8-9 pages paper.

Writing Assignment Guidelines

You’ll have one paper due of at least 8-9 pages this term. You can take either an analytical approach or a creative one and focus on any story(ies) or poem(s) that we’ve read so far. We’ll workshop your rough drafts in small groups so that you can both get feedback on your own work and have a chance to see what other students are doing and thinking.

Include a reflective memo for either of the two approaches. In the memo reflect on what you wrote, telling your readers/audience anything that you think would help us to understand what you’re doing: why this topic is important or interesting to you; why you chose a particular piece or pieces; how you decided to support your ideas, any feedback you’d like to have, etc.

For the analytical approach you might return to your informal writing and consider those ideas that interested you while reading or that came out in class discussion—what stood out for you--the image, the scene, the dialogue, the style, etc. Often that will contain the germ of the idea that intrigues you most. Or, since the course has focused on what Gothic elements are present, in particular, you might consider writing about one of the conventions, themes, or techniques we’ve identified and how it’s playing out in a work (or works). Or, you might identify the source of anxiety, since that’s always present in Gothic literature; what’s haunting them? Remember too our triangle of critical approaches that we’ve used throughout the term in class discussions: how you react as a reader on a personal level (your subjective response, perhaps reminding you of a personal experience) or on a psychological or psychoanalytic level (encountering the abject, the uncanny, the unconscious, magical, etc.)? What’s its socio-cultural significance (perhaps connected with gender, race, sexuality, class, region, what is coded taboo or grotesque, etc.)? What features of the text itself stand out (the style, the source of the horror, the point of view, etc.)?

For the paper’s form, just make sure you have some points to make and that you support your ideas with plenty of details from the stories or poems—refer to scenes, characters, points of view, plot twists, language, etc. Feel free to speculate and explore. None of us has any hard and fast answers here. You don’t need to do any secondary research.

For the creative approach, you may want to write an original Gothic story (fiction, poem, or film) OR write a piece of fan fiction: pick a scene to rewrite or add a scene, or to explore a character further, perhaps in their secret journal, or you may wish to rewrite the ending, or create a sequel, or change the setting to some other time— really whatever creative approach you can imagine. Just use your imagination and dig in. The main criterion here is that it be plausible. Most likely you’ll write in the style of the author so that it fits in. Many people find that writing creatively in this interactive way reveals more about the story to them (and to the reader) than analysis can do.

Proposal for formal paper

During this term, I read a lot of gothic stories and learned a lot of gothic elements. Two of those novels impressed me most, including “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and “ The Giant Wisteria”. Those are written by Chalotte Perkins Stetson. And the author wanted to show the collapse of a power of the patriarchal society in these two stories. I think that no matter in the past or now, equality between men and women is our common desire. So, I want to choose “Feminism in American Gothic” as the topic of my formal paper.

I want to analysis several gothic stories, such as “The Yellow Wallpaper,” “The House of Usher,” and find the feminism elements. On the other hand, most stories in this term are setting in New England period or after the Second World War. What is the impact of this period for Feminism? So, I will focus on this question to write my paper.