Literary Research Essay

Please choose one (1) of the following topics to construct an argument you will discuss through critical analysis in your literary research essay. Please use MLA format for all in-text citations, and for your Works Cited page. Please also include a minimum of eight (8) secondary, peer-reviewed sources. One of these sources should be a book chapter. Please also make sure that your essay is double-spaced, in 12-point Times New Roman font, and includes an imaginative title. (An imaginative title is neither the theme, nor the title of the text).

In this ten (10) page literary research essay, please create a discussion in which you argue a position about one (1) of the themes listed below. Please use appropriate evidence from primary and secondary sources to support your claims.  As you develop your discussion, please remember that this essay is not a summary exposition; this assignment does not require you to re-tell the story upon which you focus. What this assignment asks is that you analyze the text(s) in order to propel your argument. This assignment asks that you interpret the text(s), and use the primary and secondary sources as evidence to develop your interpretation.

In your drafting of this essay, I suggest you choose three-four strong, substantive passages from the text(s) you choose to focus upon that capture something you want to argue about the theme you choose. Beginning with these passages will help you structure and organize your thought as you write a convincing argument.

All of your sources should be researched from the Charles Evans Inniss Library at Medgar Evers College. I suggest you begin with JSTOR and EBSCO.
Please do not use Wikipedia, Google Scholar, or the internet at large for a secondary source. Appropriate peer-reviewed secondary sources are at your fingertips in the MEC library: familiarize yourself with them.
Good Luck
1.Ritual and/or Doubles
2.Signifying and Story-telling
3.The Blues in the African American novel
4.Spectatorship and/or Surveillance
5.Ghosts and Specters
6.Successes and Failures of the Diaspora
7.Narrative Voice and Narrative Structure
8.Romantic Promises
9.Labor and the Commodity:
The books to choose from are Beloved by Toni Morrison, The Street by Ann Petry