Concept Essay
Midterm Concept Essay (15% of course grade)
Due on Thursday, March 1 by 2:00 p.m. to Canvas
Description and Goals
In this essay, you'll begin to formulate a response to the overarching question guiding our course, How do texts come to mean in transnational or cross-cultural contexts? Your essay will not answer that question directly; rather, it will make some related critical discovery by applying, complicating, or extending a particular concept that has become central to how you understand the course, using our required and recommended readings from the first half of the semester.
Here are some general goals for the assignment:
Format
Not Sure Where to Begin? (Try here ...)
By this point in the semester, you all will have begun to formulate ideas about the nature of textuality, the purpose of our course, and the challenges of doing this work “cross-culturally” or “transnationally.” However, if the bigger question still worries you, then try some of the following exercises to help you brainstorm:
Evaluation Criteria (once you begin drafting ...)
Introductions and Reader Awareness
Give your argument a critical and imaginative beginning, i.e., a sense that you know what you want to say and why. You can be artful; you need not just summarize the contents of your essay. Whatever you do, your introduction should help us understand the discovery that prompted you to write, and it should help us understand our investment in reading. While I fully encourage you to make use of the OED Online, it is not enough to introduce your essay simply by writing “According to the Oxford English Dictionary …”
Organization and Coherence
To “essay” means to endeavor, to try towards or to claim, so your essay should unfold that discovery in a series of smaller claims that orchestrate, rather than merely summarize, the critical texts you discuss. How you organize your essay should ultimately reflect the argument you want to make. This includes a clear introduction and conclusion, useful transitions, and adequate development of each point. Your thesis may act like a “thread” for your main and supporting points, and each paragraph should be well focused and guided by something like a topic sentence that helps your thesis to unfold.
Language and Style Your essay can be confident and carry a balanced tone, with neutral language and strong sentences. Your use of terms should be thoughtful, even elegant. You should not need to rely on excessive metadiscourse, “I think/feel/believe,” or “In my opinion” statements to carry your argument forward. It should always be clear who is saying what. Try putting dense or complicated language into your own words, and be sure to report names and titles accurately. No patterns of sentence- or paragraph-level error should get in the way of meaning. Spelling and punctuation should be precise.
Title and Other Discourse Conventions
Ideally, your title should reflect what you are trying to argue (it doesn't always have to state what are you are arguing) and may even contain layers of meaning. Metaphors, ironies, parodies, are all fair game, as is creativity that is rhetorically sound. MLA formatting is complete.
Please feel free to ask questions if any part of the assignment is unclear or if you become stuck while working through an idea.
Due on Thursday, March 1 by 2:00 p.m. to Canvas
Description and Goals
In this essay, you'll begin to formulate a response to the overarching question guiding our course, How do texts come to mean in transnational or cross-cultural contexts? Your essay will not answer that question directly; rather, it will make some related critical discovery by applying, complicating, or extending a particular concept that has become central to how you understand the course, using our required and recommended readings from the first half of the semester.
Here are some general goals for the assignment:
- To articulate a discovery that is interesting and vital, not redundant or obvious. It should advance your thinking, rather than simply support an opinion or defend a position, and it should be more nuanced and personally meaningful than just a restatement of the big question above.
- To demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of at least 3 (three) of our critical texts, their possibilities, and their interpretive limits. This is not an arbitrary number; this is an invitation for you to handle a few more sources at one time than you handle for your Short Assignments, but not so many that you cannot maintain focus.
- To develop an interesting, specific, and coherent argument through sufficient evidence and examples, from our required readings, recommended readings, and other case studies you find relevant. This means demonstrating that you can accurately and effectively apply critical perspectives to each other and to relevant cases.
- Ultimately, to demonstrate your ability to communicate coherently what are often quite complex ideas. This means demonstrating an ability to employ some of Harris's "moves" when and where they make rhetorical sense (e.g., coming to terms with complex notions, forwarding, countering, etc.).
Format
- Word-processed or typed, double-spaced (~8 pages, but can go longer if needed)
- A legible 11- or 12-point serif-type font, and formatted to include 1-inch margins.
- (Please, no more than double spacing, and no frivolous spacing between paragraphs. Format your texts in an aesthetically pleasing way if you're going to format them at all. If you format "paragraph" in MWord, you can actually control the spacing. Happy to help in a pinch.)
- MLA parenthetical citations throughout the essay, and MLA style “Works Cited” page.
- You can find citations for our readings in the “Works Cited” list at the back of your syllabus.
- No cover sheet is necessary, but your name, due date, and course information should appear at the top left of the first page. Please create a header or footer with your last name and page number on all remaining pages.
Not Sure Where to Begin? (Try here ...)
