***FIRST ESSAY GUIDELINES & OTHER ASSIGNMENTS FOR TUES MAY 14***

Reminders (and your first essay guidelines are at the end of this message too)….

1.)WE DO NOT HAVE CLASS ON TUESDAY MAY 14 FROM 9 am to 12 noon.  YOU SHOULD STILL BE READING JAMES WELDON JOHNSON’S _AUTOBIOGAPHY OF AN EX COLORED MAN_ NOVEL AND FINISH IT IN FULL BY 5/21.  WE DO INDEED HAVE CLASS ON WEDNESDAY MAY 15 and THURSDAY MAY 16 FROM 9 am to 12 noon AS USUAL.  An alert — A campus photographer will be in our classroom to take pics of us for only the first 15 mins of class on Wednesday May 15. They like the look of the seminar table in our room (Washington Hall 115) and so they want to use the pictures they take of us that morning for school publications.  They’ve told me that they’ll be in and out of our room very quickly!

2.)Everyone in the class:  1.)By Tuesday May 14th night – at 8:00 pm, you should ALL (every single one you) send me (LWC) just ONE email with “My Argumentative Thesis Draft & My Aaron Coleman Poetry Questions” in the subject line of that one email.  Send the email to me at lwcunningham@wlu.edu

For the argumentative thesis statement within that one email:  Fill in the following blanks (see below) about TWO texts that we’ve covered in class thus far up to and including the Brownsburg, VA art.  You should choose one print/written text and one visual text to discuss in this thesis statement.  From this thesis, you will soon draft a 3 to 3.5 page essay in full that is due to a dropbox on our class Canvas site by midnight on Sunday May 19.  The formal assignment for that essay due on 5/19 is pasted at the end of this blog post and was also sent to you via emaill.

MY ARGUMENTATIVE THESIS DRAFT

Although it may seem that ​___________ (fill in a counter argument), By looking at HOW ________________ (a type of evidence in two texts), I can argue WHAT ​​​​​​​​​__________________ (a very specific claim about those two texts – a claim that has a counter argument), and this is important because WHY (a larger reason why your type claim and evidence matters in the grand scheme of understanding Black literature and visual culture or understanding society overall).

 3.)Everyone in the class:  By Tuesday May 14 night – at 8:00 pm, you should also ALL (every single one of you) check out the following writings that were either written by poet Aaron Coleman or that are loved by poet Aaron Coleman (see below). Then, send to me in that same one email with your argumentative thesis draft at least three questions about some of these works written by or loved by Coleman.  Again, you should call this one email sent to me “My Argumentative Thesis Draft & My Aaron Coleman Poetry Questions.”  Here are the Aaron Coleman poems….

i)An interview:  https://cavecanempoets.org/dogbytes-interview-aaron-coleman/

*****

CONSTRUCTING BLACK LIVES IN FILM AND LITERATURE

 

THREE-PAGER (or 3.5 PAGER) ESSAY GUIDELINES

 

(FIRST ESSAY DUE DATE: SUNDAY MAY 19^th BY MIDNIGHT)

 

Instructor:  Leslie Wingard Cunningham, Spring 2024

 

Assignment – For this first essay, you are free to develop your own 3 to 3.5 page (absolutely no longer than that! 3 pages total is enough!) argumentative essay topic about two texts representing our course units up to the date 5/9 on the syllabus. In this short essay, you must write about two works — one print text and one visual text.  Print texts from which you may choose include the following:  Any Rita Dove poem & Beals’ Warriors Don’t Cry. Visual texts from which you may choose include the following:  Spike Lee’s 4 Little Girls, Clark Johnson’s Boycott, the short documentary on YouTube about the Little Rock Nine, the Brownsburg Museum exhibit, or any of the other artwork discussed in class/on campus. You are neither required nor expected to consult sources other than those I’ve provided. Any of the critical articles about a print or visual text can certainly be used as supplement but do not count as one of your two texts. Feel free to use our blog or class debates as inspiration for your essay. Feel free to use some of the key words we’ve discussed in class.  Also feel free to write more about one of the texts you select than you write about the other in this short essay. It is just fine to write more about your print text than you do about your visual text or vice versa.  To say it another way:  you do not have to write exactly half of your essay about one of the texts and the other half of your essay about the other text. 

