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HUM 3306: History of Ideas--The Age of Enlightenment to the Age of Anxiety
Fall 2008
Prof. Harvey
ESSAY#1 INSTRUCTIONS: DUE SEPTEMBER
25 (due September 30 if writing on Equiano)
General instructions:
--The paper should be about 1200
words long or longer. Please single-space it (the norm is
double-spacing, but I find it easier to read single-spacing!).
--You may draw upon information/perspectives gleaned from the
"Prof" lectures and associated links, but the main ideas and
particular approach should be yours. Do NOT use web sample papers, SparkNotes, etc. to get ideas or for phrasing. Do NOT
do secondary research via the internet or elsewhere.
--Refer to the Checklist at the
end of this file; you are expected to take care, to the best of your
ability, to meet the criteria established on the Checklist. Note the
grading scale.
--Do not provide a cover page;
put your name/classname/date turned
in/option#/your title at the top of the first page.
--Be prepared, should it be
requested, to supply a draft stage of the essay (if you're wondering; this
helps discourage plagiarism!). This means you must remember to permanently
save a draft at some point as you are composing. P.S. It is extremely
easy for me to detect plagiarism... don't be tempted!
--Organization, quality of
analysis, and style will all be factors in determining your grade, worth
33% of the course grade. Be sure to make a computer-disk backup.
Choose one of the options below for the topic of your
essay—these options are not intended to box you in, but to provoke
insightful and original analysis (do not just "answer" the
questions below):
OPTION ONE: One might make the
argument that the most key passage in Locke is section 50, near the end of
Chapter V, in which he concludes his discussion of gold (money) and the
obtainment of a "disproportionate and unequal possession of the
earth." Read this passage very carefully. Do you agree
that "men have agreed to a disproportionate and unequal possession of
the earth" through a "tacit and voluntary consent"? Or was
this imposed upon most men by the strongest among them? Can "a man
fairly possess more land than he can use “without injury to anyone"?
Does the fact that money (i.e. gold and silver) does not spoil or decay
also mean that it is essentially worthless? Or does it, in a very real way,
represent real wealth in goods and services? To what extent is this, indeed, the key or core of Locke’s Second
Treatise? This option invites, perhaps, critique of
Locke or discussion of wider political-philosophical issues raised by or in
the Second Treatise. (Remember: just don’t answer the previous
questions… use them to brainstorm, not to organize your essay!)
OPTION TWO: A careful reading
of Locke’s notions about property development, spoilage, and so on, might
lead you to conclude that he would be opposed to "excessive"
capitalist development of real estate (i.e., say a Donald Trump tower on
Miami-Dade wetlands), or perhaps the reverse. Explore to what extent you
think Locke’s ideas in The Second Treatise are significant for
arguments for or against large-scale real-estate development. This
option provides an occasion to apply Locke’s ideas (especially in Chapter
V) to the contemporary reality of land development that we see all around
us in South Florida. Is development always
"industrious and rational," as Locke seems to imply, or can it
sometimes represent "the covetousness of the quarrelsome and the
contentious"? (Section 34). Does development always serve the common
good or does it sometimes, or often, serve only the wealthy?
OPTION THREE: To what extent
does Equiano’s awareness of his lowly status as a
slave impel him to turn to a European religion; adopt European (capitalist)
business practices; and become an ‘individual’ in the European and/or
Enlightenment sense of that term? Do you think Equiano
abandoned his ‘roots,’ by participating enthusiastically in European wars,
religion, and commerce (including the slave trade), etc? Did he ‘sell out’
to some extent? Obviously, Equiano is a
complex character. He was an abolitionist but he also participated in the
slave trade and advocated the colonization of Africa
(at the end of his memoir). Try to explain some of the contradictions in
his character, by looking both at his psychology and at some of the social
forces at work in the Eighteenth Century. It's up to you to devise a
main point about Equiano that gets at his
complexity without being meandering!
Tips for analytical essay writing:
TITLE: Your title is the first
chance to make an impression. A vague title (e.g., "John Locke's
Ideas") that could fit any other paper written on the same author gives
a vague impression, indicating that the essay to follow likely lacks a
focused main point.
AUDIENCE: Assume an audience
much like your fellow students--familiar with the work, but unfamiliar with
your particular approach, and therefore requiring specific examples
(textual evidence) to understand, appreciate, and accept your analysis and
argument. Avoid plot summary or tedious repetition of an author's points
without higher level analysis, however.
IDEAS: Good ideas come not from
your abstract memory of a text, but from your close reading and paying
attention to details that might radiate out into larger patterns of
meaning. I do not expect you to come up with something "new" from
my perspective, but something "new" from your perspective. If you
don't make a discovery in the process of writing the paper, it probably
will not be very satisfactory.
