Purpose
This exercise increases your ability to locate sources and use them to support a written argument. This exercise also reinforces skills of stating theses and forming and presenting arguments.
Background
Robert Harris’s novel Enigma is set against a background of actual historical events: Bletchley Park really existed and really was a massive but very secret code-breaking enterprise, one of its main targets really was the German Enigma cipher, etc. Harris provides very colorful glimpses of this background in the novel: how the characters live, the pressures they work under, and so forth. Your basic job in this essay will be to assess how accurately this background material captures the historical Britain of 1943.
In order to write this essay, you will need to learn something about British life and code-breaking in World War II. This is where library research comes in. To help you start this research, our class meeting on October 4 will be a library research workshop by Jonathan Grunert, one of the librarians at Milne.
Because this is a research essay, I expect you to use and cite external sources. While I am not dogmatic about citation styles, Turabian is a well-documented one if you want concrete guidelines. It is described in Milne Library’s excellent general guidance on citing sources (click on the “Chicago / Turabian” tab on the main citation page, then follow the “Turabian Quick Guide” or “Official CMS Style Quick Guide” links).
Activity
Write an essay of four to five pages in which you state and defend some thesis related to how some background element from Enigma compares to actual facts.
You may decide for yourself exactly what “background element” you want to work with. We will spend time in class on September 27 and October 2 generating possible topics.
You must use and cite multiple external sources in this essay. I expect that topics appropriate to the size of this essay would require four to six authoritative sources to cover well, although you can of course use more if you wish. Every idea taken from an external source should be identified by a short citation in the text; these citations should reference full bibliography entries (author, title, publisher, date, etc.) at the end of the paper.
You will probably need to order external sources through Milne Library’s Information Delivery Service (IDS). IDS is phenomenal in its ability to get materials for you, but some can take several weeks to arrive. You therefore must make your IDS requests early, and you must have backup plans in case they don’t all arrive in time for the first draft of this essay. In order to encourage early requests, you need to turn in a list of sources you plan to use by October 5. This list should contain at least the information about each source that you would need in order to submit an IDS request for that source (e.g., author, title, the publication it appears in or the publisher, the date of publication, etc.)
Follow-Up
As mentioned in the main description of the assignment, you need to turn in a list of planned sources by October 5. You may email me the list, or share it in a Google Doc; in either case, do it no later than 11:59 PM on the 5th.
We will do peer reviews of drafts of this essay in class on October 23. If you use Google Docs to write the essay, just be prepared to share the essay with the person you work with in the peer review. Please also bring your computer to class on that day so you can access other people’s essays online.
During the three days following the peer reviews, i.e., October 24 through 26, I will meet with you to share my thoughts on your draft and answer questions you have for me. You can make an appointment for this meeting via Google Calendar. Please make the meeting half an hour long, and schedule it to finish before the end of the day on October 26. So that I have time to prepare for these meetings, please share your Google Doc draft, or email me your non-Google-Doc draft, by the start of class on the 23rd.
Following the peer reviews and meetings with me, you’ll have a chance to revise your draft essay. Share your revision with me by 11:59 PM on November 2. If your second version is in a Google Doc you already shared with me for the first draft, sharing it again just involves emailing me a quick note that the document is ready for me to look at.
INTD 106’s “Self-Reflection #3” assignment involves revising an essay you write for some other course, and is due at about the same time this essay is. This essay would therefore be a logical one to use in the INTD 106 assignment, although of course you don’t have to. Should you want to use this esssay in INTD 106, you will need to do a bit of planning to be sure you have drafts and revisions ready by both my deadlines and INTD 106’s, suitable copies for INTD 106 (I think they want you to upload a Word document whereas I encourage Google Docs), etc.
Finally, recall that I grade things relative to what I expect you to be able to do on them. For this essay, I am expecting…
- A defensible thesis
- A convincing argument in support of that thesis, using appropriate evidence from external sources, with appropriate citations, as well as evidence from Enigma.
I expect to see these things clearly in the second draft, and signs that you are working towards them in the first.
In addition to the basic expectations above, I also expect that you will
- Turn in both a draft and final version of the essay; I generally reduce grades by four points (approximately two letter grades) if you fail to turn in one of these versions.
- Meet with me to discuss your draft; I typically reduce grades by two points (approximately one letter grade) if you fail to hold this meeting.
- Follow spelling, grammar, and similar mechanical conventions of Standard English closely enough not to distract a reader from your main ideas; I typically reduce grades by two points (approximately one letter grade) if writing mechanics interfere with understanding the essay.