30 September 2008

Readings Essay 1: Civil Rights

DUE: Thursday, 9 October

Please write an essay responding to the following question:

How was the music of the American civil rights movement a political force in that movement for social justice?

In your essay:

• You should draw on chapters 1 & 2 in Acting in Concert for ideas about music, community and politics
• You should draw relevant information from chapter 4 of Music and social movements for historical information, as well as one example of analysis of a similar question.
• You should draw on the music that we listened to together for specific illustrations of your points.

Your essay should be 4-5 pages long (that is about 1200 words, counted in the word processor).

It should be typed. Please do not include it in the body of an email message – the reason is that this approach is much harder for you to work with to make your essay the best possible, and it is more difficult for me to save, print and read. (However, you are welcome to email it to me or upload it in the student portal page.)

Your essay will most successful if you are careful to

• Think carefully about how to answer the question before you begin to write
• Organize your argument carefully and clearly. Remember that the basis for a C essay (according to the Composition program standards) is an essay that has a thesis or theme, that controls and organizes the essay. Your thesis is your answer to the question.
• Be careful to make your writing as clear and grammatically correct as possible. Re-reading and revising your essay before you submit the final version is an important strategy.
• Give credit to the authors of ideas and facts that you use in your essay; and include complete reference information in the list of “works cited”.
  • Direct quotations must be in “double quote” marks. They need a citation in your essay at the point you present them.
  • Paraphrases of ideas or the use of important information also require a citation to the original author.

In fairness to all, you should submit your essay on the due date. (This also gets it out of your hair. . .). Late essays will have a 10% penalty.

REMEMBER: all written work can be revised for a better grade (although late penalties are not erased.)

Reference notes:

• Citations are easiest to remember if you just put them in your essay as you need them. Do this by inserting parentheses with the author’s last name and the page number. For example, Music can be “confrontational” (Mattern, 54).
• Your bibliography should be alphabetical by the last name of the author. Include the authors, the title, the city of publication, the publisher, and the publication date. For example:
  Mattern, Mark. Acting in Concert. Rutgers, NJ: Rutgers University Press. 1997.
• For the songs we have listened to, simply list the song name (I did not give you all of the artists).

 

 

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FYS 101: First Year Seminar.  Fall 2008.  http://community.pmc.edu/vogelewi/fys101