Paper #2 prompt: The T.V. Said What?
Due in class on Monday, October 19, the final draft of a 4-5 page paper, formatted as shown on your syllabus, that engages a current popular television show in order to bring an issue to your audience’s attention, or to show how your audience should understand a particular issue. You must introduce, engage, and correctly cite at least three sources, including at least one relevant database source, and should include a Works Cited (or References, if you’re using APA style) page at the end of your paper.
You have two options for this paper:
The first option here would zero in on a show, analyze it as a central focus, and make an argument about that show for our culture. The particular show does something to us or for us. The second option would use a show (perhaps only briefly, perhaps as a framing device) to make a larger argument about our culture. My examples above are not very representative of the range of angles you can take: you can argue about what a show does without necessarily judging it as good or bad, and there are great arguments to be made in the course of celebrating a show. The position paper and proposal you write will give you two different opportunities to try out topics and arguments. With some hesitation, I’ll say that recent movies are fair game. As always, if you have an idea you want to pursue, ask me. I’ll almost certainly say yes.
You must target a specific, real audience for this project. Your audience will help you define your “rhetorical stance”: your purpose, the concerns your audience will need to have addressed, the assumptions you can make about what your audience knows, and the tone (the degree of formality or informality) you adopt.
You’re aiming for a narrow, manageable subject that will allow you to advance a clear argument that is at issue for your selected audience. Your subject must be at issue: reasonable people should be both concerned by and able to disagree with the argument you advance.
One of the most useful research tools at your disposal is the library’s subscription databases. For this assignment, you must introduce, quote (or paraphrase/summarize), and correctly cite at least one relevant database source. You must do the same with at least two other sources, for a total of at least three sources (yes, you can conduct primary research). Keep in mind that the sources you find can figure in your paper in a number of different ways. They might help you hook your audience, define the issue, offer your thesis, explain the issue or problem (who it affects, its limits, its implications), argue your perspective, show other ways that the issue can be understood or approached, or address potential counterarguments.
Once you’ve done your thinking and your research, try to formulate your sense of the issue as a strong thesis. In other words, try to establish a very clear claim followed by your single best reason for believing that claim to be true. When it comes time to actually write your paper, you can certainly decide that the “claim + reason” form makes for a really awkward sounding sentence that has no place in your writing (this often happens when we try to jam complex ideas into single sentences). You may also decide that you don’t want to state an explicit thesis early on (or anywhere, for that matter) in your paper. In the prewriting stage, though, and in the position paper you will write, your love of beauty should not deter you from composing and working through a strong, focused, logical thesis.
Jacoby, Susan. “The Dumbing of America.” Washington Post 17 Feb. 2008: B1. washingtonpost.com