From the beginning I've been told that I need to spend a little more time in the actual text to make sure my argument is well-grounded in proofs from the actual play. In order to better fulfill that requirement, I've gone through my outline and either removed or edited every main point that I felt could not be sufficiently supported by direct evidence in the text. While doing this I found some new proofs that supported my argument in new ways, but I did have to get rid of some things that I realized were pretty subjective in my argument.
Another improvement I have made is actually including some of the social proofs in the paper itself. Before this, I've just been using the material I've found as idea starters or personal encouragement or things like that, but now I'm planning on including in the paper quotes from a former high school Shakespeare teacher of mine, and an email response from the director of last year's BYU "family" production of Merchant. My former teacher shared her opinion on the racism in the text, how it teaches lessons appropriate for high school classrooms, and she even shared some tips on how she teaches it.
As far as publishing, some realistic options for publication are in the BYU English Symposium or the Criterion. There is also this blog which is accepting guest posts right now actually.
Another thought I have had is the NCTE journals, like the English Education one, or probably just the English Journal.
I think publishing in the BYU English Symposium would be an easier route, as the avenues to get there are more practical since we're students here.
ReplyDeleteBut also posting on that blog as a guest is a great idea since you might get contact with many people really fast.
I presented in the BYU English Symposium last year and I would really recommend that people take the opportunity to share their papers in this way. I think it's a little easier to get your paper accepted to the symposium than in Criterion, but submit to both! You never know what will happen.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you have a great way of revising your main points. I think I'm going to use a similar method to revise the main points of my paper as well because I don't want to include anything that doesn't have a tie to the text.