Paper 2: Details and debates

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 significant detail and focus on explaining its 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.

This paper should be 3-4 pages long, typed, double-spaced, in Times New Roman 12 inch font with 1 inch margins. You should include at least 1 scholarly article, but you can use as many as are necessary. You are also free to use non-peer reviewed sources from quality publications such as those found through the library databases, but this is not a requirement. Bring a rough draft for peer editing Friday, October 7. The paper is due Friday, October 14 by the start of class.