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Essay-writing

Essay-writing. Choose a topic. Identify a knowledge deficit (“no one has looked at x before”) Identify a shortcoming in the scholarship (“scholars have interpreted x inadequately”) Identify a controversy (“scholars have debated this issue…”)

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Essay-writing

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  1. Essay-writing

  2. Choose a topic • Identify a knowledge deficit (“no one has looked at x before”) • Identify a shortcoming in the scholarship (“scholars have interpreted x inadequately”) • Identify a controversy (“scholars have debated this issue…”) • Identify a rich, compelling, mysterious aspect of the text that demands to be interpreted (“the trope of x is ubiquitous in his work…..What does it mean?”)

  3. Find out about the critical conversation • Using the MLA Bibliography database, search for terms key to your topic, i.e. the title or author of the text, and a theme or issue • Examine the full entries for each relevant article, deciding among them, based on their keywords, which will be the most useful to you. • Print or photocopy these articles.

  4. Read and Summarize the Critical Conversation • Take notes that summarize the key arguments of the articles, especially if you disagree or want to complicate these arguments • Do the articles indicate a “knowledge deficit”, a “controversy”, a “shortcoming of the scholarship” or inspire you to address a mysterious aspect of the text itself?

  5. Most recent scholarship on [ ] argues that [ ] but no one has argued [ ] (knowledge deficit) • Although scholars have outlined the significance of [ ], they have missed the importance of [ ]. (shortcoming) • Scholars are divided on the significance of [ ]. Psychoanalytic critic Joanne Blow says [ ] while Hawthorne scholar John Doe suggests that [ ]”. (controversy) • I would like to investigate the significance of the recurring tropes of [ ]. (mysterious aspect of the text)

  6. Establish yourself in relation to the Critics Disagreement • Rather than read [ ] as Joanne Blow does, as a “blahblahblah”, I will argue that ….. Qualified agreement • While Joanne Blow makes several good points, she does not go far enough in [ ]…. OR I will build on Smith’s thesis… A compromise position between two extremes • While scholars such as x and y have viewed Benito Cereno as upholding racial hierarchies, and scholars such as a and b have argued that it rejects these hierarchies, I will argue [a third way].

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