedy is that he gets too caught up in his own personal drama. Tragedy depicts someone in the grips of some personal crisis and shows how these tiny things can destroy a person. We feel the classic tragic emotions, terror and pity, not laughter, when we see someone going through this ordeal.

At the same time, there is a proximity between tragedy and comedy because both depict "tragic" things. The difference is one of attitude. The tragic person can never take tragic pleasure in his or her situation. It seems overwhelming and suffocating. It is tragedy that actually requires distance from the tragic situation, not comedy. Tragedy depicts someone being overwhelmed and consumed by misfortune. You could even argue that tragedy is the response to a situation we adopt when laughter is not possible but we still require some relief. If the person suffering cannot demonstrate resolve, then we cannot laugh, but we can mirror the pain. The point of this is to provide solidarity and perhaps, the beginning of a new attitude. It is not unlike how a caring parent will mirror the misfortune of a child: if the kid spills something and is embarrassed, then a parent will spill something too in order to create a sense of shared adversity. It is at this point that tears turn to laughter. This is why many funerals feature as much laughter as they do crying. Tragedy, I would argue, is a precursor to comedy, one that seeks to restore a sense of safety and solidarity to an unsafe and lonely situation.

In the case of tragedy proper in a work of art, we do not feel the sense of total relief because we cannot witness the other person "snapping out of it" and finding relief in our shared solidarity. Tragedy, then, is a later, more artificial, more inorganic reaction to the world that is predicated on the distance of viewership and the situation of the theater. There is nothing wrong with this, of course, but it is necessary to remember that the notion of a "pure" sadness is really a somewhat unnatural condition. It isolates and develops one moment of the cycle of morning and sadness. Comedy, by contrast, looks at the total situation. It depicts resilience and rebellion in the face of tragic situations. With comedy, the most horrifying indignities and misfortunes can be funny. This is the essential truth behind comedy and its refusal to give in to the laws of reality. It says: my dad died this morning, my grandma died this afternoon, but on the plus side I just found twenty dollars! who wants pizza?!

The role of tragedy is not to cancel this laughter but to restore a note of seriousness into its levity. It is easy for comedy to turn into an unwillingness to face up to problems and to avoid facing unpleasant feelings. Tragedy prevents comedy from becoming a defense. It forces the comic attitude to confront and feel deep pain before it returns to its carefree attitude. It returns a note of vulnerability and reflectiveness to the comic universe, but I would contend that it is still very much part of the larger comic universe, rather than comedy being a respite from a larger and essentially tragic universe.

Tragedy and comedy have a close relationship, but no one would claim that tragedy is culturally specific. For whatever reason, however, they claim that comedy is culturally specific. Why is this? The same subjects are the fodder for both comedy and tragedy: sex and death. The difference is not the material, but the attitude toward the material. This is the problem with the third truism: it begins with a very limited notion of comedy, one that excludes most of its typical subjects. It is not surprising, then, that it would find the result that it was looking for. Comedy is a form of resilience and resistance, and there is no better example of this than its refusal to comply with the rules we establish for it.

And just like that, I blew up all the conventional wisdom ...

Essay 2 - Debate as a Model for Research, Research as Structured by Debate

For the first paper, we practiced emulating one of the central features of academic writing: its narrow, specific, and tight focus. For this second paper, we will keep that level of specificity, but also employ research to connect our claims to the work of other scholars studying the same topic. As with the last paper, you can select any class text as the basis for your analysis, and you are also free to explore other topics of interest to you. The most important thing, again, is not what you write about, but how you write, and by focusing in on a precise detail or aspect of whatever text, film, clip, or other phenomenon you are exploring, you will ensure that your writing keeps this narrow and focused quality.

For this paper, you will again pick a few significant details and focus on explaining their importance. This time, however, you will also add in research to help develop your claims by building them on the views of others. Instead of thinking about research as the process of finding information, we will instead think of it as a process for locating and entering an ongoing scholarly dialogue, conversation, or exchange of ideas. By clearly defining who you are talking to and why you are talking to them, scholarly research helps to focus your writing and to clarify its significance. In addition to finding out facts, academic research helps organize such information into distinct arguments with a defined relationship to one another, thereby clarifying what information is useful and what information is extraneous.

For this assignment, do not think of yourself as simply trying to disprove other scholars or contradict their work. Your claim, rather, should simply situate your topic within an existing conversation, and even when you are exploring a point of disagreement make sure to concede the strengths of other positions and use these strengths to help develop your own views. See disagreement as a way to add specificity and focus to the position you are arguing, not simply as a way to refute or disprove other viewpoints. Be positive and productive: show how the conversations help make sense of what you are studying, and show how your topic contributes and extends existing conversations. Remember the lesson of Monty Python: mere contradiction is not argumentation. Instead, think of yourself as very modestly using the work of others to amplify your claims and help establish why they are significant by clarifying whom you are speaking to and why.

If you are having trouble thinking of a topic, consider using the following prompts to help you, though you are free to write on any topic connected to the course material: 

1. Consider how a work of comedy offers a political, social, or moral critique of something. For example, we discussed how the works of Key & Peele create multilayered comedy skits that link relatively minor annoyances with much more serious issues of race, gender, sexuality, disability, and class. Find a piece of research that explores how such issues emerge in works of popular comedy, and use its insights to explore an important issue in the work you are discussing. What does the research allow you to understand about the work of comedy that you did not understand before? 

