Question, is it normal to do 10-12 page assignments in the humanities as an end-of-semester thing?
Cause one of my general courses has us do that and I have no fucking clue what I'm supposed to write so much about.
Give me an experiment and I can do the whole intro, methods, results and discussion thing. I can even write you a very nice synthesis assignment.
I have zero idea what a humanities assignment is supposed to look like. I'm in a STEM degree, I never had to read one of those, let alone write one. Why is this general course just assuming we all know how to write this when a lot of us never had to do this before???
Hi @uwouldthink, borrowing my sibbo's account to respond 'cause I don't have one (sorry to be a creep-reader! Also for the essay reblog, I didn't know Tumblr had such a low character count in the replies :( ).
The answer to whether or not this is standard is: it depends (USA perspective here, just to clarify, so I'm sorry if you're outside the US and this doesn't apply the same). In courses that are 300+ level, I never had a final essay less than 10 pages. There were a few 100-200 level classes that also wound up with longer essays, though iirc those were usually 4-5 pages or 7-8 pages. It actually tends to go by much quicker than you might expect depending on the subject, and many times I would wind up going over the 12 page max (never got into trouble with that, though). If you can't make it to 10, shoot for 8-9 and make it a good paper and the chances are high your professor won't mind (they're reading a lot of essays already, most likely, and the page count is (probably) the last thing they'll be focusing on unless you're significantly below the 10 page minimum. If you know your professor to be a real stickler for these things, that's a different story).
As for what content to write about, I would say based on the way you talk about ML you actually have a pretty reasonable base for a humanities paper. Granted, "humanities" is pretty broad, so it is dependent on what the specific subject it. I did/do a lot of film studies, so I'll use that as an example. Let's say you watch the film Lola Rennt (Run Lola Run). You would first consider what lens you want to view the film through (feminist, economic, racial, etc.) and go through the plot/cinematography through that lens to gather evidence-- depending on your class, this might be something that naturally happens as you go through the course materials: ie. you watched LR/RLR for class during the fourth week, and when you watched it you felt there was a lot to be said about how the protagonist's relationship to her father (a banker) was presented vis a vis her gender, and you think you might have more to say about that.
So you rewatch the film closer to when you're going to start working on the essay (probably a few weeks before it's due if it's not the whole point of the class) and take notes on scenes that relate to that topic, and piece together your thesis/argument (been a while since I last watched the film, please don't take this too seriously): Lola is in a position where she must take on a masculine role (protector/provider) in order to survive the day, and through her different attempts to succeed, she experiences different sorts of validation for that acquired masculinity that she must contend with as she solidifies her own identity.
You would also look for essays about the subjects that will come up: masculinity and 'being a provider', women as protectors, etc. alongside the evidence from the text (in this context being scenes from the film).
Your introduction could draw on some historical context of when the film was written, and lay out the framework you pick up from the external sources and open by discussing those. Then you move the conversation on to talk about the film itself; your thesis should be stated in this introduction, and then you would lay out the rest of the paper (ie. "This essay will explore Lola's acquired masculinity by examining the ways she interacts with her family, her boyfriend, and the people around her, and how in each interaction she has taken on a masculine aspect and is either validated (in the case of Manny) or rebuffed (in the case of her father).")
Your body paragraphs would each focus on one of these aspects: the interactions she has with her father in the bank during each 'run' through the day, the interactions she has with Manny (boyfriend), and the way she interacts with each of the other 'NPC-esque' characters who she encounters on her quest (I would be more specific than this but I can't think of the other characters off the top of my head).
In a traditional 5-paragraph essay, each of these would be one paragraph. My philosophy is that basically all essays are 5PEs at their core, so when it needs to be longer the original 3 body paragraphs become your sections (ie. a section discussing how masculinity is reinforced within her by her boyfriend relying on her and trusting her to get the job done; a section focusing on her father and how his rebuffs (and eventual disown-ment of her) are a rejection of her masculinity, but also potentially a desire for her to have-been a son instead, almost inadvertently validating her masculinity; a section about her interactions with other minor characters that paint a picture of her in service to the thesis (again, don't have specifics really here, but you could probably tweak the thesis and replace this section with one about Lola's self-expression/fashion and have a stronger essay). This isn't to say you ALWAYS need 3 sections-- you can apply the 5PE method to other numbers of body sections/paragraphs as well. I've written essays with only 2 sections that were 10+ pages, for instance; but at the foundational level this is the structure I used for all of them. 3 bodies or 2, or 4, or however many, you can basically write anything if you know how to sort the individual topics within to make your point.
Your conclusion summarizes all of the points that you've made, typically in order, and then restates the thesis. You can kind of think of the conclusion as a way to talk to someone who is now 'on the same page'. They didn't know the thesis going in, you've presented your case, and now you speak to them as though they are aware of everything.
The person talking about counting out the essay is also totally right-- one of the tricks to writing 10 pages is to consider each section as it's own mini-essay. With 10 pages, you can have half (.5) a page for the intro, three pages per section (3x3=9) , and half a page for the conclusion (.5) and hit the minimum. If your introduction is longer (giving framework for the thesis) then that's even fewer pages you have to spend on the body paragraphs (though I feel like researching for the framework winds up giving you even more to say about the bodies).
This is, of course, from the perspective of a film-studies paper, which translates to English or other similar fields easily but maybe not every humanity. I am also a history major and can confirm this is generally how you write history, too-- with history you would replace the lit analysis with historical analysis (which can be similar depending on how you write your analyses) and the evidence with analysis of primary or secondary texts.
I hope some of this is useful. I imagine other humanities have similar sorts of essay-writing, but I can't speak past my little section of academia. Your uni might have some sort of writing center that you could go to that would have people experienced in writing for a variety of subjects, so if you're struggling, don't forget to explore what resources are available to you. Your professor might even give some to the class (many of mine link it on the classroom website thingy (I think a lot of schools in the US are using Canvas now), or they could point you toward resources independently if asked.
