PURPOSE:
For this assignment, you will write a research essay that compares a cultural element depicted in a non-American novel with research about that cultural element in history. This essay is a cornerstone project, which is a multi-faceted assignment that serves as a foundational experience for you at the beginning of your academic program. Writing this essay will help improve your research, writing, and analytical skills. Also, writing the essay will help you to evaluate information, improve your digital literacy, and become more understanding of global issues.
Writing the research essay will meet several course competencies, including demonstrating basic information literacy skills, analyzing multiculturalism in a non-American novel, internally documenting literary and scholarly works using current MLA guidelines, and creating works cited entries for literary and scholarly works using current MLA guidelines.
The large outside novel multi-cultural based research essay will be worth 20% of a student’s overall final grade.
TASK:
You will write a multicultural research essay that compares a cultural aspect of a novel to the real culture portrayed. As your focus, you should choose a specific cultural aspect depicted in the novel you have chosen. Your essay will determine the accuracy of the novel’s portrayal of your chosen cultural aspect. For example, how well does Eric Remarque portray the realities of war in Germany during this time period? How well does Laura Esquivel portray the value of Mexican customs and their significance to their culture? The length requirement for this essay is 2000 words, not including the endorsement or works cited page. Your works cited page should include the multicultural novel you have chosen and five additional scholarly sources to support your claim about the novel. That means you should have at least six authoritative sources on your works cited page. You must adequately quote and paraphrase from all sources with correct documentation. A good number of source uses is 6-10 significant uses from the novel and 1-2 significant uses for each of the scholarly sources. That is a bare minimum of eleven source uses (quotes, paraphrases, or summaries) in your essay.
When discussing the novel, use literary present tense. When you discuss historical aspects, these points should be made in past tense. In your introduction, you should identify the novel, author, and setting. You may give a short summary of the novel in your introduction to set up your thesis, and you should preview the points you will use to support your thesis. Your thesis should judge the accuracy of the depiction of a particular cultural aspect in your chosen novel. You may give background of your author if it pertains to the topic of your essay. Do not include irrelevant aspects of your author’s biography. Your topic sentences should be support points for your thesis. Each body paragraph should use illustrations from the novel and/or scholarly sources to support its topic sentence. You may restate your main points briefly, but remember to discuss the importance of your essay. Only repeating your main points is not a complete conclusion. You should leave your audience with a strong conclusion and psychological closure.
Late essays will not be accepted. Failure to meet the length/source requirements will result in a non-passing grade. If your essay is not turned in correctly or on time, your essay may receive a grade of zero. Please follow all requirements on the policies for assignments document.
Here is a breakdown of the assignment requirements:
Choose between the two selected novels that I have picked for our course. They are both non-American novels. In our case I have narrowed it down to these wo novels, so we can pick reading, writing, discussion groups to help each other. These two novels were on the long list the department originally created. The purpose is for students to experience a non-American author and focus on non-American cultures.
Submit your novel choice so we can arrange teams, even online to help each other!
Acquire a copy of your novel within a week or so of deciding which one you will be reading. You may get a copy of your novel at the TCTC library, your local library, from Amazon, or a book store. Both of these novel selections are available electronically through the TCTC eBook databases. Get this right away as the course keeps going! You should be ready to start reading by the beginning of the second week of this class.
Read and take notes on your outside novel selection. Depending on your reading and note-taking speed and the length of your chosen novel, it might take you longer or less time to read than your fellow students. Creating a reading calendar will greatly benefit you. You will need to read this novel on your own as you’re continuing to read assigned pieces according to the class schedule.
Assess the culture portrayed in your novel (location and time period). As you’re reading, you should get a clear picture of when and where your novel takes place. You can also get help by reading the Novels for Students entry for your novel, available in the Gale Virtual Reference Library through TCTC.
Choose a cultural element portrayed in your novel as the focus of your paper. This may change but once you have read a few chapters you will have an idea of what appeals most to you. Some cultural elements are gender roles, courtship rituals, religion, the prison system, laws and regulations, wars, movements, rebellions, the political system, food, music, philosophy, and clothing. You should choose one cultural aspect as your essay’s focus.
Begin researching your chosen cultural element as soon as possible. For example, if your novel is Like Water for Chocolate, and you chose “food” as your cultural element, you would research food culture in Mexico in the early 1900s. You would specifically look for research that parallels scenes and portrayals in the book, like food preparation, the kinds of food commonly eaten, and food for celebrations.
Begin writing a draft of your research essay that evaluates the novel’s accuracy in portraying the cultural element you have chosen as your essay’s focus as soon as possible. It is a good idea to begin drafting notes so that you can easily make the word count.
Submit your final research essay, worth 20%, by April 5th at 11:59PM. Your research essay is due electronically to Blackboard by the due date.
Last Completed Projects
topic title | academic level | Writer | delivered |
---|