Essay over select texts
Choose one of the options below and discuss one of the following readings:
Proust, Swann’s Way
Kafka, Metamorphosis
Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
Pirandello, Six Characters
Camus, The Guest
Borges, Garden of Forking Paths
Cortazar, House Taken Over
Note: You don’t have to answer every one of the suggested questions listed under the options, but you should use those questions to help you find and elaborate a specific thesis. You may combine options. For example, you may talk about theory-of-mind issues in a text with an unreliable narrator, or you may discuss the ways in which an unreliable narrator defamiliarizes the subjects of the story or the reading process, itself.

Option 1: Unreliable Narrators
Choose a text with an unreliable narrator and contrast the narrator’s version of what happens with your own reconstruction of events. Your reconstruction of the plot should be based on clues within the text such as contradictions within the narration or impossibilities that the narrator doesn’t account for.
What does the narrator leave out or misinterpret? How do we know?
What lines of text let us know that something is wrong or missing in the narrator’s version?
How does this lead us to understand the narrator as a character?
How does this change the reader’s interpretation of the story?
How does this change the way we think about the thinking process itself?

Option 2: Defamiliarization
Choose one text from the reading list for this course and describe how the author defamiliarizes the content. Define defamiliarization using quotations from the lecture slides or other scholarly source and then describe how the author of your choice does this in a given work of literature.
What would normal readers expect to find?
What in the text does might the reader find surprising or unfamiliar?
What conventional wisdom does the author defamiliarize?
How does the author’s depiction of a person, institution, society, object, etc. force the reader to reconsider it?
What descriptive terms seem unusual or inappropriate? Why?

Option 3: Theory of Mind
Discuss the use of theory-of-mind by characters and the effects it has on the plot and the reader’s interpretation of the story. This can also be used for non-fiction, such as Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own.”
Describe how one person’s knowledge of another person’s thinking causes events in the plot.
Cite passages of dialogue that reveal the mental states of the characters.
Compare what one character thinks to what another character thinks he/she thinks.
Identify plot events that depend on one character misunderstanding another’s thinking.
You may include the author’s use of theory-of-mind, also. (optional)

Essay Criteria:
Every essay (in this class or any other) must contain an original thesis and support for that thesis.

Thesis: You don’t have to answer every one of the suggested questions, but you should use those questions to help you find and elaborate a specific thesis. Avoid vague generalizations or speculation about what a text means. Your claim must be supportable.
Vague and unprovable thesis: “I believe that Frankenstein is all about how human beings shouldn’t play God.”
Qualified and Provable thesis: “Mary Shelley’s protagonist, Victor Frankenstein expresses noble ambition, but he often fails to consider the long-term effects his actions will have on other people.”

Support: The support for your thesis must come primarily from the text, itself. You may use outside sources, though these are not required.
If you do use outside sources, these should be scholarly sources and not unqualified, general sources such as Wikipedia or Sparknotes.
Simply repeating your claim in different terms does not qualify as support.
Use quotations, and then explain how the quotation supports the claim. Do not use drop-quotes, long quotations that are inserted as if their relevance was self-evident. Describe what that quotation reveals or why it is significant.

Format & Requirements
3 pages
Must be posted online by Tuesday, Dec. 1, at 11am. Class attendance on that day is still mandatory.
File type: Microsoft Word (DOCX) or Adobe PDF Standard format:
Basic font (Calibri, Cambria, Times New Roman), 11 or 12 point
One inch margins
Use APA citation format within the text and in the Works Cited or Reference list at the end. Other APA requirements are not necessary (such as title page).
You will be graded on your ability to formulate an interpretive claim about the reading and support it with quotations from the text. Base your interpretation of the text in the text. Avoid speculation and overgeneralization.

Essay over select texts
Choose one of the options below and discuss one of the following readings:
Proust, Swann’s Way
Kafka, Metamorphosis
Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
Pirandello, Six Characters
Camus, The Guest
Borges, Garden of Forking Paths
Cortazar, House Taken Over
Note: You don’t have to answer every one of the suggested questions listed under the options, but you should use those questions to help you find and elaborate a specific thesis. You may combine options. For example, you may talk about theory-of-mind issues in a text with an unreliable narrator, or you may discuss the ways in which an unreliable narrator defamiliarizes the subjects of the story or the reading process, itself.

Option 1: Unreliable Narrators
Choose a text with an unreliable narrator and contrast the narrator’s version of what happens with your own reconstruction of events. Your reconstruction of the plot should be based on clues within the text such as contradictions within the narration or impossibilities that the narrator doesn’t account for.
What does the narrator leave out or misinterpret? How do we know?
What lines of text let us know that something is wrong or missing in the narrator’s version?
How does this lead us to understand the narrator as a character?
How does this change the reader’s interpretation of the story?
How does this change the way we think about the thinking process itself?

Option 2: Defamiliarization
Choose one text from the reading list for this course and describe how the author defamiliarizes the content. Define defamiliarization using quotations from the lecture slides or other scholarly source and then describe how the author of your choice does this in a given work of literature.
What would normal readers expect to find?
What in the text does might the reader find surprising or unfamiliar?
What conventional wisdom does the author defamiliarize?
How does the author’s depiction of a person, institution, society, object, etc. force the reader to reconsider it?
What descriptive terms seem unusual or inappropriate? Why?

Option 3: Theory of Mind
Discuss the use of theory-of-mind by characters and the effects it has on the plot and the reader’s interpretation of the story. This can also be used for non-fiction, such as Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own.”
Describe how one person’s knowledge of another person’s thinking causes events in the plot.
Cite passages of dialogue that reveal the mental states of the characters.
Compare what one character thinks to what another character thinks he/she thinks.
Identify plot events that depend on one character misunderstanding another’s thinking.
You may include the author’s use of theory-of-mind, also. (optional)

Essay Criteria:
Every essay (in this class or any other) must contain an original thesis and support for that thesis.

Thesis: You don’t have to answer every one of the suggested questions, but you should use those questions to help you find and elaborate a specific thesis. Avoid vague generalizations or speculation about what a text means. Your claim must be supportable.
Vague and unprovable thesis: “I believe that Frankenstein is all about how human beings shouldn’t play God.”
Qualified and Provable thesis: “Mary Shelley’s protagonist, Victor Frankenstein expresses noble ambition, but he often fails to consider the long-term effects his actions will have on other people.”

Support: The support for your thesis must come primarily from the text, itself. You may use outside sources, though these are not required.
If you do use outside sources, these should be scholarly sources and not unqualified, general sources such as Wikipedia or Sparknotes.
Simply repeating your claim in different terms does not qualify as support.
Use quotations, and then explain how the quotation supports the claim. Do not use drop-quotes, long quotations that are inserted as if their relevance was self-evident. Describe what that quotation reveals or why it is significant.

Format & Requirements
3 pages
Must be posted online by Tuesday, Dec. 1, at 11am. Class attendance on that day is still mandatory.
File type: Microsoft Word (DOCX) or Adobe PDF Standard format:
Basic font (Calibri, Cambria, Times New Roman), 11 or 12 point
One inch margins
Use APA citation format within the text and in the Works Cited or Reference list at the end. Other APA requirements are not necessary (such as title page).
You will be graded on your ability to formulate an interpretive claim about the reading and support it with quotations from the text. Base your interpretation of the text in the text. Avoid speculation and overgeneralization.