Final Paper Guidelines
Your final paper will consist of around 3000-3500 words, and will be worth approximately 1/3 of your final grade in the class. You will write in depth about some specific issue of your choice concerning “The Arts in New York City,” focusing on an opera, new music or dance performance from the second unit of class. Deciding on which event particularly interested you is your first step.
Along with analyzing aspects of that performance, you should also cite, draw upon, and analyze some writing about that performance or related to it in some interesting way. The writing may be a critic’s account of a performance, but it can also be a theoretical or philosophical essay that isn’t directly about it.; it could also be drawn from another creative text (the obvious example here is Macbeth, but if you wanted to talk about Don Giovanni you could also look at Moliere, or Byron’s Don Juan, or even a later text). So finding an interesting companion text or texts is your second step. In your paper, you should refer to at least three sources; please note that this should involve some thoughtful research, and not be the first thing you find on google. The more scholarly your sources, the better.)
You are to choose your own topic, and develop a critical, theoretical thesis based on your topic. The writing of the critic, theorist or philosopher or creative writer is intended as a means to ground your treatment of the performance. While there is thus a research component for the paper, the majority of the writing should involve your own analysis, and your own ideas.
As with the first paper, specificity is important. Choose a manageable thesis: Life versus death, predestination vs. free choice, love versus hate are all still too grand for a paper of this length. Once you have chosen a working thesis, closely analyze the texts you have decided to work on. This means, in the case of the event, briefly describing, and then (at greater length) interpreting aspects of the event, performance, etc, and in the case of the critical text, selecting telling excerpts, and demonstrating that you’ve comprehended them. (“Here we see” is a shorthand mnemonic device to demonstrate you are paying attention to what you have excerpted.).
I will be available to discuss any questions you have over the next two weeks, either by email or in my office by appointment.
On December 3, you will speak for 3 to 5 minutes about your topic, and your working thesis. You may read your thesis sentence, but the rest of the time you should not read. You should feel free to bring your laptops and show images.
Both your fellow students and I may offer you some comments intended to help you in the writing of your paper. You will then have at least 10 days (probably longer) to write the paper.
The paper will be due at our last performance, still to be determined. Papers received after that date/time receive an Incomplete for a grade and forego the right to receive comments. (Please do not include a self-addressed stamped envelope with your paper; if you want the paper back please contact me after January 15th and I will tell you what to do.)
