Today’s Plan:
- Attendance
- Review Proposal Project
- Review Your Questions
- Craft: The Period
- Setting up medium.com accounts
- Homework
Review Proposal Project
Let’s look at the post from last class again.
Review Your Questions
This is always a productive way to spend class time. Sorry in advance for some of the snark.
“Wait, what are we doing?” Big Picture Questions
Q: I have no idea what you expect from us and this project?
A: I can be a bit ambiguous at times. This is intentional. If I tell you exactly what to do, then you will never develop the ability to invent new things to do. But if after two classes you have no idea what I expect, then you need to put your phone away and pay attention and maybe try reading all the words I type. If you have done all that, then come to office hours and we can talk through the expectations more.
Q: Do I need to find specific articles? I don’t know where to start.
A: Yes. This sheet of potential discourse communities has resources for finding articles. You can also search on medium.com
Q: In order to do this right do I need to find articles to agree with or refute?
A: Yes. Maybe. I think a better way to describe it is: you need to find several articles on the same specific topic or event so you can compare and contrast their perspectives. Then you need to figure out how your own perspective lines up with those other perspectives, or add something new (a new perspective) that those articles don’t cover.
Q: What kinds of topics and articles do you want us looking at within our communities? What kind of papers will we write about the topic that we choose?
A: I don’t want to come off as too snarky here. My gut response is simply “interesting ones.” To which you ask, what makes an article interesting? To which I respond, I know what makes an article interesting to me, but that isn’t helpful. You need to figure out what makes an article interesting to you. Perhaps a more constructive response would be “one that instigates a response.” There’s all kinds of potential responses. Maybe at first I liked this because of X. The more I thought and wrote about it, the more I was troubled by Y.” Thought is the key word here. I can’t do the thinking for you.
“How Do I” nuts and bolts questions
Q: So we just write the proposal first and we will later write the actual papers on it?
A: Yes.
Q: How can I put the articles into conversation? How do you want us to debate them? Without our input and opinion, what are you looking for?
A: Here’s a reason why I like to solicit questions. Last class, I got a bit hyperbolic when emphasizing that I’m not necessarily interested in your opinion on a topic. The reason behind my emphasis was that too often students simply give me 700 words off the top of their head on a subject without engaging someone else’s ideas first. The idea for the class is for you to learn how to put other people’s (differing) opinions into conversation and then interject your own.
Q: How do I properly cite what I use in my project? How do you format in APA?
A: For the proposal, I am asking you to cite sources using MLA or APA format, depending on your major. Here is a way to figure out which one you should use. You should also format the paper according to MLA or APA guidelines. Let me google that for you. Seriously, the Purdue University OWL is the best free resource for MLA and APA format. Over your college career you will be expected to learn different research formats. I am using the proposal project to see how well you can teach yourself.
“Can I write about X?”
Q: Are we able to look into how video games affect social skills or do we do something more like how people respond to Destiny 2 release?
A: Yes.
Q: Can we write about anime/manga?
A: Yes. Aren’t those just comic books? (Hahahaha)
Q: For my project I want to do it on male and female stereotypes in comics. Would that be a reasonable argument?
A: First of all, and I mean this sincerely, that’s not an argument. It is a topic. And it is a REALLY broad topic. You could–no lie–write a 500 page dissertation on that topic and still not exhaust it. But, let’s say you narrow it down to something that can be proposed as an argument that could be handled in a single post: have 21st century depictions of female characters improved upon the issues of oversexualization and body image that plagued 20th century comic books? (I still haven’t made an argument, but I’ve set up a yes/no question). Ok. Here’s the thing–remember that I want you writing pieces that are largely responsive. So, before YOU can answer that question, you have to go out and find other people addressing that question. That’s where your search skills, in the resources we have provided and on google, come into play. So to address your question as directly as I can: that becomes an acceptable topic if you can find other people debating it first.
Q: Do we need to choose a specific topic within a community? I am choosing feminism and I am having a hard time thinking of a specific topic.
A: Complex answer.
Q: What do you think makes a paper “A” worthy? What does it need?
