The purpose of this essay assignment is to provide you with an opportunity to deepen your understanding of postmodern American literature and simultaneously to hone your critical writing skills.
Start by reading this "prompt" (the question that is intended to stimulate your ideas):
Read as postmodern texts, Ursula K. LeGuin's short stories, "Schrödinger’s Cat" and "She Unnames Them," challenge our notions of what we can and cannot know about "reality." No thoughtful person can read them without thinking and rethinking some profound, existential questions.
Since this course is a capstone course at the tail end of an interdisciplinary program that emphasizes interesting, well-framed questions rather than conclusive, terminal answers, your task is to craft the best question you can muster about one or both of these short stories and then to persuade your readers that yours is the best question (or at least one of the best questions) to ask about the story or stories. Put another way, here is your prompt: What is the best question to ask about Ursula K. LeGuin's "Schrödinger’s Cat" or "She Unnames Them" or both?
Now, write a formal, argumentative essay of 1000 to 1250 words (according to the word count tool in Microsoft Word), in MLA format (consult the latest edition of the MLA Handbook), in response to the prompt. To do this, develop a thesis (main argument) that responds to the prompt. Your thesis should lay out for your reader the main point that you want to make, and therefore should include both the question you wish to ask of the text(s) and the principal, overarching reason that you think it is a worthwhile question to ask. The rest of the essay will comprise your attempts to convince your reader of the veracity of your thesis. Assume that your audience is a smart, educated person who is familiar with, but is not an expert on, the stories and about postmodernism in general. As you write, it might help to think of a smart friend of yours as your audience.
As a formal piece of university writing,
your essay should be typed and double-spaced throughout, using a
standard font (like Times New Roman) in 12-point size, and with margins
of one
inch all the way around each page. In the top, left-hand corner of
the first page, place a heading that includes (using one line per
item) your name, the course number (BIS 490C), the date, and my name
(Prof. David S. Goldstein). (See item #20 in "Tips for Better
Prose"; a link appears below.) Provide a meaningful but brief title
for your paper (not "Essay" but rather a short hint of your paper's
main argument) that is centered just one double space beneath the
heading on the first page and in plain type (no underlining, bold,
italics, or quotation marks). (See item #22 in "Tips for Better
Prose.")
Please do not use a cover page, footnotes, or a bibliography. If you wish to quote, do so only after reading Becky Rosenberg's document, "Using Direct Quotation" at <http://faculty.washington.edu/davidgs/Quotation.html>. If you paraphrase or quote from the text, you can provide just a page number if it is obvious whom you are citing (such as when you refer to the author in the text of your sentence). Be sure you cite correctly according to MLA format.
Before you submit your paper, but after getting close to a final version, do some careful editing and proofreading. (I recommend that you wait until you get your ideas organized and on paper before worrying about the less-important mechanics of prose.) Because all teachers have their own idiosyncratic preferences for writing, you should review what mine are by re-reading "Tips for Better Prose" at <http://faculty.washington.edu/davidgs/Prose.html>. Reading this document is a required part of the assignment. If I think your paper is at least a middle draft, then when I return your paper to you, I will indicate patterns of problems that I noticed in your paper, using a list of codes such as "T1," "T2," and so forth, which refer to the numbered items of the "Tips for Better Prose" document. Of course, it would be better for you and for me if you pay close attention to the document so you can avoid some of the mechanical errors that I commonly find in student (and even professional) writing, rather than have them pointed out to you afterward. I recommend printing that document, and, after you finish writing your paper, check the items off one by one to make sure your paper is as mechanically sound as you can make it. Although the mechanics of writing are less important to me than the ideas expressed, the mechanics inevitably improve the effectiveness of your communication of ideas, which, after all, is your ultimate goal with each piece of writing that you do.
I will distribute on the class discussion list an example of a very good essay (written in a 300-level literature course on a different topic). You may read it if you want to see an example of an essay that I have liked. Note especially how the author lays out a specific argument (thesis) in the opening paragraph, and uses each subsequent paragraph to directly and explicitly support that thesis.
Needless
to say, your work must be entirely original. Using another person's
ideas or words without proper attribution, whether intentional or
accidental, constitutes plagiarism, and will result in a zero on this
assignment. Please re-read "Maintaining Academic Integrity" at
<http://faculty.washington.edu/davidgs/Integrity.html>.
Essay Revision: You will have the opportunity to revise your essay at least once before submitting the final version in your learning portfolio. I will do my best to return the evaluated midquarter version to you (as an e-mail attachment) within a week of receiving it.
Although you will have several opportunities to revise your paper, I expect that the midquarter version of your essay will not be a "rough" draft. Your rough drafts are for your own use in developing a version as close to ideal as possible. Please make each submitted version as good as you can.
Criteria for grading essay versions: Please carefully read "Criteria for Assessing Writing" at <http://faculty.washington.edu/davidgs/WritingAssess.html> for an explanation of my assessment criteria. In addition to substantive comments on each draft, I also will designate each draft as "early draft" (E), "middle draft" (M), or "late draft" (L).
Let me emphasize that I expect your best effort in this and every exercise. Your most serious work now will enable me to provide the most helpful comments, which in turn will improve your grade on later assignments. In other words, this assignment helps determine your grade in this course both directly (with the score it earns) and indirectly (with its capacity to teach you how to improve your writing), so it is worth the investment of your time and effort to do the best you can.
Some additional advice:
This page last updated October 4, 2004.
