Writing Workshop

Prospectus + Research Question

Due Thursday March 29

Research Questions

-Strong research questions ask "how" or "what"

-Strong research questions are specific, manageable, and don't have "yes" or "no" as their answer

Prospectus

Recall that your prospectus should be no more than one page double spaced.

Break it up into two paragraphs

In the first paragraph, introduce your topic and outline your thesis. THEN, outline the significance of your proposed thesis. Why does your paper matter? What intervention will you be making?

In the second paragraph, explain how you will going about making your argument. What will you be examining? At this stage in the research process, you do not need to name specific outside sources by title.

Your Thesis will demonstrate...

what

how

why

Background

Argument

Method

Exhibit

Background

...materials whose claims a writer accepts as fact, whether these "facts" are taken as general information or deployed as evidence to support the writer's own assertions. Writers regard their background sources as authoritative and expect their readers to do the same.

e.g. facts about the text, author, or historical context

Choose a background source that supports your argument rather than just any fact that can be inserted into your paper

e.g. Sau-Ling Cynthia Wong

What does this fact contribute to her argument?

In other words, always consider why you're using a specific source and not another

In the context of what kind of paper would you utilize the following fact?

Langston Hughes was one of the most important writers and thinkers of the Harlem Renaissance

Argument Sources

... refer to materials whose claims a writer affirms, disputes, refines, or extends in some way. To invoke a common metaphor, argument sources are those with which writers enter into "conversation."

In professional academic writing, there is a strong correlation between the genres in which writers work and the genres of their argument sources.

In the ordinary practice of their professions, historians generally write articles and books that engage articles and books by other historians

Neuroscientists generally write research reports that engage research reports by other neuroscientists.

Choose an argument source that engages with the literary text you have chosen (or one of them)

Method Sources

...refer to materials from which a writer derives a governing concept or a manner of working. A method source can offer a set of key terms, lay out a particular procedure, or furnish a general model or perspective.

e.g. If your paper addresses diaporic identity in Dionne Brand, you might engage with a theorist of diaspora.

Again, consider why you might use one method source over another. How does your method source engage with a key term within your question?

How are you following your method source to answer your question?

While your method source can be interdisciplinary (i.e. not confined the English / Literary Studies) consider whether a psychological, sociological, or anthropological study is the best kind of source for your argument.

Is the methodological approach of your method source vastly different from the methods often used within literary studies (such as close reading and texual analysis)?

Is the text more factual or more conceptual?

Can it easily be abstracted from and mobilized beyond its context?

Consider how you all used Toni Morrison's arguments to make arguments about different literary texts

Her arguments could thus be abstracted from and utilized beyond their original context

Her arguments also engaged questions of literary form and broader questions of race and meaning making

Good Method Sources

Take up a key concept central to your own argument (e.g. nationalism, orientalism, assimilation)

May engage with questions of form or genre relevant to the study of literature

Or, ideally, engage with both questions of literary form or genre and a key concept central to your argument

Peer Exercise

1. Write down a topic you would like to write about for your final paper

2. Now think about how you could make this topic more specific

- > will you engage with a particular part of the literary text you want to write about? Will you explore a particular concept across two texts? If you have already chosen a concept to engage, how could this be specified? Where do you see evidence for your topic within your chosen literary text/s.

3. Now think, again, about how to specify this topic

- > how will literary form play into your argument? how does the form of the text or texts you have chosen shape the content? Are there formal similarities or differences if you are comparing two texts? What genre are the two texts and how do these genres relate to one another?

4. One more time! Think where you could specify further

5. Now, turn to your partner and share your ideas

-> identify strengths and weaknesses of your partner's idea

Writing Workshop II

Today

1. More writing tips

2. Topic sentences group exercise

3. On your own: find sources

Titles and Subtitles

Title: Something provocative that hooks your reader

Subtitle: Something that specifies what your paper is about

"Strangers in the Night: Hiromi Goto’s Abject Bodies and Hopeful Monsters"

"Autobiography as Guided Chinatown Tour? Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior and the Chinese American Autobiographical Controversy"

If unclear at first, we should have a sense of what the title (provocative hook) references by the end of your paper

e.g. "Strangers in the Night"

Writing Tips

Connecting the parts of your argument

Your sentences should gesture back and forward, connecting to the previous sentence and to the one that follows

Strategies

• Transitions
• Pointing words
• Developing key terms or phrases
• Repeating yourself with a difference

Transitions

These signal where your text is going

Is it going in the same direction? Is it going in a different direction?

e.g. "furthermore," "in addition," "moreover," "in short," "in other words," "for example," "similarly," "consequently," "by contrast" etc.

The indeterminacy of Twyla and Roberta's racial identities illuminates how we, the reader, read for race. In other words, Morrison makes the race of her characters ambiguous so that the reader is made to reflect upon their own process of meaning making.

Julian is initially presented as a character with progressive views on race. By contrast, Julian's mother is shown to hold racist views. For example, in the scene where...

Pointing Words

e.g. this, these, that, those, their, such, he, her, she, etc.

Her point is that...

Make sure these refer to a clearly defined object

Make sure these words refer to a clearly defined object

Key terms and phrases

"While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities 'unwise and untimely.' Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If i sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms."

- Martin Luther King, "Letter from a Birmingham Jail"

Repeat yourself (with a difference)

Try to build bridges between your ideas by connecting your next sentence to what you have just said, while moving it into new territory

e.g. "In other words"

These repetitions help you to ensure that what you are saying is clear

You do not want or need to do this for every sentence, but rather for breaking down complex ideas

Topic Sentences

Subject: what your topic sentence is about

Controlling idea: the point of the paragraph. It guides the ideas that provide support for the paragraph and limits the scope of the paragraph.

Cats are better pets than dogs

Subject: Cats

Controlling Idea: Better than dogs

In "Recitatif," the racial identity of the characters, Twyla and Roberta, is ambiguous.

What is the subject?

What is the controlling idea?

Groups

Sergio, Jayden, Sabine, Mackenzie

Natalia, Jamie, Legniman, Victor Adu-Poku

Victor Lieu, Jenna, Raj, Erin

Ahad, Alanna, Alejandro, Bria

Jingwen, Dexter, Nicholas Heida

Alina, Nithya, Sylvia

Harnoor, Nectarios, Nic, Emily

Cassie, Emma, Jack, Benjamin

Taha, Bryce, Alyssa, Natalie