Description
Academic Argument Assignment (1100-1200 words)
This assignment asks you to imagine that you are a researcher, responding to a CFP or “Call for Papers” on the topic of the novel, Tomson Highway’s Kiss of the Fur Queen. Your response to the CFP must propose an original argument about the novel that emerges from the scholarly state of knowledge and utilizes a close reading of a passage from the novel (you may choose the best passage) as evidence for your claims. This is not an essay. You will be graded based on the appropriateness and ingenuity of your argument, the accuracy and clarity of your state of knowledge, and the persuasiveness of your close reading. Remember the “Read Aloud Protocol”: you want me to be able to “use” your Academic Argument Assignment in an efficient way, where I can understand how the argument emerges from the state of knowledge and how the close reading proves the argument.
CFP (Call for Papers)
“New Approaches to Tomson Highway’s Kiss of the Fur Queen”
Tomson Highway’s Kiss of the Fur Queen is generically complex. Highway weaves different genres such as myth and oral storytelling into the genre of a novel; he brings together fiction and nonfiction elements; and he unites the historical with the fantastical.
This CFP solicits short (1100-1200 word) arguments about the role of generic experimentation in Kiss of the Fur Queen. Why does Highway mobilize different genres and how do his genre choices reinforce other themes in the novel?
Scholars have explored these questions from various angles, but there is still much left to explore! Your goal is to create an original argument that responds to the state of knowledge on the novel, and that brings a new perspective to the ways in which Highway experiments with genre.
• Your response should begin by establishing a state of knowledge, orchestrating the arguments of Sam McKegney, Nancy Kang and Lindsey Claire Smith (1-2 paragraphs). Don’t forget to include the limits of knowledge or a “knowledge deficit”
• Next, you should introduce your argument as the logical outgrowth of the state of knowledge (this could be the first line of a new paragraph, following those paragraphs that describe the state of knowledge). What did these scholars miss that you will focus on? Which of their ideas will you expand upon?
• Next, you should perform a close reading of a passage from the book that illustrates your argument in action. This might be 1-2 or 2-3 paragraphs, depending on what you need!
• Finally, provide a brief conclusion that gestures to the larger project (perhaps an entire academic article!) that you think could come out of this preliminary work
