ENG 102 Research Paper Guidelines Purpose The research paper assignment for this course is due at the end of week 7. The reading and writing skills shown in the successful completion of this assignment are the concluding step in the GMC ENG 101/ENG 102 sequence, displaying your skills as a writer, reader, researcher, and critical thinker. Research Paper Directions Your research paper should be an argumentative essay that makes a specific claim about one or more of the course readings. The claim should be made by applying specific schools of literary criticism from the “Critical Strategies for Reading” section of our textbook. Support this claim and argument in a well-developed, well-written, and wellorganized essay of at least 1500-1800 words of text (not counting the works cited page) and must successfully use at least 5 critical secondary sources (primary sources are not included in the research requirement) accessed through the GMC library. The bulleted list below provides general options for paper topics. The entirety of the class reading assignments can be found in the Course Syllabus, under “Course Schedule.” The bulleted list below provides general options for paper topics: • A paper focusing on one of the texts from class • A paper focusing on multiple texts (no more than 3) by the same author • A paper focusing on multiple texts (no more than 2) by different authors (no more than 2) Tips and Reminders Use your textbook as a resource.Reviewchapters 48 (Critical Strategies forReading, page 1439), 49 (Reading and the Writing Process, page 1465), and 50 (the Literary Research Paper, page 1499). There are also examples various examples of student essays in the textbook. Re-read the text(s) you want to base your paper on. Once you have decided on a topic, begin doing preliminary research (you will need to do a lot of research for this assignment anyway). Read what other literary critics have said. This will help you to further narrow down your topic, and even to find some of the sources you will end up using in the paper. Remember that you are a literary critic too—this means you should feel free to question and disagree with the interpretations you read. Make sure your thesis is an arguable one, something that readers might actually agree or disagree with. Don’t be afraid to take a leap and put forward a new, creative, and/or unique interpretation. Remember that any argument can be a good one if you properly support it with evidence from the text. Your paper must incorporate information from outside sources found through the GMC library. Remember that you have three methods for incorporating outside information into any paper: you can quote (use the source’s exact words), paraphrase (put the source’s words into your own words), or summarize (boil down information from a source to a 1-2 sentence summary in your own words). If you need to review these topics, check out the information at the Purdue OWL here http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/563/1/ Avoid unnecessary plot summary and biographical information. Assume that your reader has already read the work you are discussing, and assume that your reader knows important information about the author’s life already. Remember that sources like Wikipedia, Sparknotes, and other open-web sources are not appropriate for this paper. Conduct your research through the library like a real researcher, rather than relying on Google to find open-web sources that may not be appropriate. MLA formatting for paper style, in-text citations, and the Works Cited is a significant part of this paper. Review the sample essays in our textbook, the Purdue OWL MLA section (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/), and other MLA guides for examples of what your paper should look like. Organize your argument to maximize its effectiveness. Your introduction should include a thesis. Each paragraph of your paper should include a topic sentence that references your thesis. Each sentence in each paragraph should directly support that paragraph’s topic sentence. Finally, don’t forget the little things. Spelling, grammar, and punctuation should be perfect. Edit and revise your work. Manage your time efficiently to allow yourself the opportunity to read and reread your final paper multiple times. As always, contact your instructor whenever you have questions!

Appendix: Applications: Diverse Responses to Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour..” Short Fiction: A Critical Companion, Jan. 1997, pp. 271-295. EBSCOhost, proxygsu-gamc.galileo.usg.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lfh&AN=24576524&site=eds-live&scope=site.

This article was published in 1997. There are several different authors to this article. In this article it showed how feminist critics respond to some of the context words that Chopin uses.  I will be uses this article to prove my point with the reader response. At the end of the story it has several critics that is giving their interpretation of the story. My point is that when you have reader response they are so many ways you can take a story in. They would react to a passage rather than suggest feminist reader might respond to a specific selection.

