EXIT EXAM SESSION 2 RESCHEDULED for WEDNESDAY

...

and here's the reading for that:

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/03/05/magazine/warning-this-is-a-rights-free-workplace.html?pagewanted=all&pagewanted=print

REMINDER

TOMORROW is EXIT EXAM Session #1!
Please come to class.
Please come to class on time!

For next week (EXIT EXAM info! important!)

Yesterday, in class, we talked about the exit exams that are a college-mandated requirement for this course.

THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW:

1. Passing the exit exam is a necessary (but not sufficient) requirement for passing this course. In other words, if you fail the exam, you can't pass the course. But passing the exam will not guarantee a passing grade in the course.
2. I'll be administering two in-class exam sessions: one on Wednesday, 4/27, and the other on Monday, 5/2. (The "last chance" exam is on 5/30; location TBA.)
3. Passing the exit exam will be easy. DON'T PANIC. (See below for further details.)

HOW IT WORKS:

1. You get the reading ahead of time. Typically, these will be short essays, 2-3 pages long.
2. You're allowed (strongly encouraged) to annotate your copies of the reading and bring them into the exam.
3. You will receive writing prompts at the beginning of the exam session.
4. Over the course of the 75 minute long exam session, you'll write an essay, at least 350 words long--so, basically the equivalent of one of our weekly response papers--on the prompt of your choice.
5. If English is your second language, you can have a bit more time, although I have to be present, and we'll have to move to a different location. 

THE PROMPTS

Obviously, I'm not allowed to give you the specific prompts ahead of time, but they come in three flavors:

1. Relate the reading to your own experience. For example: "What part of this essay seem to be the most valid, when compared to your own experience? Make specific references to the reading."
2. Do you agree or disagree with the claims made in the reading? If you agree, argue in support of the reading. If you disagree, argue against the reading.
3. Combined 1) and 2): Argue for/against the reading, drawing on specific examples from your life.

STRATEGIES FOR EFFICIENT READING/ANNOTATION/PRE-WRITING

The readings are easy. They're nowhere near as complex as the material I've been giving you all semester. (Also, nowhere near as long.) So--these very basic strategies should work well:

1. On your first read-through, skim the reading. Read--and underline!--the first and last sentences of each paragraph--generally, the first sentence will tell you what the paragraph is about, and the last sentence will lead into the next paragraph. 
2. Now read through the essay again, this time slowly. As you read, give each paragraph a number. (P1, P2, ... Pn) On a piece of paper, write the number, and then paraphrase the paragraph. (The underlined sentences from #1 should help you do this.) By the time you're done going through the essay, you should have a nice little outline of the entire thing.
3. Try grouping paragraphs together, so that you have a better sense of the flow of the reading. For example, in "Back to Basics," the essay by Diane Ravitch (see below for a link to the file), paragraphs 1-2 introduce the problem Ravitch is examining (peer pressure against academic achievement in American schools); paragraphs 3 and 4 provide evidence that goes beyond Ravitch's anecdotal memories; paragraphs 5 and 6 describe the further consequences/implications of the problem (lowered academic achievement levels are harming the economy of the US); paragraph 7 proposes a solution to the problem (a strong core curriculum); and so on and so on.
4. Now try summarizing the main claim of the essay, in 1-2 sentences. Think about whether you agree or disagree with the claim.
5. With #4 in mind, read through the essay one more time, underlining specific things you agree/disagree with. For each thing you underline, write down a short note in the margins about why you agree or disagree.
6. Read through one more time, this time underlining/annotating things that speak your personal experience. Pay special attention to the things you've underlined that overlap with the things you underlined in #5.
7. Using the material you've generated, try writing a short essay that addresses one of the three prompt "flavors."

