Literature
View the list of American Essayists. Select an essayist who wrote after the Civil War (note, the list includes some pre-Civil War essayists. Do
not select a pre-Civil War essayist). Search the internet for an essay by your selected author and read it. Compose a thesis that has a
persuasive, debatable claim about the significance of the message or theme in the essay or the success/effectiveness of the essay as a whole.
Summarize the essay in your intro paragraph, end the paragraph with your thesis, and be sure to include your three points of evidence in your
thesis statement. Cite the essay as you would any article on the internet as you examine your points of evidence.
Submission Instructions:
Your essays should be in MLA Style and approximately 1625-1950 words, not including the Work(s) Cited page. Meeting the minimum word requirement
makes you eligible for a C grade. Meeting the maximum word requirements makes you eligible for an A grade. As with most academic writing, this
essay should be written in third person. Please avoid both first person (I, we, our, etc.) and second person (you, your).
In the upper left-hand corner of the paper, place your name, the professor’s name, the course name, and the due date for the assignment on
consecutive lines. Double space your information from your name onward, and don’t forget a title. All papers should be in Times New Roman font
with 12-point type with one-inch margins all the way around your paper. All paragraph indentations should be indented five spaces (use the tab
key) from the left margin. All work is to be left justified. When quoting lines in literature, please research the proper way to cite short
stories, plays, or poems.
Should you choose to use outside references for prompt one or two, these must be scholarly, peer-reviewed sources obtained via the APUS library
(select Advanced Search and check the Peer Reviewed box). Reliable open web sources may be used for prompt three. Be careful that you don’t
create a “cut and paste” paper of information from your various sources. Your ideas are to be new and freshly constructed. Also, take great care
not to plagiarize.
Some Major American Essayists
Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790)
St. John de Crevecœur (1725–1813)
Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
James Madison (1751–1836)
Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804)
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
Margaret Fuller (1810–1850)
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
Frederick Douglass (1817?–1895)
Herman Melville (1819–1891
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)
Mark Twain (1835–1910)
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
H. L. Menken (1880–1956)
E. B. White (1899– )
Ralph Ellison (1913–1994)
Louis Auchincloss (1917– )
Betty Friedan (1921– )
James Baldwin (1924–1987)
William F. Buckley Jr. (1925– )
Gore Vidal (1925– )
Edward Abbey (1927–1989)
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968)
John McPhee (1931– )
Joan Didion (1934– )
Garry Wills (1934– )
Jonathan Kozol (1936– )
Barbara Ehrenreich (1941– )
Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002)
George F. Will (1941– )
Garrison Keillor (1942– )
Annie Dillard (1945– )
Dave Barry (1947– )
Katha Pollitt (1949– )
Bill Bryson (1951– )
Brent Staples (1951– )
Deborah Tannen (1951– )
Anna Quindlen (1952– )
Cornel West (1953– )
David Sedaris (1956– )
Malcolm Gladwell (1963– )