Reading log vs. analytical paper

For the assignment due on 1/25, you may choose EITHER to do a reading log or an argumentative paper. You will then do the other kind of writing for the assignment due 2/8. Whichever you choose, take another look at the discussion questions posted on WebCT for inspiration. These are resources that your classmates have made available to you.

Submission: These are due by 4 pm on Fridays. You may either bring a hard copy to my office (Hums 1 636), to my box in Humanities Academic Services (second floor), or send it by email attachment in .DOC or .RTF format to ksgruesz@ucsc.edu. Don’t forget to attach the file! I will not consider the assignment turned in until the file is actually attached. I’ll send an email confirmation immediately after receiving your message and opening the file successfully.

Reading logs (2-3 double-spaced pages):

• These should contain your general impressions of the work as a whole , not just the first few chapters. Show that you finished the book.
• Try to put together a series of connected observations or thoughts about something you find particularly compelling in the novel. Be specific, using quotes if needed, or mention scenes and page numbers.
• This is a looser and more informal assignment where you are encouraged to play with ideas that might later be worked into a more formal paper.

Argumentative papers (4-5 double-spaced pages):

• An argumentative paper is one that makes a limited claim about how something works in the text, and supports that thesis with evidence from close reading. For help in working your ideas into a thesis, and for general advice on integrating quotes, see the handout, “Writing an Argumentative Paper.”
• Do not consult outside sources for this paper. I want to hear what you think.
• As the handout explains, learning to shape themes and observations into an original thesis is an essential part of learning how to write a strong paper. Therefore, I am not giving the kind of paper topics in which you are presented with a position and then asked to support or deny it. However, here are some good beginning points to start the process of crafting an argument, based on our class discussions of Absalom, Absalom!:
• codes of honor; questions of morality and virtue in AA
• female sexuality, associations of women with nature
• ritual, ceremony, staged performances
• living spaces: small town/local community vs. urban, cosmopolitan scene
• Faulkner’s style: repetition (when is it ‘repetition with a difference’?)
• free will vs. destiny
• ghosts, haunting
• racial categories—fixed or fluid
• “Puritan”/Protestant mores vs. Catholic ones
• regions within the nation vs. as transnational spaces (Haiti)
• temporality: idea of the eternal present; Q’s claim that the past isn’t past
• letters, gravestones, written records vs. oral memory
• “the South” as imagined entity or mythic space

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