WORKING SEPARATELY

Where we are at this point:

Teams have committed themselves to a common NDT. Each student now works apart from his or her partner to write an individual comparative essay. The individual comparative essays are written completely separately, with no communication, to insure independence of analysis. Once this step is complete (you have submitted to me and I have signaled to the team that both have completed JES09) you will meet to write a joint statement about these two essays and, with that, you will be finished. It is probably the last thing you do for this class since there is no final. The joint segment will score best if the two ICE on which it is based are thoughtful and show independent thought. Keep this in mind when writing your ICE.

Basic relationship with partner:

You are not to communicate with your partner at all about your ICE (essay). You might need to discuss meeting times for JES10. The JES10 meeting becomes possible once I have both ICE and tell the team that.

Steps for this assignment (workflow and check list)

BEFORE SUBMISSION OF JES09:

• You might want to set up a JES10 meeting time early. It must be no sooner than 12 hours after both JES09 are complete and accepted by me so you might have to work with promises from your partner as to when he or she will be finished with JES09. (The 12 hours is to give you a chance to read your partner's essay.) The JES10 meeting is usually completed by students in less than 3 hours. Most students take around 2 hours. Some can finish in less than an hour. A few go over 3 hours, taking a couple of different meetings to complete the work. Plan accordingly.

FOR JES09:

• Read the specific instructions for ICE content that are at the bottom of this page.
• Review the basic rules page of this course, and of course remember the rules "all about love all the time" and "average Joe" and "equal interest in both countries".
• Review the Form-JES09 because it asks you to break up your essay into segments. It is time efficient to know what those segments are before you start writing.
• Review your NDT.
• Research and review premodern texts and films as necessary to complete your essay. (Regular year students must do research along specific lines. Summer students can do such research; it will probably make for a "meatier" essay but they are not expected to do so because of severe time constraints.)

FOR JES09 SUBMISSION:

• Completing the form by pasting in the essay into the various segments.
• Complete the character list based on the names you actually ended up mentioning in your essay
• Complete the bibliography, writing abstracts for outside secondary sources (that is, not the primary sources which will be the two films and the two premodern texts and perhaps other films and premodern texts) that you judge were important for the final form of your essay
• complete and recheck the content on the form
• Using the form, submit your ICE ONLY TO ME (so your partner does not see your essay) an individual comparative essay. Use as the subject line: EA105_JES09_groupletter studentnumber_LASTNAME_classname

POST-JES09 SUBMISSION:

• After submission wait for TWO emails from me. The first will be when I ACCEPT (or not) your essay. The second will be when the last of the two essays in the team is accepted—I then send out a simple email with GOTOJES10 in the subject line (no email content).
• After you have received the GOTOJES10 email and definitely not before, promptly send your JES09 to your partner so he or she can read it before the JES10 meeting.
• Meet at your convenience for the JES10. Regular year students: consider using the RRR period, either meeting ahead of it earlier enough to finish during it, or starting with it. In either case, I am there to resolve issues and immediately answer questions you might have in completely the tricky JES10.

The basics of what you are doing in this step

Writing your individual comparative essay. This requires following the instructions on this page and might require rewatching all or portions of the films. For regular year students it also includes outside research. The individual comparative essay is not long, but should be very well written and grounded in careful, disciplined thinking.

Specific instructions for ICE content:

List of Components

Your ICE might have a title, will of course have the essay itself, must have a bibliography, and must document (footnoted) information and idea sources. Be very clear in your essay what are your ideas and what are those of others. Reread my academic honesty page where I identify these rules: "context is king" "over the shoulder rule—fair and accurate use of resources". I will fail you for the essay or perhaps the class if you plagiarize ideas from others.

About documentation (footnotes)

Documentation can be footnotes or in-line citation (parenthetical citation) but should NEVER be both.

This in an upper-division class; I expect proper notation style. Include page numbers in your documentation, not just the title of the work! (This can be difficult to do with web pages. If you think I will have problems finding it, add something informal that helps such as "towards the middle" etc. If you use exact words, I can search that at this end.)

I usually begin reading your essay from the bibliography. I consider your sources. Then, I explore how you used your sources. I do this by typing in the last name of the citation listed (or other appropriate word). Therefore, in order for me to quickly determine whether and where your source is used in your essay, you must use the last name (or other proper choice), and spell it accurately, in your in-line citation or footnote. Here's an example from a recent JES:

SUBMISSION WAS: When the inclination is violated, strong uneasiness will be experienced" ("Confucian Ethics and Emotions" 358)

SUBMISSION SHOULD HAVE BEEN: When the inclination is violated, strong uneasiness will be experienced" (Wang 358)

OR, IF MORE THAN ONE WANG RESOURCE WAS USED: When the inclination is violated, strong uneasiness will be experienced" (Wang, "Confucian Ethics" 358)

Below is a screen capture of how I do this search (in this case for an author whose last name is "Brunette"), to show why I need consistent use of the last name:

About the bibliography

There must be a bibliography even if it is just the two films and the two premodern texts.

