What is your topic and purpose? What specifically are you asking about the social contract? What do your authors say about it? What are you trying to tell the reader?

Exploratory writing begins with a question or problem, summarizes a range of information on the topic, and offers a well-reasoned answer or solution. It is, in other words, an inquiry that seeks to inform the reader and to show the writers developing thinking. For our purposes, its a developed reading response in which you wrestle with a question.

You will produce a three- to five-page (1000 to 1500 word) exploratory essay in mla format discussing the social contract in the United States today. You will develop a specific question under the broad umbrella of this topic. Next, youll respond substantially to a text on this subject before you finally present your own perspective on your question.

you will tell the reader about the one or two outside perspectives, and then respond with your own thoughts and analysis.

Several of our readings are relevant to this assignmentMuhammad, Putnam, Wladawsky-Berger, Kessler, Porter, and Dervis and Conroyand you should use one or perhaps two of them in your essay with proper acknowledgement and documentation. Approximately half the essay should be a highly developed analysis of the text(s); the rest should consider whether you agree or disagree with the author.

You may use first-person point-of-view (I, me, my) for this assignment, and you may also use examples from your own life. Outside research is not required or permitted. You may not have a block quote in this essay.

Be sure to consider your rhetorical situation.

What is your topic and purpose? What specifically are you asking about the social contract? What do your authors say about it? What are you trying to tell the reader?
Who is your audience? What do they know or believe about your topic?
What is the genre of your text? How does your essay explore (rather than argue about) your topic?
What is the stance of the creator toward the subject? How do you feel about the social contract? How are your beliefs reflected in the paper?
What do these texts mean in a larger cultural context? What is the current cultural conversation about the social contract? Does your essay agree or disagree with it?

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