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

You have done this before. But ask yourself: are you simply describing what you see in the films or read in the poetry, or are you going deeper into analysis of what you read? Description is not what we’re looking for. We know you’ve done the reading (etc.), but we want to know what you think.

Your paper must be eight to ten pages in length for this essay. It 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:

Integrative Essay Checklist – winter

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 (“I’m tired of looking up; I want to look down for a change” from The Molly Maguires) 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 this integrative essays; it should reflect exactly the themes that excite you. Because it reflects your interests, locate the program materials that speak most directly and effectively to the theme of your choice. Use those materials! This essay provides 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.