ENGL 1011: Meghan Burns
Paper 3 – “Frame of Place, Frame of Mind”
Due Dates:
Rough Draft: Monday, April 14th
Final Draft: Monday, April 20th
Texts:
Bradbury, Ray. “The Veldt.” The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. 7th ed. New York: Norton, 2006.
Print.
“Campus Initiatives Index.” Office of Environmental Policy. University of Connecticut. Web. 15 March
2015.
Sober, Elliot. “Philosophical Problems for Environmentalism.” The Preservation of Species: The
Values of Biological Diversity. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1986. Print.
Background:
In this paper, I ask you to consider both a physical place of importance in your life and what the
future might hold for this particular place. Using scholarly research, you will assert the value of
your chosen place, as well as make an argument for how technological and development might
influence it – for better or worse – in the future. You will incorporate research into your own
creative thinking, as well as work with a place with which you are familiar, to build an assignment
that is both creative and intellectually insightful.
This assignment contains three distinct elements. Each of these elements will be connected in your
final project, but it may be helpful to consider them separately at the beginning of your writing
process:
Part 1: Description. Describe your place, choosing with care the sensory elements you choose to
highlight and the details you choose to include.
Part 2: Research. Using the guidelines for scholarly research that we discussed in our information
literacy session, find at least two scholarly sources relating to your place. Try to broaden your search
terms and your thinking in this portion of the assignment – your research should be used as a jumpingoff point for your assertions and ideas, not as restatements of those ideas in their entirety. Be creative
about the sources you choose. Summarize these sources, and then explain how they relate to your
specific place of choice.
Part 3: Analysis. Consider what your place of choice will look like ten, fifty, or one hundred years from
now. How will your description change? What elements of our world today foreshadow the changes in
your place? What are the implications of these changes? How might a future visitor to your place
understand it – will it serve the same function as it does for you, or a different one?
Assignment:
Choose a physical place that is important to you, and assert the value of that place to the community
more broadly. Then, using a combination of scholarly research, fictional readings, and your own
creative process, explain how you see the influence of technology and development altering this
place in the future. Make an argument about what the societal implications of these changes will be,
both for your specific place and for places similar to it. Be sure to back up your “future vision” with
your sources, and to weigh the effects of such changes more broadly for your “big picture” idea.
Guidelines:
- Be sure to include all three parts of the assignment, and to work to put each component in
conversation with the others.
- Utilize the vocabulary we discussed in class, with clear explanations of how you are
invoking the terms and what they mean in the context of your own paper.
- Use at least two scholarly research sources in your essay.
- Avoid vague generalizations; be specific in your examples using quotes and well-phrased
summary.
- Make sure to back up all claims with evidence from your sources.
- Work to put your sources “in conversation” with your own writing and your own ideas;
don’t just summarize them.
- Also work to put sources in conversation with each other; they are all related as
contributions to your argument!
- Cite all sources with MLA guidelines, and include a Works Cited at the end of your paper in
MLA format.
- Make sure your main argument is consistent throughout the paper, and that your point is
always clear to the reader.
- Avoid generalizations like “good” and “bad”; focus on the specific implications of your future
vision.
Successful Papers Will…
- Take us somewhere unique, where no other paper takes us.
- Puts ideas in conversation with current scholarly sources.
- Explains what the observations within it MEAN to us on a larger scale.
- Contributes to the ongoing academic conversation about technology and futurism.
- Explore a large-scale idea through an in-depth and innovative analysis of a small, specific
one.
Requirements:
- 7-8 Pages
- Page Numbers on Each Page
- Times New Roman, 12 pt Font only
- Double-spaced
- 1-inch margins