Q For your third and final essay, you’ll be writing the amazingly wonderful research essay where you’ll be analyzing some genre that we have gone over (poem, fiction/historical fiction, drama, short story) and create an argument for how it applies to our reality/lives. Basically....what you’ve been doing all semester. Just with one caveat... This time you’re going to come up with your own topic based on anything we’ve gone over throughout the semester. I’m not giving you the prompts. Possible research approaches: 1. Character analysis: Throughout the books, the characters have presented themselves as both internally and externally conflicted characters – over different things. Analyze one of the characters through different lenses. What seem to be the conflicting emotions and why are they important to understand. What identity factors do you see contributing to their struggle and why are they important to the theme which you want to analyze (ex. How LGBTQ+ identity was imperative in The Company Daughter or Stop Kiss and how that identity served as an imperative factor to understanding the story. What social critique does that character help to serve as? 2. Thematic approach: Choose a text, or multiple texts, with a theme you want to analyze. How is that theme represented throughout the text and what do critics say to support or oppose that literary analysis? 3. Technical analysis: Examine the various literary devices that have been used in the text(s) you choose and argue for why those literary devices are crucial to understanding that genre of literature. 4. A topic you choose that has to be approved by me Once you have chosen your research approach, you will want to re-read/finish reading your text with your focus area in mind.