Research Paper Guidelines

Objective

To present an argument about the interpretation of the work of a poet in this class with support from works of other literary critics who have examined this poet's work. In the process, students should demonstrate an understanding of the conventions of academic argument and the MLA documentation format.

Topic

Choose one poet from the course syllabus—the poet whose work is the most interesting to you. After careful consideration of this poet's work and published works by other literary critics addressing the poet, formulate a thesis statement for an argument about the poetry collection's meaning and importance. Organize your argument around this thesis statement. Come up with three to five subtopics that are in themselves arguable and that add up to a strong case for your thesis statement.

When organizing your ideas, avoid structures that might lead to excessive summarizing of the work in question. Also, be sure to support your ideas with quotations from the poems in accordance with MLA format. The paper should also include quotations from the secondary sources that you find the most useful in presenting your argument. Bring a 6-page minimum draft of you paper to class on April 10th, 2018, for peer editing. After receiving comments from your classmates, revise and proofread before turning the final draft in on April 17th, 2018.

There are numerous good topics out there. The best of them will allow you to focus on particular details in the chosen poet's work while also helping you place the work in a wider historical, political, or literary context. Good topics are often answers to questions about poetic works over which there are actual or potential disagreements among readers.

Proposal

In clear terms, write a 250-word proposal that provides a topic overview, argues for its importance, states an arguable thesis statement and introduces some subtopics—clearly related to the thesis statement—for further consideration. It is not necessary at this stage to identify the critical works that you will be consulting in order to complete this paper, though you are welcome to mention some possibilities if you have already identified some. Follow standard format guidelines for a paper, though a list of Works Cited is not necessary at this stage. Turn this in as a hard copy on March 20th, 2018.

Annotated Bibliography

Identify eight secondary sources pertaining to your research paper topic. List them according to the MLA format for a list of works cited. Add approximately 100 words of commentary to each entry briefly explaining what it contributes to your understanding of the topic, what its critical orientation is, and why you either find it helpful or unhelpful. Turn this in on March 27th, 2018.

Writing Tips

1. Somewhere in the opening paragraph of your paper, you should write a clear thesis statement, which is a one-sentence overview of what you will be arguing in your paper. In most cases, the first thesis statement you come up with will not be arguable enough. Keep revising it until you have a statement that is truly arguable and interesting. Do not hesitate to revise it after you have written a complete draft of the paper. The thesis statement should directly address your chosen work.

   Example:

   FIRST TRY: The moment of realization when a child learns that she will become an adult can be a terrifying experience.

   SECOND TRY—NOT THERE YET: Elizabeth Bishop's "In the Waiting Room" documents her terrifying experience of learning that she will one day become an adult.

   A GOOD THESIS: In Elizabeth Bishop's "In the Waiting Room," becoming an adult means regarding one's own body as a grotesque, alien entity, endlessly redefined by modern media of representation.

   Notice the evolution from an overly general, though accurate, statement about the two works to a statement about the difference between the two works to a precise explanation of how these books compare.

2. Organize your paper around the thesis statement and be sure that each part of your argument bears some clear relationship to the thesis statement. Do not leave it to your reader to figure out what each subtopic is doing in your paper. Consider the following outline for an argument supporting the above thesis:

   THESIS: In Elizabeth Bishop's "In the Waiting Room," becoming an adult means regarding one's own body as a grotesque, alien entity, endlessly redefined by modern media of representation.

   1. Coming-of-age is a major element of the experience that Bishop remembers in her poem.

   2. Though comfortable in her own body at the beginning of the memory, Bishop concludes the poem with images of her own body as grotesque and unfamiliar.

   3. Bishop's poem artfully links media images of other women's bodies to her own redefinition of self as she remembers it in this poem.

   Turn each of these subtopics into a unified paragraph with supporting evidence in the form of quotations. If a paragraph gets too long, break it down into two paragraphs, but make careful use of transitional phrases to keep the logic clear to the reader.

3. Follow MLA format when using quotations or paraphrases to support the argument:

   1. Use the blended quotation form for quotations under four lines and the block quotation form for quotations over four lines. Remember the tricky punctuation rules for each type of quotation. If you have questions about this, ask me or look it up in a style manual such as the Online Writing Lab at "http://owl.english.purdue.edu/".

