Final Paper or Performance
Whatever option you choose below, along with the rest of your assigment, you will submit a submission sheet that helps you and me see clearly that you have completed it fully. Here is a template for the submission sheet; open it, save your own version, fill it out, and submit it with your assignment.
Paper Option
Whether you write the standard version or the extra version of the paper, consider the paper as belonging to the same genre and using the same conventions as the articles that you read during the semester. You will be intervening in a critical conversation that you have uncovered in your research. The aim of this essay is still to challenge and transform existing interpretations of your text in question, and those existing interpretations will be gathered from recent published literary criticism. You should think of your audience, then, as the other scholars who are interested in the same issues that you are.
To prepare the paper during the semester, you may find it useful to read critical articles with an eye to writing your own essays. What problem is a given critic re-examining? Why? How is that critic intervening in an already-existing critical conversation? How does that critic wish to transform that critical conversation and/or the poem at hand? I strongly suggest that you find a critical writer whom you like and emulate that critic's way of setting up (framing) a problem. This is very different from plagiarizing someone's argument or content; instead, I mean that you can study a writer or an article that you find both persuasive and beautifully written in order to try to understand how that writer structures arguments and makes points.
The standard version of the paper will be at least 3000 words long and work with (quote and cite) at least five secondary or tertiary (theoretical) sources.
The extra version of the paper will be at least 4500 words long and work with (quote and cite) at least eight secondary or tertiary (theoretical) sources.
If you have any questions about whether a source is appropriate for the project or would count toward the minimum of five, just let me know. For all your citations, use Chicago Style in the Notes and Bibliography (NB) version. For formatting the paper in Chicago NB Style, you can use my quick guide (PDF). If you use a tool that generates bibliography entries automatically, that's fine as a starting point, but such tools often get details wrong. Do the final version of your entry yourself, carefully. You are responsible for what you submit.
Performance Option
In the performance option, a group of two to four students will create a 5- to 7-minute interpretation of a scene from one of Austen's novels. You can create the interpretation as a theatrical scene or as a short film; either way, you will share it with the class on the last day of classes.
The standard version of the assignment includes the performance itself and a rationale for the performance submitted by the group. The rationale will be at least 1000 words long and should lean heavily on Austen's text, gathering details from your scene and other parts of the novel to explain your interpretive choices. The rationale will quote and cite Austen's work (and any other sources you use) in Chicago NB Style.
Taken together, the group's performance and rationale should amount to an argument about the source text. In other words, your choices should demonstrate an interpretive take. You are welcome to choose any setting you like--Austen's England, Grinnell, the deep ocean--as long as you have an interpretive reason for doing so.
The extra version of the assignment involves an individual essay in addition to the group's performance and rationale. Imagine this essay as a talk you will deliver to a scholarly conference called "Adapting Jane Austen."
This essay will be at least 2000 words long and work with (quote and cite) at least four secondary or tertiary (theoretical) sources, in addition to Austen's text or texts. Use the essay to build a thesis-driven claim about the analysis embodied in your performance. What interpretation does your performance reflect? How does that interpretation engage with and respond to the scholarly conversation about Austen's writing?
If you have any questions about whether a source is appropriate for the project or would count toward the minimum of five, just let me know. For all your citations, use Chicago Style in the Notes and Bibliography (NB) version. For formatting the paper in Chicago NB Style, you can use my quick guide (PDF). If you use a tool that generates bibliography entries automatically, that's fine as a starting point, but such tools often get details wrong. Do the final version of your entry yourself, carefully. You are responsible for what you submit.
Important note: take care with your quotations and sources! Citing a non-existent source or a quotation that you cannot trace is a violation of the College's policies on academic honesty and will require me, by College policy, to refer your assignment to the Committee on Academic Standing.