Academics often talk in terms of how studying your field means you become part of a discourse community or join in an ongoing conversation focused on a set of intertwined questions and concerns. The reality, though, is that feeling as if you are a part of any community takes time and practice. For example, if you move to a different country, even if you had a working knowledge of the language you do not instantly feel at home. You think in your own language first and then translate, which both slows you down and makes you self-conscious. Even though you have memorized words and phrases you expected would prove useful, you soon realize that you are missing some of the nuances of the way people around you communicate. When you join in a conversation, you hope the native speakers will be patient, but even when they are not just tolerant but generous, you struggle at first to convey your point in an effective way. Worse yet, you find yourself limiting what you try to convey to whatever you feel confident you can say correctly, which makes you less interesting to those around you. You might well have something worthwhile to contribute to a conversation, but if the phrases that come most naturally to mind translate to “My name is Elizabeth, and I am well, thank you” and “Where is the library?” you may decide staying silent is the wisest course.

The goal of this assignment is to make you aware of how a particular discourse community — presumably one you are in the process of joining — operates in a way you have not been until now, and what that supposed ongoing conversation sounds like. To do that, you are going to trace an idea back through a series of scholarly sources. Along the way, you will take note of how each source makes use of its predecessor. Then, you will reverse your direction and consider how each source contributes to the next, before finally considering how the most recent source may prove useful to you.

Part One
Find a secondary source — a journal article, an essay published in an anthology, a chapter in a book — that is relevant to your interest and uses quotations to support its points. Read it thoroughly. Note that you may use one of the sources you have discussed in your in-class exercises or a new source. We’ll call this Source A in these instructions, though in your essay you should refer to it by its title.

Look specifically for a place where the author cites another scholarly work. Copy the sentence before the sentence, the quotation or paraphrase itself, and then any comments that the author makes directly in response to that source.

Once you have done that, write an explanation of how you think your source uses its source material. What function does the quotation or paraphrase serve? Does it provide some kind of judgment (Type 1) or proprietary factual information (Type 2)? (Do not use a Type 3 quotation for this assignment.) How does this quotation help the author make a point, and how does that point contribute to the source’s overall argument? You need to identify what the overall argument is, of course.

Now, find the earlier source, which we will call Source B in these instructions (again, just in these intructions) then find the passage your initial source quoted or paraphrased. This should not be difficult, presuming the quotation or paraphrase was properly cited. Read enough of Source B so that you understand the quotation or paraphrase in context, and understand the argument Source B is making. Identify Source B’s thesis or main argument. Then, repeat the procedure for Step One for this source: find a place where the author quotes or paraphrases another scholarly work, which we will call Source C, and copy the sentence before the quotation or paraphrase, the quotation or paraphrase itself, and then any comments that the author makes. Then write an explanation of how this source uses its source material. Start by offering a brief explanation of this source’s focus and argument. Then, consider the same questions as in Step One: What function does the quotation or paraphase from Source C serve?

Repeat this entire process with Source C, which will in turn lead you to Source D. However, do not go any further than Source D. For this last source, stop with a brief explanation of its focus and overall argument.

Part Two
Now that you have examined how each source made use of its predecessor, change your perspective. Starting on a new page, introduce the topic, then write an explanation of how each source contributed to your understanding of it and what the connections are between them, starting with source D and then going forward in time. Some of the questions you might want to consider:

When you consider all four sources, how widely do they range? Sometimes, you will find sources have focused on the same relatively narrow research question, with each scholar offering a new contribution to or a different take on the field’s understanding of it. At other times, the connections from one source to the next are less extensive, or are even tangential.

How much do the sources agree or conflict? Sometimes a source becomes a kind of established wisdom on a topic, and later authors work within the parameters the earlier source has sketched out, building on them rather than conflicting with them. At other times, a later source disputes the ideas or findings of an earlier source, or an author even writes in opposition to a predecessor. Finally, quite often a later source takes the an idea from an earlier source and goes in a different direction with it.

How much time elapsed between sources and overall? Sometimes, scholarship passes its use-by date quite quickly, while in others a source may remain influential for decades.