   2. Write a list of Works Cited at the end of the paper. The last name of the author comes first, then the title of the selection. Then, if applicable, the title of the book in which you found the work (i.e. Geography III). Notice that you should italicize the name of a book or journal whenever you mention it. Also, take note of the pattern of indentation.

      Examples:

      Clark, Heather. The Grief of Influence: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Oxford UP, 2011.

      Henzy, Karl. "Langston Hughes's Poetry and the Metaphysics of Simplicity." Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters, vol. 34, no. 3, Summer 2011, pp. 915-927.

      Lowell, Robert. "My Last Afternoon with Uncle Devereux Winslow." Life Studies/For the Union Dead, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007, pp. 65-69.

      Alphabetize works cited according to the author's last name. The year of original publication after the author's name in the above two examples is optional, but the year of publication after the publisher is required. There are many other rules for MLA format for peculiar instances that will come up, but the above two examples should serve as useful models for the vast majority of cases for this class. Do not hesitate to look these rules up.

4. Grammar issues:

   1. Refer to events in a work of literature in the present tense. This may sound strange at first, but it is the convention for addressing literature. Notice that we tend to follow this rule in class discussion.

   2. Transitions. These are words that serve as signposts pointing out the direction of your argument to your readers. Some of these transitions are like "One Way" signs leading your reader on to the next point. Others are like "U Turn" signs indicating a reversal of direction. There are other more subtle transitions that alter the tone or indicate approval or disapproval of what you are discussing.

      Examples:

      One Way Signs (leading from before to after or from cause to effect)

      Frost's neighbor utters a well-established truism about good fences making good neighbors. Subsequently, Frost feels the urge to challenge him on it.

      Langston Hughes is concerned about the narrow perspective on African Americans that visitors to Harlem attain from their visits to jazz clubs. Consequently, he requires them to follow the piano player home at the end of "The Weary Blues."

      Sylvia Plath's father Otto Plath died when she was very young. Thus, poems like "The Colossus" contain veiled references to the distant, inscrutable father-figure that he once represented to her.

      U-turn Signs (establishing a contrast between ideas)

      Whereas Elizabeth Bishop's poetry holds on to the highly structured, impersonal style of the high modernists, Robert Lowell's poems often veer into the overtly confessional mode.

      Wallace Stevens evokes many different traditional images of religious belief and practice in his poem "Sunday Morning." However, these images fail to provide him with a unified basis for his religious contemplations.

      These are just a few examples of the numerous transitions out there that can help you arrange your ideas. Most style manuals will give you a more exhaustive list of options and fuller explanations of how to use them. Your best resource, however, is your own experience with written and spoken language. You undoubtedly hear and use dozens of these transitions per day. Integrate the appropriate ones into your writing.

      Keep in mind also that these transitions are often the most important as you move from one subtopic in your paper to the next. Very frequently, the first sentence in a new paragraph needs to provide the reader a clear transition between ideas in the previous paragraph and ideas in the new one.

   3. A grammatically complete sentence has at least one subject and one verb. If it is missing a subject or a verb, it is a sentence fragment. Sentence fragments are sometimes acceptable, but only if you mean to use them.

   4. Comma rules are complicated, so look them up in a style manual if you had trouble with them on the previous paper. A comma splice is what happens when you try to separate two grammatically complete sentences with only a comma.

      Example:

      WRONG: I wish it would snow soon, I want to go cross-country skiing.

      CORRECT: I wish it would snow soon so I could go cross-country skiing.

      ALSO CORRECT: I wish it would snow soon. I want to go cross-country skiing.

   5. Avoid using the passive voice whenever it is possible to do so. When writing in the passive voice, you remove the subject from the sentence or at least de-emphasize it. This makes writing less engaging to most readers.

   6. Avoid contractions when writing college papers. Replace they're with they are and replace don't with do not (these are just a few examples of the numerous possible contractions).

   7. Italicization is the best way to signal that you are referring to a word itself and not to the thing that the word represents. Notice how I am using italicization of the terms in the following section "h". You should also italicize titles of books (even in parenthetical references and lists of works cited) and foreign-language words like idée fixe, status quo and Bildungsroman.

   8. The word it's (with an apostrophe) is a contraction of it is. The word its (without an apostrophe) is the possessive form of it. Its and whose both deviate from the standard rule about possessives.

Grading Standards

In grading papers for this class, I will use the following criteria: