The Nature of Love

Apply Your Chosen Tools

This is the capstone English course. If you followed a
traditional sequence, it might be the last undergraduate course you take, or
the last English course you take. This final project gives you an opportunity
to demonstrate and synthesize what you have learned through your studies to
raise your writing skills and practices to a new level.

For this assignment, you will create a persuasive rhetorical text that applies your chosen rhetorical tools to a specific target audience in one of three
different forms. The purpose is to
provide you an opportunity to demonstrate your mastery of the rhetorical tools
studied throughout this course and prior classes in English, rhetoric, writing,
and communications.

Select your general topic in Week 2. Any topic that is a
matter of public discussion may be considered. In Week 2, you will also examine
the intra-disciplinary
discussion of the primary disciplines shaping your topic. In Week 3, you will
study the inter- and extra-disciplinary or public debate
on your topic. In Week 4, you will choose leading or seminal texts relevant to your
topic. While working on these assignments, develop your topic into a thesis. This
will assist you in developing your final assignment.

In addition to selecting your topic, you will also select an
appropriate genre for your final project. This selection should flow logically
from your analysis of debates in the field: if all major public debate in the
field occurs through, for example, passionate editorials, writing a highly
academic research paper may not be appropriate. Feel free to adapt one or more
of the formats or genres used in the Week 4 examination of influential texts,
if that is most fitting. For example, a student writing on social justice might
borrow from Thoreau’s essay “On Civil Disobedience,” while a student seeking to
expose an accepted practice as unethical might echo the savage satire of
Swift’s essay “A Modest Proposal.”

Finally, determine what constitutes appropriate support in
this project. Some projects will require considerable research, which will
appear in the form of citations, or through the prose cadences and metaphors
used, echoing specific earlier influential texts; for example, King’s speech,
“I Have a Dream.”

The assignments in Weeks 1 through 4 are meant to provide
you with the support for your final paper, so refer to these assignments to
gather information and citations for the final written assignment.

Use the following frameworks as guidelines and starting
points:

Select a topic
that is the subject of public debate. Examples might include the following:

·
Climate change
·
The nature of representative government
·
What is love?
·
Ethical behavior in a changing world
·
Responsibility of the developed world to the
developing world
·
Abortion
·
Balancing multiculturalism with a specific faith
or tradition
·
Another topic, as approved by your instructor

Identify a thesis
relating to your selected topic.

·
This written work should be the culmination of
your previous weeks’ work.
·
The work should demonstrate a heightened
awareness of your writing and reasoning developed through the Week 1 essay.
·
The work should demonstrate familiarity with the
major disciplines shaping understanding of your topic, developed through the Week
2 paper.
·
The work should show mastery of your historical
context, developed through the Week 3 paper.
·
The work should position itself in relation to
the major texts in the field. Familiarity with these major texts was developed
through the Week 4 annotated bibliography.

The project should also borrow rhetorical techniques and
approaches from the appropriate disciplines, address traditional pivot points
in the debates, and incorporate key elements of major texts. In doing the
latter, you should build your ethos through demonstrating understanding of
these major texts, answering their weaknesses, and applying their valid
reasoning in new ways.

Option A:

·
Write a
1,400- to 1,750-word research paper, or traditional essay on the subject.

·
Develop your selected written work to
support your thesis and topic, and the elements noted above. Information from
your Weeks’ 1 through 4 assignments should be included in your written work.

·
Incorporate
at least six supporting credible sources.

·
Format
your paper consistent with MLA guidelines.

Last Completed Projects