Overview

Professor Clark demonstrates techniques of analysis in his lectures to show how literary critics work with primary sources.  He also presents an interpretation of these sources that invites you to consider how images of the family relate to state discourses about law, political conceptions of geography, attitudes toward racial difference, or officially sanctioned religious beliefs.

The following assignment asks you to write a critical analysis of different representations of the family from Huckleberry Finn and from either Rowlandson or Crevecœur.  You may want to focus on how different family configurations are presented in these texts or on how African-American or Native American families are depicted.  Your section leader may assign the text for your analysis with Huckleberry Finn or you may be allowed to choose between Rowlandson and Crevecœur yourself.

This assignment will help you to begin to think about the skills that you will need for your final scholarly research paper in Spring.  You can also incorporate information that you located in the process of completing the Discovery Task on primary sources from digital archives.  Make sure to cite everything properly and refer to Writing from A to Z for detailed assistance.

Your essay should be 4-6 pages and will count for 30% of your writing grade.

As in previous essays this quarter, you will need to present your thesis in a series of logical claims that are supported with textual evidence in the form of specific quotations and linked with explanatory statements.  You will be expected to practice close reading.  However you will be expected to choose the most significant passages yourself, which is no easy task.  Allow sufficient time to reread the texts several times and choose phrases and sentences that seem worth the effort of sustained interpretation.

For this assignment, you should focus on key passages from Huckleberry Finn and relevant passages from either Rowlandson or Crevecœur.  You should also think critically and creatively about possible key words associated with structures of power such as those constituted by categories of gender, race, and class. 

Read "Analyzing Narrative" (48-52), "Analyzing Visual Images" (58-62), "Analyzing Primary Sources" (63-65), "Comparison and Contrast" (66-68), and "Application" (69-71)in the Writer's Handbook before beginning.   You should also read "comparison and contrast as a method of development" and "comparisons" and the section on sources (35-38) in Writing from A to Z. 

To help you with making effective revisions to improve the structure of your essay, you should also review "Priciples of Organization" (72-74) and the special Core Course Guides on "Topic Sentences," "Transitions," and "Three Principles of Paragraphing" (75-82).   

A successful essay will do the following:

• Demonstrate that you have read Huckleberry Finn and the materials about families on the American frontier in-depth and that you have read critical passages more than once.
• Offer an interpretation of the texts when read together that does more than mechanically compare and contrast their most obvious features
  
• Apply Professor Clark's methods to your own focused analysis of primary documents
• Use specific techniques of analysis (i.e. narrative analysis, image analysis, etc.)
  
• Give the reader sufficient evidence to support the argument for your particular interpretation
  
• Connect all claims to your evidence (in the form of specific quotations from the text) with logical warrants
• Punctuate all quotations correctly
• Keep the reader on track by means of clear signals, clear paragraphing, interesting topic sentences, and relevant evidence in the form of quotations from the text

Undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty from the School of Humanities at UCI use recent scholarship to design presentations and materials for use in Southern California public schools.  It is important to make certain that these materials for K-12 classrooms are clear, interesting, and thought-provoking to students.  These materials must also respect the educational goals of the state standards and the expectations of local parents, teachers, and principals.  How could components of your paper be presented to high school students reading Huckleberry Finn?  You may want to look at some of the materials developed by the UCI Humanities Out There program or the UC California Social Sciences / History Project to help you think about these issues.