Course Banner: English 102 OSC. Dr. Halbert. Summer 2020.

MAUS PROJECT

Overview

Given the critical acclaim of Art Spiegelman's Maus, there is a lot of academic work to find on the graphic novel. For this project, I want you to find an academic article using our library’s databases, read it, and complete the following tasks.

Find an article

In your preferred browser, go to https://library.mc3.edu/ and click the “login” link in the top right corner using your MC3 login.
In the “Discovery Search” box, type “Maus,” “Art Spiegelman,” “and” and any search term related to the book you want to learn more about (“father,” “generational trauma,” “fascism,” “visual,” etc.). Write down the term you used: if you don’t get the results you want, try a different term and record that term as well.
After your first search results appear, click on the box labeled “peer reviewed” so that a yellow check box appears. This filter will give you information about articles deemed academic by other professors who reviewed it prior to publication.
Skim through the results, noting which ones allow you to “access now.” Click on one that seems interesting and review the summary on the page. If that seems like an article you would like to read, click on “download.” Select “full text” and download the file.

Read and mark the article

Read and mark the article as you would any digital file for the course reading check. I will give you five points for showing this marked text when the assignment is due.

Answer the following questions about the article

(Please copy and paste these questions into your word processor and then type your answers directly under each question. Please format your response using the MLA Paper Format.)

What search terms did you use to get this article? Which combination led you to this specific article? What terms did not work well?
Give the full MLA citation for the article. You can use the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL)’s MLA guide for the formatting of an academic article found through a database. Make sure you correct any capitalization errors, use a hanging indent, double space the entry, and italicize the journal title and database title.
Using your preferred search engine, search for information on the author(s) of the article. What background do they have that legitimizes their authority to speak on the graphic memoir?
Write a paragraph summary of the article on your own: do not use AI to generate this response or copy and paste the abstract/summary found in the library database about the article.
Use an AI chatbot to generate a summary of the article. Copy and paste it into your answer here. List the AI chatbot you use.
In your opinion, is the AI’s summary better than yours? What did it include that you did not? What did you include that it did not?
Restate the author’s thesis about Maus and write a personal reaction to the thesis. This reaction should be between four to seven sentences long.
Write a sentence with a quote from the article that uses a signal phrase (properly punctuated) and gives a proper MLA parenthetical citation that refers to the article as you listed in your MLA citation above. Comment on why this quotation was worth sharing in terms of your response to the article in a sentence or two.
Scan the works cited for the article. Identify one article that, just from the title, could be good further reading on your specific interest in Maus and give the proper MLA citation for it.

Submission of Response

Post your response as an MS Word file to the “Maus Project” assignment by the assigned date and time. If you need to export your file as an MS Word file and are not sure how to convert it from your preferred word processor, use a search engine to find out how to “convert [name of your word processor] to MS Word file.”

This response is worth 20 points in addition to the separate five points for marking the article.