Your paper grade account for 25 % of your overall course grade. There are two papers for this course. Each paper will be graded on the following four criteria: 1) thesis; 2) engagement with the text; 3) argumentation; and 4) language & style. For the first paper, each of these areas will count for 25% of the paper grade. For the second paper, “quality of research” will constitute a fifth area of assessment in the grading rubrics, as such each assessment category will be worth 20 % of the overall second paper grade.
50 % – paper 1 – Text-Based (Close Reading) Analysis Paper (4-5 pages): You should think of this paper as an extension of the posts and opportunity to further develop the close reading analysis and argumentation skills practiced in the posts. Indeed you may even choose to use one of your post assignments as a starting point for your paper. I will assess the paper based on how well you clearly posit and substantiate an interpretive claim about a portion of the texts using close and sustained textual analysis. While the paper provides a little more space to develop a claim than the post, a 4-5 page paper is an extremely short paper. You must make sure your object of analysis and your claim are narrow and specific enough to be thoroughly illustrated within the 4-5 pages allotted. As with your posts, your claim (your thesis) should be about how you understand some small, specific aspect of the text working; it should not be about the major symbols, primary motifs, or overarching themes, moods, nor about the entire plot. Remember you may (and indeed you should) illustrate the stakes of making such a claim by later explaining how your analysis may affect the way we ultimately understand something about the major characters, tropes, motifs, themes, and/or symbols of the text, but the actual object of study (or object of consideration) about which you will make a claim should be very focused.
25 % Engagement with Text
25% Argumentation
25% Language & Style
50 % paper 2 – Material History Research & Textual Analysis Paper (5-6 pages): The purpose of this paper assignment is for students 1) to consider in greater depth the material history at play in black texts; 2) to conduct research on a specific historically locate-able material detail in one of the black-authored texts on the syllabus; and 3) to posit an interpretive claim that answers the question: How does knowledge about the historical context of the material referenced in this part of the text affect the way we can read and interpret this part of the text (and subsequently how that interpretation affects the way we understand some overarching aspect of the text as a whole)?
As such for this paper, students should: 1) Pick one of the black-authored texts on the syllabus they wish to research and write about. 2) Conduct initial research about the general historical context of this text. Such general research should cover historical background relevant to the story’s setting or main characters as well as information relevant to the text’s publication history: in terms of place, time, and condition of publication, author background, audience, reception, etc. 3) Choose one specific historically locate-able detail about this text (i.e. a place, an object, a person, an event) to conduct further research. As with the posts and paper 1, the more focused and narrow their object of consideration is the better. 4) Research this historically locate-able material from a variety of angles using at least four reputable sources, at least two of which must be a peer-reviewed scholarly source. 5) Use the knowledge from this research to posit a clear and focused interpretive claim. This interpretive claim should still be based on textual analysis (as with the first paper). However the students understanding of the text should be expanded based on the information they gain from their research. 6) Draft a paper in which this claim is both clearly posited as a text-based thesis statement and then illustrated using both relevant information from the research and close analysis of the text’s content and formal element. 7) This paper should include an MLA formatted bibliography as well as in-text parenthetical citations (according to MLA guidelines).
Note: Students may choose to use Paper 2 to extend or continue a line of exploration begun in Paper 1. While you may include similar version of the readings from Paper 1, ultimately Paper 2 should stand as its own paper, for if your readings in Paper 1 are essentially unchanged even after your research, you have not made a claim that is fundamentally about how the historical context of this aspect of the text enriches our understanding of how we can read and interpret the black material referenced in this text.
20 % Engagement with Text
20% Argumentation
20% Language & Style
20 % Quality of Research
Black Matter 