Write an essay of 4-5 pages (c. 1200-1500 words) in which present and evaluate two sides of an issue that may be formulated by reference to works in the current module. To choose a topic you will need to identify:

• an issue and

• two works from the Industrial Revolution module that you can draw on to present opposing sides of the issue.

The two works you refer to might themselves provide arguments on the two sides of the issue, but that is not necessary. It is enough for a work to be usable that it provide material that could be used to construct such an argument. For example, although Hopkinson does not argue explicitly either for or against the production of furniture in factories, material from his autobiography might be used by someone to construct an argument on one side or the other.

The issue you consider might be one that could be stated independently of the specific works you refer to—as is the case with the example above—but it might concern one of these two works (or even a third work). For example, Hopkinson gives reasons for his eventual success but it might be that material in another work could be used to construct an argument that suggests he is wrong about why he succeeds.

Your evaluation of the two sides of the issue should be an assessment from your own point of view of the relative strength of the arguments that you consider. Part of that might be the consideration of replies one side could make to the arguments of the other. Whatever form it takes, your evaluation should be a substantial part of the paper, roughly equal to your presentation of one of the two sides (and thus roughly between a quarter and a third of the whole).

However, don’t feel that your evaluation needs to present your final judgment about the issue. You need only address the arguments that you consider in the paper, and you shouldn’t move much beyond them. There might be other arguments you don’t consider—e.g., ones that couldn’t be based on works in this module—that you see as crucial for deciding the issue. It would be fine to note that such arguments exist but you shouldn’t devote much space to developing them. Don’t think of this as a paper on the issue: it’s instead a paper on two of the ways that works in the module can be used to address this issue.

There are many ways in which an essay like this might be organized, but one straightforward approach would be to begin with a brief description of the issue, then present each of the two sides in turn, and conclude with your evaluation of their relative strength. The most likely variation on this would be to present the dispute as a longer series of exchanges (e.g., an argument, an objection to it, a reply to the objection, and a response to the reply). But if you adopt the latter approach, be careful to present each step at great enough length both to make it clear and to support it by textual citations.

Even though most of the works in this module are in the readings book, you should still be careful to give full references to the works you cite (as well as page references for your specific citations). There is no obvious right way to cite something like the readings book, but that makes citing it a good exercise in thinking about what is essential in a citation. Imagine someone finding your paper laying on the ground in a different part of the country and think what information they’d need in order to track down the book whose pages you are citing.

Wednesday 2/22 is a lecture day, so I won’t meet you in class. If you want to hand in a hard copy, you can catch me at the lecture or drop it off at my office (Center 200H) or in my box in Center 207. But I encourage you to turn in the paper electronically, either as an e-mail attachment or in the drop box of the Blackboard site for our section. (If you want a specific time for the deadline, you can count it as midnight.)