Reading Fiction: Dysfunctional Families

Assignments

Essays and Revision

ESSAY #	DUE DATES	TOPICS
1	Ses #5	(Required tutorial with writing tutor) Write a 5-page essay in which you argue a persuasive point about either one of the following topics indicated below: Shelley’s discussion of parentage (mother, fathers, or both) in Frankenstein, drawing attention to Shelley’s very role as a parent in creating this text. Shelley’s Gothic techniques, drawing attention to how they help further the novel’s seeming fear of women.
2	Ses #11	Write a 5-page essay in which you argue a persuasive point about either one of the following topics indicated below: Hawthorne’s language of alternatives or interpretive options, drawing attention to the implications of that language for our understanding of the text’s values. The symbolic significance of the motor-car in Forster’s Howard’s End.
3	Ses #15	Write a 5-page essay in which you argue a persuasive point about either one of the following topics indicated below: A topic of your own choosing, which you can discuss with me prior to writing the paper. Woolf’s narrative technique in To the Lighthouse, drawing attention to how it informs our understanding of one particular character in the novel.
Revision	Ses #20	(Required tutorial with writing tutor) Revise the essay either with the lowest grade or the one you would most want to revisit. Revising this essay will most likely require that you do a massive overhaul of the structure and maybe even the overall argument of the essay itself. Merely inserting conjunctions and transition words at strategic points in the paper or running spell check and grammar check certainly will not suffice. Please consult both the writing tutor’s and my comments on that essay to guide you along in the revising process, and do come by to see me to discuss any problems or even epiphanies you might be encountering.
4	Ses #26	Write a 5-page essay in which you argue a persuasive point about either one of the following topics indicated below: The significance of setting in either Baldwin’s Go Tell it on the Mountain or Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban, drawing attention to how changes in setting affect character development. The role of tone in any one of O’Connor’s short stories, drawing attention to how the tone informs how we read and interpret that story. Important themes such as violence and love, generational or gender conflicts in Morrison’s Jazz or Roy’s God of Small Things, drawing attention to how strife lubricates the novel’s story.

Criteria for Grading

Each paper will be judged according to the following criteria:

1. Its demonstration of clarity, depth, and complexity of thought.
2. It should be focused and coherent with transitions that help to unify, link and guide your paragraphs.
3. It should demonstrate ease with language.
4. Its major ideas should be substantially developed.
5. It should make a cogent and persuasive argument. In other words, it should have a specific, thesis-the answer to the main question that you’re hoping to raise, which you’re posing of the text, which you think remains to be answered.
6. It should offer ample and solid evidence to support your claims.
7. It should include a title and a conclusion that not only summarizes your argument in one or two sentences but also offers me a sense of what work still remains to be done in light of the work that your essay itself has begun.
8. It should not be plagiarized! Plagiarism is cause for expulsion!

Plagiarism

Plagiarism—use of another’s intellectual work without acknowledgement—is a serious offense. It is the policy of the Literature Faculty that students who plagiarize will receive an F in the subject, and that the instructor will forward the case to the Committee on Discipline. Full acknowledgement for all information obtained from sources outside the classroom must be clearly stated in all written work submitted. All ideas, arguments, and direct phrasings taken from someone else’s work must be identified and properly footnoted. Quotations from other sources must be clearly marked as distinct from the student’s own work. For further guidance on the proper forms of attribution, consult the style guides available at MIT Writing and Communication Center and MIT Academic Integrity.