Length: 4-5 pages (with 1" margins, in 12-point Times)
Your first writing assignment requires you to do something that seems quite antithetical to the project I've described for us this semester. I said on the first day of class (as you may recall) that we were going to work together to escape the New Criticism's ahistorical insistence on reading the text in a vacuum, and that instead we were going to undertake a more New Historical or Cultural Studies mode of reading, in which we would consider the text's place in an entire cultural scheme of representations, and so we would consider, in the famous phrase, both "the historicity of texts and the textuality of history."
And so we will. But in this first assignment, I am going to ask you to perform a close textual analysis -- our old friend, "close reading" -- of some particular aspect of either Sister Carrie or The House of Mirth. There are several things you need to consider as you begin this assignment:
1. The tactics and strategies of close reading. I assume you have all had practice in this critical method by this point. If not, talk to me or one of your peers.
2. "Some particular aspect" -- by which I mean that you need to formulate the question your paper seeks to answer in such a manner that it can be reasonably explored in the brief space you are permitted. "Representations of Consumption in Sister Carrie" is thus probably not a good topic. "Department Stores as Feminized Spaces in Sister Carrie" might be a bit better. Keep your focus narrow.
3. Your paper MUST seek to make some kind of argument about the text in question. "The representations of consumption in Sister Carrie reveal the novelist's concern about the expansion of capitalism" is not an especially compelling argument, as (a) it doesn't tell us much, (b) it attempts to tell us what the writer was thinking, which is always dubious, and (c) what it does manage to tell us, we already know. "Sister Carrie's representations of consumption -- and particularly consumption by women -- point to the changing roles of women in early twentieth-century America, as they emerge from the home and develop financial power of their own" could be far more compelling.
4. HOWEVER: note that that second argument requires you to have at your disposal a certain amount of historical knowledge. All claims you make in your paper, both textual and extra-textual, must be supported. In other words, if you choose to make an argument that is either theoretically or historically contextualized, you must make use of appropriate secondary texts.
5. On the subject of secondary texts: you may feel free to use them, whether critical, historical, or theoretical in nature, but you are not required to, and you must make sure that they do not get in the way of your original, compelling, tightly constructed argument.
Final notes: Your paper must be typed or word-processed, must be handed in in hard copy, titled, double-spaced. And it must use MLA format for citations. If you don't know MLA format, look it up.
I will happily look at early drafts as soon as they're ready, but will not comment on any drafts received after 10 a.m., Sunday, September 17. Drafts handed in after 2 p.m., Friday, September 15 must be sent to me by e-mail.