English 1302 Research Paper
For your final assignments in English 1302, you will write a research paper that is approximately 1,500 words. Your paper will be focused on any of the authors from the last unit of our course. As you will recall from our weekly readings, these African American authors present a distinct perspective that complicates the ideas of freedom, justice, and the right to liberty, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness. These values are supposedly at the center of the American spirit, but as writers such as James Baldwin, Rita Dove, Alice Walker, ZZ Packer, and Langston Hughes have shown, this is far from the case. We cannot move forward as a society in a holistic manner without reconciling our countrys history of systematic racial hatred.
For this paper, you will choose one of the authors from the African American unit of the course. You will then use that work to answer the following question, How does this piece of literature reveal the true nature of the African American experience? For example, if we were writing about Rita Doves Banneker, a possible thesis statement could be: Rita Doves poem, Banneker, shows how African American contributions to society are often forgotten, minimized, and attributed to other people. Your research paper would then support this claim. Remember that you have the HCC library as a resource to you, which can be fully accessed online. Look for reputable sources, not Wikipedia searches or random articles from Google searches. Your sources should be able to stand up to the test of academic integrity.
This research paper is open-ended intentionally. The purpose is for YOU to identify a work that calls your interest and to know it well enough to sufficiently answer the question. The paper should be in MLA format, which includes double-spacing your work, using the appropriate font size (12-point), and using the appropriate font style (Times New Roman or Arial). Remember to be creative, and think outside the box, but you must have a thesis statement. The thesis statement should cover the main points of your assertion, and should be clearly identified in your introduction.
Due Date: December 11, 2020
Word Count: 1,500 words
Works Cited Page: At least three sources
