ASSIGNMENTS, FALL 2010

Assignment: Essay #1--Write an essay on one of the following:

1. The effect a particular place has had on you as well as on other people—a community, a history, your relatives, etc. You will need a central narrative here: tell a story about yourself and others in a particular place. There is no “right” response as long as you develop the mood, feeling, and reflections this situation engenders (i.e., why it is/was important to you).  Possibilities (just suggestions. . . ) to think about: how this place changed you (or the other people you are writing about) or your perspectives. Please stay away from reductive “morals.” Instead, describe the characters, situations, and place in sufficient detail that you will enable your audience to experience what you did, feel what you felt, think what you thought. . . and come to the same complex conclusions you did  (see Blew, Barnes, Didion, and White for inspiring examples).

 2. The relationship or connections of your life to the life of any famous person during any time in history (see Thurber and Schrand for examples).

 3. A family problem (see Sanders for an example).

 Your essay will be a minimum of 8 typed pages (2000 words). When you revise this essay, it will most likely expand as you develop it thoughtfully. Successful essays will employ a combination of experiential writing (scene, narrative, character description, dialogue, etc.) and reflection (analysis, perspective, and other varieties of vertical movement).

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Assignment: ESSAY # 2, RESEARCH-FOCUSED ESSAY

 You are to write a personal essay (not a strictly academic essay) on a subject of your choice, using at least three sources of research. At least two of them are to be refereed journals or books. The third may be an interview (either face-to-face or ear-to-ear). I expect that this essay will be a minimum of 10 pages (font 12-point, double-spaced).

Use as examples the essays we’ve read by the following writers:  Barnes, Schrand, Blew, Wallace, Passanante, and Jones (a copy of which I will send you soon).  (N.B., These essays do not necessarily include the sort of references and citations that I am expecting you to use for Essay Number 2.)

Finding refereed information:  General interest databases accessible through the UI Library site--

http://db.lib.uidaho.edu/databases/display.html

This includes Ebsco, Masterfile, NY Times Archive, WorldCat, and others.

 The library's main page is http://www.lib.uidaho.edu/   

 Getting help with research:  Visit our excellent reference librarians (Rochelle Smith, Nancy Young, etc.) or use the following web address: http://www.lib.uidaho.edu/index-help.html

Citing and crediting sources:  Instead of creating more formal academic citations, mention in your text what the source is: for instance, “According to The New Yorker writer Roger Angell,  . . . .”  Then include a Sources Consulted or Works Cited page at the end of your essay.

 Finding answers to questions about style: MLA online style guide (Purdue)-- http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/557/01/   

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Assignment: Essay #3 your choice (minimum 6 pages—but no maximum):

 1. Using a narrative framework, describe some aspect of your education thus far (Orwell comes to mind)--you may string together anecdotes or vignettes or just detail one longer story--and discuss how effective or ineffective it was (or just plain hilarious or tragic or whatever slant you want to take) in teaching you what you want and need to know. You may want to project yourself into the future and imagine what you think you’ll think 5 and 10 and 30 years from now.

 2. Write about a work of art--music, dance, painting, sculpture, murals, graffiti, etc.--by first describing it and then both showing through a narrated event or series of events how it affected you. Then analyze a bit (ah, those reflections again!) about why it affected you as it did. Was there something about the time when you experienced it that made it particularly resonant with and important to you? N.B., This could be a work of art you hated, or found repulsive, of course.

 3. Write about a word that somehow speaks to you, that calls forth ideas or memories or interesting associations. You might narrate your own history with this word (when did you first realize it was important to you, for example?), explore various definitions of this word (and your own interpretations of them), use dialogue to show yourself and others using this word, research and detail stories associated with this word, etc.  Try Oxford English dictionary in the library, which will give you more information about the etymology about this word. In your reflections, analyze why this word has particular importance for you.