Interdisciplinary Essay #3- Humanities Essay
Your third interdisciplinary essay will ask you to employ the perspective and style of Humanities
writing. You’ll need to decide your purpose and your topic. You will also want to choose a
subgenre of the humanities that you believe your topic falls into (for example- Literature,
Writing, Philosophy, Fine Arts). You will then need to compose an essay that displays the
characteristics of Humanities writing that we discussed in class.
Those characteristics include:
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Style (eloquent, descriptive, verbose, stylistically interesting )
Perspective (any and all perspectives could be used depending on the subgenre)
Level of description/modification (A high level of description, a lot of modifiers.
Rhetorical schemes and tropes are commonly employed)
Level of formality (Most often there is a fairly high level of formality, but it can vary
based on the subgenre)
Types of evidence (Humanities values qualitative evidence (numerical evidence and
reason based, logical arguments may be, but are not always used or relevant. Pathos is
often used as a rhetorical technique)
Chronology (Literature, fiction will often follow a chronological organization.
Philosophy and analysis often will not)
Objectivity (Humanities Writing can argumentative/persuasive in nature. It can also be
analytical, which is less biased)
Synthesis (Humanities Writing often synthesizes multiple sources and perspectives in an
attempt to persuade as many members of its intended audience as possible or in an
attempt to thoroughly cover and analyze an issue. Humanities writing is audience
sensitive, but not to the extent of business writing)
Analysis (Humanities writing will often analyze causes and effects of particular
arguments or outcomes in order to argue for or against them)
Attention holding (In Humanities writing, efforts are maintained to write in an engaging
and colorful manner, often becoming wordy or verbose. Brevity and economy of words
and not considered as a priority.)
You will need to engage in the following tasks in route to completing this assignment:
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Develop your general topic into a subtopic that will lend itself to humanities perspective
and inquiry.
Retrieve scholarly articles and other relevant source materials through the scholarly
databases provided by the Schmidt Library
Critically read the articles from the perspective of a scholar in a field of the Humanities
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Highlight or annotate the key main points of the articles in order to concisely paraphrase
sourced material for your paper from them.
Compose a rough draft and attend the rough draft peer editing session
Revise your draft as needed before submitting a copy for evaluation
**In Addition to your essay, you will need to “Reflection Memo.”
This memo should be brief and should include the following:
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Your overall General Topic
How your Humanities essay topic fits into your overall general topic and into your plans
for a full project
Your purpose for writing your essay (authentic purpose please—no answers such as “to
get a good grade!)
Your intended audience (Again authentic—your audience should not be me, the
instructor)
How did you adapt your writing style to reflect that of humanities writing? (See what I’m
doing here??? Rhetorical Triangle!)
Your memo should not exceed one double spaced page
Requirements Quickbox:
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6-8 pages double-spaced
MLA Format
8-10 sources (Scholarly sources and primary texts are
preferred)
Participation in a peer review of your rough draft
Important Dates (Planning Kit)
Outline/Question Sheet due- Friday Oct 25th
Rough Draft due- Mon Oct 28th
Final draft due- Wed Oct 30th
Peer Review Sheet and Reflection Memo due- Wed Oct 30th