Assignment
Instructions: This essay is based on Rae Yang's memoir about coming of age during the Maoist years in China and living through the Cultural Revolution. Born in 1950 in the PRC, Yang later came to the United States for graduate study and pursued a college teaching career. This memoir is an account of her experiences and those of her family during some of China's most turbulent years. Further instructions and guidelines regarding the essay can be found on the next page.
Prompt: Based on the evidence gathered from Spider Eaters, what were the purposes and methods of the Cultural Revolution? How did it turn out in reality? What impact did it have on the lives of the participants? Some additional questions to consider and possibly incorporate into your essay include: How did the Cultural Revolution affect family dynamics, and how does Spider Eaters show this? What does Yang's individual experience of the Cultural Revolution tell us about large-scale events and perhaps mass hysteria?
Text Book: Spider Eaters: A Memoir by Rae Yang.
Guidelines:
1. Papers must be at least 1,000 words (approximately 4 to 5 pages) in length; they must also be typed, double-spaced, and use 12-pt. font.
2. In the upper left-hand corner of the first page, write your name, followed by the assignment date on the next line, followed by the name of the class on the line below that. Begin writing your paper on the same page below the course name after skipping one line.
3. A new paragraph should be indented; do not skip an extra space between paragraphs.
4. Page numbers must be included (use the Insert tab for Word documents).
5. The questions or prompts for the essay are designed to allow you to focus solely on the book that you were assigned without the need to consult other sources. HOWEVER...
6. Use the textbook for historical details surrounding events mentioned in Yang's book. Remember that any information you get from another source, including the textbook, that is not common knowledge must be cited. You must acknowledge the sources of quotations, paraphrases, arguments, and specific references that you use. However, you do not need to cite sources for information that most people would generally consider common knowledge (e.g., the fact that Lincoln won the Presidential election of 1860). Conversely, you must cite your source for any claim that appears to contradict common knowledge-for example, that Lincoln won the southern states in that election (since he wasn't even on the ballot in most southern states, this claim is controversial and must be supported). And you must cite matters of interpretation, such as an author's ideas for why Lincoln appealed to so many voters. If you are in doubt about citing "common knowledge" information, err on the side of giving a reference; even unintended failure to cite your sources constitutes technical plagiarism.
7. The only acceptable citation style for sources other than the book you were assigned is Chicago Style. For information about how to cite using this style, please refer to http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/DocChiNotes.html (use the menu on the right to see models for different types of sources). If you use footnotes and give full citation info at first mention, then you can abbreviate the next time it is used and you do not need a "Works Cited" page.
8. Every paper should have many citations to the book that you were asked to read. Without citations to specific page numbers, we have no way to check the references you are making to the author's ideas or arguments. Given how many times you will need to cite this specific work, you can just put the page number in parenthesis in the text. This applies to quotations, paraphrases, arguments and specific references. Sometimes the author revisits an argument or issue, in which case you should include multiple page numbers separated by commas (7, 46), or talks at length about a single issue over several pages, in which case you should include a page range (84-89); occasionally, both would be called for (14-15, 162).