Brainstorm Essay 3 —

After reading Claudia Rankine’s Citizen, this essay will give you the opportunity to examine the category of experimental literature and to interrogate the experience of reading it. What is an avant-garde text? How has it been assembled and why is it effective in its particular form? Citizen gives us a sense of the impact of the genre-breaking or multi-media text; one that performs a bricolage of history, pop culture, poetry, everyday vernacular, politics, visual arts, etc.; one that mixes the high and the low of cultural materials and aesthetic tastes. As a reader, what does the avant-garde text demand, how does it invite you in as a participant in ways of reading that are unfamiliar? How dos the avant-garde text effectively function as a means for addressing borders, particularly of race, as a stylistic response to the complexity of the Black experience in America? How does it get us to query the very act of reading language as analogous with reading race, and the complicity there within? How does it present the relationship of language & power / of image & power / of word & image / of high & low? Consider the difficulties and challenges in talking about race, and how the text activates our perspectives and confronts us with the act, as readers, of crossing or navigating or dwelling within borders. What does it mean to cross into the text of the Other? Also, how do we research texts that are either not yet canonized, or not yet researched or expansively written about? What are the strategies we must create to deepen/broaden the critical context in which we position our discussion of a text? I will urge you to think experimentally, in the spirit of the experimental texts we’re reading.

Annotation Research & Annotated Bibliography Essay 3 — 

1. Come up with a draft essay question for Essay 3 and write it down.
2. Making use of Summon, MLA bibliography, and the subject and title indices on MIDCAT, find a pool of approximately 8-10 primary and approximately 15-20 secondary sources pertinent to your question. You can perhaps do this most efficiently by identifying between one and three very recent pertinent secondary sources and mining their bibliographies and footnotes for further sources (primary and secondary)–though you’ll also want to check MLA for earlier secondary sources to see if there are any you’ve missed. You can also peruse recent periodicals (those not yet bound, for instance) in the library and on Project Muse/J-Stor. At the library and/or online, have a quick look at the materials in your pool–i.e. quickly skim them to make certain they are indeed pertinent. If they are not pertinent–or pertinent enough–find others that are (if necessary) to replace them. Then finalize your list to turn in. All sources should be cited according to MLA bibliographical format. DO NOT INCLUDE secondary sources from the web, unless these are peer-reviewed, or unless they appear in Project Muse or J-Stor. Since Citizen is a current text, some non-scholarly or non-peer-reviewed web materials (e.g. popular reviews, interviews, or other discussions) might count as primary sources, insofar as they establish cultural context; but be extremely cautious about citing such sources as authoritative secondary sources–about lending them critical authority to your analysis, or about taking their claims at face value. Your sources should include books and articles. This requires you to GO TO THE LIBRARY. 
3. Out of the pool of sources you developed, pick at least 4 secondary sources and 2 primary sources that are important to you as you think about writing your essay–those that are most likely to be helpful in allowing you to make a contribution to a critical conversation. Carefully read the most relevant portions of the 4 secondary sources and 2 primary sources you have selected. Cite each of these sources according to MLA bibliographical format, and, below each of them, write one focused paragraph that (1) articulates the pertinent argument(s) of that source, together with the motive or agenda implicit in the argument(s); (2) summarizes the information included in the source that might be useful to you; and (3) briefly explains how the source will be useful to you in addressing your question. Your secondary sources may include articles and specific book chapters. Your primary sources may include any material contemporary with or older than the main object of your analysis, as well as the object of analysis itself. This is your annotated selection of sources.
4. Now that you have studied a part of a critical conversation about your text and come to know a bit more about the its context, review your notes on the text, as well as important portions of the text, and reconsider your essay question once again. Revise the question so that it is both interesting to you and relevant to some aspect of the critical conversation about the text.
5. E-mail to the entire class a single MS Word document including (a) your revised essay question; (b) your annotated selection of at least 4 secondary and 2 primary sources; and (c) your entire list of secondary and primary sources. Please do not consult other people’s lists until you are finished with yours; at that point, do consult others’ lists to see where there is common ground, where others could benefit from suggestions, and what sources you haven’t considered might benefit your project.