By this point in the semester, you all will have begun to formulate ideas about the nature of textuality, the purpose of our course, and the challenges of doing this work “cross-culturally” or “transnationally.” However, if the bigger question still worries you, then try some of the following exercises to help you brainstorm:
- Revisit one of our case studies and perform a “critical lens” analysis.
- Revisit one of our case studies in order to complicate a particular term that you think is important for transnational rhetorical work.
- Unpack the definition of a concept that you think could be more usefully unpacked related to textuality from our glossaries or worksheets.
- Apply 1 or 2 of our critical essays to a cross-cultural spectacle or human rights event that we haven't yet considered in class but that you think is important.
Evaluation Criteria (once you begin drafting ...)
Argument and Thesis
For a concept essay, “argument” does not necessarily mean “position” (i.e., pro/con, agree/disagree, good/bad, right/wrong sense of argumentation). It means a specific or nuanced discovery that can only be arrived at through careful synthesis. Your argument should be guided by an original thesis statement that is not simply a restatement of the big question, and does not simply state the obvious about the texts you are reading. If your thesis is complex, it may take a few sentences to articulate all of its points. This is perfectly natural. But please don't make us wait until the end of your essay in order to realize that discovery.
Textual and Contextual Evidence
You’ll want to develop your argument by drawing heavily on the critical text(s) you have chosen, using examples well, and employing in-text (parenthetical) citations where needed, especially where you paraphrase concepts. Rather than relying on what you think is “common knowledge,” use the texts to provide essential background. Feel free to use examples drawn from class, but do not just echo the examples back to me without demonstrating that you can extend them. Please cite specific incidents, images, and other textual details. In a discussion this brief, try to avoid extensive block quoting. You are writing for a reader (or group of readers) who needs to see that you can carefully handle textual evidence, so be sure to educate them wherever possible by taking the time to define key terms.
For a concept essay, “argument” does not necessarily mean “position” (i.e., pro/con, agree/disagree, good/bad, right/wrong sense of argumentation). It means a specific or nuanced discovery that can only be arrived at through careful synthesis. Your argument should be guided by an original thesis statement that is not simply a restatement of the big question, and does not simply state the obvious about the texts you are reading. If your thesis is complex, it may take a few sentences to articulate all of its points. This is perfectly natural. But please don't make us wait until the end of your essay in order to realize that discovery.
Textual and Contextual Evidence
You’ll want to develop your argument by drawing heavily on the critical text(s) you have chosen, using examples well, and employing in-text (parenthetical) citations where needed, especially where you paraphrase concepts. Rather than relying on what you think is “common knowledge,” use the texts to provide essential background. Feel free to use examples drawn from class, but do not just echo the examples back to me without demonstrating that you can extend them. Please cite specific incidents, images, and other textual details. In a discussion this brief, try to avoid extensive block quoting. You are writing for a reader (or group of readers) who needs to see that you can carefully handle textual evidence, so be sure to educate them wherever possible by taking the time to define key terms.
Introductions and Reader Awareness
Give your argument a critical and imaginative beginning, i.e., a sense that you know what you want to say and why. You can be artful; you need not just summarize the contents of your essay. Whatever you do, your introduction should help us understand the discovery that prompted you to write, and it should help us understand our investment in reading. While I fully encourage you to make use of the OED Online, it is not enough to introduce your essay simply by writing “According to the Oxford English Dictionary …”
Organization and Coherence
To “essay” means to endeavor, to try towards or to claim, so your essay should unfold that discovery in a series of smaller claims that orchestrate, rather than merely summarize, the critical texts you discuss. How you organize your essay should ultimately reflect the argument you want to make. This includes a clear introduction and conclusion, useful transitions, and adequate development of each point. Your thesis may act like a “thread” for your main and supporting points, and each paragraph should be well focused and guided by something like a topic sentence that helps your thesis to unfold.
Language and Style Your essay can be confident and carry a balanced tone, with neutral language and strong sentences. Your use of terms should be thoughtful, even elegant. You should not need to rely on excessive metadiscourse, “I think/feel/believe,” or “In my opinion” statements to carry your argument forward. It should always be clear who is saying what. Try putting dense or complicated language into your own words, and be sure to report names and titles accurately. No patterns of sentence- or paragraph-level error should get in the way of meaning. Spelling and punctuation should be precise.
Title and Other Discourse Conventions
Ideally, your title should reflect what you are trying to argue (it doesn't always have to state what are you are arguing) and may even contain layers of meaning. Metaphors, ironies, parodies, are all fair game, as is creativity that is rhetorically sound. MLA formatting is complete.
Please feel free to ask questions if any part of the assignment is unclear or if you become stuck while working through an idea.