Paper Assignment
Essay requirements:
• 1500-2000 words in length
• argument-driven academic essay that uses textual evidence from multiple sources to make and defend an original claim (thesis) of your own
• offers some actual analysis/interpretation of one or more exhibit sources from our class texts
• uses one or more theory sources from our class texts to help make sense of your exhibit text.
• uses a third source of your choice-another exhibit source, another theory source, or a background source; outside sources (beyond our class texts) fine with prior approval
• not a research paper that merely or mostly presents facts
• written for a standard academic audience: that is, professors and students at BU or another institution who are generally familiar with the overall topic you are discussing, but who may not have read the particular texts you are citing and certainly do not have the texts in front of them
Specific Text/Topic Choices:
1. Write about Re Jane.
2. Write about The Beautiful Struggle.
3. Write about one or more of the poems we have read together (choose from Gossett, Lorde, Brooks).
4. Write about one or more of the personal essays we have read together (choose from Beam and Gates).
5. Write about some combination of these texts and/or another poem, essay, etc. in conjunction with one of our assigned texts as long as you have run this past me in a conference and received approval.
For the text(s) (exhibit sources) you have chosen, discuss how intersectionality OR institutional racism functions in the text(s). Where do we see this concept? Which characters, scenes, or lines show us that this concept is at work here? Why does this concept matter to a fuller understanding of your text(s)? What can we learn about the concept by looking more closely at the way the text(s) works? What can we learn about the text(s) by looking at it through the lens of the concept?
Note that a good claim is not "Re Jane has a lot of intersectionality," or "Coates shows us life with racism"; those are far too simplistic. Instead we will workshop examples of possible claims in class and co-construct what it means to really analyze these concepts in your text(s). You will use one or more of our theory sources (Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Kimberle Crenshaw, Chimamanda Adichie, Roxane Gay, Frank Wu) to help you analyze your exhibit source(s).