Today’s Plan:
- Office Hours
- Drop Deadline [Thurs Oct 11]
- Thesis Statements and Roadmapping
- Williams on Actions (and characters)
- Questions
- Homework
Office Hours & Drop Deadline
Wednesday: 1:30-3:00, Thursday 1:00-2:00.
Thesis Statements and Roadmapping
I am always hesitant to use the term “thesis statement.”
As writers–especially academic writers–we have an obligation to let our reader know what they are committing to right up front. Some of this work falls under the heading of kairos, a Greek term for recognizing and seizing the most strategic moment for speech and action. We’ll talk more about kairos later in the course.
Why am I hesitant to use the term “thesis statement”?First, they come with a lot of baggage from high school. Some people do a terrible job explaining what a thesis is and/or have loaded the term with dread. Second, good papers often don’t have “a” thesis statement (i.e., articulating the thesis, or central argument, of the paper might require more than one sentence). For me, the thesis of a paper is an explanation of the article’s purpose or argument, along with a road map for how the author hopes to get there: what steps will she take? The first is an absolute requirement. The second isn’t necessarily as popular in public writing, but is pretty essential to good academic writing. In public writing, it is ok to have a bit of a Scooby Doo thesis–one that doesn’t necessarily reveal everything right up front. In academic writing, this is almost never ok.
Ok, let’s look at how I do this. Here is what I would call the thesis for an article I co-authored called “Postpedagogy and Web Writing” (an article about how and why I teach this class in the “peculiar” way I do):
This article is divided into two major sections. The first section further explicates the concept of postpedagogy, highlighting its suitability to web writing. In short, postpedagogy advocates a critical and self-reflexive re-inhabiting of teacher authority and an insistence on kairotic, emergent, “risky” learning. The second section details how we have enacted such a model, in a variety of first-year and upper-division courses over the past six years. Taken together, the two sections demonstrate how writing for an English class and writing for the real world no longer have to be two separate enterprises. That boundary is now a matter of choice, rather than one of logistical necessity.
This paragraph comes a few pages in, well after we have laid out the purpose for the article (we do that in the first paragraph). It is meant to give a reader a sense of what is coming, a “road map” for the turns the article will make.
Here’s another example from a book chapter on Bruno Latour’s plan for reconnecting academics to politics:
This chapter begins by briefly unpacking Latour’s Non-Modern Constitution, tracing its development through his earlier writings to its explication in Politics of Nature. We then review two of Kant’s critical pieces on the role and scope of higher education, his early essay “An answer to the question ‘What is enlightenment?’” (1996) and his later, and more controversial manuscript, Conflict of the faculties (1979). Our analysis contextualizes Kant’s call for the separation of public and private duty in light of the snarly religious/political field of late 18th century Germany. Then, we detail contemporary politics’ increasing encroachment upon curriculum and funding across all levels of education. While contemporary scholars might not face the same “unpleasant measures” that Kant did, there are clear risks associated with reintegrating academic labor into the public sphere. However, despite these risks, academics must commit themselves to political action. Academics cannot remain idle; they must act before it is too late. We close by offering strategies and tactics (de Certeau, 1984) for instituting Latour’s Non-Modern Constitution. As a strategy, we present the University of South Florida’s recently approved Patel College of Global Sustainability, an interdisciplinary college dedicated to increasing scientific knowledge’s impact in the public sphere.
Sometimes I write papers that take a bit more space to do this.
Sometimes I write introductions that do this without explicitly laying out the sections.
My point is that good writers let the audience know what’s coming.
But here’s the thing, it is impossible to write this kind of introduction on your first draft. No one ever sits down and says I will write a paper that does X, Y, and Z and then actually writes that paper. Why? Because writing is emergent, generative, spontaneous, unpredictable, and often out of our control. As the Helen Cixous says–writing writes us as much as we write it. You can’t write the kind of introduction I lay out above until after you write the paper–until after thoughts that you initially couldn’t anticipate have thrust themselves upon you–often uninvited. Writing will productively trouble you by asking questions you weren’t prepared for. This means that the introduction MUST be the last thing you write.
“No way” at least one of you will say. I can’t start writing without writing an introduction! I agree. You probably can’t. You have to write that first introduction to get the thought-train moving out of the station. To plant your feet on some solid ground before the writing begins and the thoughts try to hijack it. But that first introduction you write is a baby. And what do we do to babies?
Williams on Actions (and characters)
Let’s talk about the homework.
Homework
There’s two Constant Writing assignments in Canvas:
- Monday, Sept 24th
- Tuesday, Sept 25th
For the Tuesday article, I want you to concentrate on comparing/contrasting the second article with the first. Don’t treat them in isolation–work to find two articles on the same subject and read them close enough to identify what they have in common and where they disagree.
Review chapter four, “Three Ways to Respond” in They Say, I Say. Transform one of the templates in that chapter to put your two sources in conversation. (There’s different perspectives regarding X. Person A believes X will Z, but person B disagrees because N. She believes position A/X overlooks C and D.
