Essay #3/ “Un-Essay”

Due May 15

roughly 1500 words

This last project asks you to interpret one or multiple course texts or themes. In other words, your paper should be performing an analysis or “close reading” of the literary works we have focused on this semester. In this way, it might be less “personal” than previous essays in this course. Here are some suggestions about process:

• Be thinking about how you want to focus the paper. You are welcome to write an interpretation of a single text (even individual poems) or a theme that cuts across multiple works, but the best papers will have a narrowed focus.
• One way to narrow your focus is to generate a question or series of questions to which you’d like to respond. Below are examples of the type of questions you might generate:
• How does Thoreau frame economics in the context of ecology?
• How does the “magical realism” of Beasts of the Southern Wild impact the viewer’s response to the themes of ecological destruction? Is there restoration (of landscape/ relationships) in Beasts? If not, what alternatives does the film present?
• For what larger purpose do Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude and Under the Feet of Jesus bring together poetic explorations of body parts and fruit?
• How is violence (to landscapes, to people) variously condoned and defied in Beasts of the Southern Wild and Under the Feet of Jesus and how does such violence reflect the implications of a relationship to the land?
• Your paper should make an argument and then support or ground that argument in specific passages from the text. In other words, your paper should analyze the specific metaphors/images, repeated language or “tropes”, and choices of form (thinking here of line length or Passarello’s disjointed essays) of the text, drawing conclusions about what impact these individual artistic decisions have on the overall meaning of the text.

Essay #3 — “Un-Essay” Option

Due May 15

This option invites you to take a similar interpretive project as Essay #3 and to present it in a different form or medium. In other words, the purpose and assessment criteria of the assignment are essentially the same — to interpret a theme or text in a creative, rigorous, focused way. If you’re producing a painting, it needs to reflect a specific course theme and do so in a way that shows critical thought and attention to detail. If you are producing a short film, it needs to do the kind of creative interpretation you would in a paper, developing a kind of argument even if you’re not doing so in overt terms (i.e. the short film we watched about zoos). A short story might embody a tension that you’ve identified in one or more of a text, or a series of poems might revise or re-appropriate a metaphor that we’ve encountered in the semester. Or, you might re-imagine the idea of “form” altogether, producing something that doesn’t fall neatly into any one genre: what might “digital compost” look like? What kind of environmental ceremonies do we perform on a daily basis? How might poetic tools redefine or improve sustainable practices? (I’m thinking here of our discussion of recycling and feelings surrounding it.) No matter what medium or final form you select, your work should be a creative presentation of a question that connects to one or more texts and that is well produced (not rushed or sloppy) and demonstrates significant thought.