DEVELOPMENT: Good essays unfold
a major idea or argument stage-by-stage, in a manner that will be
compelling and convincing to the reader. This means that the old, boring
high-school strategy of breaking down your basic idea into three (more or
less disconnected) subpoints may not be the most
suitable arrangement. Instead, for example, an essay (depending upon the
thesis, of course) could in the first fourth highlight some intriguing
contradiction or tension in a text; the next fourth might frame the tension
in terms of a larger moral, literary, philosophical, religious, or
historical debate or issue; and the last two fourths would illustrate the
ramifications of the tension for the text you're exploring (tensions
resolved? and if so, by what means? tensions not resolved? and if so, how
does the author/narrator cope with irresolution?). An essay can be
thoughtful and well-organized, and yet still be confusing to the reader.
Most often this occurs because the essay writer needs to provide clearer
sign-posts to the overall argument. At crucial junctures (the topic
sentence for a paragraph introducing a new stage of your argument), try to
foreground analytical points rather than just something about character or
the plot or the page-by-page sequence of a text's ideas.
There are two basic patterns of
development:
Deductive: here, you state the
thesis of your argument (your main point) directly up front and proceed to
provide evidence for your main point. For example: you could make
your main point "Equiano's obsession with
status is not defensible" or "Equiano's
obsession with status is justified." And then the subsequent
paragraphs would present aspects of your position and your evidence for
those aspects.
Dialectical/inductive: here you
proceed to make successive more complex discoveries through a
thesis--antithesis--synthesis pattern. For example: the first third
of your paper would explore how "Equiano is
obsessed with status"; the second third would explore "how Equiano is in fact filling in a void with status
seeking"; and the last third would pull the two ideas together through
a more complex observation, that "Equiano
fills in his grief of being exiled from his native country by seeking to
emulate the status values of European culture" (note how what seems to
be a negative point about Equiano--that he is a
sell out by seeking status--ends up to be a more complex positive
point). Rhetorically, in your introduction you may want to state your
overall point as "Equiano fills in his
grief..." or you might want, without being vague, to state the thesis
as a problem that your paper in effect solves, but without giving the
solution immediately: "Clearly, Equiano's
eagerness to obtain status makes his character a vexing one if we assume he
should remain consistently loyal to his native country or identity."
INTRODUCTIONS: Keep us focused
on the text or author or main idea. Do not start off with weighty
generalities about morality, the human condition, and so on. Avoid the
"funnel" opening paragraph if possible. If your
introduction is more than a single paragraph (it might be two paragraphs
if, for instance, you were setting up an author in terms of especially
pertinent historical or cultural background), give an extra line space
between the introduction and paper proper.
QUOTES: Depositing too many
long quotes in a paper wastes space. Too few or no quotes, however, suggest
inattention to the text or texts. You should probably have one or two
longer, inset quotes, which you set up and analyze; the purpose here is to
indicate that there are especially key or symptomatic passages that warrant
lingering over because they are so revelatory. Quotes, besides
helping to anchor/prove your points, often lead to analytical discoveries
as you ponder/unpack them.
Grading scale:
A = focused, interesting main
idea suggesting that you read, re-read, and probed around. Prose is not
merely correct: it is compelling and sophisticated. Organization makes
sense given the topic and argument of the paper. The paper is of sufficient
quality that it could be put online as a sample paper.
B = Main idea and development
are clear, but the organization is weak in a section or two, or there are a
few sentence or punctuation glitches that suggest careless editing.
C= Paper has a main idea, but
not thought through by attending to the text actively. Organization falls
apart at key moments. Sentence construction, although usually correct, is
imprecise or wordy. Nearly every page shows signs of careless editing.
D = The thesis is vague, and
the organization is chaotic. Or the prose/grammar suggests the need to go
to the Learning
Center.
No Grade = The paper goes
astray so far or is so half-hearted that it cannot be read.
Use the checklist below to help you
edit/revise your paper before you submit it:
Three tips for effective revising:
-- Revise with "fresh
eyes": revise at least a day after you've completed a substantial
draft.
-- Use a printed copy and
revise at a different locale than your computer.
-- Revise in four
"loops," using the revision checklist below.
Yes
No
CONTENT
____
____ sharply focused: no extraneous material
____ ____ complex aspects of issue
thoughtfully examined
____ ____ judicious use of supporting
specifics/quotes
ORGANIZATION & DEVELOPMENT
____
____ unified paragraphs, with clear topic sentences
____ ____ transitions between ideas and
sections of essay
____ ____ essay unfolds stage-by-stage,
no unnecessary "back-tracking" or repetition of sections
PROSE STYLE
____
____ straightforward and precise phrasing, without
sentence fragments or run-ons
____ ____ few boring "is"
verbs
____ ____ appropriate use of transition
words
____ ____ varied sentence length and
patterns
CORRECT GRAMMAR, ETC.
____
____ correct use of possessives and punctuation
____ ____ correct match between verbs
and subjects
____ ____ no typos/misspellings
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