Final Paper

The final paper brings together many of the skills you have developed during the term, including close reading, building analytical arguments, and using and citing secondary sources. The paper should focus on at least one of the primary texts from our syllabus. Here are some guidelines and resources to guide your writing:

Topic and Thesis
The first three documents on this page outline a process for moving from a rough idea of what you want to talk about--a topic--to an analytical thesis that can guide your paper.

Audience: What You Can Assume About Your Reader
You can assume that your reader has read the primary text you discuss and understood them at a superficial level. (There's no need, in other words, to explain what the text or texts are "about.") That understanding is only superficial, however; your essay, then, should present to your reader a way of seeing the text[s] at hand that will teach that reader a more worthwhile and interesting way of understanding that text.

Length
The paper should be at least 2000 words long (roughly 6-7 pages).

Secondary Sources
The final paper requires you to quote at least three secondary sources, at least two of which must have been published in or after 1990. Those sources must substantially affect the shape of the argument; by that I mean that you should not conceive and write a paper and then retrospectively sprinkle it with quotations. You should rather think of yourself as joining part of an ongoing conversation about a text. As in a "live" conversation, the most productive participation involves listening carefully to what others have said before formulating your contribution to the discussion.

Citations
Use Chicago style for the citations of your paper, in the Notes and Bibliography (NB) mode. The Purdue Online Writing Lab's page about Chicago style offers a sample paper and instructions on citing many kinds of sources. If you have any questions about whether or how to cite a source, please ask me.