Gender and Contemporary Society
Order Description
Instructions:
1. Write a short essay (750-900 words) in response to the prompt below.
2. Keep in mind that it will be graded based on the following criteria:
a. The essay should respond to the prompt question fully, specifically
and accurately. In doing so, the essay should demonstrate your
comprehension of the readings, key course concepts, and
information discussed in lectures and sections, by drawing on those
course materials to support your argument.
b. The essay should be well written. It should make a coherent logical
argument, with a thesis statement and supporting reasoning.
Sentences and paragraphs should be organized so as to support
the logical development of the argument. The essay should include
complete sentences, correct grammar and spelling, and
appropriate punctuation.
3. Submit the essay through D2L no later than Monday, November 7, 5PM. It
must be submitted in Microsoft Word, double-spaced, using 12 point Times
New Roman font with 1-inch margins.
Prompt:
Read the essay by Katheryn Edin, entitled “What Do Single Mothers Say About
Marriage?” (This is the assigned reading for Wednesday October 26). As you will
see, Edin has a particular take related to what we have covered in class related
to marriage.
Write a short essay in which you identify and describe Edin’s project and
argument.
The project is the purpose of the essay: what topic does the author investigate
or discover? (Recall lecture topics on October 31.) What questions does Edin
pose? What new approaches or perspectives does Edin contribute to
understanding welfare reform, single mothers and marriage?
The argument is the claim the author makes about the topic, PLUS the evidence
or reasoning they bring to bear in support of that claim. (Other terms that mean
the same thing as claim are “thesis” or “the main point.”). What is Edin’s main
point? What reasoning does Edin offer, to help us to see and understand the
thesis, to persuade us of this main idea? Are there some key sub-arguments that
take us step by step to the larger claim?
Hints for reading and writing:
Edin’s essay is well organized, straightforward and clear. They lay out their
project in the opening section, (on pgs. 388-89). The essay has subsections with
titles that indicate the topic of each section. They offer a clear review and the
impact of their argument at the end of the essay (397-400).
After careful reading, outlining, and notetaking, you are ready to write. Your
essay should present the authors’ project and argument in your own words. Use
short quotes from Edin’s essay as evidence to support your own claims about it
Note about citing sources: You do not need to use any sources other than the
Edin’s essay itself, but are welcome to include references to lecture or the essay
“The Marriage Cure” by Katharine Boo but are not required to do so. You can
use a very simple citation method: simply put the authors name and page
number from which you are quoting or paraphrasing in parenthesis after the
quote or paraphrase.
On Plagiarism:
What is plagiarism and why is it important?
In college courses, we're continually engaged with other people's ideas: We
read them in texts, hear them in lectures, discuss them in class, and incorporate
them into our own writing. It's very important that we give credit where credit is
due. Plagiarism is using other people's ideas and words without clearly
acknowledging the source of that information.
To avoid plagiarism, you must give credit whenever you:
• Use another person's idea, opinion, or theory
• Use any pieces of information (for example, facts, statistics, graphs, or
drawings) that aren't common knowledge
• Use quotations of another person's actual spoken or written words
• Paraphrase another person's spoken or written words
For More Info:
https://www.library.arizona.edu/help/tutorials/plagiarism/index.html