Final Critical Essays

Due 12/8 by 5pm

By Monday, December 8 at 5pm, students will submit by email attachment an 8 to 10-page critical essay that analyzes at least THREE poems or writings from authors on the syllabus or featured in Edward Hirsch, The Heart of American Poetry (2022).  Good essays will develop a strong thesis statement that analyzes the respective strategies of the authors in connection with how they attempted to reach either similar audiences or to develop similar themes.  Essays should be typed and double-spaced as Word or PDF documents with title page and Chicago-style footnotes (no bibliography required).  Essays must include at least THREE quotations from the Hirsch book and use a variety of other sources developed from the research journal posts.  Students MUST submit at least one DRAFT (full or partial) to Prof. Pinsker BEFORE the deadline.  Essays will be graded on research effort, depth of analysis, and quality of prose. Late essays will be penalized up to 5 points per day.

 

Additional Guidelines

  • Here is a model critical essay from student Jake Sokolofsky (KFF Summer 2022) comparing the reform rhetoric of Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Martin Luther King, Jr.  This is from a different course with a different type of assignment but the general thoughtful approach grounded in specific textual evidence offers a model worth emulating.
  • Remember to limit AI use to search engine functions only and to avoid third-degree plagiarism; See the Handout on Plagiarism and these blog posts: Plagiarism 2.0  and Artificial Intelligence or Fake Intelligence?

 

    1. Start with a striking statement: some concise narrative vignette, thought-provoking quotation or statistic, or a crisp sentence or two of your own
    2. Pivot to a few sentences of concise summary about the topic and its essential context
    3. Close the opening with an interpretive thesis statement that makes a debatable argument about how these texts reveal something meaningful about the period or theme
    4. A good opening paragraph should both engage and inform a general reader or fellow student
  • Prof. Pinsker is available to review drafts (full or partial and multiple iterations) until Sunday afternoon, December 7.  The minimum requirement is for students to submit at least a version of their opening paragraph by 12/7.
  • Students are also encouraged to visit the Writing Center, though that is not required
  • Students may incorporate revised material from their earlier assignments in the final essay.
  • Students should use a combination of primary and secondary sources, not only including the poetry texts themselves and the Hirsch book but also other sources that had been previously analyzed in earlier research journal entries.  There is no fixed formula for how many sources are required for a successful essay, but students should certainly aim for citations to at least SIX different sources besides the poems themselves.

 

  • SPECIAL ADVICE FOR ORGANIZING ESSAY:

There are multiple ways to organize this type of critical essay.  You might prefer to approach it as a series of close readings of three different authors followed by a section of general interpretation that analyzes the collection of texts by period or theme.  Or you can try something like this:

    1. Introduction (1-2 pages)
      • Employ a striking opening
      • Offer a clear, debatable thesis about period or theme
    2. Background (Context) (2-3 pages)
      • Cover authors and respective audiences
      • Treat authors in chronological order
    3. Texts (2-3 pages)
      • Offer close readings of texts as a group
      • Make sure to find connections among the texts
    4. Analysis (Subtext) (2-3 pages)
      • Explain what these texts reveal together about period or theme
      • Make sure to illustrate your thesis statement
    5. Conclusion (1-2 pages)
      • Return to opening framework
      • Offer elegant closing that does more than just repeat thesis

 

You should build your research from the foundation created in your research journal posts, though you don’t have to use all of those sources.  Overall, you should have good citations to at least six different sources, but most good essays will use more over the course of an 8-10 page paper.  However, quality matters more than quantity.

    1. Primary Sources (by priority for citation):  Letters or diary entries by the author on the text // Contemporary responses by others (newspaper accounts, letters, diaries, etc.) about the text // Recollections about the text (by author or contemporaries) // Other related texts
    2. Secondary Sources (by priority for citation):  Recent influential academic books or articles (biographies about authors + articles about texts + monographs about the period or theme) // Recent popular books or magazine/newspaper articles // Older academic books or articles
    3. Tertiary Sources (by priority for starting points):  recent academic print (digitized) reference sources (#1 – American National Biography) // academic or institutional websites (including Wikipedia)// Internet frontier (buyer beware)

 

  • SPECIAL ADVICE FOR FORMATTING PAPER:
    1. Title page: Hacker & Sommers, p. 272
    2. Make sure that you are integrating quoted material fluidly.  See this handout for advice.
    3. Chicago-style footnotes: Hacker & Sommers, pp. 246-68 // See also this methods handout on How to Use Footnotes and consult as needed with the library’s Chicago-style guide, but make sure to use sample footnote models for formatting and NOT bibliography examples
    4. Other tips:  Hacker & Sommers, pp. 269-74, but remember that no bibliography or works cited is required for this assignment