I’m taking an autoethnographic approach to the analysis paper.
I will attach the four readings that I used and the annotated bibliography that I created for this paper. I wrote the essay but my professor left comments and I have no time to correct them to her standards. the final paper is due on monday.
The directions for the paper from the professor is below:
Final Paper Assignment: detailed instructions
THE ASSIGNMENT
In five to eight pages you will explore a topic of your choice through a specific example or set of examples, using theoretical ideas and approaches from four different course readings to critically analyze your example(s).
Draw your example from any form of media or direct observation. Identify the specific example that you will be analyzing and also think about the broader context. If you need to do some background research, plan for that. Make sure you have REFERENCE for your example. If it is from direct observation, write it down or document it, and make a specific note of that observation (date, time, and method).
ON LOGISTICS
You must submit a topic for comments, and then an annotated bibliography for feedback before you can submit anything else. All students must participate in a peer editing exercise (post your draft– in whatever form it is– by 05/03), and only after that, submit a draft of your paper and get individual instructor feedback (due 05/10).
Final papers must be submitted on Blackboard no later than the end of the day on 05/23.
ON STYLE
Use MLA style. A comprehensive guide can be found here: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_formatting_and_style_guide.html
Make sure to have a bibliographic reference for every course reading AND your example (unless it is a direct observation you made, in which case you should be clear and state that in the paper), and for any other supporting documents you used to write your paper (blogs, advertisements, articles, facebook comments, television listings, twitter feeds, etc). Personal communication can also be in your bibliography.
Your paper should have a title, but a title page is not necessary.
Papers should use a 12 point font, normal margins, double spaced, and formatted in a standard way (do not switch fonts, keep your paragraph styles the same, etc). You do not need to use endnotes or footnotes (unless you absolutely want to do that to give supplemental information), but instead should use in-text parenthetical citations per MLA.
Do not use relates to, speaks of, talks about or mentions to introduce concepts from the theoretical readings.
All students are encouraged to use the writing center as a resource for editing your papers, but if your feedback from the first two papers was that there were problems with grammar, word choice, spelling, punctuation, or basic organization than you must build in time for that. Papers will be marked down if they contain persistent errors of these types. Use the resources available to you to fix that before you turn the work in.
TIPS FOR WRITING THE ACTUAL BODY OF YOUR PAPER
Introduction: describe your example. Give some of the broader context. Use this time to draw the readers attention to the specific things that you will later analyze. Suggestions: write your description before you begin to write the rest of your paper, understanding that you will come back and adjust it later.
Next, re-read each of the four course readings that you plan to use. For each one, summarize the relevant ideas from this reading that you are using in your analysis. Then, use it as a “lens” to make a claim of your own about your example. DO NOT use extensive direct quotes in your paper, and do not summarize the entire argument of the author. Instead, be efficient about how you draw from the theoretical readings. Put the author in context, and then highlight the ways their theories and insights are useful for analyzing your example.
After you have written this out, take a little break, then re-read what you have written. Is there a “flow” to how your analysis develops? Does the order of your paper make sense? Move things around until you are happy with the order. You don’t need to necessarily have explicit transitions between each section, but make sure that it will be clear to your reader what you are talking about at each point in the paper.
NOW, go back and re-read your introduction. Do you need to adjust it? Did you really introduce the things you ended up writing about? Be smart about your introduction, and make sure that you get right to describing exactly what your example is, and what those aspects of it are that you ended up analyzing. Make sure you have actually introduced what you go on to write about. It is not necessary to explain the whole of human history here.
Finally, write the conclusion. Don’t over generalize or write platitudes. Stop and think about what you learned or noticed in this process. Ask yourself some questions: What did you learn? What does this suggest to you for further study? What questions can be answered, and what cannot? Do you have a new understanding of this example after doing this analysis? Why does this matter? Then, go ahead and make some larger conclusions about your topic.
This an email with more feedback on the essay from my professor:
I have attached a copy of the draft with my annotations (please open and look at them!) but general comments are copied in this email. I have focused on the first page or two with my feedback, but the things I am pointing out should be extended to the rest of the essay.
This is an interesting idea and still needs a lot of work, but it could really be a very strong essay. If you can, I would like you to make an appointment for the writing center for Monday– work on the issues I have outlined below and put in the comments, and then use a session with a tutor to work on clarity, organization, catch sentence fragments, citation. OR, use the CASA drop-in tutoring if that is not an option. Going over your work just for these mechanics of writing issues will help make sure the finished version is the best it can be.
1) First paragraphs/intro I would like to see you clean up and streamline the first paragraph. Don’t use it to tell us what you plan to do, but instead, set up the terms of what you will be discussing. I made extensive comments but what you need to do is a couple of things. a. Give us a general Make sure that you go back, knowing what the rest of the paper is about, and “foreshadow” some of it by highlighting the key issues. Right now its a bit “stream of consciousness”, and a little too informal in tone. I think you can make this work better by making sure its organized, clear and uses a more formal voice.
2) Body paragraphs: The vignettes are fun. You can slip into a more personal style here, and it works, because you are talking about yourself and your own recollections. BUT, what I think you need to do is then formally separate them from the analysis. It might feel artificial, but try actually putting in a paragraph break, and then switching the “voice” that you use, and maintain a more formal/academic type discourse.
3) Analysis/using the theories: You have a way to go here. Look at the handout on Blackboard (in the content) folder about how to introduce ideas from other writers. Its got some ideas for sentences and ways to do this. Right now, while I see the choices you’ve made and they make sense, you really need to work on how to introduce the ideas and then how to use them for analysis. I think if you can separate the vignette/personal story from the analysis more clearly, this may get a little easier. As a general template/formula: explain (in your words) the idea from the author you are drawing on, and then lay out how it can help make sense of the vignette you shared.
4) It seems to me you are only drawing on three theoretical pieces (“feminist theory” by which I think you mean Lakoff, or maybe you were referring to Messner? de Seta, and Jane). What else can you draw on? You could draw on someone like Danesi or even Messner (a bit of a stretch but I think you could) to think a little more through the claims you make in your introduction about how the games are marketed to male or female players? (actually you frame it as “preference” but if you stop and think about it, surely it makes some sense… you could probably simply look at the image that advertises/is an avatar for GTA vs Sims and analyze from a semiotic standpoint how it communicates something different about who will like this game). You could think about the ritual aspects of communication, perhaps, to address the way that online gaming connects you to other players and changes the way it feels and what it means to play. You could take someone like Anderson– and its a stretch but you could make it I think– about how “gamers” is a kind of “imagined community” of its own, one in which you don’t have to personally know everyone else but you can feel one of them (or feel somewhat excluded at times, as you describe, because the “imagined community” of gamers is not fully including women?)
5) need a works cited: Sources must only be from the attached readings.
For the attachments:
the reading by Judith butler is an entire book but the focus is on chapters 1,3 and the conclusion to get the main concept.
for the lakoff reading the article is long, but focus on part I (introduction) and part II, and then in part III notice the discussion of “lady”
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