Signature Assignment #3: Collaborative Literary Analysis Project

Directions: Collaborate with a group of at least two other classmates to produce an analytical
essay that examines the works of a certain author with at least one scholarly source from each
student corroborating the content. Additionally, your group will create and present a slideshow
presentation (using Google Slides, PowerPoint, Keynote, Prezi, etc.) reflecting your research and
analysis.

For this project, you may choose one of the following authors for your topic:

• Percy Shelley (English writer known for exploring the concepts of Romanticism, often
meditating on the human condition through parallels with nature)

• John Keats (young English Romantic writer whose poetry examines various oppositions,
such as life/death and reality/illusion)

• Nathaniel Hawthorne (nineteenth-century writer known for “Dark Romantic” themes and
exploration of the Puritan experience)

• Edgar Allan Poe (nineteenth-century writer known for Gothic works that plumb the
psychology of its characters and feature often grotesque characters and settings)

• Kate Chopin (protofeminist author whose works often critique nineteenth-century gender
norms for women)

• Emily Dickinson (Civil War-era poet whose distinctive works reflect on identity,
isolation, and transience)

• Stephen Crane (youthful writer from the Gilded Age whose short stories exemplify the
literary style of Naturalism and depict realistic episodes from the writer’s journalism
career)

• F. Scott Fitzgerald (Jazz Age-era writer whose novels and short stories, largely
autobiographical, explore and critique the Roaring Twenties and their aftermath)

• William Faulkner (twentieth-century writer known for his stream-of-consciousness style

and depictions of life in the American South, especially the dichotomy between the
rural/urban and Black/White experiences)

• Ernest Hemingway (“Lost Generation” writer known for his spare, journalistic prose and
adventurous life—his works explore themes of war, masculinity, and disillusionment)

• Langston Hughes (Harlem Renaissance writer whose stories and poems capture the Black
experience in early twentieth-century New York)
 • Zora Neale Hurston (Southern writer whose stories depict Black life in the American
South in the early twentieth century)

• Sylvia Plath (postwar poet known for her feminist and introspective themes)

• Flannery O’Connor (Southern writer whose stories, usually “grotesque” and macabre,
examine religion and race in the American South during the late twentieth century)

• Joyce Carol Oates (prolific, decades-spanning writer whose Southern Gothic stories
typically focus on the experience of women)

This third signature assignment will assess your ability to analyze poetry and prose, evaluate
research sources, and assert your position via a well-structured, well-supported analytical essay
with appropriate MLA formatting. The assignment will also assess your public speaking skills
and your ability to work well in a group setting with peers.

For this project, you and your group members will each select a poem or short story of the
selected author. You will conduct independent analyses and then compare/contrast your findings
in the final draft of your collaborative essay and presentation.

Requirements: Your essay should conform to the following requirements:

1.) MLA format (one-inch margins, 12-point font, Times New Roman, double-
spaced, header, endorsement, title, in-text citations, works cited page)
2.) At least 2 pages in length

Your presentation should conform to the following requirements:

1.) MLA format (in-text citations, works cited page)

2.) At least 9-10 slides in length (title slide, introduction slide, 2 slides of
content per student, conclusion slide, works cited slide)

For the individual essay component, write a brief analytical essay with an introduction and body
section integrating your scholarly source.

For the presentation component, adapt your essay’s content into at least two slides of the
presentation’s body. Ensure that the presentation is consistent in its layout and style throughout
(as though created by one person).