Script: AA315 Independent Essay
Lyn Rodley [as recorded 20.7.2009]
This course has no examination. Instead, it has the independent essay, which is the last piece of
written work to be done and which counts for 50% of the final grade for the course; it has a limit of
4,500 words, making it a bit more than twice the length of an ordinary essay at this level.
Independent here means that you choose your own essay topic and you are responsible for finding the
materials you need – in other words, the books, articles, websites and so on that will supply the
information upon which the essay will be based. Typically, an independent essay topic will be a single
work of art, or a small number of related works, and the essay will answer a question about it (or
them) – this question is devised by you and must be relevant to the themes of the course. All this
means that you can write your essay on a topic that particularly interests you.
It is important to stress that the essay is not a research project of the sort required for a post-graduate
degree. You are not expected to break new academic ground – rather, your task is to select and
evaluate published material and use it to write an essay that shows your understanding of the themes
of the course. Also, independent does not mean that you get no help in producing the essay – you will
receive substantial guidance both on choosing your essay topic and on working out a suitable question
to ask of it. This guidance is built into the course: it is in the Study Guides supplied as course
materials, in a special tutorial and in the submission of a proposal upon which your tutor will give you
detailed advice.
It follows from all this that you are not expected to start the course with an independent essay topic
already in mind – in fact it is usually best not to do this. You may well be aware of a subject area that
has particular interest for you – such as tapestries or sculpture, or the work of a particular artist – but
the specific choice of work and, most particularly, the question to ask of it, is best left until the course
is well under way and you have had time to assimilate its approaches.
To give you some idea of the timetable for the independent essay, I would say that you might expect
to know what kind of material you would like to work on by about week twelve, when you will be
halfway through reading the course books, and will have done the first of three ordinary TMAs. By
about week 16 you may have found a specific subject, or perhaps have made a shortlist of possibilities,
so that you can do some initial investigation of the availability of materials; the electronic resources of
the Open Library will help with this – and the point is simply to check that there is enough accessible
information to make the subject viable.
The tutorial specifically concerned with the independent essay comes in about week 18 or 19, and
gives you the opportunity to discuss your ideas with your tutor and fellow students – it is often the
case that this is when the ‘question’ of the topic is worked out. After this, you will be in a position to
complete a detailed proposal for the essay [called a proforma], in which you explain your topic, and
list the resources you have found for it. Your tutor will read this proposal and return it to you with an
assessment of its workability – and advice on how to modify it if necessary. After this you should be
in a position to start work on a viable topic, a task which will occupy you for the last seven weeks of
the course: you submit the essay in week 32.
Experience so far has shown that the great majority of students enjoy doing their independent essay,
they find the task itself interesting and have a real sense of accomplishment with the end product.
Also, although (as I said) the independent essay is not a task of primary research, it does provide an
excellent basic training for research if you do decide to go on to post-graduate study.