Author and Purpose

Due: March 19 15% of total grade

Assignment Two: Spatial Narrative My Place in Space

In our past assignments, we discussed finding themes, or what can be called “dominant impressions,” that a writer expresses in music. Moving toward the next Unit, we will examine narrative writing, and the dominant impressions writers make through specific language. You will write a short informal narrative from which you will extend one dominant impression and write a more formalized personal narrative that integrates bits of research.

The purposes of this paper are the following:  to develop your abilities to discover, analyze, and compare/contrast various spaces/places you experience(d).  to engage in subjective and objective forms of descriptive essay writing.  to expand and show multiple perspectives on such spaces/places.  to make observations, connections, and disconnections between what you experience(d).

Assignment: My Place in Space

This assignment has two parts: Awareness of Space(s) and Awareness of Place

Part One: Awareness of Space(s) (The Body Narrative)

This narrative corresponds to your themes. In other words, your narrative should infer and refer to the three qualities about yourself that were excavated from prior writing prompts. Write a short narrative that explains how these themes (or impressions) represent you. The narrative must be 2 full pages.

Part Two: Awareness of Place

Use a dominate impression from the body narrative as a foundation; then, write a descriptive, researched narrative. This narrative should present how you are engaged in this space/place or how your dominate impression designates you in place. In other words, you are to discuss how such an impression creates you as a person, or how it becomes a part of your life. Find three qualities that illustrate this connection. (3 body paragraphs)

Choose carefully the qualities you intend to discuss. These qualities are sites (places) that are significant to you and directly impact you as per your dominate impression (space). It is important that you feel comfortable enough to expose such qualities for a reader in this course. Exposing such sites, through writing, provides you and your reader with a spatial awareness of who you truly are in that this task is not all about identity, but subjectivity as well. (We will discuss this part in class.)

Finally, you must incorporate works and/or quotes from at least four narratives (what is a narrative?) that deals specifically with your dominate impression based on how you intend to discuss its connection to you. The works you choose to include should either confirm current assumptions you have about your impression or offers an alternate, objectified perspective.

This assignment is intended to encourage analyses of narrative writing through close readings based on your own experiences as well as help you make real connections with outside works.