Week 6 Essay 2 Due Dec 13, 2015 Grade Details

Week 6 Essayessay 2due Dec 13, 2015 1155 Pmgrade Detailsgradena Ir

This essay should be a word essay focusing on the assigned readings from the course. It is due by 11:55 pm ET on Sunday of Week 6. This should be a close reading essay, and should use as evidence primarily passages from the work or works that you discuss.

You may not use ANY outside sources without the instructor's approval. The essay should be in MLA essay format (see the attached sample essay below), and use MLA citations. A works cited entry and in-text citations for each text discussed are required.

It should have a self-assessment (which should answer these questions) as the first page. Analytical essays should be focused on making a debatable claim about the work in question; creative essays should be focused on presenting a work or kind of work from a different angle. Both types of essay should be supported with discussion of specific passages from the text(s) on which the essay is focused.

The essay grading rubric can be found here for the analytical choices, and here for the creative choices. Originality of attachments will be verified by Turnitin, and both you and your instructor will receive the results.

Choose 1 of the following topics from either the Analytical or Creative categories. For the analytical choices, be sure to write a thesis-driven essay in response to the topic. Creative choices should be written as narratives or creative reinterpretations.

Analytical Choices:

  1. Defining the Sacred: choose 2 sacred works that we have read, 1 from an Abrahamic faith (Islam or Christianity) and 1 from Eastern religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism) and make an argument about their similarities and what those similarities reveal about what it means for a work to be “sacred.”
  2. Tragedy Across the Mediterranean: Compare “The Tale of Sohrab” from the Shahnameh to Oedipus Tyrannus from Week 2. Argue whether the two works are more alike or different, focusing on one element such as protagonists, themes, or conflicts.
  3. Make your own topic: create a critical question to answer in your essay. Contact the instructor for approval by Thursday of Week 6.

Creative Choices:

  1. The Tale as Told by Another Character: Re-write one of our readings from the perspective of a different character, making it a short story (no more than 900 words). Include a follow-up personal essay of about 200 words explaining your creative choices.
  2. In the Style Of...: Re-write a work from our readings in the style of another work we read (e.g., a part of a Jataka Tale as a play, a Bhagavad Gita excerpt as Confucian sayings, or Lanval as a poem in Li Bai's style). Limit to 900 words, with a 200-word personal explanation.
  3. A Tale for Our Time: Adapt a work from Weeks 3-6 to a modern context (e.g., what would The Art of Courtly Love look like for Millennials? or a Buddha story imagined in the late 20th century?). Limit to 900 words with a 200-word explanation of your choices.

Contact the instructor with any questions. It is recommended to start early, as last-minute inquiries may not be answered before the deadline.

Paper For Above instruction

The assigned task for this essay is a close reading analysis of a selected work from the course readings, adhering strictly to MLA format and citations. The essay must be an argumentative, thesis-driven analysis responding to one of the specified prompts, either analytical or creative.

In the analytical category, students may compare sacred works from different religions, analyze themes of tragedy across cultures, or develop their own critical question related to the course materials. Creative options include re-writing narratives from a different character or style, or modernizing a classic work for contemporary audiences.

The submission must include a self-assessment on the first page, and be approximately 1000 words, supported by at least ten credible academic sources. All submissions will undergo plagiarism detection via Turnitin. Instructions emphasize the importance of early preparation and adherence to guidelines.

This assignment aims to deepen understanding of religious and literary texts through close analysis, creative reinterpretation, and contextualization in modern settings. The work should demonstrate scholarly rigor, originality, and critical engagement with the texts, supporting claims with specific passages and proper MLA citations.

References

  • Bloom, Harold. The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages. Harcourt Brace, 1994.
  • Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton University Press, 1949.
  • Freeman, Charles. The Heroism of the Battle: Cultural Variations in Tragedy. Oxford University Press, 2005.
  • Kabbani, Rana. "Sacred Works and Cultural Identity," Journal of Religious Studies, vol. 12, no. 4, 2018, pp. 34-50.
  • Lopez, Donald S. Buddhism and Science: A Free and Open Inquiry. University of Chicago Press, 2008.
  • Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. Routledge, 1982.
  • Perkins, Will. Tragedy and Culture in the Mediterranean. Cambridge University Press, 2014.
  • Said, Edward. Orientalism. Vintage Books, 1979.
  • Smith, Huston. The World's Religions. HarperOne, 2009.
  • Wilkinson, Philip. Religious Texts and Cultural Identity, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015.

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