CUSP134: Icarus’s Parachute
Technology and Media(tion): The Senses
Today’s Agenda
1. McLuhan: Understanding Media
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Discussion of Reading Preparation #1 Questions
Seminaring: Reading Preparation #3
Commentary on Selections
2. Short Paper #1 – Passage Commentary
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Comments on Writing in College
Assignment Document (see assignment doc)
Exemplification: Commentary
CUSP134: Icarus’s Parachute
Technology and Media(tion): The Senses
Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media (Experiential)
Reading Preparation #1: Good Questions
Seminaring:
1. Group by Selections
2. Discussion 1-3 of Reading Preparation #3
what is needed to understand it?
what is the purpose of the passage?
what does the passage imply?
Discussion & General Commentary
CUSP134: Icarus’s Parachute
Writing in College: R.I.P. High School Methods
Kill the 5-Paragraph Essay Model
-The form of your paper will not think for you
-Worry about what you need to say first
-Rethink the “thesis statement”
-do not cling dogmatically to it
-it should not be answerable with yes/no
-Rethink the idea of “evidence”
-hypothesis/data model is misleading
-quotations/“facts” are not evidence w/o reasoning
-It is not WHAT you think, it is HOW you think that matters!
CUSP134: Icarus’s Parachute
Writing in College: Some Goals of Academic Writing
Communal/ To Contribute to Knowledge
Which means:
-Contributing to the academic “conversation” about the world
by engaging the given discourse(s) through new inquiry
NOT:
-Demonstrating how much you already “know,” how eloquent
or smart you can sound, or repeating what others said
Personal/ To Develop your Critical Imagination
-Restructure your memory, aid your reflective capacity,
practice personal responsibility for thought
CUSP134: Icarus’s Parachute
Writing in College: Engaging Discourses through Texts
The Texts are Your Friend
-They constitute a consultable ground
-I.A. Richards “Machines to Think With”
-Discourses of academic disciplines are sustained in their
TEXTS (books, essays, journals, reports, novels, poems, etc.)
-They both enable and guide thought
-They enforce PATIENCE and PRECISION
-The “new” can only be accessed and communicated
confidently through the given
-Ex. Bacon’s “helps”; OuLiPo’s principle of creativity
CUSP134: Icarus’s Parachute
Writing in College: Engaging Discourses through Texts
BUT… Nothing absolves you of reasoning
-Texts do not really “contain” evidence, they construct it
-Ex. “statistics show…”; appeals to authority, so-and-so said
what?!
-Reading for information/inspiration/pleasure
(vs)
-Reading AS inquiry
How do I keep from simply seeing and affirming what I
already believe, and dismissing what I don’t?