ENG 235

Final Project Assignment

Keywords

Prompt:

For your final project you will write a paper with a thesis that examines a keyword and its relevance to texts on the reading list for the course. The final paper will be around 1500 words (about 5-6 pp) and it will be structured around a thesis statement that defines your overall understanding of the term in light of your textual examples.

I provide more specific guidelines below, but I want you to encourage you to think about this assignment as a culmination and assessment of the reading and work you have completed this semester. With this in mind, I encourage you to contact me if you have other ideas.

Final Paper

Generally, we learn words by looking them up in a dictionary. There we encounter the word’s one or more definitions, pronunciation guides, perhaps a sample sentence and a short etymology. This approach assumes that words have stable, static definitions that we can summon and apply every time we see a given word in use.

With this assignment, I would like you to take the opposite approach. I would like you to choose one of the terms listed below, and ask yourself: if we had to use readings from the syllabus to define this term, what would be its definition? In other words, if the syllabus is what provides the textual evidence for how this term is used, what would it mean?

This will be a traditional thesis-driven paper. In order to offer a complete assessment of your term in light of the texts on our reading list this semester I would like you to select readings from the beginning, middle, and end of the course schedule. I’m not sure about how many you should choose, but I can’t really see you writing a coherent assessment of your keyword without discussing 5-7 readings from the syllabus. You can use sections from your previous papers, but you should substantially revise these pieces of writing to fit your new, longer, more comprehensive final paper.

I’m open to your thoughts about what shape your essay will take, and we can work the details out in the proposal process.

Keywords:

• Community
• Race
• Nation
• Slavery
• Servitude
• Land
• Gender

Due Dates:

• Rough draft: February 10th
• Final paper: February 19th