This in an upper-division class; I expect proper notation style.

NOTE: If the source is online, it MUST have a working URL that points to it. Include this under the regular citation, starting with "ACCESS:"

NOTE: Elsewhere I invite you to add a paragraph after any citation that helps me understand its role in your essay.

About the essay itself

Some essay format and style rules:

Use MLA style or any consistent style but don't worry about minor details. DO spell key names, places, terms, titles and such correctly!

Specific requirements: Use fonts, font sizes, margin choices and line-spacing choices that read well on screen.

Proper management of titles (important): Film titles can be like this "English Title" or like this English Title but always include country and year in every mention of the film, like this English Title (country, year). If you want to include the title in the country's script, include a romanized version of it, like this Departures [送り人, Okuribito] (Japan, 2004). Articles should be like this: "Title" and books should be like this: Title.

Proper management of character names (important): Please use the same name each time and use the name that matches the character list (which is usually the first name), even if this is boring and redundant. Overuse the name. Too many "he"s and "she"s make it very hard for me to quckly skim around in the essay.

Essay content requirements:

Your essay must stay within your NDT boundaries and work towards the goals of this class. This is non-negotiable. (Students sometimes write, in the middle of their ICE that they want to change the NDT. Don't bother me with such an email, please.) In fact, your essay is in part a test to see if you understand the methods, themes and goals of the course well enough to employ them.

Your essay should carry out a comparative analysis that reveals something not immediately obvious to the casual observer and relevant to the themes and discussions of the class, namely cultural differences among East Asian countries (not "East vs. West"). It must, of course, be about "love" in some way. COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS IS NOT THE SAME AS SIMPLY IDENTIFYING DIFFERENCES AND SIMILARITIES. You need to discuss the significance of what you identified, within the themes and goals of this course. That is the heart & soul of the essay, not finding just differences and/or similarities.

Your essay will score much better if it references the assigned premodern reading to some degree, in a useful way. What "role" do premodern core values have or not have towards those differences? Please remember that the "role" premodern values might play can be slight or not, can be supported or challenged or ignored.

Word count is strictly regulated.

Your "essay" will feel to you, almost certainly, incomplete and unfinished. You have spent quite a bit of time with your films, and there is a lot to cover given that you have two films and premodern materials to reach towards. The topics are broad, ambiguous, and offer up lots of interesting sidepaths. But, this is not a normal essay. It is a well-developed presentation of your key ideas, with just enough argument to make it credible but not enough argument to rise to the level of a standard essay. Keep to a single topic and put other observations outside the body of the essay.

The form specifies which sections are counted towards the word count.

MSWord counts the words in footnotes; it doesn't count the words in its margin comments tool. Keep that in mind.

How I check your essay length. If you appear to be close to the minimum or maximum, I will "eyeball" your footnotes and so some simple math. If, after that rough estimate, it is still hard to tell whether you might be below minimum or above maximum, I'll paste your essay into a new doc and erase the footnotes.

Your essay must be at least 1100 words long (footnotes not included). Your essay cannot be more than 2000 words long, period. No exceptions. Around 1600 words is my preferred length more or less. (HowTo Wiki: Avoid Going Over an Essay Word Limit.)

To satisfy this very difficult word requirement—one that is necessary for the success of JES10 and that is much needed by me to grade in time the enormous amount of material that is generated by the class at the end of the term—think not just of what you want to say but, rather, steer you investigation into areas that can be said in that space. It is best to pursue ONE idea. Your goal is NOT to write an impressive essay; it is to produce insights (that is, beat the "average Joe" rule) that your partner will read and which will become the basis for the FJS (Final Joint Segment). Impressing me with how far you went with your ideas works against you, grade-wise, for the ICE, as does taking time to argue thoroughly. If you have other exciting things to say, you can suggest the beginning of them in footnotes (or, better, margin comments on MSWord) but do not complicate the main essay by mixing them in there. Avoid at all costs extended reports, encyclopedic overviews, detailed argumentation, lengthy examples, summaries. You probably will need examples and they probably will need to be "set up" a bit, but keep this AT A MINIMUM. This is not an ordinary essay. It is a presentation of insights, interpretations and such. Stimulating observations and suggestions for interpretation should be your goal. You can write a longer essay, but do this only when you are running with a great idea, and the idea clearly requires that length. If possible separate it from the basic essay and put it in an "Additional Thoughts" section that your partner will not have to respond to. Do not stretch out a paper or allow a paper to be unnecessarily long because it hasn't been edited or rewritten tightly. Control over your ideas is one of the grading criteria of the individual essay.

