English 192
Summer 2013
Due Thursday 12 September 2013 at 5:00 p.m.
You have two options for this paper. Select one or the other and write a paper that satisfies the requirements for the option you have chosen. This paper is due at the beginning of class on Thursday, 12 September. You cannot pick up your final exam until you you turn this paper in; failure to turn in this paper guarantees that you will receive a non-passing grade for the course. I will not grant extensions beyond the due date on this assignment except in genuinely extraordinary circumstances.
You should be aware that, although I did not fully enforce the grammar and formatting limitations on paper one, I will do so on this paper. Note, too, that the minimum paper length is a bright line that you either do or do not cross — coming close is not good enough. Falling short of the five-page minimum — even by one line — will seriously hurt your grade on this assignment.
This paper is worth 35% of your total grade for the term.
Any instance of plagiarism will result in removal from the course and referral to the University's student conduct committee.
Both of these paper options will require advance thought and planning. Both options will be very difficult to do at the last minute. You should ensure that you schedule and plan adequately so that you have sufficient opportunities to consider your ideas in advance. Turning in a successful, polished assignment will depend in part upon having engaged in planning and/or research before you start to write.
I take my pedagogical responsibilities seriously, and want to help each and every one of you to be successful in all course-related tasks. You are welcome to discuss your ideas for your paper at any stage in conceptualizing or writing it; to ask for assistance in evaluating your own rhetorical, analytical, creative, or expository strategies; or to think through difficulties that you encounter during my office hours. If my office hours are at inconvenient or impossible times for you, let me know and we will arrange another time to meet.
If you choose this option, you will need to conceptualize and write a research paper of five to seven pages that explores and resolves a specific question that is in some way related to the science-fiction genre by arguing for (or against) a specific idea. Your paper should explore this idea (in part) by engaging in an attentive reading of thoughtfully selected passages in the text(s) with which you are working. Your paper should engage with at least one of the course texts; if you want to engage with other primary texts instead of or in addition to the course texts, you should consult with me before doing so.
Although you are welcome to consider texts from the first half of the term, you may not write a second paper on the text or texts on which you wrote your first paper.
Your paper must be research-based; it needs engage substantially with at least two scholarly sources (in addition to the primary text or texts which you are considering). You may also use additional sources — scholarly or otherwise — beyond your primary texts and two scholarly sources. There are many good ways that you can engage substantially with the scholarly research on a text; if you need suggestions, you should consult with me about productive ways to do so. There is a collection of links to scholarly research sites on the course web page.
Your paper should properly attribute words and ideas belonging to others, be double-spaced, have one-inch margins, and in all other ways conform to the MLA standard for academic papers in the humanities. If your word processor does not conform to the MLA standard by default, it is your job to override your word processor's defaults in order to produce a correctly formatted paper. The degree to which you conform to the conventions of formal academic writing will also be a strong factor in your grade. If you choose this option, your paper will be graded according to the criteria specified in my grading rubric for analytical papers, which is available at http://is.gd/winucu or from the course website.
If you choose this option, you will need to conceptualize and write a science fiction story of five to fifteen pages. Your story should demonstrate that you understand the conventions of the science fiction genre (though it is not necessary to make your story into an encyclopedia of generic conventions, or to check off
every characteristic of the genre that we have discussed over the course of the quarter). The primary criteria for grading assignments of this type will be the quality of your writing and the degree to which you demonstrate an understanding of and engagement with the generic conventions of science fiction. Stories will be graded according to criteria specified in my grading rubric for fiction, which is available at http://is.gd/ubanic or from the course website.
There are many ways to engage profitably with the conventions of science fiction genre, and doing this effectively does not mean that you need to do so mechanically or without thought; neither does it mean that you need to allow the generic conventions to stifle your creativity. You might profitably think about deploying some of the common elements that mark a text as "science fiction" for readers (aliens, robots, humans or other life forms that have had their genetic structures altered, space ships, time travel, etc.); imagining technological advances; considering fundamental alterations to what we understand as the basic parameters of life, the universe, knowledge, etc.; a basic engagement with (some understanding of) science; science fiction as a method of defamiliarizing our everyday understandings; and/or other theoretical approaches to the what is science fiction?
question that we have considered repeatedly throughout the quarter.
Good writing in the context of a fictional story is not the same thing as good writing in the context of an analytical paper, but there are many areas of overlap. Though I do not expect that you will necessarily confine yourself to the strictures of very formal academic English, I will expect that you write clearly, express precise thoughts, and engage your reader effectively by doing a strong job of such tasks as constructing a satisfying plot, thinking through how your characters' speaking styles, and other aspects of satisfying narrative construction. Similarly, there are expectations inherent in the MLA specification that do not make sense in the context of a fictional story (your story probably will not have citations, for instance), but I expect that you will follow the basic formatting guidelines that it specifies (one-inch margins, MLA-compliant headers, double-spacing your paper, etc. If your word processor does not conform to the MLA standard by default, it is your job to override your word processor's defaults in order to produce a correctly formatted paper.).