Sample idea for a thesis about two texts (one print and one visual)  — Maybe for your WHAT claim you want to argue that the character named Link in Melba Beals’ memoir and the man named Chris McNair in Spike Lee’s film cannot *ever* be as brave as they want to be in these two texts because fear trumps all other emotions – for white and black men – during this particular time period.  That is a provocative statement!  Especially since you used the word *ever.* Remember then that you’d need to announce upfront that the type of HOW evidence that you’ll be tracking in the body paragraphs of this short essay includes moments in the two texts when these two figures (Link and Chris) are just about to be as brave as they want to be, but then must fall short of that because a racist society won’t allow them to be brave. You will cite specific page numbers/scenes so as to convincing.  After that, you’ll need to hint upfront that your WHY conclusion to this essay (which is your concluding paragraph) will say a bit about how some clinical psychologists conducting a recent study are helping young boys of all races to talk more openly about their feelings while in kindergarten — so that they’ll hopefully grow to be older boys and men who help make racial change for the better in our society. Use the argumentative thesis statement handout I gave you — about the Lever 2000 soap ad — to help you brainstorm for this essay. 

When writing your paper, please observe the following guidelines:

1. Give your paper page numbers and a title.The title of your paper should not be the title of the written work or film.  Do not underline the title of your paper.

2. Your paper must have a full argumentative thesis (including the three parts—WHAT, HOW, and WHY—described on your argumentative thesis handout). As you close read, weave this argument throughout.You should draw on evidence from the texts you cite to support your claim. 

3. Use the evidence you cite.Do not leave it for your reader to determine the relationship between the evidence and your argument. 

4. The first reference to a book, article, or poem should be in a footnote and should follow the MLA format (see examples below). Identify all additional quotations from the text in the body of your paper by page number only or the author’s last name and page number in parentheses. Consult the following reference book (or a more recent edition of it) for more specific guidelines concerning source use, formatting, and style:

*Basic format for footnoting a book –

Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 6th ed. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2003.

*Basic format for footnoting an article –

Segal, Gabriel.  “Seeing What Is Not There.”  Philosophical Review 98 (1989):  189-214. 

*Basic format for footnoting a poem –

Hughes, Langston.  “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.”  The Collected Works of Langston

Hughes.  NY: Knopf, 1994.  23-24. 

5. The first reference to a film should be footnoted as follows:

*Basic format for footnoting a film –

North by Northwest.  Dir. Alfred Hitchcock.  MGM, 1959.

6. When later citing films in the body of your paper, list the director and date of release in parentheses, e.g. North by Northwest(Alfred Hitchcock, 1959).
7. As much as possible, avoid passive voice. Not: “Imani was hired by Julie.” but “Julie hired Imani.” Be sure that the subjects of your sentences perform the action of the verbs.

8. As much as possible, avoid impersonal constructions — phrases such as “there is,” “there are,” “it is,” “it seems,” “it would appear,” and so on, in which the subject refers to nothing in particular and the verb is a flabby, state-of-being verb. Not: “It would appear that the characters in this novel are confused,” but “The characters in this novel are confused.”

9.  Allow yourself time to PRINT YOUR PAPER AND PROOFREAD.  Watch for repetitiveness, wordiness, errors in punctuation, grammar and spelling, awkward diction, passive voice, impersonal constructions, etc.  Remember that the Writing Center on campus can help.

• 10. I will not grant extensions. For each day that your paper is late, you will lose a letter grade.

 

Basic Tips On Writing About Film or Art In Particular:

1. Film titles and art exhibits should be underlined or italicized.
2. Background Reading:It’s important to become familiar with a film’s development and context.  Because we have a tight syllabus, you were given much of this background information in class or through assigned secondary readings (i.e. snippets from critics’ articles or artists’ websites).   3.  When possible, watch a film/view art several times.
3. Jot “micro” notes about the film or art shot-by-shot/piece by piece.Try not to get sucked into the narrative/the “big picture” at first.  Find something idiosyncratic about how the filmmakers/visual artists chose to express their message. Choose elements (such as camera angle, lighting, camera movement, sound, distance, zoom, etc.) and follow the usage of those elements throughout the piece.