Important reminder: Your essay should remain aware of films as films (multimedia objects that are collaborative projects with commercial interests and paying audiences), not just as narratives (though of course that is important). Try to stay attentive to, and refer to when useful, cinematography and other sorts of visual elements/messages, use of music (including lyrics) and other sound elements/messages, costume, body language, and so on, as has been discussed in class. And please remember, you should stay aware of "levels"; that is, consider the values of the films characters of course, but also consider what seems to be the attitude of the director and what the film might be suggesting unintentionally about prejudice or particular ways of viewing things.

Regular-year students must do outside research (see below), to sharpen and make more sophisticated the content of their essays. Summer students are invited to do so if they can manage the workload. Summer ICE that have clearly benefited from research are more likely to score well, and such research is expected of any "A+" JES09.

About discipline and clarity. It is your job to be clear, not mine to untangle your expressions. This writing assignment has a built-in tension: on the one hand, I want you to show discipline, focus, and commit to positions rather than making vague statements and you are graded on this ability to discipline your analysis; on the other hand, I don't want you to make sweeping or easy conclusions that give the appearance of control and conclusiveness. I would rather you stay tentative because it is the more credible position in most cases. Sometimes it is hard to achieve clarity when trying also to keep ambiguity, or suggest possible conclusions rather than assert definitive conclusions. Try to solve this problem. It is important for your credibility and I am watching to see if you understand what are reasonable limits to your assertions and conclusions. I am not asking that you understand, even understand only sort of well, a particular cultural situation. I am asking that you develop methods that enable the ability to notice new things, to know where caution is wise and so on. So beware being rhetorical and strongly conclusive except where warranted. I am comfortable, very, with conclusions that have caveats or are otherwise tentative ("It seems to me ...", "At least in this case it seems ...").

About NDT boundaries. I am also comfortable with you mentioning ideas and directions that are outside your essay boundary. ("If there were space, I would also to explore this odd similarity I found between the two films [stated in a phase or sentence here] but I suppose I should save that for another essay ...." or "I noticed that green seems to be a key color in this film and definitely carries meaning. If I had the space I would explore that a bit more ...") The reason I say this is because the individual comparative essay is quite short—because of JES10—and many of you will worry that you will look to me as if having not thought much about your films because of all the things you noticed, thought, concluded or whatever that don't fit into the length of your essay or the boundaries of the NDT. Phrases like the above allow you to signal to me further interesting thoughts you had that doesn't really work for the essay at hand. And this helps with clarity by clearing the table for your main points and marking explicitly additional items that we can notice but not get distracted by. Beware trying to look good on your essay by writing at length or bringing many ideas. The purpose of your essay is to create an effective document for JES10: targeted, specific, simple, so that the two of you can exchange ideas. You are graded not on writing an essay that shows off your broad analytic powers; you are graded on generating interesting ideas that others can think over.

About research:

The role of research for the ICE is NOT typical. You are NOT presenting or engaging the ideas of others or collecting and coordinating information. Research is used, on the one hand, to make more sophisticated your understanding of the premodern texts you are using and the films you are interpreting. Then, on the other hand, research on topics of love are meant to STIMULATE your thinking. They provide start points and such. You can use articles and books on "love" that is general or modern or "Western" or Asian, whatever. Just be aware of what you are using and whether or not it is relevant and if you use "low" love sources (that is the chemistry of love and so forth) be careful not to slip into making "low" love analysis.

Research should be grounded in credible academic sources. The sidebar definition states what I consider is credible and gives some important online resource links.

Research must have an active role in the key areas of the essay. Avoid at all costs just tacking in an idea from an article to have something. Find excellent articles, read them in full, and allow them to give sophistication to your ideas. If you worry that how research helped shape your ideas isn't immediately apparent by my simply reading the essay, footnote to explain or write something after the entry in the bibliography. Begin such a paragraph with "How this source contributed to the ICE:"

Types of research: Sources that help you prove your thesis are not particuarly welcome; this is not an exercise in making a strong argument. We are in the business of drawing out interesting aspects of a film and so forth. Research that helps you understand your films or directors or audience recpetion, that helps you understand premodern concepts, that helps you understand current cultural attitudes towards "love" among those in the target audience of your films, or that give you a more sophisticated understanding/view of some aspect of love—any of these or combination of these is welcome. One or two sources read carefully for its full ideas (this might be a full article, or a chapter of a book, or a extended section of a book, etc.) is definitely more valued by me when grading than many sources used not for the thesis of the source but for data or a single idea. Long biblio lists makes me worry that you haven't yet found a good thinking direction for your essay and I will read with that in mind to see if it is the case. By the way, successful JES10 tend to be those that are based on two ICE (two jES09) that have distinctly different interpretations. Outside research helps you challenge the viewpoints and assumptions of this class and helps, therefore, in developing a well-defined interpretation that isn't just an extension of course comments, lectures and such.

