ENGL 2543 Research Paper

My Spring 2014 section of ENGL 2543 will require students to draft a conference-length research paper that treats a work from the periods under study (English-language literature of the British Isles to 1785) not listed among those assigned for course readings. The selected work is to be treated in one of two ways:

  1. How does the work create or reinforce an impression of what it is to be British? That is to say, how does the work define Britishness?

  2. How are the tropes and figures featured in the work appropriated by later literary periods or other literary areas?

Simply dropping students into composing a conference-length paper is likely to lead to bad ends. Accordingly, work on the paper is divided into three parts for my Spring 2014 section of ENGL 2543:

  1. Abstract

  2. Annotated Bibliography

  3. Conference-Length Paper (full)

Ideally, working over the paper in the listed stages will help students to better understand their chosen materials and the contexts in which they exist. In addition, working through the process of composing the paper may help students to better understand how academic research is carried out, which understanding they are encouraged to take with them to their other classes and their future lives.

Please do keep in mind that for all components of the research paper, any referenced materials must be appropriately accounted for. Failure to do so will be investigated as potential plagiarism; please do not provoke such investigations.

An example of a longer version of such a paper as my students are asked to write can be found in Alexandra Cook's "Critical Medievalism and the New South: Red Rock and Gone with the Wind" (South Central Review 30.2 [Summer 2013]: 32-52).

More information is forthcoming.