A. Freundschuh
Lesson Plans and Activities: Writing on Crime and Culture in Contemporary History
ACTIVITY (for Day 1): Crime Narratives, the press, and historical context. This
activity is a kind of introductory exercise to open the class. It is meant to be fun, but
also to introduce the practice of scrutinizing primary sources.
1. Draw a newspaper headline from the hat (from the given selection of
Félix Fénéon’s Novels in Three Lines, all of which the author wrote
during a year-long stint at a Parisian newspaper in the early twentieth
century).
2. From the headline alone, what can you glean about the people and
events contained in the missing story? Write a paragraph-length
newspaper article to accompany the headline. Let your imagination do
the work for you.
3. (Now exchange the “newspaper article” with your neighbor.) Read
their headline and crime narrative and begin by highlighting what
strikes you – as strange, incomprehensible, funny, etc. What important
details were excluded? How was the society in which this crime took
place different from your own? Write a few sentences detailing what
you’d like to know about that society in order to write a follow-up
article and where you could turn to find such things out?
ACTIVITY: Reading Foucault (I). This activity aims to aid students’ comprehension of
Discipline and Punish, namely by focusing on his study, and rhetorical use of, crime
narratives in making his argument.
1. Discuss the roles of crime narratives in Foucault’s theory. How does
he mobilize them in order to make his argument?
ACTIVITY: Reading Foucault (II). This activity seeks to further aid in the
comprehension of Foucault, and specifically to do so by encouraging students to write
through difficult/important passages as a means of better understanding what makes these
passages important and slippery at the same time.
1. Read over your annotated text. Locate a “hotspot” from the text: one
that seems striking or puzzling and put it briefly into your own words.
2. Write a brief response to it, explaining what makes it interesting or
suggestive. If possible, state the “exam question” that this passage is
trying to answer.
ACTIVITY: The Argument in its “Intellectual Context.” This activity asks students to
locate motive (intellectual context) and thesis as the historian places these in
conversation with other scholars. The idea is to provide a model example of how to
construct a motivating problem in an artful way and build intellectual context.
1. Academic writing takes place within a community of people who
discuss and argue with each other. Which authors and writings does
Vanessa Schwartz explicitly engage (versus merely citing)? Cite the
titles and page numbers.
1.5. What is Schwartz’s thesis?
2. How, specifically, does she characterize Foucault’s argument?
3. Write a paragraph-length response to Schwartz in which you
evaluate the level of interest and importance of her analytical challenge
to Foucault. Is her assessment of his argument fair and accurate? How
close to the heart of Foucault’s arguments does she strike?
4. (Having shared these responses) Now re-state Schwartz’s thesis.
LESSON: Close reading of a primary source: Chapter 1 of Haysett, Anatomy of a Trial
(available through QC Library online at:
http://site.ebrary.com/lib/qc/docDetail.action?docID=10364877 )
This lesson serves as an introduction to primary-source analysis. The emphasis is
on close reading, and developing students’ awareness of what they see as a first step
in the development of a writing project.
1. Look closely at a selected passage from the book: What strikes you?
(Write observations on the board: discuss and highlight any overlap,
divergent perspectives, layers, etc.).
2. Now look again. Write down questions that come up for you in the
chapter on Judge Ito—things that are unclear or ambiguous, about
which you’d like to know more.
3. Choose a question that interests you and look for clues to the answer
in this third viewing. (This leads toward an interpretive claim about the
Haysett’s portrayal of the judge.)
4. Group discussion of the importance of this recursive process in the
task of close reading, namely how it could lead to a broader thesis and
motive.
ACTIVITY: Stories in History: Taking Sides. This activity asks students to sketch an
argument and marshal evidence and their own observations in
support of their position. If there is time, it could be useful to ask
students to respond to counter-arguments that they can foresee from
skeptical readers.
1. Half the class: Drawing on Williams and/or Haysett, write a
paragraph-length rejection of the following claim:
“The tensions surrounding the OJ Simpson case were merely symptoms
of Los Angeles’ true ills.”
The other half of the class does the same with the following statement:
“The Simpson case stands as a historical rupture, a breaking point in
social relations made possible by the particularities of the case.”
2. Share and discuss written responses in the larger group.
3.
ACTIVITY: Thinking about thesis and Structure. This revision exercise/handout
prompts students to examine their thesis in relation to the body of the
draft.
Applying the “Cleaning Up that Muddled Thesis” handout to the draft as
a means of thinking about thesis and structure at the same time. I will ask
draft readers to apply the bullet points to the draft they’ve just read before
the workshop in order to orient the discussion toward thesis and structure.
ACTIVITY: The investigation in history. This activity seeks to aid in comprehension
of a classical scholarly article (a foundational text for this course, in
fact) that is difficult. But in historicizing the investigation of clues as a
scholarly practice, it also asks students to anatomize Ginzburg’s
argument and structure.
1. Briefly retrace Carlo Ginzburg’s steps. Begin with how he frames his
argument and briefly answer the following questions: (1) Distill
Ginzburg’s motive and thesis, and comment on the relative ease or
difficulty of this task. (2) Draw a picture(s) of the argument’s
movement. (4) What sorts of moves permit Ginzburg to move between
such disparate topics?
2. Now (in a small group), share answers and answer the following
questions (1) How do the form and reasoning of Ginzburg’s article befit
the larger epistemological question he is addressing? (2) How is
Ginzburg’s argument “historical,” and to what ends does the metaphor
of crime investigation serve him? (3) How might Ginzburg’s structural
moves serve as a statement of methodology on research and writing?
ACTIVITY: “After the Fact” Outlining. The exercise/handout asks students to think about
revision as a function of argumentative structure. The aim is to clarify the relationship
between parts of the essay. This self-check tool encourages revision that places an
emphasis on a dynamic argument, propelled forward by analytical claims rather than
arbitrary turns.
1. Copy the “topic” (aka “point”) sentence from each paragraph in your
draft onto a separate sheet. Read to yourself. Does it follow
logically? Identify gaps, repetition, etc.
2. Make suggestions in your margins about how to go about repairing
structural issues.