ESSAY 3
I. Brainstorm: After reading Claudia Rankine’s Citizen, this essay will give you the opportunity to examine the category of experimental literature and to interrogate the experience of reading it. What is an avant-garde text? How has it been assembled and why is it effective in its particular form? Citizen gives us a sense of the impact of the genre-breaking or multi-media text; one that performs a bricolage of history, pop culture, poetry, everyday vernacular, politics, visual arts, etc.; one that mixes the high and the low of cultural materials and aesthetic tastes; one that troubles form. As a reader, what does the avant-garde text demand, how does it invite you in as a participant in ways of reading that are unfamiliar? How does the avant-garde text effectively function as a means for addressing borders, particularly of race, as a stylistic response to the complexity of the Black experience in America? How does it get us to query the very act of reading language as analogous with reading race, and the complicity there within? How does it present the relationship of language & power / of image & power / of word & image / of high & low? Consider the difficulties and challenges in talking about race, and how the text activates our perspectives and confronts us with the act, as readers, of crossing or navigating or dwelling within borders. What does it mean to cross into the text of the Other? Also, how do we research texts that are either not yet canonized, or not yet researched or expansively written about? What are the strategies we must create to deepen/broaden the critical context in which we position our discussion of a text? I urge you to think experimentally, in the spirit of Rankine’s experimental text.
II. Research and Bibliography
- Scholarly Question: Create a draft essay question for Essay 3
- Research: Compile a list of bibliographic sources, including 5 primary and 10 secondary sources pertinent to your question. Periodicals such as Project Muse and J-Stor will provide many materials for secondary sources; do not include secondary sources from the web unless these are peer-reviewed. Cite all sources according to MLA bibliographical format. Browse bibliographies of your sources to gather additional ideas. Since Citizen is a more recent text, some non-scholarly or non-peer-reviewed web materials (e.g. popular reviews, interviews) might count as primary sources, insofar as they establish cultural context, but be cautious about citing such sources or lending them critical authority to your analysis. Aim to include books as well as articles; your secondary sources may include specific book chapters. Your primary sources may include material contemporary with or older than the main object of your analysis, as well as the object of analysis itself. Note: you are not expected to read all of these sources in full, but rather peruse titles and introductions (or more) to see if they’ll be relevant.
- Annotated Bibliography: Out of the pool of sources, select 2 primary and 4 secondary that are most important to your essay (most likely to be helpful as you contribute to a critical conversation about the text). Read relevant portions of these sources. Cite each according to MLA format. Below each, write 1 brief and focused paragraph that articulates a) the relevant argument(s) of the source and the motive/agenda implicit therein; b) any information in the source that might be useful to you; c) how the source will be helpful as you address your question.
- Revision of Scholarly Question: Now that you’ve studied a part of a critical conversation about Citizen and come to know more of its context, review your notes, important portions of text you may include in your essay, and revisit your essay question again. Revise the question if you need to make it more relevant/interesting to some aspect of the critical conversation of Citizen.
- Email: Email the class a google doc of these components in this order: a) your revised essay question, b) your annotated selection of 2 primary and 4 secondary sources, c) your list of primary and secondary sources. Please don’t consult others’ lists until you finish yours, but then do check them out to see points of connection — where there’s common ground, where others might benefit from additional suggestions (sources you’ve found that they might not know of), and what sources you haven’t considered which might benefit your project.
III. Essay: Write a 7-10 page essay incorporating a minimum of 3-4 quotes from Citizen and 3-4 quotes from primary/secondary sources. My assessment will focus on 1) your critical perspective on Citizen as an avant-garde text in relation to critical race discourse, 2) the clarity and precision of your insights, 3) your close reading of quoted material and integration of sources. Try not to take on too much of the text. Find a balance of critical analysis, scholarly research, and thoughtful reflection. You may write this in as experimental/creative a format as you want—I encourage it. Use 1st POV. Include a Writer’s Memo with Grade Proposal for this essay.
Write a 5 page critical reflection in 1st POV in which you pursue the question you’ve formulated about Citizen by looking closely at specific moments in the text with a connective approach. You have full creative freedom in the style and form of your essay, and I encourage you to model your reflection after Rankine’s “lyric” essay; you can structure your ideas as a sequence of meditative, anecdotal, critical meditations. Just as Rankine integrates quoted material across sources, experiment with this same textural layering to weave in quotes from Citizen and cite from scholarly sources where relevant. Most of all, aim to have fun in your exploration of this text …without the formal constraints and expectations of the conventional academic essay; imagine you’re reinventing this form, how might it most represent your engagement with Citizen.