Paper 3

For this paper you should choose one of the topics below and write a 500-word essay with a central thesis. 

Prompts (Choose one):

1. The play A Raisin in the Sun is often talked about for the ways it represents intersections of social class and race. One large part of this discussion involves the American dream, a concept that is loosely imagined as the desire for every American to attain middle class status, which is itself a vague category that signifies different things to different groups of people. If you choose this prompt, I would like you to detail your interpretation of how A Raisin in the Sun represents the American dream. How does Lorraine Hansberry depict social mobility? How does this depiction represent the crossroads of race and social class? And, how does this depiction of the American dream resonate with today? Don’t feel like you need to answer all or any of these questions. They are meant to get you thinking.Be sure to include a thesis statement in your first paragraph that states your central point and use textual examples throughout to make this point.  
2. This semester we have used two social annotation platforms: hypothes.is and Manifold. Using these platforms, you have annotated several poems and a digitized copy of Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno. In doing these activities you have hopefully gained a better sense of yourselves as readers. For this prompt, I would like you to reflect on the annotations you made. Do you notice any trends in what kinds of questions you had about the texts? Do you notice any trends in the kinds of observations you had about the texts? Do you notice any changes to the ways you read throughout the semester? Did the chapters from Jonathan Culler’s book influence your reading over the semester? Don’t feel like you need to answer all or any of these questions. They are meant to get you thinking.Be sure to include a thesis statement in your first paragraph that states your central point and use textual examples throughout to make this point.  

Format:

• Typed, double-spaced

Due Date:

• Friday, December 11th
• Turn it in to Blackboard under “Paper 3: A Raisin in the Sun/Annotation Assignment”

Prompt

For this assignment, I would like you to write a 1200-word essay with a thesis that makes a claim about the depiction of race in Benito Cereno. 

Scholars have long concerned themselves with this novella’s representation of the problem of racial slavery. H. Bruce Franklin, for example, argues that Melville creates a character in Amassa Delano who, like the founding fathers, “fails to see the disparity between his ‘republican impartiality’ and his racist, hierarchical behavior.” Similarly, Caroline Karcher writes that Benito Cereno is a response to the “menacing gains racism was making” in the name of what constituted science and genealogy during the 1800s.  C.L.R. James is even more expansive when he writes that in the story Melville, “itemized every single belief cherished by an advanced civilization […] about a backward people and then one by one showed that they were not merely false but were the direct cause of [Captain Delano’s] own blindness and stupidity.” 

I’m interested to know what you think. Does the novella give us an antiracist representation of enslavement that opposes the slave trade? Or does it paint enslaved Africans in a negative light? What about whiteness? Are we on Amassa Delano’s side or should we be suspicious of his assumptions about what he perceives while on board the San Dominick? 

Format:

Typed, double-spaced, 1200 words

Due:

11/29 by midnight

• Annotations: There are different kinds of annotations that you can add yourself. All annotations should be around 100 words. Be sure to use our class’s annotation group when leaving your annotations. Some kinds of annotations you can write include:
  • Pointing out a detail of the text and describing what you think it means
  • Asking questions about the text’s meaning or an element that is confusing
  • Reflecting on the historical context (you may choose to include a link to another web page for this and describe the information)
  • Connecting to personal experience, class discussion, or other course materials
  • Answering other students’ questions or adding on to their observations

Paper 1 Rubric

ENG 102 

Paper 1

Prompt

For this paper I would like you to choose either “The Sea is History” by Derek Walcott or “Diving into the Wreck” by Adrienne Rich and write a paper with a thesis that responds to the corresponding prompt below. Address one of the prompts by analyzing the poem itself; do not use any outside sources or material. (Choose only one of the prompts below.)

1. Derek Walcott’s poem “The Sea is History” is an extended metaphor about the meaning and significance of history. Walcott, a poet, playwright, and painter from the island of Saint Lucia, often reflected on colonialism and postcolonialism in his work, and “The Sea is History” is a good example of this theme. In the poem, he takes up the question of the role of history for a place that is often said to have no history, especially in the context of euro-centric understandings of world history. Here, Walcott uses the image of the sea–often thought of as a blank void–as the location of his island’s history. Write a paper that discusses Walcott’s representation of history. In the context of the poem, what makes historical events significant? How does he depict his island’s history and how does he recover this history’s significance?
2. Adrienne Rich’s poem “Diving into the Wreck” uses the imagery of a deep sea exploration of a ship wreck to represent how one comes to gain knowledge, about oneself and the world. Maps, a compass, a camera are some of the tools the poem discusses for the attainment of knowledge about the wreck. Rich, a feminist poet, often explored themes of sexuality that questioned gender norms. In addition to representing the production of knowledge in general, this poem also destabilizes gender norms as the speaker of the poem becomes disidentified from these norms by the poem’s end. Write a paper that discusses how Rich represents the attainment of knowledge or the act of exploration. What does she show us about these activities? Do they clarify the subject they study–does the speaker of the poem gain knowledge about the wreck? Or, does she gain some understanding of herself? Or is it both? And what is the significance of Rich’s representations of this process?

Warning: Both of these poems are very popular and are widely discussed on the Web. I know about these sites and I will know if you get information or, more importantly, analysis from them. Be sure that you are reading the poems in isolation and basing your paper on your own interpretation.

Due Date:

10/18on Blackboard

Format:

1000 words

Typed, double-spaced, 12-point font

There are different kinds of annotations that you can add yourself. All annotations should be around 50 words. Some kinds of annotations you can write include:

• Asking questions about the text’s meaning or an element that is confusing
• Answering other students’ questions
• Pointing out a detail of the text and describing what you think it means
• Reflecting on the historical context (you may choose to link to another web page for this and describe the information)
• Connecting to personal experience, class discussion, or other course materials