This space has been created to allow all of you to communicate with one another (if you wish to do so) on your upcoming paper topics. Use your comments to either discuss your papers, ask questions, talk about thesis formation or any problems you are coming across. Please know that you are the authors of these posts and therefore no one can take your ideas and use them as their own.
Here is a useful MLA formatting guide: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/
Feel free to share useful articles/information with your peers and with me!
Is there a page limit, or minimum?
5-7 pages
Well Chela I believe the paper is supposed to be somewhere around 5 pages. Im not sure if there is a word limit or not but if you shoot for that many pages you should be fine
I’m writing about Langston Hughes and his impact on the Harlem Renaissance. Do I need to focus on his poems in the reader or can I incorporate some of his other works?
I would stay within the class readings, as part of the requirements for the paper.
Oh really because I referred to some of his other poems that were closely related to the ones we discussed in class.. I did a lot of cultural reasearch so I kind of went into a direction that combines Patrick’s topic with the topic about how sound works in his poetry… it’s basically about Langston Hughes, his influence from and on the Harlem renaissance, and how he uses the sounds of everyday life within the Harlem community to create his poetry and reflect the community.. I talk specifically about the importance of jazz sound in reflecting the people in a way that no other medium can.. African-American people have a different language and history than whites so they need to incorporate their own traditions, vernacular and dialect to create their own distinct “textual voice”… and the importance of the presence of all this in Hughes poetry is that WE as readers must all recognize that Hughes’ poetry is ingrained within its historical context and we must analyze it in relation to and with research of the traditions of jazz and the culture of the Harlemites, in order to fully grasp Langston Hughes’ intent and fully sense the beauty of his poetry.
and i just re-read my paper and realized that since I did a lot of extra research on Hughes I kind of forgot which ones belonged to the class and which ones didn’t so a few of them were poems from his collection, Montage of a Dream Deferred, which holds the same themes and styles as the ones we discusses in class… I hope that’s ok
I believe Irina wants us to stick to just the works we’ve look at in class/homework.
I am trying to use Inada’s Legends from Camp and Ortiz’s From Sand Creek to discuss deception in literature and in American History, but I am having a tough time narrowing the topic down to be able to write a strong thesis…. any ideas?
Did I hear correctly, but were outside sources recommend, or stay away from?
You can choose to use outside sources if you want to. Often they help support your paper a little better, but they are not necessary.
I am using the figure of the ‘camp’ prompt. As I’ve been writing I have kind of been expanding it and talking a lot about the feelings of the asian americans as opposed to just the imagery of the camp. Are we supposed to tell you what prompt we were using or will you just look at our thesis and go off of that?
You do not need to write out the prompt. I have to be able to tell what your thesis is without the help of that.
I wrote my paper about how by stretching out the rhythm and pace of the two Poems “the negro speaks of rivers” and “The weary blues” is slowed down to mimic the sadness of the histroy of black people. I hope I made sense in my paper about how the allusions used are there to show that black people have been suffering since the beginnings of civilization. Hughes is using this to unite black people so they dont feel burdened by their difficult past and are instead empowered by their durability. I hope my paper seemed enjoyable!
I’m pretty happy with how my paper turned out. I evaluated the role that form has in interpreting poetry, specifically with regard to ethnopoetics. By looking at Hurston, Zuni storytelling, and poetry from angel island, I think I was able to make valid arguments. However, i’m nervous that I did not include enough “close” reading of the texts themselves, but I did evaluate the texts and question the interpretation of “meaning” of a work. Did anyone else do this? We were we supposed to use Footnotes?
I submitted that last one at 3:50, not 10:50