This paper will address your first three readings for the course: Edward Ayers, “What We Talk About When We Talk About the South”; Imani Perry, “As Goes the South, So Goes the Nation”; and Joan Didion, “An Afternoon in Meridian with Stan Torgerson.”
Paper topic:
Write a paper that analyzes the ways these readings discuss the South in relation to the rest of the United States. Your paper should: present an analysis of each reading on its own; and synthesize the three readings in a comparative section.
I will evaluate your paper based on: the clarity and logic of its organization; the quality of its writing and analysis; and its use of supporting evidence. (You should find the guides that I’ve included in the papers folder helpful when it comes to the grammatical, stylistic, and organizational elements of the paper.)
Formatting, length, and citations:
1- Be sure to double-space your paper, to use standard margins, and to use a standard twelve-point font. For a heading, you need only your name and the title of the paper. This is a three-page paper.
2- When you quote from a reading, identify the reading and the page number(s) that you’re quoting in parentheses at the end of the sentence(s) containing the quote. Be sure that your citations include the reading and page numbers.
Here’s an example. Faulkner writes that Sutpen came to Mississippi and “tore violently a plantation out of the ground” (Faulkner, 107).
