Transcript The Scholarly Essay

Moving From the Class Paper
to the Publishable Piece
What Makes a Scholarly Article Publishable?
According to William Kupersmith:
• Is it True?
• Is it New?
• Is it Important?
We might ask if any of these are possible or even
realistic?
The Bulletin of the Midwest Modern Language Association. 12(1), 1979
1. Write With a Purpose In Mind and Make
that Purpose Explicit
• Purpose of essay is clear from beginning
• This purpose should animate the entire essay
• Make structure transparent by explicitly
explaining how each section connects with the
purpose
2. Use Organizational Sections
I. Introduction
II. Living in a High-Tech America: “The
Networks, The Streams, the Circuits”
III. The Tyrannies of Television
IV. Technosensibility and the Life in Routine
Things
Sections in Martins’ “Everyday Technologies”
Introductions and Conclusions
• Think of both as sections
• Therefore; they may perhaps both be longer
than you are accustomed to writing
• Intros: setting up relevant background, defining
terms, broadly situating your argument within the
existing scholarship
• Conclusions: Synthesis Section
• Looks to make final point(s) that could not
have been made without laying down
foundation of essay
Benefits of Sections
• More Titles! (come on, titles are fun)
• Sections operate as mini-essays within the essay that build
upon the master thesis
• Force you (in a good way) to think about what points are
needed to make your organization and what order they
should come in
• Give you tangible goals throughout the process of writing
(finish a section, move closer to your goal)
• Mini theses, intros, and conclusions within the sections
operate as guideposts for the reader
3. Operate With These General Assumptions
• Your audience has read the novel but not read your
scholarly research
• Skip long plot summaries but briefly summarize
pertinent portions of research
• Use the eternal tense
• Shakespeare “writes” he never “wrote” . . . Even if he’s
dead
• Audience’s responsibility to know the basic tenets of a “big
name” drop
• There is no need to explain all of Foucault, Heidegger,
Baudrillard, Nietzsche, etc. But a little relevant context is
OK
Operate With These General Assumptions
• Author’s full names will be used upon first mention- last
names with subsequent references
• USING “I” IS OK
• There’s an old joke that you need a PhD to be a person;
I’m gonna give you honorary ones right now!
• A fairly formal tone is expected; however
• Contractions are OK
• Slang is generally not OK (I insist contractions are not
slang)
• Humor is not forbidden; however, you should be very
careful with it
4. Truly USE Your Research
• Make sure overall topic is situated in the
research that exists
• Offer up a quotation only if you plan on doing
something with it
• If it supports you, explain why the author is
correct (in relation to your thesis)
• If you disagree, explain why you disagree and
show how this relates to thesis
• Point out how research relates to each other
• Don’t just he says, she says, but show
connections between individual pieces of
research and your own ideas
4. Use the Source Text Wisely
• Students have a tendency to over-quote the
source text
• Since your own analysis is key, a well-chosen
block quote can often do the work of a bunch of
shorter quotes
• Look for a number of “key scenes” that illustrate
your point versus going all over the novel
• Make sure to do something with any quoted
material: do not quote for summary
• Break any of these rules if there’s a good reason
for doing so!
5. Thou Shalt Use Meta-Commentary and
Deep Transtions
• Transitions ideally do 3 things
• Explain what the next paragraph/section is
going to do
• Summarize what the last paragraph/section
just did
• Explain the logical connection
Even though Jack experiences these new
found feelings of respect for his son, the
father/son remains tenuous as he realizes
that he cannot walk over and share in the
moment.
What happened in last paragraph
The connection to this new idea
What this new paragraph will be about
And I don’t care what anybody else has told
you, transitions between paragraphs come
at the beginning of the new paragraph – not
at the end of the previous one.
. . . Though I’m open to hear the debate. A
little bit.
Meta-Commentary
• Defined as the art of explaining and commenting
upon your own writing/points within an essay
• It’s like the Greek chorus in a drama standing
off-stage and narrating what is going on
• Think of your paper as having two functions
working simultaneously
• The making of your argument
• The “working” of your argument that
anticipates objections, confusions, and
connects ideas to one another.
Meta-Commentary
• Writers provoke actions they didn’t intend
• Readers may fail to realize grander implications
or conclusions
• Helps develop ideas and get a higher page count
(a very valid concern, right?)
• In this class especially, with this novel, we should
realize how slippery and unreliable language is;
therefore, we are tasked to comment on our
language in the name of clarity and complexity