Do you see any indication of a source having ongoing influence? The most obvious example is when you find that Source A quoted not just Source B but Source C or Source D, too, but sometimes the influence is less direct, though still discernable.

To support your points, quote (do not paraphase) and cite from the four articles and comment on the quotations as necessary. Always set up a quotation substantively, then comment on it to make your point, and cite it parenthetically. Never expect a quotation to make your point for you: you cannot assume your readers will see everything in it that you see, let alone see it the same way. Note that you are submitting only this section, Part Two, to your peers, so it must make sense on its own.

Provide bibliographic citations for the four sources. At this stage, I am not requiring that you follow MLA works cited protocols exactly, but your entries should include the following information:

1) If an article published in a journal: author(s), the article’s title, the journal’s title, the volume and number of the issue, the date, and the page numbers of the entire article.
2) If an essay published in a book: author(s), the essay’s title, the book’s title, the editor, the publisher, the date of publication, and the page numbers of the entire essay.
3) If a book: author(s), the book’s title, editor, the publisher, and the date.

Once you have completed Part Two, go back and put an appropriate title at the top of the page where it begins.

Much of your success in this assignment depends on your thoughtful selection of sources and quotations. Not all quotations will be equally fruitful. Some may even be dead ends. When you are trying to trace influence, you cannot merely select a citation at random. Make sure the citation leads to a source that will allow you to continue. Be patient. I recommend you look up several quotations from each source before deciding which one to use.

Choose citations with which the author engages directly. If a citation merely directs us to another relevant source but lacks a specific page reference, you will probably struggle to figure out its relevance to the current argument — indeed, it may not have much. Sometimes an author cites a prior source merely as a courtesy, to help readers to continue with their research. Sometimes, too, authors attempt to establish their own ethos by demonstrating that they have read widely on the subject. Often, these kinds of references to sources appear in footnotes, rather than in the text itself.

The explanations you write for Part One are relatively informal. You do not need to write a separate introduction or conclusion for them. Begin with the quotation, provide the information you are copying from the source as instructed, and then answer the questions below in a single paragraph per quotation.

For Part Two’s narrative, I expect an essay. It should be properly paragraphed, and the overall structure should be chronological. The writing should be clear, grammatical, and concise. You should have an introduction that establishes the overall topic and a conclusion that renders a judgment about how these sources are connected and the effectiveness of their arguments.

Given the task, using first-person may be appropriate on occasion, but you should still not overuse it.

As always, I expect the writing to be grammatically correct, and you must again follow the Format Rules.

To help you with this assignment, here is a sample produced by a student in an earlier semester. It focuses on intellectual property law, but the topic doesn’t matter. Use it as a model for your approach and structure.

The essay draft for Step Two should be at least 850 words of your own writing. That does not include quotations from the article, citations, or your title and header information. Because you will need to revise this essay and submit it for evaluation, you would be wise to make the draft 10-20% longer, depending on where you are on the free-writing to self-censoring spectrum, but no more than 1100 words of your own writing in any case.

Prior to class on the day marked on the calendar, you must submit the entire project to me by e-mail at rnanian@gmu.edu. Name the document [Last Name]-dap plus the doc or docx extension. For example, if your name is Smith, you would name it Smith-dap.docx. Then, you must bring three hard-copies of Part Two (just Part Two) with you to class.

If you are not in class when it begins, fail to submit the project by e-mail prior to class, or do not have three hard-copies with you when class begins, the assignment is late, which will mean you lose some of the credit for the peer responses.

After receiving feedback from your peers in the peer response session, you will revise this project and submit it to me for evaluation.

The revision’s required length is slightly shorter — 800-1000 words.

Submit the document directly to me by e-mail. Along with the essay you must submit a reflective commentary. Attach both the essay and the reflective commentary to the same e-mail.

I will comment on this essay by using the Comment function in MS Word. Then, I will complete a rubric that scores the essay in multiple areas of both content and style. These scores are averaged to create overall content and style scores, and then these scores are multiplied together. The resulting percentage is then multiplied by 15, which is the number of points of your final grade this assignment is worth.