For Paper One, you will write a thesis-driven essay that is 1000 to 1500 words in total (including bibliography, header, etc.).

These instructions cover four areas:
1. Using MLA Style
2. Using Turnitin.com
3. Your choice of topics
4. What you need to keep in mind as you write, including some very specific rules

1) Before you write your paper, please review my essay on MLA style and watch the accompanying videos. These can be found on the course home page: Content>Using MLA Style and Outside Sources.

2) You MUST submit your paper via Turnitin.com. The window for submissions is Friday 7/1 through Wednesday 7/6 by 11:00 pm. You must submit your paper before the due date. Late papers will not be accepted and will receive a grade of ZERO.

If you have not done so already, please sign up for a Turnitin account, which is free. Be sure to write down your account name and password. Once you have an account, sign into the course. Here is the information you will need to do so:

• Class name: LIT 375 Summer 2016 ONLINE
• Password: mckible
• Class ID: 12654271

For best results, please submit your essay as a Microsoft Word file.

If you are caught plagiarizing—intentionally or not—you will fail this course.

3) Please choose one of the following topics:

Choice One: Nella Larsen portrays two very different marriages in Passing—but how different, really, are the relationships between the Redfields and the Bellews? What might Larsen be showing us about the nature of love and marriage within the broader contexts of racial hierarchies, heteronormative expectations, gender behaviors, and/or the function of class? Explain how we might interpret the representation of marriage in Larsen’s Passing.

Choice Two: In The Great Gatsby and Passing, certain wealthy male characters serve as representatives of ideologically dominant ideas about race, class, and/or gender. Tom Buchanan and Jack Bellew espouse ideas about people and society that Gatsby and Passing interrogate, critique, and/or uphold. How would you describe Fitzgerald and Larsen’s representations of their male characters? Discuss Tom Buchanan and Jack Bellew, and consider the very different outcomes these characters face at the ends of the novels.

Choice Three: Clare Kendry and Jay Gatsby can be described—borrowing from The Great Gatsby—as springing from their own Platonic conceptions of themselves. Indeed, the transformations these characters make are remarkable, as are their successes and failures. Describe the origins of Clare Kendry and Jay Gatsby, discuss how and why they remake themselves, and analyze the consequences of their transformations. What do these characters tell us about American identity in the 1920s?

4) You should keep these suggestions and rules in mind:

****Your essay must include at least one legitimate outside source. This source should come from a library database such as JSTOR or Project Muse. Please review my video on outside sources.

Your essay will be graded on both form (grammar, style, etc.) and content (your ideas). Your essay should have an introductory paragraph that includes a thesis statement and a concluding paragraph. Your essay should be carefully organized, be supported with quotations from the text, and provide a coherent argument. Be sure to provide adequate and meaningful transitions between ideas and paragraphs.

Before you submit your paper to Turnitin for a grade, you should print out a hard copy and proofread it.

Your paper MUST comply with the word count expectation. Your essay (including bibliography, etc.) should be between 1000 and 1500 words. If your essay does not comply with this expectation, it will receive a grade of F.