Academic Writing Sample

Share a sample of your academic writing in the form of an essay (1500 words or 5 double-spaced pages, not including references or bibliography) that you submitted for a course or research experience. This can be past work or from the current semester. We are looking for an essay that presents a thesis and makes arguments in support of that thesis through analysis of evidence from one or more primary sources (archival material, film, interview, magazine, map, memoir, music video, novel, participant-observation/fieldnotes, philosophical text, poem, short story, social media text, television show, visual art, website, etc.). An essay that analyzes at least one primary source alongside secondary sources (scholarly books/chapters or journal articles) is especially well suited for this purpose. The essay should also include some form of citations and/or a bibliography. 

Your writing sample can be a complete paper or an excerpt that meets the length requirement. If you will be submitting an excerpt, it can be helpful to include a paragraph at the beginning that explains briefly what you write about in the larger work and where and how the writing sample that you’re submitting fits into the broader argument of the paper. That paragraph is included in the page/word count, but your bibliography or works cited list is not.

Please submit a “clean” copy, without comments. You are welcome to revise the essay according to any feedback you received, though this is not necessary.