Final Paper: Gilman & Butler
Background
Susan Perkins Gilman and Octavia Butler led lives that might appear well removed. However, their intellectual concerns centered on common questions of freedom, equality, and justice. Both were concerned with social confinement and its physical manifestations. Both writers treated the experience of subordinated women in ways that expand our concepts of the literature of captivity.
Throughout this course we have addressed different forms and stories of captivity. Now in this final paper we shall attempt to put them together and understand how genres and themes of captivity echo through US literature.
Question
Using the body of readings assigned during this course, propose an argument on how captivity can shape minds and personalities. Your argument should address immaterial forces of captivity across a range of narratives and stories. How do these ideas function to effect, reinforce, or maintain physical captivity? How does captivity gain its power over minds? How do threats and fears work, and how does resistance manifest itself? IMPORTANT: The paper should integrate a discussion of both Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ and Butler’s Kindred that constitutes approximately half of this 10-page paper.
I want to include Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl written by Harriet Ann Jacobs and Mary Rowlandson’s Captivity Narrative.
Abstract
On the title page, preface your paper with a 2-3 sentence abstract containing the gist of the paper’s argument. The abstract is required and should accurately reflect your paper’s argumentative content.
The abstract is due posted online by Friday, February 25.
Evaluation
A persuasive paper will be one that frames a broader argument from the outset, and employs brief textual evidence in support of the specifics of that argument. Ensure that your response has a single, analytic, and unifying thesis, not multiple argumentative claims. Above all, I love a paper that is both passionate and well-argued.
Your paper should not be one that is simply a paragraphed checklist of disparate observations, followed by a gross generalization, irrelevant truism, or false conclusion.
Your paper will be graded on the basis of (a) a clear and convincing argument that emerges from the beginning; (b) a sustained and focused examination of the implications of that argument throughout the paper; (c) appropriate use of brief citations to provide evidentiary support for the argument; and (d) competence of writing skills and absence of technical errors.
Technical
This paper should total 10 complete double-spaced pages of text, not including a title page. Use 1-inch margins and 12-pt. Times New Roman type. Single-space citations and use parenthetical page references (no footnotes). Avoid unnecessary first-person reference (e.g. “I think…”) or overuse of the passive voice. Text citations should be very brief, illustrative, and no more than a line or so. Short papers or excessive use of quotations will lead to a grade mark-down.
Do no library or online research. The object here lies in a close reading and interpretive engagement with the text. Your ideas are what matter, not someone else’s opinion. For this reason, plagiarism will be treated in strict accordance with university policy guidelines.