Assignment: As the title of this assignment suggests, our course begins with a focus on reading skills.
In this first essay, you will mount an original and sophisticated textual analysis (also called rhetorical
analysis) of a single text. By textual, I mean you must engage not only what Berry or Solnit says, but
deeply investigate the way in which the language s/he uses: diction, syntax, vocabulary (e.g. key terms),
and structure of the essay rhetorically serve his/her argument. You have only one object of analysis
and no outside sources, so this assignment will allow you to focus on the nuts and bolts
of strong academic writing: developing a complex argument; analyzing key terms and concepts; and
citing textual evidence to support your claims. A strong essay will demonstrate mastery of these skills.
Goals:
Find a rich interpretive problem in the text: an ambiguity, contradiction, tension, or point of particular
interest or illumination. Choose a passage of about 5-7 lines where you identify this interpretive problem.
This passage will serve as your essays exhibit.
Generate a rich intellectual question raised by interpretive problem that propels you toward a claim
Formulate a claim that makes a strong argument and is not obvious. We are outside the realm of
agree/disagree. The best essays dont just have a claim; they take it further and do something with that
claim, using it to show something larger thats at stake.
Structure the essay around your central claim, making sure that each paragraph is adding an essential
piece to your argument.
Establish a motive for the essay in your introduction. Here you will answer the So what? question
(establishing the stakes), suggesting why your essay is important and interesting to the reader. Draw out
the implications of your argument in your conclusion.
Use evidence (in this case, the passage youve selected as your exhibit and other quotes from different
moments in the text) persuasively in order to say something about the text, quoting from the text when
necessary, summarizing accurately and responsibly when appropriate.
Note: Perhaps the most challenging and important component of the close reading essay is to identify
an interpretive problem in the text that fosters a strong intellectual project. The goal is not to choose a
quote you can use to prove the writer wrong; that wont make for an interesting or a strong essay. Think
of the interpretive problem as an invitation to say something original and compelling that grows out of a
textual tension or ambiguity. Ultimately, we should think of ourselves as new members of an intellectual
conversation that has been ongoing and will continue after us; our goal is to enrich, to reframe, to reveal
complexities and nuance, to reshape that ongoing conversation in invigorating new directions.
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