Lorinda Toledo

Critical Paper Seminar

Friday, June 23, 2023 12:30 to 2:00 p.m. 

Lorinda Toledo

This seminar will help you form an understanding of what a critical paper is and create a step-by-step plan to begin working on it. We will discuss how to mine the body of your work at Antioch so far—for example, annotations, discussion board posts, and your own creative writing—to find a topic. With this in mind, we’ll participate in an in-class brainstorming exercise to explore the following questions:

● What in your writing are you struggling with?

● What questions are you asking about your work?

● What are your 3 favorite (or least favorite) books—what do they have in common?

This seminar will also provide a brief overview of the conventions of academic writing, answer questions, and present you with resources you can access to help you be successful at this endeavor.

Required Reading (in Reader):

Pathak, Yamini. “Beauty and the Poetic Image: Redefinition of Feminine Beauty in the Poems of Lucille Clifton and Natalie Diaz.” Long Critical Paper. Antioch University Los Angeles, Summer/Fall 2021. PDF.

Pathak, Yamini. “Beauty as a War Cry: Redefinition of Feminine Beauty in the Poems of Lucille Clifton and Natalie Diaz." Short Critical Paper. Antioch University Los Angeles, May 2021. PDF.

Spagna, Ana Maria. “What If?: The Art of Speculation in Creative Nonfiction.” The Writer's Chronicle, vol. 52, no. 1, Sept. 2021, pp. 70-75.

Wurth, Erika T. “The Fifth Wave: Intersections in Canadian and American Indian Fiction.” The Writer’s Chronicle, vol. 53, no. 4, April 2021, pp. 70-79.

Recommended Reading (in Reader):

Huynh, Amanda Galvan. “Elements of Multilingual Poetry in America.” The Writer’s Chronicle, vol. 52, no. 1, Sept. 2021, pp. 76-85.

Mattison, Alice. “A Woman Alone in a Room Realizing Something.” The Writer's Chronicle, vol. 52, no. 1, Sept. 2019.