Rough Draft

ENGL 1302 Fall 2020 Instructor: Dr. Ronald Gordon Essay #1 (Responsive) : Paradise Regained, Paradise Lost The prompt below is for an essay of a minimum of 500 words, consisting of what you think in response to the prompt. Feel free to draw on personal experience, family history, your education to date, the views of your peers, and, of course, the work to date in this course. This is not a research assignment involving the investigation, support, and citation of secondary sources. It is but the first of a series of individual and group assignments that will culminate in a major research-based essay at the end of the semester. Your response paper should, however, be organized around a specific thesis statement and logically structured. It should address each of the questions below in turn. Prompt Background In Notes of a Native Son (1955), the African-American novelist and essayist James Baldwin wrote that “the story of the Negro in America is the story of America–or, more precisely, it is the story of Americans. It is not a very pretty story: the story of a people is never very pretty.” If the discovery and settlement of America by colonists from the Old World (i.e. Europe) was evidence of God’s will made manifest, the establishment of a second, New World Eden, then the appropriate title of that particular story would be Paradise Regained. But that story is a mythic tale. The title of the historical narrative might well be Paradise Lost–through the Original Sin of slavery, beginning with the arrival in the Jamestown colony in 1619 of the first shipload of captive Africans. Questions 1. Did the Old World sin of slavery doom the embrace of genuine “diversity” in our culture down to our own time? 2. Is slavery only the most heinous expression of a much broader sin of exclusion and discrimination inherent in “the story of America,” beginning with the indigenous peoples as well as African slaves, but applicable to all the waves of immigration—nations, races, religions, ethnicities, and women—that flowed into the melting pot and became, at least for a time, “the other?” 3. Is disapproval, if not outright hatred of an unacceptable “other,” to whomever the term applies according to time and circumstance—a condition of acceptance as a “true” American? 4. If “discrimination” is both the recognition of and opposition to diversity, is there, in fact, “diversity in discrimination?” Due Dates First Draft: Submit to Blackboard no later than end of day Tuesday, 9/15 (daily grade of 100% for on-time submission). Final Draft: Submit to Blackboard no later than end of day Tuesday, 9/22 (15% of final grade in course).     Format   1. Online submission must be Word or .pdf file only. 2. Margins: 1 inch on top, bottom, and sides. 3. Font: New Times Roman 12 pt. throughout (no exceptions). 4. Spacing: Double space the entire paper. 5. Heading: Name, Dr. Gordon, assignment name, date in upper left (double spaced). 6. Title: An original title (not the title of the assignment) centered on the first page on the first line below heading, no bolding, no italics, no font change. 7. Page numbers: student’s last name and the page number in the header, right justified, not on first page. 8. Justification: Left, not full or right.  9. Staple all pages together. 10. Do not use a cover page. 11. Paragraph indentations: 1⁄2-inch. 12. Do not skip extra lines between paragraphs. Double-space the entire paper. 13. Do not use the first or second-person point of view (I, you, we, us).