ENG 235
Paper 1
Prompt:
Write a 1,000‑word, thesis‑driven literary analysis examining how one text from our course syllabus conceptualizes, represents, or interrogates multiculturalism. Your essay should develop an original, arguable thesis about how the text constructs cultural difference, cross‑cultural encounter, racial or national identity, or the uneven dynamics of early American pluralism.
Choose one of the following authors/texts:
- William Apess, “An Indian’s Looking Glass for the White Man” (1833)
- David Walker, selections from Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World
- Alexis de Tocqueville, selections from Democracy in America
- Phillis Wheatley,
- “On Being Brought from Africa to America”
- “To S.M., a Young African Painter”
- J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, “What Is an American?” (Letter III from Letters from an American Farmer)
- Thomas Jefferson, “Query 18,” Notes on the State of Virginia
- Walt Whitman, Preface to Leaves of Grass (1855)
Develop a focused argument about how your chosen text shapes, critiques, or complicates the idea of multiculturalism. You may approach multiculturalism broadly—as racial, ethnic, religious, linguistic, or national plurality—or focus more narrowly on how the text imagines coexistence, conflict, assimilation, hierarchy, cultural fusion, or exclusion.
Guiding Questions
Your essay should answer questions such as:
- What vision of cultural diversity does the text promote, question, or resist?
- How does the author represent encounters between groups with different cultural or racial identities?
- What rhetorical or literary strategies (tone, irony, imagery, structure, metaphor, narrative voice) shape the text’s portrayal of cultural relations?
- Does the text reinforce, revise, or challenge dominant narratives about American identity and its multicultural possibilities?
- How does the text imagine who “belongs” within a multicultural America—and under what conditions?
- What tensions does the text expose between ideals of equality and the reality of cultural or racial hierarchy?
- How do metaphors, images, or formal choices (e.g., the letter form, the sermon, lyric poetry, the preface) shape its vision of multiculturalism?
- Does the text portray multiculturalism as possibility, threat, contradiction, aspiration, or illusion?
Requirements
- A clear, arguable thesis that makes a specific claim about the text’s treatment of multiculturalism.
- Close reading of textual evidence. Your argument must develop through analysis of language—not summary.
- Effective organization that builds a coherent, persuasive line of reasoning.
- Approximately 1,000 words (acceptable range: 950–1,100).
- Textual support that demonstrates attention to both the text’s ideas and its literary techniques.
- Optional but welcome: brief, relevant historical or cultural context—used sparingly and in service of your argument.
Format
Times New Roman
12-point Font
Double-spaced
Due Date
01/18 by midnight