Two primary sources are required. Primary sources are the stories, poems, ads, Television programs, or films that you will analyze in your final paper. You may be using yourself as one of the Primary sources for this assignment.
Your primary sources can include stories, poetry, film, ads, or musical lyrics and videos, — a combination of these elements is fine.
Three secondary sources are required. A secondary source is an article or book about your subject. So an example of a primary source would be an article titled “Finding Redemption: Transgender Issues in TransAmerica.” You must find good, authoritative secondary sources if you hope to receive a good grade on your paper.
Length: six to eight pages.
Proper MLA documentation is required.
Your paper must either conform to the topics listed in the course or receive topic authorization from me. You may not choose a new topic after week seven. If you submit a paper without having had your topic authorized, you will automatically fail this assignment. Believe me, this has happened to students before: don’t let it happen to you.
You MUST post information on our weekly discussion boards, by the due dates indicated, in order to have your final draft accepted. This is known as ‘process work,’ and proves that you’ve been working on your paper throughout the quarter (and not just during the last week). More information about these requirements–in other words, what you need to submit–is included in the Weekly Assignment folders.
I strongly encourage you to send an early draft to me or visit the Online Writing Center in order to get feedback and direction as you progress in your work.
A Final Note:
One difficulty that students tend to have with this paper is that you must work on it concurrently with your other papers. In other words, while you are working on Essay #1 and Essay #2, you will also be completing work on this final essay (usually that will involve simply thinking about your topic/thesis or researching primary and secondary sources). It’s important that you keep these things separate in your head, since I can’t stop and remind you during class that you need to switch gears. One thing that I’ve done to help you keep them separate is to use purple highlighting whenever I bring up the final paper in our class materials.