Purpose
The OCC assignment provides an opportunity for you to demonstrate skills in the rhetorical conventions of contemporary literary and cultural criticism.
Successful completion of the OCC, will meet the following student learning outcome published on the syllabus:
- Students will “understand the practice of criticism through the metaphor of conversation and demonstrate this understanding in their own critical writing.”
Description
The OCC is an essay of 1,000 – 1,250 words that asks you to stake out a position on an object of study in relation to prior critical statements on it (three articles or book chapters). To do this successfully, you will need to understand the critical sources very well and then play them against or off one another and against or off of your own position.
You will present a point of view that, in some combination, either agrees or disagrees (to a greater or lesser extent) with the secondary sources. The possibilities for how you might engage with your sources are many: a successful OCC will form a sort of critical matrix out of the ideas and claims in the selected articles.
Your OCC will require you to engage with three of the critical articles on Tropic of Orange that appear in the OAKS. You can also begin to conduct your own research, placing the novel in conversations that might be topically or theoretically related to your interest even if they address different novels or works.
The OCC asks you to being making and practicing some of the moves critics make as they engage scholarly conversations and situate their work in those conversations–especially at the start of papers. In that sense, you can think of the OCC as extracted from a larger, possible paper (and it will certainly play a key role in your own final project). You are also welcome to incorporate footnotes to experiment with what Hayot calls citational density.
Advice–Choosing a Topic: consider articulating for yourself a narrowed guiding question that you hope to answer in the form of a thesis statement. For instance, you might ask a more general question: “how does the Tropic of Orange address globalization”? or “what role does Los Angeles as an urban space place in Tropic of Orange“? You might also start more narrowly: how do these authors use the character of Manzanar to make their respective points. Trying to answer this question in a way that includes both evidence from the novel and from the critical articles could lead to a number of different arguments (and therefore different thesis statements).
Advice–Intro: The intro, as Hayot notes, should engage, teach, and locate. The first step is to get us on board and help us understand what is at stake in the critical conversation that follows. The second step is to provide a general theoretical, cultural, or historical background so we have a framework for understanding these critics (e.g. in relation to debates about “universalism” or “post-colonial critique”). The third step is to locate. In the early parts of the paper (paragraph 1 or 2 most likely), try to offer a clear thesis statement (could be multiple sentences) that situates your own claim in a broader critical matrix. I often think of this as a “dueling” thesis statement–a two-part statement that both sketches the contours of that broader conversation (what ‘they say’) and presents an argumentative statement indicating how you will engage an extend that conversation to new critical territory (what ‘I say’). Here is a general template that you might adapt, or that might help you think about what these “dueling” statements can accomplish:
- Template where X = the chosen topic or issue of interest addressed by your critics; Y = some aspect of the key source text (e.g. Yamashita’s novel); and Z = your more focused response, emerging from how critics have viewed X in relation to Y. This statement will appear after you have sufficiently “taught” the reader about the general ideas your paper explore at the start of your intro. Now, you can use a statement to “locate” the reader in the critical conversation:
- Critics have addressed [X] in relation to [Y]. Some argue A and B, while others focus on C and D. While it is true that some aspects of A and B provide a unique way of understanding [X], approaching the text through C and D illuminates how Z.
Note how this template will change a lot depending on your own position in relation to the critics. Are you refuting them all? Critiquing one of them and productively extending the ideas in in the others? There are many ways that your own position can appear in relation to your critics, and this statement will serve as a key signpost, making that clear for the reader. Note that you might also begin by stating your argument, and cycling back to provide a thumbnail sketch of the conversation you’re entering. Either way, it’s important to develop this key statement–often unfolding over the course of a few sentences or even a paragraph–where your argument is presented in relation to a concise thumbnail sketch of the critical conversation.
Advice–body paragraphs: The first, central, part of your paper, after the introduction, will delve deeper into the critical conversation, bringing up each critic by name, playing them off one another, and responding to the conversation as you go. It is not necessary to include the title of their work–you usually only do that when citing major or landmark works. So, instead of writing “Sue-Im Lee’s ‘[name of article]’ argues that…”, you might write “In Sue-Im Lee’s work exploring [topic of article].” The latter just feels less mechanical and gives us more complex info.
After you’ve captured the critical conversation in sufficient depth, you can move on, in the final part of your paper (final 2-3 paragraphs) to deliver your own response, signaling your use of evidence from the literary text you are analyzing. The focus should be on your own emerging argument in relation to the text, and in relation to the broader topic under discussion. This section, in the context of a larger seminar paper, would set up much more extensive engagement with the source text. In some ways, you can think of your final paragraph as a fully developed and expansive thesis paragraph that presents a more complete argument and notes how this argument will be pursued. You won’t directly address and engage literary evidence, but you will point to the kids of evidence you would explore in a more extended analytical paper.
Evaluation
This paper will be evaluated according to 4 key criteria, and a rubric will be used to offer feedback in each area.
- Engaging, Teaching, Locating: Does the author effectively engage the reader in the introduction, teach them what they need to know about the broader topic, and locate their own view in an abbreviated thumbnail sketch of the critical conversation?
- Accuracy & Understanding: Does the author clearly grasp and convey to the reader the nuances of the critical conversation they are entering? Is conversation presented well for an external audience that might not have read either the articles or literary work under discussion?
- Joining the Conversation: Does the author effectively distinguish their own point of view, substantially adding something to the conversation? Is this point of view clearly articulated at the start and filled in at the end of the paper.
- Organization and Style: Does the author write clearly and concisely, applying relevant lessons from our “Style” readings? Does the author incorporate at least one well-framed quotation from each critic? Are individual paragraphs cohesive, and does the author transition smoothly from paragraph to paragraph through carefully constructed transitions that bridge ideas and guide the reader accordingly?