Essay 1 – Research and Analysis
Essay Proposal: Due Tuesday, Feb. 19
2 Annotated Bibliography Entries: Due Feb. 22
Final Annotated Bibliography: Due March 4
Rough Draft: Due March 7
Final Draft: Due March 14
The goal of this essay will be to research a text that we have read this quarter and to write
an essay that incorporates both that research and your own independent analysis. The
direction that the research can take is very open, and it will be based on the research
question that you ask.
As you conduct your research, you will a) first compose an Annotated Bibliography with
four entries (assignment below) and the b) move from the research in the Annotated
Bibliography to a fully developed essay (assignment below).
Steps:
1. Formulate a research question. This question can be historical, social, political,
literary in nature, and the openness of the research question itself allows you to
frame the essay according to your own research interests.
2. Conduct research in our library databases. You will need to find at least three
database articles on the topic of your choice. (Your fourth source will be your
primary literary text.)
3. Compose an Annotated Bibliography with four entries. (See Assignment below).
4. Draft your research and analysis essay. In the process, you should
a. Develop an original, independent, specific thesis statement. The thesis
will often be the answer to your research question.
b. Engage in conversation with your sources, incorporating them seamlessly
into your essay and argument.
Annotated Bibliography Assignment:
Provide a citation and annotation for each of four sources, primary and secondary, that you
think you might use in your research and analysis paper. (NOTE: The text that you are
going to focus on will be your primary source, and it will count as one of the four sources.)
A citation provides the author name, the source’s title, and the source’s publishing
information. To find the correct way to cite a source in MLA format, consult a current MLA
style guide (such as Easy Writer) or a trustworthy citation website like the OWL at Purdue.
After you give a citation in MLA format for each source, you should:
 Define the topic, scope, thesis (if it is a secondary source) and any crucial main ideas
of the source. Here, you may also want to include direct quotations that you might
use in your essay. If you do include a quotation, make sure to cite the page number.
 Explain how the information in this source will help you develop your thesis. Be
specific. What particular part of your thesis will this information develop or
support? How will it help you develop this part of your thesis?
Two Annotated Bibliography Samples can be found on the final page.
Essay Assignment:
Expectations: The essay should be 5-6 pages, double-spaced with 1” margins, and
formatted according to MLA rules. The essay should also contain a Works Cited page in
addition to the 5-6 pages. Please note that the essay should contain a regular Works Cited
page without annotations.
Thesis: The central focus of your research and analysis essay will be your original,
argumentative thesis. The rest of the essay will be driven and organized by this thesis.
The thesis should
1. Answer the research question as fully as possible. In the process of writing and
revising your thesis, you may need to reframe your research question. To refine
your thesis, keep asking yourself questions such as “Why is this significant?” or “So
what?”
2. Be placed at the end of the first paragraph. Because the thesis will drive the
organization of the rest of the essay, it should the final sentence of the first
paragraph. Then, the point sentence or topic sentence of each paragraph (the first
sentence of each paragraph) should refer back to the thesis.
Body:
The body of your essay will both a) develop your central thesis and argument and b)
incorporate the research from your Annotated Bibliography. A literary essay is often text
or quotation heavy because it focuses on analyzing language use. You should focus on
specific language found in both your primary literary source and your secondary resources.
As noted above, the first sentence of each paragraph (the point or topic sentence) should
a) reference the thesis or central argument AND
b) provide the “mini-argument” and focus for the paragraph.
Conclusion:
In the conclusion, you should think about how your thesis has evolved throughout the
course of the essay. Therefore, the thesis found in the conclusion should be a more complex
version of the thesis found in the introduction; after all, your reader now knows much
more about your topic.
In this kind of essay, the conclusion is also used to extend the “So what?” question. Why
should we continue to care about this issue, even if this text was written 50 or 100 years
ago? What remains relevant and significant? What do you want us to take away from this
discussion?
Sample Annotated Bibliography Entries
Brown, Gillian. Domestic Individualism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.
Print.
In her study of 19th-century women's domestic fiction, Brown argues that contrary
to popular interpretations of the genre, women’s domestic and sentimental fiction bridges
the gap between the public and private spheres rather than enforcing it. Specifically,
Brown asserts that "domesticity has an accommodating, cooperative function with the
marketplace despite its explicit stance against it" (23). This idea will be particularly useful
in my study of how Susanna Cummings' novel The Lamplighter represents the role of
women in shaping masculinity. Brown's ideas help clarify that masculine identity is not
formed entirely in the public, political and economic sphere; instead, men are shaped for
the public marketplace by a domestic influence that permeates the public sphere.
Apocalypse Now. Dir. Francis Ford Coppola. Zoetrope. 1979. Film.
This is the film I am focusing on in this research paper. Specifically, I am focusing on
how the uncanny doubling of the main characters Captain Willard and Colonel Kurtz reveal
fears about the blurred lines between moral action and immoral action. Willard has been
deemed by the U.S. government as the moral character whose actions are “legal” while
Kurtz has been labeled the immoral character whose actions are illegal. However, many of
their actions are identical: both kill civilians, and both are operating outside of U.S. law. The
movie relates to my hypothesis because it shows anxieties about the lack of moral clarity in
war and reflects fears during the 1960s and 1970s that the Vietnam War had no clear
moral purpose.