21W.022.01 Writing and Experience: Reading and Writing Autobiography
Louise Harrison Lepera
Spring 2017
Essay 2: The Personal Investigative Essay
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For this assignment you will continue to develop and refine your skills in generating vivid and interesting material for life writing in your first drafts and revising the raw materials into a polished essay. The challenge this time will be first to identify an aspect of your life that you want to explore and investigate, and then to locate and use primary and secondary source material that will answer some central question.
In class we will spend some time discussing how to pose promising research questions and then how to use those questions to direct and focus the work of identifying and evaluating useful sources. You will assemble an annotated bibliography and develop your skills in working with sources, effectively summarizing, synthesizing, integrating, citing, quoting, and paraphrasing them to produce a professional and engaging investigative essay.
Required Readings:
Steve Almond, from Candy Freak
Gretel Ehrlich, “Darkness Visible” from This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland
Andrew Graystone, “The Rhetoric of Cancer” (podcast documentary)
Student Essays from Angles:
Xunjie Li “1927”
Anon, “Honed to Perfection”
Helen Nie, “Are You Feeling Hyggelig?””
Tim Lu, “Lessons from the Kitchen Doorway”
Suggested further reading
Roxane Gay, “I Was Once Miss America” and “To Scratch, Claw, or Grope Clumsily or Frantically”
David Foster Wallace, “Shipping Out: On the (Nearly Lethal) Comforts of a Luxury Cruise”
Michael Pollan, “Why Mow?”
Jonathan Franzen, “My Father’s Brain”
Alison Hamilos, “The Starting Line” (MIT Angles 2010)
Homework 4:
Due in class on Wednesday, March 22: Write a prospectus for your personal investigative essay that responds to all the following questions. (400-500 words)
– What is the research question that you would like to investigate?
– What is the personal experience that inspires this question?
– What kinds of questions might readers have about this topic?
– What kinds of sources would help you develop your investigation and answer the question? What sources have you already consulted?
Homework 5:
Due in class Wednesday, April 5
Create an annotated bibliography for your investigative essay, in which you briefly summarize
each source you plan to use and explain how each source you have identified will contribute to
your project. (Links for resources on annotated bibliographies are provided at the Stellar site). Aim to include 5-10 sources, drawn from print books and articles, as well as web resources.
Essay 2: Personal Investigative Essay, First Version
Due on Sunday, April 9 on Stellar by 12 noon, with a reflection letter.
Monday April 10: Class Workshop on Personal Investigative Essay first drafts
Tuesday, April 11-Friday, April 14 First drafts returned in conferences and Pod Group meetings
Essay 2: Personal Investigative Essay Revision
Due Tuesday, April 25
With new reflection letter,
Pod responses and previous drafts and comments.