Integrative Essays provide an opportunity for you to demonstrate your intuitive, analytical, and empathetic understanding of the program themes and materials. For this assignment you will need to draw from each of the following types of presentation used in the current period of study:

• Films
• Lectures
• Seminar notes
• Songs
• Irish language
• Drama
• Poetry
• Texts

Understandably, however, it would be impossible to cover everything (i.e., every film, each lecture) presented during the period. Your instructor considers all mediums to be equally important, and she or he will be looking for examples drawn from each one. You are also encouraged to draw on outside information such as research or your own personal passions if you choose, but you must focus mostly on program materials.

Your paper must be at least five pages in length for the two Fall Quarter papers. These essays must be typed, double spaced, stapled, with 1″ margins, and in a reasonable font (Times New Roman 12). Each assignment includes an Integrative Essay Checklist to which you should refer.

To start with, making sure to cover each medium of study as mentioned above, go through your portfolio and jot down any lecture, seminar, language, and film notes, important quotations (“But remember that words are signals, counters. They are not immortal. And it can happen – to use an image you’ll understand – it can happen that a civilisation can be imprisoned in a linguistic contour which no longer matches the landscape of… fact.” from Translations) literary passages, song lyrics, personal thoughts, comments from seminar, or other elements that seem important to you.

Think of the items on this list as “dots.” Using your list of dots, work on developing a theme — a kind of golden thread — that matters to you. Your job will then be to connect the dots in some coherent order. You may wish to prove something, or argue a position, or you may prefer to show how a particular image or idea plays out in the materials presented in this particular period. In the conclusion of your paper, you should show why the theme you chose matters to you. Ask yourself, “How can the reader know it was I who wrote this paper?” It is important to reflect on how you, at this point in the program, are processing into your life and worldview what you are encountering in this section. Every major point needs an example and must have a specific reference drawn from program materials only.

Only you can write these integrative essays; they should reflect exactly the theme that excites you. Because they reflect your interests, locate the program materials that speak most directly and effectively to the theme of your choice. Use those materials! These essays provide the opportunity for you to develop and showcase your best creative and academic writing skills, so plan ahead so that you can revise as many times as you need.

For your second (five-page) integrative essay in fall quarter, please change your theme from your first essay, keeping in mind that the period of time covered by the conquest and famine is 1200-1860. The basic idea is for you to discuss and give evidence of the cultural conquest of the Irish people.

Intro: discuss the theme on its own, without using any examples or dictionary definitions. How do you understand the theme?

Body of the essay: Use each paragraph to select an example or two that illustrate your theme.

You don’t need to include whole poems or all the song lyrics or a long description of a scene in a film; just a few lines. Remember that your faculty has already seen the films and read the poems and sung the songs, right alongside you. We want to know how your chosen theme appears to you in a song, a film, a poem, a play, a lecture, a seminar discussion, in your study of the language, and in the texts. You may use more than one of each category (such as two or more poems or several lectures or whatever), but use all the categories: oral and literary. Please don’t privilege only the texts.

Second-to-last paragraph: How do we know it’s you? What drove you to explore this theme and why is it important to you? This paragraph is about you. Of course you may use “I” and “me” in your writing.

Conclusion: Sum up what you’ve written. Refer to the introduction, remind readers of what you’ve told them, but do not add any new information.

Do you need a bibliography? You do not. We already know all your in-program sources. If you use an outside source, that’s fine, but you don’t need to use anything other than what we did in class.