UNST 125K

Winter 2015
Paper #2: They Say/I Say
Due Date: MONDAY, MARCH 16, BY NOON VIA D2L
For your final paper of the term, you will practice identifying a topic,
researching, planning, drafting, revising and polishing an argumentative
essay. Your thesis, a strong claim in support of one side of a debate, should
emerge in response to what they say, presenting your own argument as
entering a conversation about a given topic. You should include a broad range
of types of sources to establish your I say in relation to what they say;
these sources can (and should) include interviews you conduct with relevant
persons, news stories, activist materials and other media along with scholarly
articles or books on the issue more broadly. But you must include at least two
peer-reviewed, scholarly work that you find through the librarys databases.
This source could be directly addressing the issue youre writing about, or it
could apply more indirectly to this topic. Part of what youre demonstrating
here is your ability to find, evaluate, and make use of other peoples
arguments to situate and lend credibility to your own.
A list of topics are provided on the next page to help you get started, but it is
your first task to formulate a clear, specific, and defensible thesis for
your essay. Your thesis should:
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answer, either implicitly or explicitly, a question or take a position on a

controversy;
be specific and narrow enough to defend effectively in a paper of this
length (~5 pages), but also substantial enough to sustain an essay of
this length;
be analytical and argumentative, rather than descriptive or expository:
what are you adding to readers understanding of this issue and its
stakes?
be defensible (in other words, not something that everyone would
likely agree with, or be able to identify the first time they hear about
the issuea non-obvious claim that you need to (and can) defend.
Youre not simply describing an issue, but making an argument about
it. Remember: so what? Who cares?
be indicated clearly and strongly early in your essay, ideally in the first
paragraph (perhaps even in the first sentence!).

As you plan, research, and draft your essay, keep the following guidelines in
mind:

 Plan and outline your essay carefully before you begin writing,
paying attention to logical organization, rhetorical persuasiveness, and
relevance. Each paragraph, each point you make should be clearly
relevant to your thesis. As you revise your essay after youve drafted it,
try a reverse outline and consider how (and whether) each point
contributes to that broader argument.
Provide specific, detailed, and persuasive evidence from your sources
to support each claim, including quotations, paraphrase, and page
citations where appropriate. As noted above, you should include a wide
range of sources: in print, online, or via direct interviews; popular
and scholarly alike. Be sure to document your sources carefully
according to MLA citation style, providing page numbers for every
reference and a Works Cited page at the end. Review MLA citation style
for formatting rules; you will be judged on how closely your Works
Cited page and other references conform to these rules.
Avoid overly broad, general, or vague statements, phrases, or words;
be as specific and detailed as possible in every single sentence.
Choose strong, active verbs that clearly and precisely convey your
meaning. Words like important; interesting; society; mankind
or humanity; basically; always/never/everyone should be
avoided. It is ok to use I (for example, I argue in this essay that)
as long as you are not (only) expressing a personal opinion.
You are required to make reference to at least two other
scholarly sources, in addition to any news media, online, literary
or filmic, or other materials you are writing about. Your essay must use
the they say/I say model by situating your own claims in relation to
existing conversations and arguments. Use the library databases to
begin your research (these can be accessed via the Librarys website:
click on databases from the home page).
Carefully proofread and copyedit your essay for grammar, spelling,
punctuation, clarity, paragraph breaks, and citation style. Be sure to
italicize or underline the titles of all films, novels, websites or journals
(use quotation marks for essays, chapters, individual pages/posts, or
poems).
Give your essay a clear, descriptive, and interesting title that usefully
summarizes what your argument is about.
The essay must be no less than 5 pages long; ideally, it should fall
in the 5-6 page range.

Please note that you will still need to formulate a specific thesis (a position or
argument) in response to any these topics:
1. Choose one possible solution or remedy to climate change and write
an essay in which you argue either for or against (or some combination
thereof: yesbut) this potential solution. Your thesis needs to be
specific, detailed, and thoughtful, considering and responding to both
sides of the debate. Examples might include (but are definitely not
limited to!): carbon offset requirements (either planting trees or paying
a carbon tax to fund carbon offsets in exchange for specific actions);
individual or household carbon caps; higher mileage requirements for
automobiles; alternative fuel sources (wind, solar, geothermal,
biofuels, nuclear); electric cars; higher gasoline taxes; bio- or
geoengineering (a giant atmospheric airconditioner?); government
regulations on specific activities or behaviors; and so on. (Since were
spending all of spring term on the topic of food, please dont write
about vegetarianism as a solution to climate change!)
OR:
2. In Odds Against Tomorrow, students stop listening to the professors
lecture on Pushkin when news of the Seattle earthquake breaks,
implicitly signaling the irrelevance of literature (and, perhaps, human
culture more generally) in the face of environmental catastrophe. We
usually turn (as the students do) to science, journalism, and other
harder modes of inquiry for answers in such circumstances. Yet
fantasy, imagination, storytelling and other forces often associated
with literature are central to the action of the novel itself. And Odds
Against Tomorrow is, after all, a novel! Do you think literature (and art
more generally) has a continued role to play in the face of climate
change and other natural disasters? Why or why not? Include detailed
textual analysis of Odds Against Tomorrow and/or other artworks to
support your answer.
OR:
3. George Marshall insists that our brains are wired to ignore climate
change, pointing to neurology and other biological factors. Al Gore
and Naomi Klein, on the other hand, maintain that it is, above all, a
political problem, one that government needs to take on and in
which political ideology influences us most strongly. What do you see
as the biggest factors shaping peoples response to climate change?
How should activists work to change peoples attitudes, behaviors, and
collective actions in response to the climate change issue? Undertake

preliminary (but detailed) research into the psychology of climate

change, then test out your own hypothesis by preparing activist
materials and testing their efficacy on at least two different
populations (perhaps, say, freshman college students and their
parents; or liberals and conservatives; or Americans and
foreigners). Write an essay in which you describe your study (your
hypothesis, methodology, findings and conclusions), situate it in terms
of existing research, and argue for what you see as the most effective
approach (or approaches) in light of your findings.