Research Essay checklist

Research Essay checklist

Please remember to:

• Include, in whatever balance is appropriate, three components:  your ideas about the painting, your ideas about the poem, and your research
• Include quotations from both the poem and your sources—and any time you include a quotation, make sure it’s not its own sentence but is part of a sentence, even if all that exists outside the quotation is According to SoAndSo, “Blah blah blah blah blah” (123).
• Check the organization of your essay—write an outline of the draft you’re working on to see if you like the order of ideas
• Make sure you have a thesis statement, and make sure it fits the essay you’re writing
• Avoid over-generalizing, especially in your introduction—remember that you want to argue something specific, not some universal truth that would be impossible to discuss well in 4-5 pages
• Think back to the initial questions you came up with for the project—do you answer them, something like them, different questions altogether, or is your essay merely a report of research collected?
• Write an essay that interests you, that you’re proud of, and that upholds college regulations on academic integrity
• Use a parenthetical citation at the end of the sentence any time you refer to someone else’s words or ideas
• Include a bibliographic entry in your Works Cited page for each source you quote from or refer to in your essay, and use easybib.com to help you format your citations—remember that the poem and painting should also be in your Works Cited page!
• Remove the annotations from your bibliographic entries that you wrote for the Annotated Bibliography
• Double-space your essay using the option in the paragraph menu, and indent the first line of each paragraph—and use a hanging indent on your Works Cited citations
• Proofread your essay, looking and listening for places where commas belong, for sentences that you might combine, for incorrect word, tense, or number choice, for sentence boundary errors, for illogical phrasing, and other errors
• Put titles of poems and paintings in quotation marks, books, magazines, journals, newspapers in italics
• Give your essay a title
• Upload your essay to our shared folder on Dropbox.com by the start of class on Wednesday.

Thank you—I look forward to reading your essays!

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IMPORTANT UPDATE for those working on “Mourning Picture”

It just came to my attention that the version of the poem “Mourning Picture” on the site we have been using is incomplete.  Since it’s so late in the semester, I will not fault you if you only use the first two stanzas as you write about the painting and poem in your essays.  However, the final stanza might be very helpful for you, so I want to offer you the chance to read the whole poem–look for it here.  If you want to talk to me about this correction and what it means for your essay, please get in touch with me either by talking to be before or after class or by e-mailing me, or by talking to me in my office during an appointment or my office hours.

I hope this new information helps!

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Annotated Bibliography

The next assignment in our research project is the annotated bibliography.  We discussed how this is a good way to keep track of the research you are doing and to share the work you have done with other researchers.  For our next class, please bring one of the resources you have found so that we can draft part of the annotated bibliography in class.  These will not be the only resources you use, but they will help you get started with the project.  Be sure to have read the resources before class, and post links to any non-print materials so that you can quickly access them in class if need be.

As we get to work in class, we will consider information from some online sources that define what an annotated bibliography is, explain how to write the annotations, and provide examples of those annotations.  Here are a few links to sites on annotated bibliographies that we will look at together:

The Online Writing Lab at Purdue University

The Writing Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

The Cornell University Library

When you write an annotated bibliography, you not only write an annotation, but you also write the citation according to, in this course, the MLA guidelines.  Use Easybib.com to compose your bibliographic entries.

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Research Question: American Gothic

How is parody used in connection with classic American Art?

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Research question (Girl before mirror)

Why was this picture not as acknowledged as Picasso’s other paintings?

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Explication

In your explication of the poem written about the painting you have already examined, you want to think about what the poem says, as well as how it says it.  You will certainly think about the painting in this essay, since the poem refers to it, but the painting is not your main focus here–the poem is.  Think about how it looks on the page, how it sounds read aloud, and how it reflects on the painting.  Look for repetition, rhythm, rhyme, other uses of sound, metaphoric language, poetic forms that would not work in prose, syntax and punctuation, stanza and line breaks, mood or tone, in addition to thinking about the content of the poem.

There are many resources that can help you write your explication.  The Online Writing Lab at Purdue University has some helpful information about writing about poetry.

Here is a checklist for drafting an explication, borrowed from Literature for Composition, edited by Barnet, Burto, and Cain:

Overall Considerations

• Does the poem imply a story of some sort, for instance the speaker’s account of a love affair, or of a response to nature?  If so, what is its beginning, middle, and end?
• If you detect a story in the speaker’s mind, a change of mood–for instance a shift from bitterness that a love affair has ended to hope for its renewal–is this change communicated in part by the connotations of certain words?  By syntax?  By metrical shifts [changes in the meter or rhythm of the poem]?
• Do the details all cohere into a meaningful whole?  If so, your explication will largely be an argument on behalf of this thesis.

Detailed Considerations

• If the poem has a title other than the first line, what are the implications of the title?
• Are there clusters or patterns of imagery, for instance religious images, economic images, or images drawn from nature?  If so, how do they contribute to the meaning of the poem?
• Is irony (understatement or overstatement) used?  To what effect?
• How do the connotations of certain words (for instance, dad rather than father) help to establish the meaning?
• What are the implications of the syntax–for instance, of notably simple or notably complex sentences?  What do such sentences tell us about the speaker?
• Do metrical variations occur, and if so, what is their significance?
• Do rhyming words have some meaningful connection, as in the cliches moon and June, dove and love?
• What are the implications of the poem’s appearance on the page–for example, of an indented line, or the stanzaic pattern?  (For instance, if the poem consists of two stanzas of four lines each, does the second stanza offer a reversal of the first?)

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Update on options for the painting and poem choices

It’s great that so many of you have signed up already–please be sure to post your choice before class on Monday.  Here is a list of who has signed up for which pairing so far.  Remember, no more than five people can sign up for one pairing.

“Starry Night ” by Vincent van Gogh (1889) and “The Starry Night” by Anne Sexton (1961)

1. Brittany
2. Melissa
3. Lester
4. Erica

“Girl Before a Mirror” by Pablo Picasso (1932) and “Before the Mirror” by John Updike (1996)

No takers so far?!  Five spaces left.

“Nude Descending a Staircase ” by Marcel Duchamp (1912) and “Nude Descending a Staircase” by X. J. Kennedy (1961)

1. Justin

“American Gothic” by Grant Wood (1930) and “American Gothic” by John Stone (1998)

1. Terel
2. Javon
3. Hugo

“Vincent’s Bedroom in Arles” by Vincent van Gogh (1888) and “Van Gogh’s Bed” by Jane Flanders (1985)

1. Bhumishti
2. Min
3. Richard

“Mourning Picture” by Edwin Romanzo Elmer (1890) and “Mourning Picture” by Adrienne Rich (1965)

1. Diana
2. Yun Sang

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my poem and painting

the painting and poem i choose is Starry Night

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Poem and Painting pairings for the Research Project

Please reply to this post with your choice of poem and painting from the following list of six pairs for this semester’s Research Project .  Look at the poems and paintings here:

1. “Starry Night ” by Vincent van Gogh (1889) and “The Starry Night” by Anne Sexton (1961)
2. “Girl Before a Mirror” by Pablo Picasso (1932) and “Before the Mirror” by John Updike (1996)
3. “Nude Descending a Staircase ” by Marcel Duchamp (1912) and “Nude Descending a Staircase” by X. J. Kennedy (1961)
4. “American Gothic” by Grant Wood (1930) and “American Gothic” by John Stone (1998)
5. “Vincent’s Bedroom in Arles” by Vincent van Gogh (1888) and “Van Gogh’s Bed” by Jane Flanders (1985)
6. “Mourning Picture” by Edwin Romanzo Elmer (1890) and “Mourning Picture” by Adrienne Rich (1965)

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