English 4784, Senior Seminar
Women Writers Re-Presenting Marriage
CRN 12544, MW 2:30-3:45, Shanks 242

Professor Bernice Hausman

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Paper #1, due Feb. 15

From syllabus: 5 page paper on marriage as a concept, either with respect to literary, theoretical, or historical issues. Due February 15. 15 points.

Longer description: Using at least 3 secondary sources (i.e., not the novel we are reading at this time), discuss marriage in its literary, theoretical, or historical dimension. You may consider this paper as a review of relevant sources for your seminar paper.

How to write this kind of paper: Choose an aspect of marriage that you are interested in investigating--the question of love within marriage, how the marriage plot functions, or how marriage constitutes a public contract (as examples)--and, utilizing the background readings available for the course, construct a paper that discusses the sources and their ideas concerning the issue that you are concerned with. For example, if you are interested in the function of love within marriage historically, you would look at Yalom, Kelly, and Coontz (among other possible texts) to see how they have understood the issue. Your paper would discuss your understanding of their claims, and consider (as well) how well they answer the questions that you are posing.

Please note: The assignment asks you to consider marriage as a concept, but this includes ideas about marriage as a practice. This paper is not, however, asking you to analyze marriage in a literary text. That will be the focus of the seminar paper.

The paper is due February 15. This should be a FINAL COMPLETE version of the paper. However, you will be able to revise the Feb. 15 paper for a higher grade, after coming in to a conference and discussing the paper with me. The second grade will take into account the first grade, so that if it seems that you are handing in a draft on Feb. 15 rather than a completed paper, your grade will suffer as a result. Please consider the Feb. 15 due date a firm date, after which you will be permitted to make revisions.