As you know, your first short paper is due one of two days, depending on when you choose is best for you to do it: Wednesday, 9/9 or Thursday, 9/10 (usually dates short papers are due won’t be so close to each other!). Your short paper should be on the text due to be read for that day, though you may compare that text to something we’ve read on a previous class day. In other words, here’s what you should write about depending on the day you choose to hand in the paper.

Wednesday, September 9th

Gilgamesh, 95-99 (overview), 99-112

Thursday, September 10th

Gilgamesh, 128 (Tablet VII)-151

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Asking questions: Find a passage in the reading for the day that confuses you, sparks your interest, calls your attention, or seems like it might be interpreted in a few different ways. Start by asking yourself the simple questions “what do I find confusing or ambiguous about this passage?” and “why is that confusing?” What confuses you or interests you about this passage: is it something in the language or imagery? Is the way a character behaves  unexpected or unusual to you, or do the social/cultural values the text presents feel unfamiliar or confusing? Do you just feel uncertain about what is going on in the text, or why it is happening?

Assignment: In 1-2 pages, present the passage (or passages) and your questions about it; explain how the text creates this ambiguity/confusion, and the effect that it has on you as a reader (does it make you uncomfortable, frustrate you, leave you wanting to know something? Does it make you start guessing about possible outcomes? Do you feel you have a cultural ignorance about the social values of the people who would have read or heard these texts when they were produced?). Try to pose some possible answers to these questions, and pay attention, where you can, to how being geographically and temporally distanced from the culture this text comes from affects how we read and understand it.

• Purpose: By asking these questions, we can begin to weed out what makes a good research question for a paper vs. what makes for a factual question that has a brief answer (A factual question might be, “Who is Gilgamesh historically?” while a good research/interpretative question might be “Are we expected to admire Gilgamesh and his actions, or should we critique him in some way?”). A factual question results, usually, in one answer; a solid research question allows for several answers, which means we can get a debatable argument out of it.