“Spontaneous Me” Walt Whitman

Essay:   Final Assignment for English 201

1. Choose a poet and a poem for analysis for your essay:

Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

2. Choose one of the selected topics to write an 650+ word research essay using a minimum of three sources. Submit your assignment through Blackboard which includes the Safe Assign plagiarism check.

• you will choose and then research at least 3 other sources about the topic (you can certainly use more sources)
• you will write a 650 word (minimum – papers can be longer) research paper explaining the theme of the work. Papers

o   should be formal

o   have an introduction that narrows to the thesis

o   have a clear thesis

o   must use the readings listed for the conception and text reading(s) plus at least 4 additional sources; the focus of the paper should be on the text reading(s)

o   sources should be reliable and academically defensible – do not use Wikipedia, ask.com or other such sources; blogs are NOT reliable sources

o   use specific quotes (at least one direct quote from each source) and examples to explain what the concept is and whether or not the concept is accurate/true

o   have a clear, summative conclusion

o   use proper MLA documentation for all quotes and paraphrases

o   include a bibliography that uses proper MLA format, is written in alphabetical order and uses the hanging indentation (you should NOT use a citation generator unless you know for sure it is accurate).  The bibliography should include the readings for the topic plus the minimum of 4 additional sources

3. A couple of notes:

• no paper should be a biography of a person
• any synopsis should be minimal; these papers should be analyses, not plot summaries· Help with documentation can be found at Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL) at http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/