Essay #1:
First Draft due: 9/18
Revision due: 10/2
Length: 3-5 pages
Texts:
“The Willowdale Handcar” Edward Gorey
“The Fable of the Goat” F. Y. Agnon
“How to Know a Poem When You See One” by Stanly Fish
WHY:
Interpretation is a crucial part of college writing, as well as simply being a critical reader
anywhere in the world. However, often two people will understand similar events, pieces of
artwork, or even newspaper articles in completely different ways. Our task in this assignment is
to investigate some basic questions about how and why this happens and, in the end, for you to
advance your own theory about how people can “read” the same situation in so many different
ways.
In this assignment, we will look at the assumption that the meaning of an event or text is clear
and always stays the same, and is based solely / inherent in the content of the thing being viewed
or understood.
Along with learning about the topic, in this assignment you will develop the following skills:
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Closely reading texts to develop an interpretation
Using specific quotations as examples / evidence of an idea
Developing a self-reflective writing practice; forming a theory about the nature of
interpretation.
Using a scholarly concept to test out and revise a previous theory.
Creating an argument in light of a scholarly argument and self-collected evidence.
WHAT:
In this essay you will be asked to read two ambiguous texts, then, based on a close reading
of the text, develop an interpretation of the meaning of the story. You will then be asked to take
your interpretation a step further and reflect on what caused you to make your interpretation –
especially in light of other student interpretations that might be different. This will be the essence
of your essay: developing a theory or argument about the way that you (and by extrapolation, many
of us) form arguments. As a post-draft you will use a text by literary critic Stanley Fish to add
another dimension to your argument – you will evaluate the ways that Fish’s theories contradict,
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complicate or expand your ideas. In the end, you will want to generalize your theory of
interpretation. Instead of just talking about how you form interpretations you will want to be
investigating how people in general form interpretations.
HOW:
Pre-Draft A)
Summarize the text, first in two paragraphs, then in one paragraph, and finally in two sentences.
Pre-Draft B)
1) Choose one text to analyze. Write about a page describing what you believe to be the moral,
message or meaning of the story. Choose at least three places in the text that you feel help
illustrate this moral, message, or meaning and explain how they do so. One easy way to do this
is to select three quotes. For each quote, write a 1-2 sentence paraphrase of the quote (put the
quote in your own words.) Simply explain what you believe to be the meaning (or actions) in
the quote in different words. Last, for each quote write a short analysis. Explain how, or which
parts of this quote, led you to make your analysis.
2) For the same text, find 2-3 places in the text that do not fit with your moral, message or
meaning. These might be sections that you found difficult to understand or explain, or that seem
to point to a different idea or message, or simply seem too complicated to fit into your initial
analysis. Explain what about them did not “fit” with your original main idea. For this part of
the assignment, you are not being asked to change your interpretation – just to hunt for a few
places that can’t be easily assimilated into your idea.
Pre-Draft C)
To be done in class: For each quote, analyze what led you to make this your interpretation.
Also, look at peers’ interpretations. What assumptions were made by you and your peers?
What did you all agree on? Why? Where did they differ? What did you highlight? Ignore?
Post-Draft)
Apply Fish’s theory of interpretation to your essay. For this post-draft, you are going to refocus your essay to respond to Fish. You should quote Fish, and re-analyze some of your
original quotes in light of Fish’s ideas. Does Fish refute or complicate your ideas? Or could
you see your ideas as an extension of Fish’s work?
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Rubric
When I’m looking at your revision of this essay, I’m going to look at the following things….
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Do you present some theories or ideas about how people, yourself included, form
interpretations?
Do you use the sources (Gorey or Agnon, your own pre-drafts and Fish) as a “source” of
inquiry, as a place to start asking questions? Do you carefully select quotations in order
to show the reader your own train of thought, to ask questions, to analyze and to
demonstrate?
Does your essay help me follow the logic of your thinking (your “train of thought”)? In
formal essays, this is called “development” or “progression”; I want you to show me the
connection between your ideas and to frequently summarize and rephrase your ideas to
help me understand where you are going.
