Research Paper (1500 words)

Your work on the research paper will entail spending time in the library, doing research and documentation exercises, preparing annotated bibliographies, participating in individual conferences, and workshopping drafts. The purpose of this assignment is to demonstrate that you know how to find sources for a research-based essay, then construct a persuasive argument that uses quotations from those sources for support.

Choose a topic that you are truly interested in, and ask questions that you would like to have answered. Following some preliminary research, narrow your topic down, find a focus, and formulate a working thesis.

Choose one of the following topics. You may also make suggestions.

1. In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the monster's world view is shaped not only by his interaction with humans, but also by his reading. Examine his reading materials, such as Milton's Paradise Lost, Plutarch's Lives, and Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther. Choose one of the above texts, examine its literary and historical contexts and assess its influence on the creature's character.
2. Infant mortality rates were extremely high in the early nineteenth century. Between the years 1815 and 1817, Mary Shelley gave birth to three children, all of which died in infancy. Frankenstein was begun in 1816 and published in 1817. Is it possible to read Frankenstein as a narrative expressing her fears regarding birth and parenting? Nineteenth century first-hand accounts such as letters and diaries, and how-to-do books on parenting are a good place to start.
3. In the summer of 1816, Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Claire Godwin, and Lord Byron spent a wet and unseasonable summer together in Switzerland. Bored and in need of amusement, Byron suggested that they write stories of specters and ghosts. Out of that diversion grew Frankenstein, which was subsequently published in 1817. Examine the inception and development of the book. Begin with the varied "eyewitness" accounts of the summer and then move on to literary and historical examinations of the book.
4. Examine Mary Shelley's Frankenstein against the backdrop of the industrialization and scientific development in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century England. Can the book be read as a criticism of science? Is there anything in the book that suggests science can be a force for positive change? Answer with reference to either eighteenth and nineteenth century electrical research or the development and spread of steam engine technology.
5. Examine the ideal of womanhood and feminine behavior in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century England. Do Frankenstein's female characters conform to this ideal? Mary Wollstonecraft's feminist essay "Pernicious Effects Which Arise from the Unnatural Distinctions Established in Society" in A World of Ideas or Rousseau's "Discourse on Inequality" might be good places to start.
6. Examine the historical development of a literary genre: the Gothic Novel. Begin with the first English specimen of the genre, Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto. How does the Gothic Novel change? How does the notion of the sublime influence and change Gothic novels? Edmund Burke's "A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful" is a good place to start.
7. Examine the history of Frankenstein in Film. To do so, you could compare and contrast a specific scene in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein with its rendition in other Frankenstein movies. Remember, to examine all films goes beyond the scope of your research paper. Choose 3 to 5 films which you believe have cinematic and historical significance. Formulate a thesis for your paper. Also, examine the theses of the movies.
8. During the early twentieth century, western scientists embarked on aggressive programs of atomic and eugenic experimentation. Can Frankenstein be read as a comment on these real-life events and their consequences? Answer with reference to both Hiroshima and the Holocaust.
9. Mary Shelley's book bears the title and subtitle Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus. What is the Prometheus myth and what is its significance both for the book?
10. Bill Cosby has written six books, among them Fatherhood where he discusses the joys and frustrations of raising his children. He has also given controversial lectures questioning many adults' fitness to be parents and has drawn much fire for that. How do Mary Shelley and Bill Cosby address the issues of parental responsibility and abandonment in their works? Do they have the same views?
11. Examine Frankenstein in the context of European overseas exploration. Can the book be read as a critique of colonialism? Answer with reference to seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth century European efforts to collect and classify exotic plants, animals, artifacts, and other objects.
12. In the last decades, animal cloning and genetic engineering have caused much controversy and triggered hot debates. Can Frankenstein be read as a comment on this modern, perhaps forbidden, use of science? Although you might choose to define "cloning," bear in mind that this is not merely a paper on cloning. Rather, its intention is to interpret Frankenstein as a commentary on this controversial science.