Students worry about using the ideas of others in their essays because they are often told "do you own thinking" and feel that essays where the ideas of others play a large role reduce their grade, that the grader feels they have borrowed ideas rather than created their own. This is a real problem but it has real solutions:

a) When writing, but very clear and up-front about the source of the ideas on paper. They might belong to another, they might belong to you, but often they are hybrid. In this case use writing formulas such as "X suggests that .... , and that makes sense to me, too. I would only like to add that perhaps in this case .... " or "The main character, Z, in film Y appears to be possessed by a strong mimetic desire (as Girard defines the term)." or "The main character, Z, in film Y is sad .... because he misses his mother. That, anyway, is scholar B's interpretation. I find this convincing." In all these cases you have attributed a portion of the assertion to the proper source but you have been transparent about your relationship to that idea. You have accepted someone else's interpretation, but only partially, and extended from it (or adjusted it in other ways, or you used the idea (not originally meant for your film) to interpret a film character's actions, or you have wholly accepted and used the idea of another but after critically evaluating it, and reassuring the reader that the idea has gone through your critical consideration before being accepted.

b) Have good, strong, interesting thoughts (or even just one thought / concept / approach) of your own making. The ideas of others cannot "take over" a paper if you also have ideas.

Research start points:

• Please know that only web sites that are academically credible for the ICE are those with a specfied author who can be independently confirmed as an expert in the film. Wiki, etc, are therefore disqualified and their use as key points in your essay might negatively affect your grade.
• We have a strong film studies department. Expect the library to have interesting books on specific directors, "Asian films", etc. This should be your solution to getting past all the web sites of dubious quality that are about Asian films. (The other topics: cultural, psychology of love, etc. are easier to research using traditional research methods such as JSTOR and so on.) Here's an example (and note the subject heading you could click on to find more resources):

• JSTOR, Project MUSE, EBSCO (online repositories of academic articles)
• ebrary (online academic e-books)
• My eBrary folders for this class:
  • East Asia Romance
  • Cinema (All Asia)
  • Japanese culture
  • Chinese culture
  • Korean culture

Grading rubric

When I have time, I read like this (I check formal matters and stuff before that, this is just about the reading process itself):

• I go to your bibliography and consider what is there and how it might contribute to your essay. (This step is treated differently in the summer—I only do this if it seems that outside research has risen to the level of being considered seriously. Further, lack of effective use of such materials has a downside in the regular year but has no negative impact in the summer, unless academic dishonesty is evident.)
• I go to where you used your sources in the essay and compare your use of it to the original source. (For summer, see the comment just above this one.)
• I read your final paragraphs.
• I read the conclusion portion of the body of your essay.
• When I think I have clarity, I now read the essay start to finish. If I'm still unclear, I kick around in the character lists, summaries and so forth. However, fundamentally your essay should be very easy to understand. Write it that way, please.

I will read your ICE primarily for this:

Does it provide interesting, credible insight (not immediately obvious observations, interpretations, conclusions) on cultural differences or subtle, less evident similarities between your two countries, with an eye to the status of the specific traditional core value(s)/world view that is part of your NDT?

Essays should not try to do too much but rather be built around one or two good ideas. Idea-rich papers with ideas not thoroughly argued trump papers that take safe topics that can be relatively easily argued. Avoid sweeping characterizations or over-reaching conclusions. Some of you will find that your "credible conclusions" aren't very startling (such as, "Film One seemed to uphold Confucian values in many ways; Film Two seems less interested in doing so"). Try to get beyond such conclusions into more nuanced, tentative or specific territory, something others would not notice.

In the case of the regular academic year, how the research improves the essay is an important point. This is helpful for summer essays but not expected. Be sure to review the Academic Honesty page to avoid the use of sources in a way that I judge to be dishonest. My guidelines are more narrow than what might be considered, generally, more or less acceptable.

Then, the ICE must stay within the above-stated boundaries and must follow the above-stated rules. Quick check list:

• Is academically honest (no plagiarism or other forms of academic dishonesty when working with sources).
• Follows course rules and pursues course goals.
• Strictly stays on-topic (NDT).
• Strictly stays within the word limit.
• Is disciplined in method (per the approach used in this class) and expression (organizing and rewriting for clarity).
• I check for good form (citation form, and such) but this doesn't become a grading factor until a certain level of messy / casual form occurs. However, you MUST follow the title management and character name management requirements.
• Timely submission.