A PDF of this assignment prompt can be found in the Assignment Prompts folder in “Files” (and may be easier to read in that format than it is here. We will address any questions you might have about the take-home final in class on Thursday, December 5.
The Scene
The year is 2044. You are old…well not “old” per se, but middle-aged and your back hurts, so you tell people you are old. Specifically, you tell your students that you are old. Yes, that’s right. After a brief moonlighting stint as a “co-teacher” in your 300-level literature seminar on International Women Writers at Emerson College, you decided to fall down the rabbit hole of academia and now find yourself planning your syllabus for your own college seminar on women writers. What books will you decide to teach this semester?
And why?
Questions that you ask yourself while planning include but are not limited to:
what do want to communicate to my students? What does feminism look like in 2040 and is the feminism of my youth outdated? What do Iwant them to learn about gender? Or race? Or globalization and the way we move across the world?
How has society evolved since was in college? How has it stayed the same? What role does literature, specifically the books you chose for your syllabus, play in answering these questions?
Also, you heard a rumor that your former professor’s daughter has retired from traveling the world as RADA, the 21st century’s youngest and most celebrated conceptual performance artist, enrolled in an undergraduate program in gender and literary studies at the university where you teach, and is planning to take your class. So, no pressure or anything, but she’s kind of a big deal and will totally talk about your class to her mom.
The Assignment
In a creative/critical essay, you will articulate which five books from the semester you have included on your syllabus and why. Taking the questions above as your starting point, you will develop a focused argument for your choice of books as opposed to simply constructing a list. You may, of course, add to these questions or bring in other topics of inquiry that we have addressed throughout the semester, such as discourses of colonization and anti-colonization, the role that history plays in our understanding of literature, sex and sexuality, genre, the environment, etc. etc. Regardless of which direction you plan to pursue in your focus, your essay should include close-reading analysis of specific passages from the texts of your choosing that exhibits careful attention to both form and content. Also, because this is a creative/critical essay assignment, encourage you to take risks in your writing and communicate your unique perspective on the books and themes we have engaged with this semester.
Additional Writing Guidelines
Although the scope of this assignment is wide, you will need to articulate why you have chosen your five texts and draw connections between them. Your essay should not be a “list” of texts; rather, you should communicate a particular focus and argument. Also, you should not feel restricted by
“The Scene” section of the prompt and feel like you must write in the genre of a syllabus. As long as your essay includes analysis of five texts, the genre of your essay is up to you.
While your essay is framed as a creative work—and therefore can experiment with style and form—it is also an exercise in argumentation and textual analysis (so remember to include a claim that communicates your approach to the assignment early on in your essay). By paying close attention to the texts (that is, analyzing textual features such as the authors’ use of language, imagery and other rhetorical devices) you are demonstrating how you have understood the course material.
Be sure to support your close-reading analysis with specific cited evidence from each of the texts you highlight and avoid excessive plot summary. Choose your passages effectively and purposefully to support the overall “point” or argument of your essay. Think of this essay as an argumentative analysis essay that takes advantage of your analytical voice and your personal voice.
Instructions and Requirement
Your take-home final should be approximately 1,500 – 2,000 words long. Please include the word count at the end of your document. (To give you an idea of what this looks like, the first page of this assignment prompt measures 503 words. This word count is meant to offer you space for both close reading analysis of your chosen texts and the creative direction you take in this assignment.)
You will write about five texts from the course in this essay, only one of which may be a text you have already written about in either your analytical essay or research essay.
Use 12 point, Times New Roman font, number your pages, and follow the MLA style and citation guidelines (including parenthetical citations after cited quotations and a works cited page).
Proofread your paper carefully and avoid excessive typographical or grammatical errors
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