Writing About Movies: Arguing with Sources

Assignment: For our finalproject this semester, we will create an extended argument incorporating appropriate source materials in a formal collegiate format. This type of writing is what will be expected of you in your writing assignments in most other undergraduate classes: not only are you expected to be able to understand facts found in outside source materials, but you are expected to discuss what those facts mean and use them to support your own claims—in effect, you create an argument with a thesis statement for any college-level research paper.

Length: 5 pages minimum; no more than 8 full pages(Works Cited page not included)

Sources:Minimum five (5)separate secondarysources.

▪ No more than one (1) internet source(Databases are okay)

▪ At least four (4) sources procured through our collegiate library resources

▪ Generally, sources should be academic and scholarly in nature. Examples of scholarlysources include

o –scholarly/academic journals articles and books

o –major daily newspapers (Washington Post, L.A. Times, etc.)

Essay Assignment:

You are to generate an essay that is both argumentative and expository in relation to a topic of your development and investigation of the course topic: Writing About Movies.One key is to choose and develop a topic you are actually interested in writing about. In a nutshell, you must choose a film to analyze and write about—just as we’ve been doing all term—,but this time you get to select the film and use secondary sources to develop and support your argument.

Potential Topics (these are film I think will likely work well for this sort of project):

Spike Lee, Do the Right Thing(1989)