Writing Assignment #1
Guidelines for Writing Assignment #1
Your archival research paper on Breadgivers should be 3-4 pages in length, double-spaced, and primarily focused on your close reading of the novel. Your discussion must include at least two archival sources that allow you the opportunity to elaborate on your focused reading of the novel. A title page is unnecessary but you must include a bibliography or a list of works cited.
You are welcome to use this assignment as an opportunity to begin research, or test arguments, for your final projects.
Because there is no specific topic of research question in this assignment, it may be difficult for you to get started. Here is some advice that will allow you to produce a rigorous, coherent essay that easily fits within the parameters of length and research:
1. Organize your topic, argument and evidence before you begin writing. Do not let the short length of this assignment trick you into cutting corners—plan this essay as you would plan a longer essay. The discipline advance planning involves provides the best conditions to become a better writer.
2. Your argument, or thesis, should have more than one claim that you will have to prove with evidence from the novel or from the archives. A thesis is more complex than a topic; in order to generate your own thesis, ask questions of the novel and answer them. Ask more questions. Using the answers to your questions, you can design your own thesis statement that is based on the specifics of the novel. Be sure to consider the implications of your analysis and how those implications might nuance your reading of the novel and/or the historical details you discover in your archival research.
3. Once you’ve organized your topic, argument and evidence, start writing your introductory paragraph(s). Include a quote from the novel, analyze it in a way that calls attention to your topic and that delineates the terms of your argument. Use your analysis of the quote to help explain the logic of your argument as well as the historical questions it raises. (This is an exercise in close reading and analytical clarity).
4. As your paper progresses, connect your archival material with your reading of the novel. How does the historical detail comment on your interpretation of the novel?
5. Please include evidence (i.e., quotes) from the novel or from the archives in each paragraph; make sure each paragraph supports one of the claims you make in your introduction.
6. In terms of style, remember to always use the present tense when writing about literature. This means that not only for the novel, but also for your archival material you must write your prose in the present tense. For instance, when you cite a newspaper article for 1920 you present it alive: “In a December 1920 article in the New York Times, the author writes…” Or, “Mrs. Smolinsky dies before the novel ends.” And, “In 1898, 280,000 Eastern European Jews immigrate to New York, helping make the city the most densely populated in the world.” Also, be sure to include a title for your essay as well as page numbers and the correct citation format (your choice).
Archival materials are secondary sources that correspond to the historical moment in which the novel is written and published. Breadgivers was published in 1925; you should look for sources published in the 1920s, or that might have influence on the author or her readers in 1925. Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York (1890), or its sequel, Battle with the Slum (1902) would still be relevant to readers of Breadgivers.
Newspaper and magazine articles, Supreme Court decisions, census data, letters, book reviews, painting and photographs, as well as works written by Yezierska and her contemporaries count as archival materials.
The Baruch College Library has online databases that can help your research (http://newman.baruch.cuny.edu/). For an assignment like this, you might try: The New York Times (1851-2006), American Fact Finder, the Wall Street Journal (1889-1992), and Women’s Social Movements in the U.S. 1600-2000.
Great resources for images are:
Museum of the City of New York http://www.mcny.org/
The Jewish Museum http://www.thejewishmuseum.org/
The New York Public Library http://www.nypl.org/
The Tenement Museum http://www.tenement.org/
Google Books is also a great place to find old books and magazines as well as Jacob Riis’s writings and Yezierska’s subsequent work, Arrogant Beggar (1927).