F2014: Composition / Short Paper 1.3
“Entering Into Conversations”
Length:2-3 pages, double-spaced
Format:Times New Roman font, 12pt size
1 inch margins on all sides
Responding to secondary sources (texts or research sources other than the ones that serve as your primary evidence) is a tricky, but necessary, business. In their book, They Say/I Say, Graff and Birkenstein claim that for any argument to become properly academic “a writer needs to indicate clearly not only his or her thesis, but also what larger conversation that thesis is responding to” (18). While I agree with this claim, I would also emphasize that there are numerous inventive ways to respond to and insert yourself into any conversation. My argument here (the one that drives this prompt) is that using secondary texts to indicate a “larger conversation” is itself an argumentative, creative act. (See what I did there?) This assignment will allow you to experiment with strategies for using secondary texts to situate and support your own argument.
OBJECTIVES:
- To practice entering into a “conversation” (ala Graff and Birkenstein). At this point in the course, we have read and collectively discussed LudmillaJordanova’s “Melancholy Reflections.” You have also, along with your presentation group, read a number of articles on a research topic of your own choosing. These essays, amongst other things, are a part of a conversation on the historically specific anxieties or conflicts that produced the monster of Shelley’s novel. Your goal in this paper will be to enter into this conversation yourself by constructing a complex, nuanced response to one of these articles.
- To generate your own “response claim,” using your article’s argument as a launching point. Follow these steps to generate an argument for this paper:
a)Pick a specific claim or sub-claim from the essay to “converse with.” Keep in mind that you can use either the main claim, or any of the sub-claims as a jumping-off point for your own argument.
b)Decide on the terms that you will use to construct your conversation. Regardless of whether you decide to agree or disagree withyour article’s ideas, your main focus should be on constructing a claim of your own that emerges from and converses with her ideas in some way.
c)Write an argumentative essay that contains the following:
- A directed, purposeful summary of (one of) your essay’s arguments
- A specific idea in her essay that you would quote or paraphrase in the service of your own claim
- Your own claim which emerges from that conversation and is supported by one piece of analysis of the novel.