Has your essay been revised with a reader in mind? (Remember, your ideal “reader” is an
intelligent person who has not been in our class. This means you’ll have to introduce the
readings and give me a little context about who the author’s are, and what the essays /
stories are about). This also means that the essay has been re-read and re-organized to
make it clearer, complicated/confusing sentences have been clarified, and basic
typos/spelling mistakes have been corrected.
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Essay #2: Expertise
First Draft due: 10/18
Revision due: 11/1
Length 4-6 pages
TEXTS:
“The Education of the Knife” from Complications by Atul Gawande
“The theory of Thin-Slices” from Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
“The Loss of the Creature” from Message in a Bottle by Walker Percy
WHY:
In this essay, you’ll respond to the ways in which multiple sources try to define a concept; you’ll
do so by examining your own detailed example of that concept. Scholars often spend time
explaining and giving examples of complex concepts. One reason they do this is to contribute to
a conversation (or argument) in which others have not only staked out their position or opinion,
but have also attempted to define the terminology around the concept. In any field, from
biology to politics or medicine and law, re-defining a concept, or seeing it from a new angle, can
completely change the conversation about a given topic. To be heard, new scholars need to take
into account what they see as the strengths and limitations of other scholars so that they can
speak alongside them in the larger, ongoing debate. Your goal in this assignment is to speak in
that conversation.
Assumptions: In this assignment, we are looking at commonly held assumptions about expertise.
This assignment is designed to help you develop the following skills:
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Practice different annotation strategies on different kinds of texts
Summarize, compare and contrast different notions about an abstract idea using varied
source texts.
Test out a scholarly definition by writing a personal anecdote
Create a definition of an abstract concept by synthesizing differing scholarly sources and
a personal anecdote.
Revising by copying the moves of a published author.
WHAT:
A classic scholarly move is to convey new ideas by defining an abstract idea. Some scholars
create their own terms (as Gladwell does in his piece) to frame their ideas, others, like Gawande
and Percy, try to explore an accepted term like “expertise” by looking at it in a new and different
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way. In this assignment the ball will be thrown in your court, and you will be asked to create a
definition of your own about an abstract concept: expertise. To do this, we will be looking at
three pieces that question widely held assumptions about expertise; both what it is, and what it is
good for. To help you create your own unique definition, you will not just be asked to agree or
disagree with one of these authors, but to test out their ideas in your own area of expertise: your
life experience. In response to these sources you’ll offer your own rich and detailed example of
expertise in order to consider what expertise is (and maybe what it is not). Your example of
expertise might be about your knowledge about an object, your skill in an activity, or your
mastery of an idea, or another kind of expertise that you have gained. You will not want to say
the obvious, but you want to find an interesting aspect of expertise that might surprise or educate
your readers. Although your example of expertise needs to be precise, it does not need to take
over your paper. You’ll need to synthesize the conversation about expertise so that you can
articulate your own idea about expertise.
HOW
Pre-Draft A) Annotating sources
Choose at least one annotation method for each of our three sources:
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Pre-reading and predicting
Outlining
Marginal annotation
Double-entry notes
Pre-Draft B) Synthesize and respond to sources (2 pp)
1) In about a page, explain what these writers seem to be saying about expertise. Make
sure you differentiate between a) what they are claiming about expertise (and their examples)
and b) each writer’s concept of expertise. (Often what an author has to say about a concept
depends deeply on what their definition of the concept is.) What do these writers say that is
surprising, counterintuitive or different from what we have been commonly told about expertise.
2) In about a page, speak back to any one of these writers? How might you respond to
one of these writers, for example by agreeing, disagreeing, or pointing out limitations in his
ideas? Do his examples support his ideas? How do his ideas connect with your own ideas about
expertise, or your experience of it?
Pre-Draft B) Describe your expertise and use it to test out an idea in a source (2 pp)
1) Choose an example of expertise from your own experience: a concept you’ve mastered, an
activity in which you have some skill, or a place or object that you know well. Spend time
choosing this example carefully; the quality of your essay will depend very much on the type of
anecdote you choose. In about a page, explain your example of expertise. Think about these
questions: What do you know? How did you come to know what you know? How could you
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explain it to others? What makes you more like an expert and less like a novice? What is it
about your expertise that you think most people (non-experts) don’t know or fully understand?
