Researching an author or a time period; Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Joyce, E

This writing assignment is designed to engage you more thoroughly in a writer’s life and influences, while also sharpening your research skills. Many of the works we read represent the general body of work of the authors we study. You will choose one of the authors that we have studied, or will study soon, from any unit, and write a brief research essay investigating how their lives or interests led them to write the story, poem, or play we read in class. This assignment should help you learn more about the author, the historical and social climate that they were writing in, and how an author’s background can influence their work and the world around them. It also asks you to continue to fine tune your research skills, consulting credible, valid source material and interpreting your reading. You should NOT develop a Wikipedia type article (and certainly don’t use Wikipedia) of births and deaths, but instead look at an author’s life, influences, and work, and relate your research to the works we are reading and will read.

Many of the works we have studied are representative of the themes that the author’s tend toward in their most classic work. Think about your favorite story or poem so far, and take a look at the author’s life and times. You can start with the short autobiographical works in the back of our book. Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Joyce, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Kate Chopin, Robert Frost, Toni Cade Bambara, and Henrik Ibsen are all authors with particularly interesting lives, and you will find a wealth of material on each. Or, you might do a brief research piece on a particular time period, like the Harlem Renaissance, the Women’s Suffrage movement, or income disparities in our country. Find something that interests you, is related to the literature and themes we are studying, and that you want to learn more about!

Use the process of writing, including invention and planning, drafting, revising and editing. Your essay is quite short, at a minimum of 5 paragraphs, so one challenge will be to narrow your topic sufficiently so that you can say something interesting and avoid broad generalities. I would again suggest that you use the LibGuide for your source material. I particularly like the Literature Resource Center there. However, don’t let your sources overwhelm you; think about what you have learned, and present your own argument, with support from your sources. Remember, too, to cite in the text and on the Works Cited page accurately, using the MLA guidelines that you no doubt practiced in Composition 101. You MUST cite all quotes, paraphrase, summary, and facts and statistics. You cite to give credit to your sources, to provide credibility for your perspective, and so that a reader might easily consult your sources. A research paper does take extra time for editing and verifying your source material, so plan ahead!