These are the essential aspects to keep in mind:
Purpose: Your job as a writer, exploring your chosen genre of music, should respond to the following problem: your genre is not fully understood, theorized, or appreciated for its larger significance and how it reflects culture/identities. Your scholarly contribution will help readers gain insights on the deeper significance of the genre – which are claims you make based on your research – and help them understand the genre beyond possible stereotypes, generalizations, or easy dismissals.
Essay Structure: Your essay should include the following sections (follow this outline structure!)…
Introduction
An opening which sets up the topic for readers and brings them into the reason why you are exploring the genre. Hooking readers into the topic may start with bringing in one of your sources, setting a scene with personal experience, or diving into representative evidence with one song or artist. Capping off your introduction should be your initial theory/thesis statement or your guiding question to explore.
Background/History
Bring readers into some of your research into the history and origins of the genre. By introducing these sources and commenting on what insights they raise, you can give readers important, yet brief context for the genre (assume that readers dont know it) and set up the rest of the essay to move beyond just establishing how the genre got started. This necessary context for readers can also help you, as a scholar, better understand how the genre came to be and what might be important to notice about the genres beginnings or the place it is from.
Zoom In on Your Own Original Scholarly Analysis
After the Background/History section, you should focus the rest of the essay on one of the following
Briefly contextualize central/repeating themes in the music and lyrics of a few major artists associated with the genre. Through these representative examples, you can make claims about the rhetoric of the genre or the identities (the audience) it informs or reflects.
OR
Trace the influences or intertexts of the genre to make claims about the implicit meanings and significance of those influences or intertexts.
OR
Investigate the major audience for the genre and consider how the genre either informs or reflects the culture of that audience (values, demographics, how/when they listen to the music, etc). Note: It is okay if you see yourself as a part of this audience too – it will allow you to offer your readers first-person insight into your subject.
Conclude with an Evolved Thesis
By the end of your essay, frame up what exactly has been gained by your look into this genre of music. Imagine readers asking so what? at the end.
Successful scholarly arguments, in the end, will offer readers insights that help them understand some deeper significance of the genre, sparked by the angle you have chosen (noted above) and the imagined problem that the essay is responding to – that the genre is not fully understood for its significance beyond stereotypes, generalizations, or easy dismissals.
Use of Sources: Keep in mind that your essay is not a report or summary of facts about your chosen genre. While you will contextualize the history and origins of the genre, the main part of your paper will bring in evidence/source material to set up and explore your claims. You are required to use a minimum of four credible sources. Of these sources, you need to have at least one book/e-book or scholarly journal article. Additional sources can be newspaper or magazine articles, open web sources, fan discussions (blogs, social media), interviews, the music itself, etc.
Analysis: Analyze your source material to make claims/assertions and develop original ideas about the genre you are writing about. In other words, when you come across important evidence, keep asking so what? Make your readers think about your genre in an interesting or new way, with particular focus on the genres past or present cultural contributions.
Checklist of Requirements:
Your draft should be a minimum of 6 full double-spaced pages with 1 margins, Times New Roman, 12 pt font. Your revised draft should be submitted to Canvas by 11:59pm on Sunday, 11/14 (letter grade evaluation, 20% of overall course grade). No late essays will be accepted.
Your draft should attempt to engage in analysis of one specific, selected genre of music by using one of the foci listed on the second page of these directions and the general structure suggested: intro, history/background, zoom in analysis for the body of the paper, an evolved so what? conclusion. Analysis should be driven by your research findings and the musical texts you encounter.
Help your readers navigate your discussion by offering thesis moments. An initial working thesis or thesis question should be present in your introduction. As the paper unfolds, also be sure to frame up further thesis moments where readers can see you developing ideas and evolving your initial thesis (or answering your thesis question) as you move through your evidence/sources/details.
Bring in at least four credible sources from your research. For your readers, you must accurately summarize the ideas, theories, terms, or concepts you are using from that source making sure your summary is understandable to a reader who is not familiar with the source youre introducing, but that summarizing does not take over your essay. On the page, this would be the first part of the citation sandwich move.
Use your sources as a springboard for your own claims, questions, and analysis. You cannot just incorporate sources to add facts to your essay. For this essay assignment, you must add to and help develop the ideas from the source you bring in to offer your own thinking about the genre you are writing about. Your essay must offer your thinking which goes beyond ideas your readers already know or may find obvious. This is where the lead-out part of the citation sandwich move becomes essential.
Evidence of revision from the first draft (Essay 2.1) should include moves that show attention to audience, purpose, and scholarly work with sources. Particular attention in the introduction, conclusion, and lead-outs of sources should be present.
Cite all sources in MLA format (in text), in addition to a Works Cited page. Use Purdue OWL to look up proper MLA in-text citations and Works Cited formatting.
Proofread and edit for clarity, “voice,” and sentence-level concerns like grammar and punctuation. Consider paragraph organization and appropriate transitions to lead your reader through your discussion.
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