LINKS TO PRACTICE READINGS/EXAMS

grading rubric: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B19N9rbwQdXZMFp4ZWgyS1g0R28

sample exam responses/grades: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B19N9rbwQdXZTHFGVlhPY0l2dHM
The prompts the students were writing to: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B19N9rbwQdXZOFBnS3Fmb3FpTEk


Practice Exam 1

Sample reading #1 (Ravitch): https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B19N9rbwQdXZU0xkUHc3aUlYUnM
Sample prompts for Ravitch essay: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B19N9rbwQdXZZjhfMVZjbFBVUnc


Practice Exam 2

Sample reading #2 (Harris): https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B19N9rbwQdXZRmJNcUo3clZmN2c
Sample prompts for Harris essay: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B19N9rbwQdXZdmxxSzVabHo0cVE


READING FOR EXAM SESSION #1

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B19N9rbwQdXZeERNVTNBTGR4RDg

(hard copies available in our next class)

For Monday,

Please read:

http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/07/webs-and-whirligigs-marshall-mcluhan-in-his-time-and-ours/

and

Chapter 2 from Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, by Scott McCloud
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B19N9rbwQdXZS2pmN21WSWxydVU/view?usp=sharing

Reading for tomorrow

Laura Mulvey, on "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"--it's pretty dense, and I don't expect you guys to fully digest it, but give it a read, and make notes on anything you don't understand.

https://www.amherst.edu/system/files/media/1021/Laura%20Mulvey,%20Visual%20Pleasure.pdf


Supplementary watching:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HE1wRL-BRo0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DP7yf8-Lk80

Supplementary reading:

http://www.salon.com/2015/12/29/its_time_to_call_foul_on_the_cruelty_of_beauty_pageants_trump_may_not_own_the_miss_universe_pageant_anymore_but_his_dehumanizing_worldview_permeates_all_beauty_pageants/

For use in class--

Hawkeye Initiative:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiVjMi8lvrLAhXBRSYKHXtyB50QFggcMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthehawkeyeinitiative.com%2F&usg=AFQjCNEzWO812Niw1Twi3EGV6TZ6UKwbgw&bvm=bv.118443451,d.eWE

Beyonce:

"Beyonce is not performing for the male gaze."
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:kQGMIm0Y3ZsJ:www.psmag.com/books-and-culture/beyonce-91908+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

"Beyonce is absolutely performing for the male gaze."
http://stanfordartsreview.com/the-girl-you-like/

Reading/viewing for Monday

For Monday (in addition to having your papers ready), please read:

http://ase.tufts.edu/gdae/CS/Marketing%20Madness.pdf

After you read, watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WTA_8waxTo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R_483zeVF8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcV8WN1YIL4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGZa5xGwgko

Come ready to discuss.

*For use in class (and for those of you who won't be in class), we're also watching:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPOla9SEdXQ

Full transcript of this video (and extra links) available here:

http://feministfrequency.com/2016/03/31/body-language-the-male-gaze/

Long Paper #2

Your second long papers are due on Monday. (See previous post for topic.)

A word about interpreting quotes:

A lot of you tend to write things like this:

Mami  was  nervous,  like  a  frozen  person  without  reactions,  as  shown in this  quote : “Why  don't  you  help  me  to  unpack?  Mami  suggested. Her hands  were  very  still,  usually  they  were  fussing  with  a  piece  of  paper,  a sleeve,  or  each  other.”

 That's not quite enough.

Saying Mami is "nervous" in this quote is ONLY valid if you guide the reader through the steps that led you to this conclusion:

1. We know, because Yunior tells us, that Mami's hands are "usually" in constant motion, "fussing  with  a  piece  of  paper,  a  sleeve,  or  each  other."

2. But in this scene, where the boys are unknowingly headed towards confrontation with their father, her hands are "very still."

3. Holding your hands still when your natural inclination is to have them in constant motion requires effort; tension. 

4. We can therefore guess (infer) that Mami is feeling really tense.

5. In the context of this scene, there's only one reason for her to be feeling tense--it's the possibility of conflict between her husband and her sons.

