Prompt: Write a 500-750 word essay (2-3 double-spaced pages) in which you respond to the authors so far this semester (Phillis Wheatley). This is a little more formal in tone that the weekly responses.
Ways to Expand a Reaction:
Broaden
Contextualize: Look more into how a text interacted with its own time. Read up a little on the historical moment that the author found themselves writing in, and discuss how the text responded to that moment.
Connect: Compare or connect one text to another. Is there a pattern you’re seeing here? How do they compare in terms of prophetic style or content?
Connect across time: what does this text from 200+ years ago have to say to us today? Pick a contemporary author or speaker and discuss how they relate to this earlier author.
Deepen
Focus: Go deeper into a text. Take your idea and find more examples of it or find a passage or two and explain how it works in more detail.
Explain: Maybe you’ve already explicated a passage in your response—explain in more detail why it’s important, or why you had that reaction.
Tips
Since this paper is 500-750 words, you’ll need to be pretty efficient about it. That’s about 3 pages, which is not a lot of space once you get into working through some examples. So make your intro focused and get to work. Remember that I’m your primary audience here: I’ve read the texts and I know the history. So you only have to remind me of the background, not explain it—unless it leads directly to a point you’re making. Similarly, you don’t have to summarize the texts. Just give me examples.
A successful response to this assignment is going to have a short intro and clear thesis that tells me pretty directly what you’re going to be talking about. It will then give me some specific examples from the text or texts you’re discussing, and explain those examples, showing how this thing works. It will wrap up with a short conclusion that reminds me what the big picture of the paper is.
use these links as sources:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/phillis-wheatley
https://www.masshist.org/database/viewer.php?item_id=771&img_step=1&mode=dual#page1
https://www.masshist.org/database/772
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2h19t.html