Final Paper
English 221

Your final paper should be 5 pages, double-spaced, 12 pt. font. No long headers. No title page. All you will have at the top of the first page, centered, is a creative title and then your name, in that order. The rest of the first page and all subsequent pages should be your paper. Below you will find all the details for your assignment.

For this final paper you should show how one or two of our readings advance(s), critique(s), or amends(s) our understanding of one of the terms we have touched on this semester. Your essay should argue that this work or works theorize(s) this term in a new way. Put another way, you should illustrate how this work or works allow(s) us to recover a different definition of this term.

Possible terms to use for the paper include (but are not limited to) the following:

Colonialism
Settler Colonialism
Black Legend
Apology
Frontier
Puritanism
Separatism
Indigenous
Covenant
Race
Enlightenment
Romanticism
Federalist
Republican
Nation
History
Neoclassical
Jeremiad
Captivity
Imperialism
Revolution
Sentimentalism
Capitalism
Author
Poetry
Fiction
Satire
Gothic
Masculinity
Femininity
Autobiography
Commons

Here is how you should approach the paper:

Choose a reading or two from our syllabus that interests (intrigues, bothers, or confuses) you. If you choose to use two readings, keep in mind the following: papers that analyze works published around the same time period tend to result in stronger essays than the essays that analyze works from radically different time periods; and comparative papers (papers using two readings) are easier follow if you analyze one work and THEN the other rather than alternating back and forth between the two.

Choose a relevant critical term

Begin taking relevant examples from the readings and start to structure your paper based on YOUR interpretation of those examples

Try to come up with a working thesis about what the work or works illustrates about your term.

Remember: The majority (~80%) of the paper should be detailed literary analysis, which is clear and well organized. Make sure you clarify the significance of key words or phrases, recurring tropes, metaphors, etc. in the passages you cite.

The introduction and conclusion (20~%) will serve to frame your analysis. For the introduction, you will need a good dictionary. The Oxford English Dictionary is your best bet. It is available online through the UNA library website (go to the library search engine, then go to search, Databases by Title, then search under the letter O). The paper’s introduction should include (in quotation marks) one of the dictionary’s definitions of your key term, which should be contextualized and properly situated in this paragraph. Treat your introduction as a place for connecting the dots between this definition, the work or works you analyze, and your thesis or argument.

Work for substantial body paragraphs (7-10 sentences) throughout the paper. Remember that short paragraphs likely mean that you have not fleshed out your paragraph’s main idea.

Other strategies:
Share your thesis with a friend. See if he/she has any ideas for making it more argumentative or for more making it clearer.
Take the paper to the writing center for specific help.

**No need to include a works cited page, but note that I do run suspect writing through an online search. Use quotation marks when you use any language that is not your own.