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Concept Essay (Midterm) Assignment: ENGL 443/WGST 301 (Fall 2022) Fundamentals:
✓ Your completed essay is due to your instructor via email by 8:30pm, Eastern, on October 30, 2022. Late submissions will not be accepted, unless approved by me by noon on October 27, 2022. Early submissions are welcome. You must email your essay to me at [email protected]. The following formats are acceptable: .dock; .pdf; Google Doc. In case you send me a Google Doc, make certain you allow access and editing privileges to each of the following emails: [email protected] AND [email protected].
✓ Your “Midterm” Essay is worth 20% of your overall grade in the course.
✓ Your essay must be at least seven (7) double-spaced pages in length and no longer than ten (10) double-spaced pages in length. If you are taking this course for honors credit, your essay must be at least nine (9) double-spaced pages in length and no longer than twelve (12).
✓ Note that the minimum page count does not include the Works Cited/Bibliography page. Use one of the following fonts: 12.0 Times New Roman or 12.0 Garamond or 12.0 Calibri. Your essay must be double-spaced and each page should keep to the standard margins (1” on each side).
✓ You must conduct research for pertinent scholarly materials and include a minimum of three and a maximum of five carefully curated scholarly sources within the body of your essay. You may adopt any citation and format style that you are familiar/comfortable with, as long as you stay consistent in your usage throughout the essay. In other words, you may choose MLA or APA or any of the other formats, but stick to one format throughout your essay. Include your first and last name and page numbers on each page of your essay.
✓ If you wish to submit a draft for my feedback, make certain that you submit it to me by noon on October 26, 2022. I will return the draft to you with my feedback by March 28, 2022, thus leaving you with two days’ worth of time to incorporate the feedback as you see fit.
✓ Your midterm essay grades will be made available to you (posted on Moodle or emailed to your coastal Email) by November 06, 2022. Students interested in receiving feedback will be expected to sign up for one-on-one Zoom meetings (or, if you prefer, one-on-one in-person meetings) with me. The Zoom meetings will be recorded and I will share the recordings with you individually, so you can retain a link/record of my feedback for your records. If you wish to meet in person to discuss my feedback on your essay, you will be responsible for taking notes regarding my suggestions/comments on your essay. If I grant you an extension, note that you will not receive detailed feedback from me. By October 30, 2022, I will post a sign-up sheet for interested students to select a date/time to discuss their midterm essay.
✓ Prioritize your time on the basis of your understanding of how you function as a reader/viewer/researcher/writer. For example, if you know that you tend toward procrastination, plan out some of the materials—the choice of films, the scholarly sources you will include, your main points and key insights—in advance of the literal act of writing. Also ensure that you set aside substantial portions of undivided time to work on your assignment. These are your responsibilities toward yourself that will enable you to turn out a product that best reflects your capabilities as a writer.
✓ If you have questions for me, ask them as soon as possible. If you wait until the day before the assignment is due to ask me questions about it, please note there’s a good chance I may have other obligations that prevent me from reading or responding to your email before the assignment is due.
✓ You may use “I” (the first person pronoun) as and when you wish to include it in the body of your essay.
✓ Read the Assignment completely and thoroughly.
✓ All students must meet with me on Zoom to discuss their respective plans for their concept essay. Details on this and a sign-up sheet will be provided separately.
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Details of the Essay Prompt (what your essay must be about and should include a discussion of):
❖ Critically discuss a key concept we have engaged with in the semester and contextualize it in the key topics of our course. Key concepts we’ve engaged with include: care as radical activism; fabulous/fabulousness; camp and respectability politics; pleasure and deviance in the context of queer identities; representation of lesbian sexual desire; abolition feminist practice; kwe and decolonial methods; feminist remediations of women’s representation in cinema; trans experience; cultural intersections and gender performativity. As you discuss the concept you choose to elaborate on, consider the rich complexity of its interlaced and networks—intersectional—functions. (Our discussions of these concepts have revealed the networked and interlaced nature of identities. For example, in our analysis of films like Rafiki and readings like “Lesbian Bed Death” we’ve understood that most media representations of lesbian women’s romantic and erotic pleasure is as much about disciplining women’s gender and sexual/sexualized identities as it is about their peripheralized class and political status. In discussing this concept, then, we need to discuss the multiple contexts within which it ought to be understood.) Spend about 50% of your time and space in the essay (3.5-5 pages) in defining and contextualizing the concept you choose to discuss and use.
❖ Once you have defined and contextualized the concept, use and adapt it to critically analyze a visual text (film/show/music video/advertisement/a visual media artifact) that has NOT been assigned as required viewing for our course this semester. That is, the visual media you pick should not be one that’s assigned as course viewing. Spend about 50% of your time and space in the essay (3.5-5 pages) in analyzing the film through the critical lens of the concept you choose to discuss and use. If you need help identifying a suitable film, please let me know as soon as possible, so I can offer you substantive suggestions in a timely manner.
❖ Your analysis must be rooted in close readings of the visual text and your claims or thesis regarding the visual text must be critically developed to showcase your understanding of the concept you have defined and that you use to engage with the visual text.
❖ Do not spend anything more than one paragraph (about @300-350 words) summarizing the plot of the visual text. You may rest assured that I will watch or review the visual text you discuss. Avoid summary, therefore, and focus instead of close readings of scenes/aspects of the visual text, paying particular attention to how and why the specific scenes/aspects are critical to your understanding of the motifs you engage in your analysis. If this is confusing to you, let me know, and I’ll explain in class.
❖ Conduct research thoughtfully and identify pertinent scholarly materials. Include a minimum of three and a maximum of five carefully curated scholarly sources within the body of your essay. Where you find your sources is not as relevant as how you vet and evaluate them.
❖ Showcase your voice and critical investment in representing your ideas. Engage with the sources you incorporate in your essay without letting them take over your paper. At the same time, don’t throw in random quotes to check a box, but be deliberate and thoughtful about what content you choose to include in your analysis. Build on and juxtapose your authorial ideas and perspectives with those of the scholarly sources you cite. Give credit where it is due. Remember that specificity in the act of giving credit to those that shape your ideas and/or words makes you a credible and credit-worthy writer. Avoid generic paraphrases that don’t clarify which are your words/ideas/statements and which are the words/ideas/statements of others whom you cite.
❖ Enjoy stylizing your essay and take pride in the ways your style as a writer and communicator reflects on your identity. Consider how rhetorical and other stylistic moves you make can inspire and persuade your reader to see something as you see it and to understand your perspective. Think about how introductions and conclusions are not mirror images of each other or “filler” paragraphs but are crucial components of your analytical framework in the essay. Come up with a title that is meaningful to your essay. Something like “A Comparative Analysis of Authenticity in film X” is not too inspiring, though of course it tells the
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reader what the general topic of the essay is. On the other hand, a title such as “There’s no I or You in ‘I Love You’: Authenticity Traps and the Pleasures of Intimacy in film X” is much more detailed as well as engaging by way of an essay title.
❖ Remember I do not grade up or down on the basis of grammar or mechanics. So write fearlessly and thoughtfully with respect for your ideas and for your reader’s time and attention. Do proofread your essay and catch avoidable errors that you notice.
