In the scaffolded researched paper (which I've adapted from OSU's first year composition program), there are three distinct stages to the assignment: the primary source analysis, the secondary source integration, and the final researched paper. All three steps require at least some tricky work, but I'd like to focus on the first part of the assignment, the primary source analysis.
This assignment asks a student to select a text pertaining to the theme of the course. My favorite theme to teach is Horror, Suspense, and Crime in American Fiction, and I've had students analyze episodes of The Twilight Zone and Lost, short stories like "The Yellow Wallpaper" (who is Jane?!), and novels like Carrie, among countless other texts. This first assignment asks the student to become really familiar with this primary source, and to write two to three pages taking it apart and analyzing it rhetorically, and then to conclude this exploration with two to three research questions to move the student forward into the next step.
These research questions are tough, but super revealing. Often, a student's first instinct is to try to answer some question brought up by the text with empirical evidence (eg. is the house in "The Yellow Wallpaper" really an asylum? or did the Misfit's childhood make him what he is? or are there really ghosts in The Turn of the Screw?). These questions are impossible to answer, of course. Therefore we spend a great deal of time looking at the kinds of questions suitable for academic work, and these questions can either look deeper into the text, or they can shift the focus to issues outside of the text (What textual evidence exists that the house is an asylum? To what extent was Henry James interested in the occult?). Finally, even though we have not yet done the work with secondary sources that will help us find our way to an answer and to a thesis, we have to begin to consider the 'so what?' question (What does James's interest in the occult have to do with anything? What do we notice that is interesting and new?).
This assignment is one of my favorites because, to me, it shows a burgeoning sophistication with analysis, and a real separation between academic writing and the five paragraph essay. Students are generally really excited about their primary sources, as well, as the theme is both general and high interest. I also think it's important to address the difficult of these questions in the classroom, instead of in written assessment, as they are not yet tied to a formal grade.
Hi Nancy!
ReplyDeleteWonderful assignment idea! I particularly like the theme you've selected here--Horror, Suspense, and Crime in American Fiction. The theorist Avital Ronell has said that she considers her work in literary and cultural theory as a kind of detective novel--she's pursuing the mysteries of conceptual problems, difficult-to-interpret moments in texts ranging from Heidegger's Being and Time to Flaubert's Madame Bovary. In every "case," the desire to uncover something hidden or perhaps not fully seen, before. I'm struck by the potential in this comparison: researcher to detective. It seems especially fitting to use crime fiction in a course all about the (sometimes frustrating) process of discovery. And in crime fiction, the turn often comes when the investigator realizes he or she has been asking the wrong questions. So, like you say here, we need to help our students ask the right questions (i.e. more specifically engaged, more attuned to the actual issues at stake).