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Integrating the Work of Others
Main Task
This unit asks for a specific genre, an academic essay of three to four pages, in which you will integrate your ideas with the ideas of others (in this case three other authors).
You need to work toward a goal of a balanced essay that uses your ideas, but also does justice to the ideas of the authors with whom your piece interacts (balancing between representing some aspects of the authors’ work while highlighting your thinking in relation to them). That is, rather than a pure summary of the essays or a pure reaction based only on your opinions and experiences, you are aiming for more of a “conversation” between you and the authors.
That said, however, you will need to choose a focus for your paper that may not (and probably should not) “cover” every point the authors make. Let your own interests, ideas, experiences, and reactions be the guides for what ideas in the published essays you choose to focus on. The center of your paper is, as in your Unit 1 paper (personal essay), you and your ideas, but this time you will also work on integrating your perspective with the different ideas offered in the texts in ways that will appeal to an academic audience.
An important goal of this assignment is to recognize complexity and show awareness of multiple viewpoints. With this larger goal in mind, you will work to achieve the objectives listed below:
to discover new insights in dialogue with a set of thematically related texts
to develop a larger idea that would add to the conversation purposefully
to fairly represent the texts’ ideas through summary, paraphrase, quotations
to tailor writing (content, form, style) to an academic audience
to cite the source texts in the text and in a works cited page
(Three to four pages – MLA style – 20%)
Source Texts
You will choose either:
two of the course readings listed below (two that have high overlaps and will therefore be most useful to you) and another source of your own choice to put in dialogue with the course readings
or
one of the course readings and two sources of your own choice
(second option)
You will bring ideas, examples, and experiences from the texts into your paper, summarizing, paraphrasing, or quoting directly from the texts. Remember that the texts will not make your point. They will provide examples, perspectives, and viewpoints so that you can make your point. It is important, however, that you understand the larger points made in your selected sources so that you will not misrepresent a source text by taking a quotation out of context.

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