Topic: American Concept of Nuclear Family
Order Description
I have attached my previous essay in which my grade was a D. Hopefully you can help bring that up. Please see the uploaded file as it will give you an idea of what the professor is looking for. His comments are at the end of my essay.
Part 3. In a 1200-1500 word essay,
Identify your topic and the representations you will use.
Describe each representation.
Analyze each represenation.
Offer some concluding remarks about the importance of these for the human condition.
The final paper is the culmination of the course. It should be a finished product, with a coherent thesis, which is supported by relevant materials and a believable argument. It should contain the appropriate number of sources, properly cited, with a Works Cited or Reference page that matches what is cited in the paper.
I will score Stage 3 as follows:
Introduction: The paper has an introduction which clearly identifies the topic to be discussed, has a clear thesis, and which gives a plan as to how the thesis will be demonstrated and what the result is expected to be (10 points)
Descriptions: The paper offers a sufficiently detailed description of each of the three areas being investigated relevative to the thesis, with proper citations and relevant quotes from appropriate materials (15 points each, 45 total)
Analysis/Argument: The paper offers believable analysis and argument about the impact or effect of the areas explored on the thesis given (25 points)
Style: The paper is written in a style appropriate for a college class in the humanities, with approproiate grammar, spelling, paragraph structure, etc. All quotes are properly cited. The citation page is properly done, and matches what is in the paper (no extra entries on the citation page) (20 points)
These are to be Word or Rich Text Format documents (MAC users use Rich Text Format, please), saved as your last name, first initial and FP (SmithJFP). Any other file title loses you 5 points. If you simply paste your work into the text box, or send a file I can open but not edit, I will create a Word document for you – and charge you 10 points.
Below are comments from my professor.
COMMENTS: This represents some progress, but not really sufficient progress. If this were to be a paper about how American Beauty represents the decline of the American Nuclear family, then it would really be off to a great start. Sure, the sweeping claims about what a proper family should be would need a whole lot of support (and you would have difficulty finding it from academically appropriate sources, since most of those sorts of claims have been widely debunked in the social sciences, in terms of the actual impact, and in the philosophical literature for their moral impact – but who knows, maybe you could find something?!). But at least you would have something pretty solid.
Unfortunately, though, that’s not really what we are after here. If you want to discuss representations of the alleged decline of the American nuclear family in the late 20th and early 21st century, that’s fine. But your thesis needs to address that, without adding the extra layer to it (again, not because that’s a project doomed to fail, but because that’s a project for another class, like PHIL 305, Contemporary Social Justice Issues). And you need two more disciplines.
For what you have, your best bet would probably be something like art and music – find a song about the decline of the family and a piece of art about it. But if you know of a piece of literature, that would be fine, too. You could probably apply the work from those two scholarly sources you found to a piece of art or music in much the same way that you might apply it to the movie. This would give you something that works in the context of the current project.
