instructor: Jentery Sayers 
~ classroom: mgh 076 & 074 
~ MW: 8:30-10:20 ~ University of Washington, Seattle
Response Paper 1.2: Method Switching [ Submit It Now! ]
Due: Monday, April 21st (length: three pages)
How does how we read influence how we write? How does switching our “critical lenses” from time to time allow us to make more complex arguments about literature and history? And what happens when we map one method onto another?
The goals of this paper are for you to develop critical reading and writing skills by:
(1) Practicing the three-step analysis in your own close readings.
(2) Continuing to explore why methodology matters.
(3) Considering the intersections of history, literature, and literary form.
Part I: Pick a text from the course readings . Choose carefully. Select something that interests you, because this work will become the focus of your Major Paper 1. (Of note, you can also select a text from your 1.1 playlist ; however, please run your decision by me before writing this paper.)
Once you select your text, get to know it. Examine it closely, using various methods. First, read it with history in mind. What historical references are made? When was it written? Under what social or political circumstances? What texts or events does it connect with and to what effects? Second, read it with form in mind. How does it say what it says? How is it arranged? How would you describe its language? Its literary devices (e.g., tone, appeals, and defamiliarizations)? Finally, what happens when you map your first approach onto the second? What questions, issues, and/or tensions emerge?
Part II: When you are done, write a three-step analysis of your text for each of your methodological approaches. Your paper should include three distinct and separate analyses—one paragraph with history in mind, one with form in mind, and one that intertextualizes your first two paragraphs. (In this third paragraph, I encourage you to literally quote your own work in the first two paragraphs.) Each three-step analysis should introduce your method and the text you selected, explain the text through your method, and articulate the implications of your explanation. The implications should attend to why your particular method matters. What does your method (or method mix) suggest about your particular text?
You only need three paragraphs—one on history, one on form, and one on history mapped onto form. There is no need for an introduction or a conclusion.
Part III: When are finished with your three analyses, at the end of your paper, please include three productive research questions about the text that you want to pursue for the balance of the first sequence. After your three-step analyses, what issues do you want to explore?
Your audience for this assignment is academia. As you write, you should consider what your audience needs to know and what they probably already know. Also, when you are finished with the paper, you should email it to your sequence one peer.
Targeted Outcomes
1: Your three-step analyses should show an understanding of the conventions of your text, and the tone and style of your writing should also be appropriate for its academic audience.
2: Your three-step analyses should demonstrate an awareness of context, an attention to form, and knowledge of how to unpack and synthesize multiple perspectives on evidence with particularity.
A Discipline for Your Method Switching
Your paper should be three pages with one-inch margins, typed using twelve-point Times New Roman font, double-spaced, and spell-checked. It is due to me via the class drop box and to your sequence one peer via e-mail by the end of Monday, April 21st. On Wednesday the 16th, I will ask you which text you are selecting.
uw english | jentery at u.washington.edu
