Thesis Statements Activity

Please go here first.

Then, please edit the following thesis statements to make them more specific and well-qualified. (Qualifying a statement clarifies what it is and is not about).

Angela Carter's "The Tiger's Bride" updates the Beauty and the Beast tale type for the modern era in the areas of romance/love, acceptance of appearance, and transformation.

Although both the modern Once Upon a Time and the older Grimm's version of the Evil Queen share unreasonable motives and techniques to hurt Snow Whiter, the modern Evil Queen in Once Upon a Time exercises the theme that people are not all bad through past history and future efforts to redeem themselves.

Reading Quizzes and Other Class Work Grading Protocols

Overall score rubric

Check +: Excellent job. You went above and beyond the expectations for the assignment. Your analysis is tight, your thoughts original or complex in some significant way. Your examples are killer. You put your heart and mind into this.

Check: Good work. You completed the assignment to its specifications.  Your thinking is mostly logical, and you provide some examples from the reading to support your ideas. You may not have gone above and beyond, but you really did a fine job.

Check -: The work is somehow incomplete. Either you did not answer the question appropriately, you misunderstood it, or you did not do the pre-work (reading) required to answer it correctly. 

Titles

It's important to remember that your essay needs a strong title. 

There is a general formula you can follow to create solid academic paper titles, as well as some general guidelines about titles that should give you some clues as to how to craft yours.

Rule 1: Your title should essentially be your thesis statement, albeit condensed to its most essential parts. In other words, your title should give your reader a clue as to what the main purpose of your paper is.

It should also usually include the title of the fairy tale you are analyzing, and the author of that fairy tale.

Example:

Yours, Mine, or Ours? Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, and the Ownership of Fairy Tales

Rule 2: If you are writing about a work of literature (or art, or a film, or a scientific phenomenon, or anything really) you should include the name of that work of literature in the title, and most of the time the author as well.

Example:

Poisoned Apples and Mean Mirrors: Reconsidering the Wicked Stepmother in Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarves

Rule 3: This rule goes after Rule 2 for a reason. While it is necessary to include the thing you are focusing your paper on, you should not let that thing alone be your title. The reasons for this should be obvious: if you call your paper "Cinderella" you are basically saying that it is, in fact, Cinderella. It is not. What about Cinderella are you trying to say? The answer to that question should be your title.

Example:

Upward Mobility and the American Dream in Gary Marshall's Pretty Woman

*Remember, Pretty Woman is a Cinderella story

Rule 4: When considering how to "sum up" your paper in your title, try and think of several words or a brief phrase encapsulate the main idea of the paper. You will combine this phrase with your subject (in this case, the fairy tale and it's author).

Example: From Naive Girl to Ferocious Wolf: Little Red as Feminist Hero in Once Upon a Time

For additional support on title creation, I recommend this Wiki How, which is actually pretty solid and helpful. Just don't read the bad title suggestions in the comments.