Researched Essay: Write a 9-11 page paper in which you critically examine, contextualize, historicize, and reframe a topic or concept that our society often rhetorically frames as “natural”. You can use your research questions from your WikiMedia Project as a starting point, or you can choose a new topic. Questions to guide you as you as you develop your complex claim: What is nature? What does it mean to be natural? Contextualize your definition. What is the difference between what’s considered natural and what’s considered normal? WHO frames your topic as natural? WHO disagrees? WHO benefits? WHO doesn’t? HOW is your topic framed (through what media, genres, venues, and rhetorical strategies)? STAKES: why does it matter? How does your topic impact people’s lives (or other creatures’ lives) in a material way? What role do these assumptions play in legal and social policies? PURPOSE: after using critical thinking to challenge assumptions about your topic, how would you recommend we should REFRAME this issue in more accurate and complex way? Is your claim complex? Does it meet the criteria of the BIG FIVE? What arguments can you foresee against your reframing of the issue? How can you respond to such an objection in a way that strengthens your own argument? Has your reframing been suggested by others? If so, who are your allies? Are you suggesting the same reframing, or is yours slightly different in some crucial way? That is: are you attempting to improve on an idea that has already been proposed? Who is the audience to which you are offering your reframing? Is it readers of a local newspaper? A group of literary scholars? Marketing professionals? Government officials? Is your audience like-minded or resistant? Are you writing to leaders who you’d like to see put your reframing into practice or are you writing to a more general population? EXPECTATIONS: A successful paper will: 1. Define the SITUATION or concept which you are addressing; 2. Establish a sense of the AUDIENCE who is (or should be) invested in this situation or problem through appropriate diction and syntax; 3. Clearly state your REFRAMING, which should effectively address the complexity of the issue; 4. Make use of emotional appeals, logical reasoning, and evidence to enhance your points through ethos; 5. Appropriately paraphrase, quote from (with internal citations!), and summarize the arguments made by other SCHOLARLY SOURCES in a way that clearly enriches and supports your argument; 6. Acknowledge and respond to OPPOSING VIEWPOINTS and 7. Convey why it is important that this issue be reframed (i.e. answer “SO WHAT?) 8. …. PLUS: a Works Cited Page that includes correct MLA citations for all sources. LENGTH AND FORMAT: 9-11 pages, double spaced, 12 pt. Times New Roman font, 1-inch margins, MLA formatting and Works Cited Page. Essays that stray from these requirements will not be accepted.
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