MLA style, double spaced, Times New Roman, 12-point font, 1200-words plus a Works Cited page (footnotes do not count towards the word count).
Students will have two options for this paper: formal and creative. For the formal option, Students will write a 1200-word, thesis driven essay on a key theme in Richard Wagameses Indian Horse, the film adaptation of the novel, or they can write about the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. It may be a theme that was discussed in lecture, but it does not have to be. The paper must engage with ONE credible source. While this source can be a scholar, critic, or artist talking about the novel, it can also be a credible source discussing the key theme of your paper. This could include a peer-reviewed journal article by a credible scholar, a book or chapter from a book published by a university press, a podcast or scholarly webpage done by a credible scholar employed by a college or a university, or an interview by an artist involved in the text. Students will provide a footnote after citing the source that will say who the author of the source is, where they are employed, and why you think they are credible. Students, moreover, will need to include a Works Cited page in MLA style. This must include at least a citation for the credible source that was used and the primary text under discussion.
For the creative option, students many respond artistically to a key theme in Richard Wagameses Indian Horse, the film adaptation of the novel, or they can write about the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. The student may work in any medium they wish, be it a short story, a poem, dance, music, or film, so long as they can make it clear in the work how they are responding to the text and the work is original for this assignment. Students must attach a 600-word artist statement that explains how the work is responding to the text. This artists statement must engage with the primary text and should have ONE credible source. Students must upload the artist statement to UM Learn and they can email the professor about how best to deliver their work of art.
The readings of the novel in the formal or creative option should pay attention to the social and political context of the text, the literary form of the novel, and the political issues addressed in the novel. Students will not be given a list of topics to write about, nor will they be given a rubric. Rather, students will be asked to use the introduction to explain what they plan to discuss, how their discussion is building on a key idea form the class lectures, and what narrow, debatable, and provable point they wish to make about the text. Students, moreover, are encouraged not to deal with entire novel, since these topics can be too big for a small paper to cover adequately, Thus, students should pick a particular major or minor theme, a formal element, or a section of the novel and discuss why it is important.
Students will be expected to have a clear title for their paper or artist statement that gives the name of the author being discussed, the name of the text being discussed, and the key term of the essay. A key term is a central concept that the student will address in their essay. A key term should be clearly defined in the opening paragraph of the paper, and the entire paper should be about one key term. So, if the key term of the paper is love, the student should specify what kind of love they are going to discuss in the paper, and they should ensure that each paragraph in the paper is about love.
If students get help with the paper, however, they must provide a footnote after the first sentence of the paper that clearly indicates who helped them, what they helped with. Moreover, if students use any webpages like Wikipedia, SparkNotes, or any other service designed to explain the texts when working on the paper, they must give a footnote (in MLA style) clearly indicating what webpages they used. Sources like Wikipedia, Sparknotes, or Litcharts do not count as credible sources. For more on credible sources, see the following website from Purdue OWL: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/conducting_research/evaluating_sources_of_information/index.html
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