A: Tough question. Let’s be clear about how grading works in a university (A, B, C). Generally, my response is that an A is impressive. It shows investment. It goes beyond the bare requirements of an assignment to teach me a better way to do the assignment next time. That’s the first component: show me something that you are interested in and tell me why it is interesting.
Q: What do you mean by emulating the writer of an article?
A: Good question. It can be tough to teach a writing class, because people walk in with wildly different experiences. I mean, people walk into a math class with widely different competencies too, but generally speaking our everyday lives don’t lead to a drastic difference in our academic mathematical ability. English is quite different. Just from reading your responses to last week’s summary activities, I have a pretty good sense of which of you read for fun. I have some sense of which of you read news articles. Here’s the rub: if you don’t read a lot, it is nearly impossible to be a great writer. Reading is essential, because through reading you internalize writing forms and patterns (genre expectations etc). You can be able to write perfect individual sentences, but if you don’t read enough, then even then it can be really hard to develop longer thoughts into an argument and an article.
That’s a long preface to an answer. Some students will have read enough that they can start articulating a style for a particular author they like. For instance, I like baseball. Carlson Cistulli is one writer who emulates the elongated prose of 18th century essayists. Jeff Sullivan uses just a little bit of self-deprication. Outside of baseball, Malcolm Gladwell mixes personal investment with research (though some people say he cherry-picks too often) in order to tell stories. As you are researching the proposal, I encourage you to identify great writers, to pay attention to what they do, and to try and mimic or imitate those techniques in your writing.
Craft: The Period
“The period check.” When I am reading writing in a professional capacity, I tend to read slowly. I stop after every sentence, examine it, and try to identify a question generated in its predicate. For instance, let’s try some examples:
- Bob runs to the store.
- To commemorate the two hundredth anniversary of “The Star Spangled Banner,” its lyrics composed by Francis Scott Key in September 1814 following the failed British bombardment of Fort McHenry outside Baltimore, the Smithsonian Institution asked a group of artists to reflect on what the American flag means today.
- Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner confirms death of police officer Sunday when he was trapped in flooded patrol car.
- The surfaces of another, which can be scrutinized as an expanse of symptoms of the inner musculature, glands, and nervous circuitry of the functional organism, double into a face.
We I am grading, I will often try to identify sentences that have a “jump” in logic–where the next sentence doesn’t have an immediate or strong connection to the predicate that precedes it, or where the next sentence doesn’t anticipate and answer a clear question from the previous one. This is something we will work on a lot in workshop–some of you will already have this ability, others will need to cultivate it. But recognizing this sense of logical development will not only improve the quality of feedback you provide in writing workshops, it will also strengthen your ability to revise your own writing.
Setting Up Medium.com Accounts
While we are sitting at computers, let’s set up medium.com accounts and get to know the publishing site.
Before we begin: think about what you want your pseudonym to be. I have a few. One is insignificantwrangler. It is a bit long, but gets the job done. Another is santosis, a gift from a former high school student who thought that once you started thinking like me it was akin to a disease. Or Oisin and/or Bulgart, my gaming handles. Let’s look at some handles on medium.com
So let’s create accounts.
So let’s include a profile pic. I will strongly advise against using an actual picture. Most of them know this, not all do.,/p>
So let’s write a brief profile. Keep it short and professional. For today, let’s treat it like a twitter bio.
Ok, let’s look at some of the resources on medium, let’s find some articles.
Ok, so we have read an article we like. Let’s clap it. Now, let’s leave a comment.
Fifth, and perhaps most important, after they have created an account I will ask that they follow me so that I can follow them back.
The quality of writing on medium varies pretty significantly, so it might be a good idea to present them with a rubric for determining the quality of a source. We will talk more later in the semester abou identifying quality sources, but here’s a quick handful of things I look for:
- when was it written?
- how fairly does it frame opponents?
- how thoroughly does it consider counter arguments?
- how well are its links composed?
- how credible is the evidence it provides (and what kind of evidence)?
Homework
A slight revision from what is on the syllabus. I want you to spend two hours working on a complete draft of the proposal. Remember that I have a sample proposal form here that you can copy/paste to get you started, and that yesterday’s class notes have a clear breakdown of each section of the proposal. Bring two printed copies of your proposal to class on Thursday. We will do peer review on Thursday.
