Secondary Sources and Writing Sample

[mobydickpic]

My writing sample provides a close reading of three primary texts in 20 pages. This endeavor makes it difficult to go particularly deep into the existing scholarly conversation on any one of these texts. However, I feel that the close reading is robust, and there's some reference to secondary sources (mostly 21st century monographs and chapters) related to the texts that I am discussing, as well as overarching theoretical lenses from two or three contemporary scholars who speak to many of the ideas that I am highlighting in these novels. Do you think it's more important to conceptualize a project and prove that I am able to read closely/write decently, or to zoom in onto one text and go deep into other scholars' readings of it? Any success stories related to writing samples that relied primarily on close reading that situated it into a broader theoretical landscape but lacked a totally comprehensive literature review?

Edited November 19, 2019 by mobydickpic

[HenryJams]

8 minutes ago, mobydickpic said:

Do you think it's more important to conceptualize a project and prove that I am able to read closely/write decently, or to zoom in onto one text and go deep into other scholars' readings of these texts? Any success stories related to writing samples that relied primarily on close reading that situated it into a broader theoretical landscape but lacked a totally comprehensive literature review?

What I'm about to say is speculation; I'm not in grad school, nor am I on an adcomm.  Other people can and probably will give better advice.  

I think it's probably more important to zoom in on one text and go deep into other scholars' readings.  I would think that demonstrating the ability to engage with primary and secondary sources would likely be looked on favorably by adcomms.  But I'll add two things:  (1) a paper's thesis should dictate the depth of its engagement with secondary sources (i.e., a paper centered on close reading will likely not need to engage as deeply with secondary sources); (2) even in 20 pages it's pretty difficult to engage deeply with a large number of secondary sources.  

If you're concerned that readers will be turned off by less engagement with secondary sources, you could always explain in your introduction that, because of the depth of the close reading you're doing, the paper's scope will be necessarily limited as far as its dialogue with other scholars' works.  I think adcomms would be able to read between the lines and recognize that you're saying you can't engage with 900 secondary sources and do the close reading you want to in just 20 pages.

I'm sure it'll turn out awesome no matter what you do.  Good luck!

[Glasperlenspieler]

20 hours ago, HenryJams said:

But I'll add two things:  (1) a paper's thesis should dictate the depth of its engagement with secondary sources (i.e., a paper centered on close reading will likely not need to engage as deeply with secondary sources); (2) even in 20 pages it's pretty difficult to engage deeply with a large number of secondary sources.  

Yes and no. Having read an ungodly number of articles in literary studies, I would say that a good essay on a literary text does both. The key is perhaps not to "engage" with a large number of secondary literature, but to clearly situate your reading in the context of the existing scholarship. For the body of the article it's common to structure it around a close reading, but the footnotes and brief framing comments make it clear where this reading converges and diverges with other readings. In this way, you may not be directly arguing for or against existing scholarship, but you are making it clear where this arguments fits into what's already out there. You might directly engage with only one or two other critics at key points, but you can easily make reference to 10, 20, 30 other scholarly works by briefly commenting on them in the footnotes in a 20 page essay. The merit of this style of argumentation is that it keeps front and center what's really important: your (hopefully original and compelling) reading of the text, while also doing due scholarly diligence and making clear that your reading is rooted in but also going beyond existing scholarship.

NB: This would be a paradigm for an article in a good peer-reviewed journal. A writing sample may not need to fully fulfill this, but the closer you can come to approximating it, the more successful you're likely to be.

There are, of course, other ways to go about writing an essay in literary studies, but I would say that the above is an important form that one will have to become accustomed to in order to succeed in academia. 

[mobydickpic]

5 hours ago, Glasperlenspieler said:

Yes and no. Having read an ungodly number of articles in literary studies, I would say that a good essay on a literary text does both. The key is perhaps not to "engage" with a large number of secondary literature, but to clearly situate your reading in the context of the existing scholarship. For the body of the article it's common to structure it around a close reading, but the footnotes and brief framing comments make it clear where this reading converges and diverges with other readings. In this way, you may not be directly arguing for or against existing scholarship, but you are making it clear where this arguments fits into what's already out there. You might directly engage with only one or two other critics at key points, but you can easily make reference to 10, 20, 30 other scholarly works by briefly commenting on them in the footnotes in a 20 page essay. The merit of this style of argumentation is that it keeps front and center what's really important: your (hopefully original and compelling) reading of the text, while also doing due scholarly diligence and making clear that your reading is rooted in but also going beyond existing scholarship.

This is so helpful, thank you. I think my next step will be more strategically using footnotes, rather than seeing direct engagement as the only way to merit bringing in secondary sources, but to bring in a strong overview of pre-existing scholarship on the text(s) I'm working with. (For this reason and a few others, I am also going to slightly expand my engagement with one of the primary texts, and shrink the other two).