Assignment Sheet, Essay 3

“Inside and Beyond the Book Group”

(ENG 111-S14F, #56695, Prof. Tim Dalton) | Link to Collaborative Rubric (Nov 22)

Peer Editing Draft due

November 22 to Google Docs (or, optional, Annotation Studio)

Graded Revision Due

November 29, by 9am to Google Forms

Instructions

As always, you may choose from any of the prompts below. Whichever you choose, this essay should be 1250-2000 words.     

Essay 3 Topics

While the specific prompts won’t be available until next Monday, after we’ve gotten underway with book clubs, I can say with some certainty the general topic choices you’ll have for this essay. We’re returning to a more traditional format, in this case a 1,000-1,500 word essay. Your choices of topic will be as follows:

  1. The Research Option: Using library sources from Lehman or the NYPL, pose a research question about a social issue that emerges from your reading and discussion of your book. Your essay should define that issue and give it some background using at least two peer-reviewed sources. That background should explain where your book enters into a larger conversation about that issue. And your essay should explore the way that issue shapes the experiences of the writer of this book. Examples abound but could include: immigration; identity; sexuality; gender; race; education; place; family; disability. And many more!
  2. The “Struggle” Option: As we articulated the reasons we were choosing these books, many writers described an interest in the “struggles” these writers “overcame” along the way to becoming “successful.” If you pick this option, you’ll engage that idea of a “struggle” story (sometimes also called a “deficit narrative”). In what ways do these stories resist that trope? In what ways do they reinforce it? Were these stories “inspiring”, “depressing” or something in between? How do these terms help us as readers, and how is that a binary that limits our interpretations?
  3. The Fly-on-the-Wall Option: Drawing on Alvarez-Alvarez and (to a lesser extent) P & E as models, observe your own group and at least one other group. Use research/data gathering skills like interviews and surveys to make an argument about the benefits and limits of book clubs in a pandemic-influenced college class.
  4. The You-Tell-Me Option. Compose a prompt you’d like to respond to, perhaps one that has emerged from your conversations and blog posts. Let me know what it is by Nov 17.