Overview
For this paper, include documented research. Use 2-3 peer-reviewed secondary sources. These sources should be traditional academic sources (a good scholarly book or article published in a recognized scholarly journal). Use 2-3 popular secondary sources.

Multiple Perspectives
The challenge in this kind of paper is to weave together seamlessly your thesis/claim and your secondary sources. The focus is still on what you are adding to the discussion, but your discussion takes place in the context of what other scholars have also been saying about your topic–or have failed to say about your topic. Avoid using secondary sources as “proof” that clinches your argument. Instead, use the secondary sources as starting points–ideas you will agree with and develop in more detail or in a different way or ideas you will disagree with, showing what is wrong with their idea/treatment as you develop your “corrective” reading of the text. Treat this assignment as a kind of scholarly dialogue with your sources or an exchange of ideas with the larger community of scholars.

Introduction
There are many ways to begin such a paper, but one standard way is to start with a brief summary of some of the various approaches to your primary text and, in a smooth transition, indicate where your thesis/claim/approach fits into that community of academic opinion. Or cite a certain approach to your primary text, plus what others have done along that same line, and, in a smooth transition, indicate whether your paper will agree or disagree with that approach and (briefly) why. In all cases, try to set up your thesis/claim as having some significance or in some way being a helpful way to understand the primary text better.

Body Paragraphs
In the body of your paper, develop your ideas in detail, noting occasionally when a secondary source has expressed similar or different views on that particular sub-point. However, do not take your primary text examples from your secondary source. Pick your own primary text examples and conduct your own reading. For instance, you might occasionally say that Smith has an insightful reading of a particular passage and paraphrase some key points Smith makes about it, but you should add something of your own or relate it to your reading of the primary text. In other cases, you will conduct the reading of the primary text examples without any reference to what secondary sources have said. However, if you touch on some aspect that your secondary sources indicate is highly controversial, you might need to slow down and cover in more detail some of the pros and cons before you move on with your own approach to that material.

Quotes and Summaries
Remember that whether you quote, paraphrase, or summarize a secondary source, you must document that source. Use standard MLA documentation (parenthetical in-text citation and Works Cited, keyed to each other). I also strongly encourage you to put the author’s name of an in-text citation in a “signal phrase” at the BEGINNING of borrowed material (page number at end in parenthesis), or at least begin with a phrase like “According to one study of the imagery, . . . .” That way you avoid reader confusion about whether you are developing your own ideas or working with your sources’ ideas.

Make sure that your paraphrases/summaries are in language VERY DIFFERENT than in the original and that your quotations are EXACTLY THE SAME as in the original.