American literature

Major American Authors: On Writing the Papers and Examinations

1. While I do post topics for the papers, you are free to modify these or to come up with your own topics, subject to my approval. All papers, though, must focus on significant discussion of literature from the course.

2. All papers must incorporate significant material from our reading. I also expect to see you integrating brief quotations from the literature into your essays.

3. Above all, all papers must be analytical and develop a clear, well-explained and well-supported thesis. I do not accept report writing for the paper assignments.

4. You may write about religious topics, but you may not base the argument of a paper on your personal religious beliefs. Since your personal beliefs are a matter of faith, I have no way of judging or evaluating them in an academic context. I will return such papers with no grade and ask that you do the assignment over again. The late paper penalty will apply. If you’ve any question about the suitability of a paper topic or if you want me to check over a rough draft, please let me know.

5. Papers must meet the length requirement.

6. Papers should be written carefully in your best English style and be error free. Papers can fail on the basis of mechanical errors alone.

7. Research for the papers is not permitted in this course. You may not use any kind of external source of information, opinion or interpretation in your papers or examinations for this course. All content in the papers must be your own original content. All papers will be checked for non-original content and grade penalties assigned depending on the amount of non-original work included in the paper. You should, however, document any important material from our textbooks that you use in your papers, using parenthetical documentation. For our textbooks, no List of Works Cited is necessary.

If you need help writing a paper, please let me know. I also encourage you to seek help from the tutors at the Academic Achievement Center.