Order Description
GOALS OF THE ASSIGNMENT:
Show that you are able to apply skills like textual analysis; defining a problem, project, and argument; identifying exhibits that raise problems; putting sources in conversation, characterizing the conversation)
Show that you are able to manage these skills within a larger original research project
Show that you can develop a clearly defined research question
Show that you have managed your sources seamlessly and ethically

CONTEXT:
This is a research paper for a writing class. This research paper will rise out of the text “The Violence of Public Art: “Do the Right Thing,” by W. J. T. Mitchell (I’ve attached this). This text will motivate the inquiries we will pursue.

For example, the text talks about public vs. private. In this case, your research paper could explore this ‘public vs. private’ theme. But of course, feel free to do what you deem fit. That was just my example.

You will also identify exhibits (a text, event, performance, speech, image or anything that can be interpreted and carries the potential for rich analysis) that raise intellectual problems (a tension, an ambiguity, a complicated idea, or a site of possible misunderstanding) in relation to Public Art and Visual Culture. These fields offer a broad range of potential sites of inquiry.

THE ASSIGNMENT:
You’ll write individual research essays on issues, questions or concerns that emerge out of the common experience of exploring Mitchell’s essay on “The Violence of Public Art”. You will choose an exhibit that raises questions and a project, and develop and advance a conversation that fulfills that project. Close readings of the exhibit and the conversation texts that you choose will elucidate key aspects of the conversation and reveal gaps. The research essay is not merely informative but imagines some philosophical or real-life problem that needs to be solved, dilemma that needs to be reconciled, or common conception that needs to be revised.

You audience will be your fellow peers and me, your instructor.

Your final draft should be formatted according to MLA style. Research essays of this scope typically engage about 8-12 sources. More sources might not necessarily be better. Your reader will benefit more from thoughtful, close engagement with fewer texts than surface-level readings of more texts.

Bear in mind that you should also demonstrate:
Strong ethos by showing the writer’s mastery over the conversation. Essays that do this will select not merely a quantity of sources but the key sources that have influenced conversations about this issue.

Strong logos by educating the reader on the facts and arguments surrounding the issue in a way that looks beneath the surface and elucidates nuanced analysis.

Strong pathos by connecting with the audience to the extent that they identify with the issue at hand and feel they have an intellectual or personal stake in it.