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.