For your major paper of the semester, then, you are going to focus on a topic of your choice related to information from your common read and explore it as academic scholars.

40% grade, five weeks.

Your research essay should, then:

Be appropriate for an audience of your peers at NCTC.
Focus on a topic related to our book using 2-3 chapters.
Be unified around a research question rather than simply reporting on several different aspects of a topic.
Be “original” in that it attempts to wrestle with a topic that has not already been rehashed again and again in print.
And, be “research,” which may mean textual studies, library sources, historical sources, or media sources.

We will break up writing this paper into several parts to make it more manageable and to encourage you to engage in the writing process as a method of inquiry. Therefore, you will first need to start thinking about a topic. Then, we'll move into locating and evaluating sources, drafting our rough draft and constructing a thesis statement, revising, editing, and submitting.

Also:

Your paper should be five full pages plus a works cited page for a chance at an A. Remember, each page is worth 20 points.
Include 4-7 sources: the primary text (2-3 chapters) with the remainder being secondary sources, half of which should be scholarly. Ideally, this would probably be 2 chapters from the DR, 2 scholarly sources from the databases, and 2 regular ol' internet sources.
Your paper should utilize MLA documentation.
Cannot reuse material from previous essays.