Paper #2:  Analytical tools

Length:  4-6 pages.

Deadline:  Monday, 31 October, in class.

Format:  Double spaced, with 1-1¼ inch margins.

Font:  Legible, preferably 12 pt Times New Roman or similar.

Extensions:  Only in exceptional cases.  Must be cleared in advance.

Citations: You must cite one source.

We have begun applying many of the themes and concepts from class to increase our understanding of travel literature. We saw a good example of this in Brian Reed’s lecture for Monday, 17 October, on Mary Rowlandson. In this lecture Professor Reed demonstrated how an understanding of de Certeau’s distinction between “place” and “space” helped us understand the ways that Rowlandson struggled to make sense of her abduction. Scholars in the humanities often use distinctions like de Certeau’s to help them organize their thinking on new topics as well as bring fresh insight to older materials.

Now that you have honed your expository and close looking skills, we would like for you to begin thinking about which of the analytical tools we’ve introduced will be the most helpful for you. For your second paper choose one of the analytical categories listed below and apply it to an analysis of a cultural artifact of your choosing (a work of art, a short story or novel, or a movie). Although we encourage you to choose material that we have not covered in class but that interests you, we’ve gone ahead and listed some of the artifacts we have looked at this quarter. Please feel free to use one of these if you are having trouble coming up with something on your own.

This paper isn’t so much a close reading of an object as it is an analysis. We want you to state a clear thesis, develop your thesis using your chosen analytic, and support your argument through quotations and citations to the analytic and the object analyzed. In other words, use your analytic as a tool to look at your cultural artifact from a new perspective. You must use at least one citation. Feel free to use either a footnote, a parenthetical reference, or an in-paper attribution followed by a page number in parentheses. (Either the  “Humanities,” “Social Sciences,” or “History” options provided at http://www.dianahacker.com/resdoc/ are good choices). Just make sure that you consistently use the style of your choosing. Finally, the argument should be cumulative, creative, logical, well signposted, and contain a minimum of repetition (for example: avoid concluding sentences and concluding paragraphs that do nothing but restate what you’ve already said).

Please choose an analytic from the first column and apply it to a cultural object of your choosing. The third column is included for those who would like to apply this analytic to a cultural object introduced in the course.