Midterm Sample

Midterm Sample/Clarification
My meetings on paper topics revealed more misunderstandings of the midterm than I would have expected. 
Here is the text of the assignment, again:
As a springboard in this direction, your midterm will be takehome: 3-4 pages about one of the secondary articles, an article it cites, and an article that cites it. You should offer a paragraph précis of each article, and provide an analysis of the engagement of the one article with the other, and an argument about the conversation that takes place. Ideally, this is the conversation you will enter in your final paper.   As I explained, one or more of the articles can be a book.

Here is an example of the kind of thing I have in mind. Bruce Burgett, “The History of X in Early America” Early American Literature  44:1 (January 2009) pp. 215-225.

Cites Block, Sharon, and Kathleen M. Brown, eds. “Sexuality in Early America.” Special issue of The William and Mary Quarterly 60.1 (January 2003).

*Block & Brown’s introduction,  Sharon Block and Ruth Brown, “Clio in Search of Eros: Redefining Sexualities in Early America” The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 60, No. 1,   (Jan., 2003), pp. 5-12. Cites Edmund S. Morgan, "The Puritans and Sex," New England Quarterly, 15 (1942), p. 591-607.  

If I were doing the assignment, I’d summarize each separately, and then discuss the relationship among the three works, making an argument about the conversation they are in, and thus entering the conversation myself. You should begin your paper like a review essay, with full bibliographical citations for your three articles/books.  Here are the articles, for your review:
Download Burgett
Download Block and Brown
Download Morgan

*This is a bit of a wrinkle, b/c Burgett cites the whole issue, not a specific article.

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[The Gurgling Cod]

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