Guidelines for Papers

Students will write six 2-3 page essays linking the course readings and lecture materials with the practical sessions of the course. These papers are intended to get students to reflect critically on their direct experience with different kinds of media.

Papers should be typewritten, double-spaced (12-pt. Times font preferred) with name, date, course number/name, and title (no cover page necessary), and no more than 3 pages long. This may seem short, but means that you have to organize the points you want to make and be selective.

Students will write six 2-3 page essays linking the course readings and lecture materials with the lab activities. For each assignment, some sample paper topics will be posted to the website. These are not intended to limit the range of possible topics. Rather, they are intended to suggest the kinds of subjects the student might wish to address. Part of what I will be assessing will be your ability to identify a meaningful topic and to develop it in sufficient depth and detail. A good paper will have:

1. a clearly defined topic AND argument: Your essay should stake out a claim about one or another aspect of media. Your topic should be expressed in a clear thesis sentence, which I would like to see printed at the top of the paper. Your topic should be something that is open to dispute, that is, not a factual statement (i.e. Thomas Edison invented the light bulb) and not a statement of opinion (i.e I hate Thomas Edison), but an interpretive or argumentative proposition (i.e Thomas Edison's Laboratory provided the model for the contemporary think tank; or, Thomas Edison's inventions fit within a larger pattern of technological innovation in the late 19th century; or Thomas Edison promoted his light bulb through images that fit within the larger tradition of "technological utopianism" in American thought.)

2. a direct relationship to one or another of the readings or lectures: Ideally, your first paragraph will describe one or another claim made in the readings and then develop your thesis in relation to it. You want to make sure that you clearly understand what the writer is arguing. You want to summarize and quote the argument directly. You want to make sure that you are focusing on a salient point in the argument, not a throwaway detail. You want to make sure that this claim by the writer is relevant to the argument you want to make. You may draw on the author elsewhere in the paper as well, and probably should, but I want to make sure that from the start, your paper is engaging with the course concepts and materials.

3. an organizational structure which allows you to develop your ideas in a systematic and logical fashion: Often, MIT students write their papers stream of consciousness style, finding their thesis somewhere near the end of the process, and turning it in. In an age of word processors, you have no real excuse for not shuffling around paragraphs, once you find your thesis, so that it structures and guides your argument throughout. You also don't have an excuse for not rethinking your key propositions if need be once you figure out what your paper is about. In an ideal world, of course, you would think through the essay and outline it before you start writing.

4. clear support for each major proposition you make: Think of a simple and basic formula. For every claim, 1-3 concrete bits of evidence (quotes from the reading, facts, relevant stories, etc. which illustrate your main ideas). For every example, some analysis which shows why it is relevant to the case you are trying to make.

5. a clear conclusion which puts the whole into perspective and tells us why what you are arguing matters: This is the part students at MIT often miss. They sometimes see the exercise as one of describing some aspect of contemporary media, often in the breathless prose we come to expect from corporate prospectuses or WIRED magazine reports. And, then, they end without putting it into some larger social or cultural context. Remember this is a humanities course even if we are talking a lot about technologies. We still want to know the human consequences of media. So, as you write, imagine that I am sitting over your shoulder and every time you finish a paragraph, I look down at you sneeringly and say, "SO WHAT!" You had better be able to answer that SO WHAT question and if you can't, you haven't thought through your subject enough.

6. some concrete substance you want to communicate:. I don't necessarily expect outside research for each paper. I'm not listing how many sources you need to have. You can write directly about the experiences we have in the labs -- the films we see, the radio shows we hear, the demonstrations we observe -- and you need to support your claims about them with some concrete examples. That means you probably need to be taking notes during the lab. You might also focus your paper around some aspect of the media you know well -- your favorite video or cd-rom game, a website you designed, a UROP project you are doing, your fandom, etc. But, you could also select something you want to know more about and hit the books -- or Netscape -- and find out something you didn't know before. If you use outside sources, use a recognizable citation system. If in doubt, follow These examples.

   Henry Jenkins, TEXTUAL POACHERS: TELEVISION FANS AND PARTICIPATORY CULTURE (New York:Routledge, 1992).

   Henry Jenkins, "Acting Funny" in Kristine Karnack and Henry Jenkins (Eds.), CLASSICAL HOLLYWOOD COMEDY (New York: American Film Institute, 1996).

   Henry Jenkins, "Going Bonkers!: Children, Play and Pee-Wee," CAMERA OBSCURA, March 1991.

   Henry Jenkins, Lecture Notes, Sept. 5 1997.

   THE OFFICIAL HENRY JENKINS FAN CLUB HOME PAGE (http://henry3.i.love.me/students.suck-up) -- NOT A REAL WEBSITE!

7. originality: While I want you to anchor your discussion in course concepts and materials, I also want to see signs that you've reflected on what you are saying and contributed some of your own thinking to the conversation. Maybe that's a helpful way of thinking about what you are doing -- engaging in a conversation in which the professors and the essay writers have spoken first and now it's your turn to respond. You don't want to bore us by totally repeating what's already been said, but at the same time, you want to make some connection to what we've said so it keeps the flow of the conversation intact.

8. appropriate spelling, grammar, and syntax: Use the spell checker but don't be dependent upon it. I don't expect really formal writing. You can be a little funky, loose, and personal. I love that stuff. But you want to write clearly, not mangle the language too much. You won't offend me if you use slang or "naughty words," if they are appropriate to make you point. Listen to me lecture sometime. But, I do want to have some sense that care and thought went into your writing. And, of course, I do want to know that you aren't plagiarizing.

mehopper@mit.edu