Anne of Green Gables” + Identity: How does Anne Shirley’s search for identity and belonging resonate with the challenges faced by young people in finding their place in the world?

Research Project

The culmination of your work for the semester will be a researched text-based study of a significant question relating to children’s/YA literature. The goal for the paper is to answer a specific, complex question that you pose related to the stories and issues that we’ve discussed in the course. I encourage you to bring in other stories that you’re interested in. Your research will start with major journals and books on children’s literature, but you may also need to include some historical or cultural research to contextualize your work. You will choose your topic in consultation with me. Here are some ways for you to start thinking about what interests you: how an issue appears in a work that we haven’t read in class by an author we have encountered or works across several texts; why a story addresses a certain interest or concern; to what extent does a story depend on the interaction between fantasy and reality; in what way and for what purpose a story reflects or comments on a particular social condition; what effect imagery or language has on a narrative; and so forth.

Research Paper: 7-9 pages (double-spaced)

Examine and contextualize the factors that are involved by your central question through close reading of a primary text or texts and integrated references to appropriate secondary sources. Your thesis will be the complex, modulated answer to your question that best accounts for the factors and evidence.