2) Choose two specific ideas about expertise from two different sources that we’ve read for the
essay. These two ideas might be claims about what expertise is, or assertions about how it is
acquired, or definitions of key terms associated with expertise. They should be relevant to your
example in some way. Spend about a page outlining how your own example can help you test
out these two ideas – i.e., how does your example help you to speak back to these two ideas in
the source material?
Post-Draft Exercise: Learn by using Gawande’s moves as you revise.
Gawande makes some important moves as a writer:
a) He carefully recounts well-chosen anecdotes about acquiring expertise.
b) He steps back form the anecdotes in order to use them to say something about acquiring
expertise.
c) He uses source materials to help him reflect on the subject of expertise.
In your revision, you’ll want to make the same three moves, with the caveat that yours will be
shorter than his and you will use more sources (since your essay is an academic essay, and his is
not). Your anecdote(s) will come from the example of expertise you chose for your pre-draft
exercise. You’ll use one or two very short but precise anecdotes (no more than that!). You’ll need to
reflect ton what your anecdotes say about the nature of expertise and how it is acquired. In doing
so, you will use some of your sources. These sources will give you some language and concepts to
use as you speak back to them (just like Fish in your first essay). Like Gawande, you’ll want to move
back and forth between anecdote, reflection and source so that you can explore the concept of
expertise. Like him, you’ll be writing about a particular kind of expertise (the one you chose) and,
like him, you’ll want your essay to be interesting to those who do not share your expertise; so, like
him again, you’ll want to be able to generalize your concept of expertise to some extent.
Rubric
When I’m looking at your revision of this essay, I’m going to look at the following things….
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Do you offer your own ideas, claims, or arguments about expertise? Do you teach me,
as a reader, something surprising, insightful or new about expertise?
Do you use source material to present claims, definitions or key terms about expertise?
Do you carefully and briefly use 1-2 precise anecdotes from your life to exemplify your
response to concepts found in the course readings?
Does your essay speak back in a meaningful way to the sources?
Does your essay help me follow the logic of your thinking (your “train of thought”)? In
formal essays, this is called “development” or “progression”; I’m interested in seeing an
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essay that grows in nuance, strength, depth or meaning as I read, especially by adding
new examples, quotations and evidence.
Has it been revised with a reader in mind? (Remember, your ideal “reader” is an
intelligent person who has not been in our class. This means you’ll have to introduce the
readings and give me a little context about who the author’s are, and what the essays /
stories are about). This also means that the essay has been re-read and re-organized to
make it clearer, complicated/confusing ideas have been clarified, and basic typos/spelling
mistakes have been corrected.
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Assignment #3
First Draft due: 11/20
Revision due: 12/4
Length: 4-6 pages
Texts:
“Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid
“Beauty (Re)Discovers the Male Body” by Susan Bordo
Topic: Gender
WHY:
Assumption: that the terms “masculine” and “feminine” mean the same thing to everyone.
This assignment has been designed so you can practice the following skills:
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Analyzing and imitating a writer’s moves
Continuing a writer’s project with different source material
Using a writer’s terms, definitions and methods to analyze personal experience and…
Think critically about visual media
WHAT:
In your first essay, you looked out how meaning was made. In your second essay you entered a
scholarly conversation and were asked to make your own contribution. In this third essay, you
will be asked to look through two authors’ lenses and carry their projects forward, looking both
at our contemporary culture and some source images that you choose. Using key terms from
Bordo’s essay you will work with source material in a way that follows the broad contours of a
published writer’s project. You will be “reading” a set of images from popular media testing
Bordo’s theories and analysis, and comparing what this image portrays with what you have
portrayed in your own writing. Your goal is to take Bordo’s work and push it further. This
means examining how your own experiences support, complicate or refute her ideas – and how
you can use this “double-lens” to “re-see” images of men and women.
First, following a creative writing tradition, you will write an “imitation” of Jamaica Kincaid’s
short story, “Girl.” The content will be drawn from your own life, and your own experience of
what are the “rules” to being a boy or girl in a context with which you are familiar. Next we will
read Bordo’s analysis of depictions of men in advertising and analyzes the methods she uses to
look at her source material (personal, academic, historical). Finally, you will be asked to find
images in popular media and analyze them in light of both your imitation and Bordo’s analysis.