2. Pick a work of comedy and choose a theme, technique, character, or symbol from that work. Then find a piece of research that discusses how a similar theme, etc., functions in comedy. What insights do you gain from your research about the work of comedy you chose? What does the research allow you to understand about the work that you did not understand before? 

This paper should be around 1300-1600 words long. It should be typed, double-spaced, in Times New Roman 12 inch font with 1 inch margins. You should include at least 1 peer-reviewed, scholarly article, but you can use as many such articles as are necessary. As long as you include at least one peer-reviewed source, you are also free to use non-peer reviewed sources from quality publications such as those found through the library databases, though this is not a requirement. Bring a rough draft for peer editing Friday, October 11. The paper is due Friday, October 18, by 5pm. 

Essay 1 - Comedy, details, debates

In this initial paper we will practice the first crucial feature of academic writing to master: focus. For the assignment, pick a specific reading from class, or another work that discusses or presents comedy, and locate a significant detail: an element that seems important but whose significance you cannot initially fully explain. In an essay of approximately 1000-1500 words, offer an explicit account of why you think this detail is important. The most important thing for this essay is that you remain focused on the detail and your account of it. Support your claims with concrete features of the work. While you can discuss other relevant aspects of the work, the key is to discuss those other aspects in terms of the main detail.

Your paper should feature a strong, refutable, significant thesis. The thesis should possess all of the components we've discussed in class (clear topic; focusing question; central claim; a connection to and role in a larger debate or conversation; clearly defined key concepts; organized evidence; and a strong sense of significance).You can approach the assignment using either of the two types of comedy analysis we have discussed: dissecting the work as a piece of comedy by using some of the theories we have read; or explaining how comedy itself reveals important truths. Be as specific as you can in posing your questions. Instead of trying to show, for example, which theory of comedy explains why the work is funny, focus on mapping all the features of incongruity theory onto one moment: what are the two ideas contrasted, how are they contrasted, and what does this contrast show? Instead of arguing that a piece of comedy mocks hypocrisy, again, be very focused: map out in explicit terms what the character appears to be, what he or she really is, and what the significance of this deception is.

You may write about a clip we have watched, or about any other thing we have read or watched in class. You may also pick almost anything else of interest to you (run the topic by me if you have any doubts or questions about it). If you are unsure what to write about, then pick something from the class.

You are only limited in your topic selection by one factor: your paper should have some connection to what we have discussed. Other than that, you are free to pick whatever you want to write about. If you are having a hard time thinking up a topic, consider some of the following prompts.

1. The classic analytical paper: apply concept x to work of art/literature/film y. For this assignment, you want to pick two significant details: one from a work of comedy (or another relevant example)  and one from one of the theoretical examples we have read. The trick to this kind of paper is showing not just that you can apply the theory but why this is the best theory to apply. What do we learn by applying this theory as opposed to others? How does it help answer the “so what?” question?

2. Write a short treatise laying out your own theory of comedy. The trick to this kind of paper is showing why your theory helps us understand something the other theories do not explain. Bring in significant details to help do this.

3. Explain some specific event through the lens of comedy theory. Part of answering the question of why studying comedy is significant is showing what we can learn from comedy theory. Can we explain a political or social phenomenon using comedy theory?

As with all college writing, what you write about is less important than how you write about it, and it is this latter skill we are attempting to master. The most important thing for this assignment is to focus in on a very specific feature of the work you are writing about, hone in on a narrow topic and question it suggests, and provide a strong, refutable claim in answer to it. The point of this exercise is to practice framing narrow questions and topics; making significant, specific, refutable, non-trivial claims about them; and supporting those claims with specific bits of textual or detailed evidence.

Have a posible topic picked out for a writing exercise on Friday, September 13th.  Bring a rough draft to class for Friday, September 20th. The paper is due Friday, September 27th at 5pm. 

Some model blogs

Why the storm trooper?

For your blog posts, feel free to follow your interests and passions, even if you see only a tenuous connection to some of the main topics we have discussed so far. All I ask is that the blog posts draw our attention to a piece of writing, a clip, a news article, or even an excerpt from a novel or other longer work, and provide your take on that: why is it significant? What makes it meaningful for you? What do you want others to understand about it? Feel free to interpret comedy in the broadest possible sense: you can blog about not only things that are intentionally meant to be funny, but things that are unintentionally funny, or anything else that presents an interesting incongruity, unexpected detail, or surprising feature that is worth comment.

I'm always a bit hesitant to provide models, because there's no set formula for writing these posts. The following are just some examples of different things you could do, and you should feel free to ignore them if they are not interesting or appealing, for they are not at all the only way of approaching the subject.

Here is an example of a fun post on a very dry topic--typography--that nonetheless points out the unexpected beauties of a classic film (not exactly comedy, but an attention to the little details, which is often a key feature of comedy).

This post is a smart and silly critique of the unintentional comedy and inanities of popular culture.

Here's an example of a music review of an old album of an old band from my hometown that more or less became The Shins. It's not exactly an analysis of something comedic, but it is an insightful review that points out some interesting and unexpected details in its own way.

Of course, best and worst lists can always be a fun way to do a blog post.

You can go with something light and silly on college life or other close-to-home topics. Hey, it may seem a bit informal, but it actually does a very nice job of closely analyzing the language in the emails, albeit in a goofy way.

And of course, you can always try to elevate the dialogue when it comes to current events.

Finally, you can check out some of the previous student blogs for this course (you can find even more if you look in the archive for this blog).