Your final major assignment for this class will serve as a marriage of the metho – graduate researcher

Your final major assignment for this class will serve as a marriage of the methods used in the first essay and your article-assessment assignments: independent, close reading of a text and secondary source research. This last, 5-to-6-page (double-spaced) essay will be centered on your own interpretive claim regarding a work or works assigned during this semester but will require you to inform your discussion of this text, or texts, with relevant research (at least three secondary sources, two of which must be found in the library or through its databases, plus your primary work(s)). You may consider a single text or make connections between texts and across periods and genres. However, remember that you
should not sacrifice depth for breadth and that you should move beyond simply pointing out commonalities. The focus
of your thesis and the bulk of your analysis of primary works will come from you, but you must also demonstrate that
you have engaged with other critics’ ideas regarding the piece, or pieces, you have chosen. Your essay will be structured around your main points, but occasionally weaving in and/or acknowledging related research of others will only enhance your own work and show that you have become familiar with the field of literary scholarship as it relates to your particular
subject. You will be writing in the manner of the sort of critical essays you might find via the library database; notice that these writers attempt to prove their own interpretations, sometimes pointing out where others have succeeded or fallen short or providing some critical background information, primarily through careful analysis of primary sources and contexts. Consulting Chapter 8 in our class anthology for suggestions regarding literary research and a model student paper
should prove helpful as you begin this process. Remember, all sources, primary AND secondary, should be cited fully
according to MLA guidelines both within the essay and in the works cited page, which does not count toward your total page requirement.
Sweat by Zora Neale Hurston is the story that should be used as a mandatory source to be used and here is
some other information in regards to my other sources. Keep in mind that the sources you use don’t have to back up your thesis. They just need to relate to your topic and enhance or inform what you have to say in some way, even if they aren’t about your claim or even your text necessarily.
also attached is a file of work that I have already started.