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The Analytical Essay
II: "Scrolling Forward"
In his introduction to Scrolling Forward, David Levy writes, "I
am less interested in persuading you that I am right than in encouraging
you to think things through for yourself and from your own experience"
(6).
Write an eight-to-twelve-page essay in which you engage a particular
question or issue raised by Levy in Scrolling Forward by
- recounting in detail an experience with the class projects
this semester and/or an experience you've had with creating documents.
- projecting your analysis/experience forward to the possibilities
of creative practice in your intended field of work (or perhaps in a
political, civic or cultural endeavor that you will be involved with).
This essay will be due by our scheduled
final exam time.
Format
- Begin your essay by introducing the question or issue you've chosen
from Levy and stating a "thesis" about it--that is,
one conclusion that encapsulates your perspective. The punchier and
more surprising, the better. You'll want to include in your introductory
paragraph a provocative quotation from Levy to hook the reader.
(Suggestion: rewrite this after you finish writing the body of the essay.)
- The point of this essay is to use an idea from Levy to enable some
creative contact between your experience and your analysis of
future creative practice in your career and/or life.
You'll want to avoid, therefore, putting the idea from Levy, your experience,
and your analysis of the future in different sections. Instead, try
breaking down Levy's question/issue and using the component ideas as
the major sections of your essay. Within each of those sections,
then, talk about both your past/present experience and your speculations
about the possibilities of creative practice in your field.
- End the essay by briefly recalling the thesis or conclusion you presented
in the introduction and adding something extra (a "kicker"),
perhaps an example, detail, quotation or observation that's interesting,
funny, or thought provoking which you didn't include in the essay so
far, but which suggestions a further implication of your analysis, or
that illustrates or crystallizes your overall point.
Quotations, Citations and Documentation
Be very scrupulous about putting quotes around other writers' words and
crediting the quotations with in-text citations. Failing to do so, even
accidentally or ignorantly, is plagiarism, and is grounds for failure
of the paper and the class. If you paraphrase an author, be sure to use
your own words and sentence structures.
Cite the authors and page numbers parenthetically in the text--at the
end of the sentence where the quotation appears--and document the source
in a "Works Cited" page at the end of the essay using MLA format.
There are no annotations required for the paper.
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