Essay Assignments

Students MUST submit at least two essays throughout the course. Each required essay (i.e., the first two) will also require the submission and instructor approval of:

  1. a thesis proposal

  2. an outline

  3. a rough draft.

You can recieve a maximum of 6 points for essays and essay preliminaries. All essays will be graded on the 0-3 point scale.  All essay preliminaries (i.e., thesis proposal, outline, and rough draft) will receive 1 point upon satisfactory completion.  Should you write more than two essays you will not be required to submit further preliminaries, though you will still need to get topic approval from the instructor before an essay can be turned in.

Instructions

Thesis Proposals:

All topic proposals should be emailed to josh.keton@gmail.com. 

Your proposal should be in the body of the email NOT attached as a separate file. 

Write a brief paragraph explaining a topic that you would like to write a longer term paper on.  Keep in mind that the term paper will require citation of at least two scholarly sources from outside class material. Try to develop a provisional position, though you need not have a completely formulated thesis statement at this time.  The topic proposal should address the following points:

  • There should be at least one sentence that says something like “In this paper I will argue that…”

    • You can change this at any time, but is important to get as clear as possible before you outline and structure the paper.

  • What is your research question? That is, what is the question that motivates the paper?

  • Why is this an interesting question that is worth writing a paper about?

  • What are some obvious answers to this question and which do you favor, at least initially?

Outline:

You may turn in an outline at any time after receiving approval of a thesis topic.

Formatting:

  • Double spaced

  • 1” margins

  • 12 pt. Fonts: Times New Roman, Calibri, Cambria, or Arial

  • Your name should be centered directly under the title.

  • Email to me at josh.keton@gmail.com in PDF format.

  • Format the file name in the following fashion:

  • [LastName]-[FirstName]-Essay#-Outline

    • E.g., Keton-Josh-Essay1-Outline, Doe-Jane-Essay3-Outline, etc.

Please provide a detailed outline of your paper. It is up to you to choose between a topic outline and a full sentence outline, but the latter will be more effective and make writing the paper much easier—it will also result in much more detailed feedback from me.  If you need help with an outline, click this link.

Essay Drafts (rough and Final):

You may turn in a rough draft any time after recieving approval of an outline.

You may turn in a final draft anytime after receiving approval of a rough draft.

Formatting:

  • 4-6 pages

  • Double spaced

  • 1” margins

  • 12 pt. Fonts: Times New Roman, Calibri, Cambria, or Arial

  • Your name should be centered directly under the title.

  • Email to me at josh.keton@gmail.com in .pdf format.

  • Format the file name in the following fashion:

    • [LastName]-[FirstName]-Essay#-Draft

    • E.g., Keton-Josh-Essay 2-Draft, Doe-Jane-Essay1-Draft, etc.