English 3080 
Professor Diane Krantz
Summer Semester
Research Paper Guidelines

Long paper Assignment

Due Date:  Friday, April 21, 2006;
Draft Workshop: Friday, April 14. This is mandatory. No excuses will be accepted. Failure to attend class will result in a lowering of the paper grade by a whole grade.The final paper must be accompanied by a well-revised draft. Again consult the writing links and possibly the writing center for feedback.
Weight: 30% of the class grade. This paper counts heavily because this is the culmination of what you have learned that you will take on to other English courses.
Length: 10-12 pages. 2500-word minimum. Bibliography: MLA format (Chapter 24).

Your Bibliography: A minimum of 5 critical sources. This is an extremely important aspect of your paper since an important course goal is to prepare students to produce acceptable research papers. Failure to follow the guidelines will automatically reduce the grade of the paper.
Reference materials such as Encyclopedias, dictionaries, Bibles may be used, but they do not count for the required critical sources. Chapters 20 and 21 in your book will help in finding literary critics. Also resources are cited at the end of each description of a literary theory in your text. Note the hints in this link for finding acceptable sources. A rule of thumb for using sources is that 1/3rd of the paper may be ideas taken from other scholars; at least 2/3rds of the work must be your own: commentary on the sources plus your own ideas about the text your are using. Not using sources enough may lead to an idiosyncratic reading such as one that critics of Fish would attack; using sources too much makes the paper an overview of the literature rather than analysis.
Format: see the Explication paper. The bibliography should be MLA format.

Description (adapted from Professor Brian Locke, English 3900, University of Utah, March 2003): This paper will analyze a fictional text (literature, film, or popular culture) of your choosing, using at least one of the theories covered in the course. If you wish to analyze a text we haven't covered in class or a film, you must get your topic approved by April 7th at the latest. In order to write a good paper, you need to pose a good question, one that assumes the text is political (its representations/structure/themes/ techniques have cultural, personal, or political consequences). In order to answer your question, focus on one or two problems in the text. Here are some questions you might consider as you get started:

• What kinds of ideology does the text represent and reproduce? (New Historicism, Cultural criticism)
• What is the narrative structure of the text? What is its significance? (Psychoanalytic criticism)
• What are the gender, race, or class politics of the text? (Feminism, Queer Theory, Marxism)
• What kind of comment is the text making about identity? (Psychoanalytic criticism, Queer Theory)
• How is cultural value established? (Culture Studies)
• How does a film negotiate between representation and reality (Deconstruction, Post-Structuralism, New Criticism)

Be sure to cite all sources and include a proper bibliography. Papers will be evaluated on how well your ideas are supported and explained and on the quality of the prose.