Research Essay

Using the sources that you culled for the annotated bibliography, write an extended, thesis driven essay on one or more of our course’s texts. This essay should be anchored in scholarship, which is to say that you’re expected to situate your argument to some degree within the context of existing scholarly perspectives. Situating your argument will require explaining how that argument converges with existing perspectives as well as how it diverges. (For example, “Scholars, such as Scholar X and Scholar Y, have argued [fill in the blank] about this short story. While they are right in asserting that the story [fill in the blank], their arguments tend to overlook [fill in the blank]. My essay corrects this oversight by [fill in the blank].”) You’re required to engage with no fewer than two scholarly, peer-reviewed sources. Let me stress that it is not enough simply to mention or cite the articles; you need to engage with them substantially—to have a conversation with the other scholars. Again, these sources may come from articles that you or your peers discussed for the presentations but they need not. Please use MLA conventions for citation and formatting. Unsure about MLA conventions? Visit the Purdue Owl website or consult a reputable handbook if you have one. Upload the essay to Blackboard by the deadline.