Midterm Essay American Lit I
Length: min 1,200 words !
Prompt: For your midterm paper, you will be asked to examine how two or more works we have looked at so far this semester (any works up until the due date of the essay) illuminate a particular theme. In short, what I am asking you to do is examine how two or more of our readings can help us understand a theme. For this assignment we will define “theme” to loosely mean an idea that a work conveys, examines, or raises. We are working under a definition that implies work may have multiple themes, some of which may be intentionally introduced into the text, others may be implied by the text intentionally or unintentionally. So, for example, a theme for this essay might look at how two or more works we’ve covered inform our understanding of the theme of how historical texts can also be texts of justification. Or, a different essay might examine how we can see the social limitations on women writers manifest in the works of Bradstreet and Rowlandson. Your first task is to arrive at a theme. I would encourage you to run it by me before you get started. In most cases the more specific the theme, the better. So, for example, rather than examining the portrayals of Native Americans in the works we’ve looked at (very broad), you would want to consider examining how Puritan writers understand Native Americans in terms of God’s providence (much more focused). !
Your essay will focus on a specific theme, but you will also be making an argument about the meaning and insight readers can extract from the works you discuss (as it relates to your theme). As with the reading responses, a central part of supporting your thesis (the overall argument that you are making for the essay) for this essay will be presenting and analyzing specific details from the texts. Avoid just summarizing details (summary is the communication of uncontested facts), but make sure that you develop the analysis of those details (analysis is the contested aspect of how one might glean significance from the details). !