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Pre-Draft A) Looking for Beauty
Part 1: For this assignment, you’ll bring in some images (from magazines, the internet or any
other sources) of male and female beauty. As you look for images, I want to push you to look
for expected and unexpected images of beauty. This means thinking not just about what you
think everyone will agree is beautiful (although you might be surprised about where we agree
and disagree) but also some that you think represent a surprising or counterintuitive
representation of beauty.
Part 2: (in class) writing about a “beautiful” person: students choose from among several images
in class. First, they must describe this image (well enough so that someone else might be able to
imagine it). Then they must choose the details in the image that make it a “beautiful” image.
Pre-Draft B) responding to Bordo
1) In the end, Bordo’s essay is not so much about advertising as it is about masculinity, and,
by extension, about femininity. In about a page, see if you can summarize three of
Bordo’s claims about men, masculinity and beauty. She covers many topics in this essay,
so it’s up to you to choose the three that you think will be most useful in referring to your
own experiences and what you see in the popular media.
2) In about a page, respond to these three claims. These could be agreeing, disagreeing, or
simply noting exceptions or limitations to her ideas.
Pre-Draft C) The rules: Bringing in Kincaid
Jamaica Kincaid’s piece emphasizes the “rules” that surround femininity and being a woman in a
very specific time and place: Antigua and Barbuda, the 1950’s and 60’s. In this one-sentence
story, she is given advice from a nameless voice instructing her on how, in some ways, be a girl.
And although the story is called “Girl,” it really is teaching her how to be a woman. The “howto’s” range from skills she needs to know (sew a button, pick fabric for a shirt) to ways of
interacting (smiling or not smiling) to the consequences of not following the rules.
1) Your assignment now is to make your own list of rules for your gender and a time and place
with which you are familiar. For this, you will be applying some of the ways of thinking that
Bordo introduced: thinking about what is acceptable and what is taboo for men and women in
our culture. Thinking about location will be helpful: it can be large (rules to be a boy in the
state of Massachusetts) or more specific (Johnson-Cabot High School). Try to stick to what you
know. As you write, think about the skills that are useful, or even crucial, for a boy or girl to
learn as they go through adolescence, how one should interact or specific advice. Think also
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about the consequences of not following the rules you have set out. Are some more important
than others?
2) Now, in about a page, look back at your rules. What can they tell us about the culture that
created them?
First Draft:
Choose two images that you think can tell us about beauty, masculinity or femininity today.
This images should show some kind of contrast with each other; the contrast should help you
explain your ideas in your essay. Choose carefully; as in the last assignment, how you choose
these images will have a big impact on the quality of your final essay. In about a page, give
these images the “Bordo treatment” – first, describe what you see, and the response it evokes in
you. What do you think is the intended audience of the image? What is the message of the
photographer? What can it teach us about “the rules” for being a man or woman? Does it
follow commonly accepted rules about images of men and women?
Thinking with Bordo: what would she say about these images?
Thinking against Bordo: would her ideas or opinions still seem relevant today? Which parts?
How so? Which parts of her essay resonate with your “rules”? Which parts seem to conflict or
contrast?
Extension: Looking back at your “rules” – How do these images fit with your “rules”? Can
your rules help us understand these images, or do they complicate them? To what extent do you
think the images obey, or defy, some of the “rules” you presented?
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Essay #4
Due 12/11
Length: variable
Topic: Revision
Why:
It is important for all writers to learn revision tactics, and to be read without prejudice. In this
essay you’ll be practicing a key final task for professional writers: re-reading with attention at
the sentence level to check for errors and unclear, disorganized thinking.
What
In this assignment you will be using the skills that you have learned in class so far to revise and
edit one of your previous essays.
How
In this final draft, we will be working on creating essays that can be read without prejudice.
This means going back and revising with attention to introducing and orienting readers to source
material, thinking carefully about organization, paragraph order and transitions between
paragraphs. It also means unifying your essay, and taking out sections which might not be
essential to your analysis. We will also be working on the sentence level: are your paragraphs
internally coherent and easy to understand? Are your sentences clear, easy to read and
punctuated correctly?
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Resources:
Jamaica Kincaid’s story “Girl”.
http://www.fphil.uniba.sk/fileadmin/user_upload/editors/kaa/Ivan_Lacko/Kincaid_Girl.pdf
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