Hi Class,

I hope that you are well. Four things to discuss:

1–The final day to turn in work for my class will be Monday, May 25 at 5pm. This is a strict deadline. Please contact me if you issues with this time/date.  The research essay and the final exam will both be due on this day and time. Can you turn it in early? Yes, you can turn it in early. In fact, I would appreciate it if you could turn it in early–via email.

 

2–Credit/No Credit option. The following is from an email I received. I think this link has been emailed to you as well: https://www.cuny.edu/coronavirus/credit-no-credit-policy/student-information/

 

3–We will have a short class on Monday and Wednesday of next week (May 18 and 20). No new material will be discussed– these classes are optional. In these short classes, I will spend a few minutes going over the final exam–which I will post on Sunday night. Please copy and paste the exam into a word processing document; type the answers and send the file to me via email.

 

4–I  provided a student example (on The Intuitionist) on how to incorporate research articles into the thesis and method. But it seems that I may have unintentionally given students the idea that they must duplicate this type of thesis. The main object of this paper is to research and argue for how ethics is used in a short story. The evidence that students bring into the essay should support their ideas on ethics in the story. Don’t force the story to support an article.

Here are the directions from the assignment details:

Specific Directions: Students are to analyze one or two short stories from an ethical standpoint (using our handout on Five Types of Ethics). Students are also to incorporate outside research that helps them explore ethics and their selected short story. Students should consider, especially, what characters decide to do in moments of stress. Therefore, students should select characters and scenes in which important events occur. When characters make decisions, that is when we can make a claim that they are acting according to some ethical principle. For example, does a character act to help others or herself or nobody? What forces are acting upon a character to act/react in a certain way?

So, when you are writing your own thesis and method, make sure the emphasize the story, characters, scenes, ethics, and decisions. The research you bring should support (or act as counter claim) your ideas.

You do not have to pit two articles against each other in a battle. You can simply have an article reinforce your idea about how ethics works. If you can’t find an article about your story or about your author, you can find an article about the type of ethics you are dealing with and have that article speak to the type of decision that a character makes. Also, you do not have include two articles in your thesis and/or method. You can mention one or none. It is up to you. I think that a research paper has to make use of the research, so I provided a model of how to do so. But it is one model. There are millions of possible thesis statements that could work.

Review the three different examples in the post below.

Email any questions

Best,

Sean