CRITERION 10: DEPTH (typical feedback: go deeper, more!, report vs analysis, superficial, shallow, obvious, summary)
To download my handout on Depth in pdf, click here.

KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A REPORT AND AN ARGUMENT.  

The purpose of a report (or a review, lecture, or encyclopedic entry) is usually to inform the reader about their subject.  It may call for a breadth of information: a general summary of the subject, a run-down of the most prominent work on that subject, a lesson in large-scale historical contexts, an array of related points of interest.  None of those items has any place in an undergraduate argumentative academic essay in the humanities.  Material included to provide breadth does so at the expense of depth: the argument becomes shallow as a result, with too little room to achieve the requirements of the assignment.  If you include items that add to breadth at the expense of depth, it will not only ruin your argument, but will also signal to your reader that you have failed to understand what a logical argument is at a fundamental level.

DIG! Think of each word of your thesis as a chance to “dig”: to put your shovel into the ground and pull out dirt.  You have a limited number of chances to dig into a particular subject — and your goal is to dig as deeply as possible.  What do you do?

At Level B1: OBVIOUS, your thesis describes the topic; gives facts; makes an observation. This level of thesis is non-controversial, i.e. no reasonable person would disagree with them (and they’re not interesting enough for anyone to bother to try). A person reading such a thesis thinks: “Yes, this is true.”  Note: You have to pass through B1 in order to dig deeper.  You must be able to articulate the most obvious, denotative readings of your subject (see Clarity and Rigor handouts), but those readings should take up very little of your final draft—a passing reference or two to situate your argument in relation to what seems obvious.  The best way to determine what is obvious is by referring to prior scholarship on the subject (see the Innovation page).

At Level B2: REASONABLE, your thesis interprets, gives a point of view on, and/or reveals some controversy orcontradiction beneath the plain facts of B1: a thing to be argued, a position which a reasonable person could (and would bother to) disagree with.  A person reading a B2 thesis thinks: “That’s an interesting take on what I already knew, but hadn’t thought about much.”  By controversy, I do not mean this thesis must be absurd, radical, or idiosyncratic; rather, I mean a position (ideally innovative) that might be opposed to other reasonable positions.  This level of argument is generally where high-school training, particularly for standardized tests, stops digging.

 But you want to reach Level B3: DEEP.  Again, you must pass through B1 and B2 to get here (see Clarity and Rigor handouts). But now you look for the key structures (often themselves controversies or contradictions) underlying B2, on which it relies for support; you show how revealing those structures expose something about B2 and B1; you try to shift those structures in order to see how B2 and B1 change shape. B3 is the most difficult level of thesis to describe here, because a full essay would be required to think it through: that’s why it’s usually the main requirement for a high grade on a university essay assignment.  The reader of a B3 thesis might say: “Aha!  I’d never thought of it that way and will never see this familiar subject in the same way again—you’ve enriched, challenged, or troubled my understanding” or “I’m not convinced of your final point, but you make a fascinating case on the way.”  A B3 thesis statement is at least a paragraph long.  

PAPER LENGTH. You should not be able to sum up your thesis off the top of your head.  A B3 thesis considers its subject in such depth… that a full essay is required to articulate it. That’s the point of an essay. If there’s a simpler way to get to your final point, do that — and then dig deeper from there.  The length of the assignment should determine the thesis’s depth: it should be deep enough to require the full word count to explain and defend.

READ AGAINST THE GRAIN.  If you cut wood against the natural alignment of its fibers, you end up with rough edges.  Rough edges are vital to literary analysis.  To read against the grain, a term coined by David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky: 1) find the “grain” of the work (the way it seems to want to be read, the thing its author function sets out to do); 2) challenge that smooth implicit reading, revealing its inherent contradictions, controversies, contingencies, paradoxes — and then breaking those apart.  Does a text do what it seems to set out to do?  What does a text’s “doing or not doing what it seems to set out to do” do?  How does “the thing that a poem does by ‘doing or not doing what it seems to set out to do’” do (or not do) what it does?  

This is not the same as identifying irony or ambiguity! In fact, irony and ambiguity usually offer the smoothest grains of all.Instead,look for:when an author function seems most clearly to say “see what I did there?”; when everyone in class seems to agree about, and be dazzled by, something — but you’re not convinced.