Diederich, Nicole. “Sharing Chopin: Teaching “The Story of an Hour” to Specialized Populations.” Arkansas Review: A Journal of Delta Studies, vol. 43, no. 2, Aug. 2012, pp. 116-120. EBSCOhost, proxygsu-gamc.galileo.usg.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=fth&AN=82856013&site=eds-live&scope=site.

The article was published in August 2012. The author is Nicole Diederich. This is an academic journal. The audience from this journal are college students from the University of Finley Ohio. Diederich is a teacher that is analyzing Chopin’s “Story of an hour.” Most of the story passages takes on a different approach from single perspectives; others have approached this story from several points of view. These responses, of course, are coming the point view of opinion rather than a definitive.

The reactions of English-speakers and non-native speakers to the death of the character Louise Mallard in the story are noted in relation to marriage laws in 19th century Louisiana (118).

Jamil, S. Selina. “Emotions in the Story of an Hour.” Explicator, vol. 67, no. 3, Spring2009, pp. 215-220. EBSCOhost, proxygsu-gamc.galileo.usg.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=fth&AN=40121203&site=eds-live&scope=site.

This article was published in the spring of 2012. The author of this article is Selina Jamil. This gives us descriptive details pointing out the lots of ways in which emotions play an important role of the theme to develop the narrative. Chopin’s investigation of emotion in this story clearly fits R. J. Dolan’s argument that emotion influences not simply attention, but also “preattentive processing” (1191, 1192). As Chopin shows through Louise, the act of watching nature and engaging in sense perception is the act of processing emotional stimuli: “She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air” (193). As Chopin demonstrates, then, so powerful is emotion that it enables clarity of perception in Louise. It allows her to perceive life’s immeasurable beauty, without which, as she realizes with the suddenness of acutely shocking pain at the sudden entry of her husband, there is only death (218). This passage was inserted to show another perspective of emotion during this short story. I will use this to show the different dimension. 

Sümer, Sema Zafer. “‘The Story of an Hour’ or the Story of a Lost Lady in the Shadow of the Patriarchy’s Ideology.” Selçuk Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi, vol. 28, 2012, pp. 191-196. EBSCOhost, proxygsu-gamc.galileo.usg.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=mzh&AN=2014970056&site=eds-live&scope=site.

This article was published in 2012. It was a common belief of 19th century Victorian society that unrestrained sex was a danger to the social order, as it was supposed to threaten the mental health and procreative capacity of human being. The sexual desires of women were increasingly regarded as inappropriate and unnatural and were denied. In other words, sexual desires and passion hardly existed for most of the 19th century American literary heroines. Woman, patriarchy, marriage, love, passion, independence, freedom. As a woman, Chopin saw the destructive effects of the “cult of true womanhood” and started writing as a way of expressing her frustration and disappointment with life Kate Chopin was first woman writer in her country to accept passion as a subject for serious, outspoken fiction. Revolting against tradition and authority; with a daring short story which we can hardly understand today; with an uncompromising honesty and no trace of sensationalism, she undertook to give the unsparing truth about woman’s life (192). 

Wan, Xuemei. “Kate Chopin’s View on Death and Freedom in “The Story of an Hour.” English Language Teaching, vol. 2, no. 4, 01 Jan. 2009, pp. 167-170. EBSCOhost, proxygsu-gamc.galileo.usg.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ1083696&site=eds-live&scope=site.

This research is supported by the Education Department of Jiangsu Province, China from 2008 to 2010, among the Directing Projects on Philosophy and Social Sciences in Universities of Jiangsu Province. This story strongly indicates how deeply Mrs. Mallard wanted her freedom. but there was a conflict between her life and death. Comparisons and parallels of Chopin’s ideas on spiritual and physical freedom with Zhuang Zi’s philosophy can reveal the universality of ideals of truth and morality encompassed by philosophical thought. an important representative of the Taoist school of thought in Chinese history, is very famous for his thought on freedom. He uses the story form to evoke the reader a philosophical response (167-170).