Wake Tech English 111 Reader

Informative Historical Context Analysis:

Wake Tech English 111 Reader

Objectives

• Develop an informative historical context analysis that gives historical context for author and text
• Prewrite and organize ideas
• Create a clear thesis statement, body paragraphs, conclusion, and examples
• Demonstratecollegiate style and mechanics

Assignment

Choose one of the essays below from the Wake Tech English 111 Reader.  Choose the one that intrigues you most from the following list:

• “Being Country” Bobbie Ann Mason,
• “Salvation” Langston Hughes,
• “The Way to Rainy Mountain” N. Scott Momaday
• “Shooting an Elephant” George Orwell
• “Learning to Read and Write” Frederick Douglass
• “Letter from Birmingham Jail” Martin Luther King Jr.

After you have chosen your reading, you will develop an informative analysis paper on the historical context of the author and text.To do this, you will need to briefly SUMMARIZE your reading and DISCUSS how the historical research you did relates to the reading’s meaning.

You will use specific examples from the story AND from AT LEAST three research sources (the story is NOT one of the three sources) to support your analysis.Articles, websites, books, and chapters in books are all acceptable, but they must be college-level, academic reading. Wikipedia is not an academic source, so only use it for background and NOT one of the required sources.

Suggested questions to consider when contextualizing your text and author historically:

• What do you know about the author’s background: nation of origin, political events and struggles of the time, family structure, education and social class, religion, moral beliefs, age and health conditions? How do these (and other) biographical facts influence your reading of the work?
• What do you know about the time and place in which the reading was written and/or set?
• What political and social issues and historical trends or landmarks are being raised or reflected in the work?
• If the time the work is written is different from the time in which it was set, how does this distance impact the work?

Audience

College-level readers who have some familiarity with the topic

Goals

Retrieve relevant information about the author and historical context of the reading

Understand/summarize the reading

Evaluate author’s role in historical context in your conclusion

Analyze and evaluate appropriate sources

Apply writing strategies: thesis, topic sentences, coherent, unified paragraphs, specific examples and/or description, appropriate quotes

Implement MLA format/documentation

Apply rules of standard English and skills learned in ENG 111

Requirements

Length – 3-4 typed, double-spaced pages (12-point Times New Roman font)

Sources –at least three required: Chosen reading does NOT count as one of the three sources.  Use scholarly, peer-reviewed articles, websites, books, and chapters in books, as long as they are college-level, academic readings.

                        You must hand in photocopies of your sources that have been highlighted and annotated.

Format – MLA with MLA documentation (in-text citation and works cited page).

Due date – announced in class

Organization

Introduction – In 1 paragraph, introduce your reading and author.  Your thesis should make a claim that

connects the reading to its historical context and author.

Body –First, summarize your reading in one or two paragraphs.

Second, describe the author’s background and analyze how these biographical facts influence the reader’s interpretation of the work.

Then substantiate the claim you are making about the reading.  Assess what you know about the time and place in which the reading was written, including political and social issues and historical trends or landmarks that may have influenced the reading.  The research you’ve done will be there to INFORM what you’re saying, but you will need to CITE any source you quote or paraphrase. Even if you paraphrase the ideas expressed in your source, you need to give the author credit for those ideas. It is your responsibility to document these sources correctly. The proof of your research will ALSO be present in your essay’s sophistication and knowledge.Again, you must have a thesis that relevantly connects the reading to its historical context and to the author. The body of the paper will substantiate that connection.

Conclusion – Synthesize your main points.  Show how your ideas fit into a larger context.

Works Cited –The final page of your essaywill be a Works Cited page in which you have used the correct MLA

format to document the sources you have chosen.