6. Why would this make her tense? 

7. Yunior says, in the middle of narrating the scene, that if he'd known his father better he wouldn't have turned his back on him, which implies danger coming from Papi--and more specifically, physical violence. (Physical violence is the kind of danger that can be mitigated when you can see it coming.)

8.So when Mami is tense in this scene, we're able to gather that she's afraid of her husband doing physical harm to her sons.

9. Therefore, we can guess that Mami is "still," in this scene, in the same way that a gazelle is still when it's near a lion. She's frozen, like a deer freezing in front of the headlights of an oncoming car.

You have to show your work, like long division.

For Wednesday,

• Please write a rough draft--2-3 pages long--of your second 5-6 page essay. This essay should be about "Invierno," by Junot Diaz. Write about Mami and cold; Mami and snow. (A good question to ask, for example, would be something like: "When Mami goes out into the snow at the end of the story, what is the intended effect on us, the readers, given what we know about the way the story uses the images of 'snow' and 'cold' throughout the story?)

• Please bring three hard copies of your draft.

For Monday

Please re-read:

"Invierno," by Junot Diaz

Also:

A selection from Citizen, by Claudia Rankine:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/247344

And:

"To the Man Who Shouted 'I Like Pork-Fried Rice" at Me on the Street," by Franny Choi

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/247348



On Wednesday, we talked about indexing, as a tool for following an idea or an image through a text.

If you were to make an index of "sight"/"looking"/"watching" in the first three pages of "Invierno," for example, it might look something like this:

121 ("[...] you could see the thinnest sliver of ocean cresting the horizon [...] my father [...] didn't stop to point it out." Papi controls what his family sees.)
("I was watching the snow sift over itself, terrified [...] this was our first day in the States." First glimpse of the US for Yunior is something terrifying and completely foreign. And cold.) 

123 ("Don't you eye me, he said." Papi sees Yunior's looking or eyeing as a challenge to his authority; Papi doesn't want to be seen for what he is, possibly.)("We mostly sat in front of the TV or stared out at the snow." Papi turns his family into passive watchers--they're not allowed outside; all they can do is look. And only at things that aren't Papi; only at things that he wants them to see.)

For your weekly response paper this week, please index in this way, images in "Invierno" that have to do with cold. 

For Monday:

• Your papers are due.
• Please read "Invierno," by Junot Diaz. (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B19N9rbwQdXZWGJvUzBLMFljZ2s/view?usp=sharing)

FOR WEDNESDAY

1) Those of you who weren't in class today should (re-) read my attendance policy. It's on the very first post on this blog--the one titled "Syllabus."

2) Please generate a rough draft of your first 5-6 page paper, and bring 4 hard copies so that you can workshop it with your peers.

Your rough draft should use the opening paragraph(s) that I've provided below, in the post titled "First Paper Draft Generation."

In order to work with those paragraphs, your draft should include at least three quotes in which Coates is either

A) talking about the body in the context of institutional racism,

or

B) translating the language of the "host"--a language in which the body is obscured/buried/erased into something more visceral (and, Coates would probably say, more true).

Again, refer to previous post if you're confused.

Also in that post: I've included sample quotes and sample commentary on the quotes--things that, if I were writing this paper, I'd probably expand into full paragraphs.

(This should go without saying, but: please do not use my exact phrasing, if you choose to borrow any of these quotes/ideas.)

First Paper draft generation

For this paper, I want you guys to practice selecting quotes that work with an already defined thesis. So:

Let’s look at the very first sentence of “Letter to My Son,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates: “Last Sunday the host of a popular news show asked me what it meant to lose my body." (My italics.) Later on in the same paragraph, Coates writes that when the host “turned to the subject of [his] body [...] she did not mention it specifically.” We can therefore assume (even before Coates informs us that her question is about “why [he] [feels] that white America’s progress, or rather the progress of those Americans who believe that they are white, was built on looting and violence”) that when the host asks Coates “what it mean[s] to lose [his] body,” she’s not using those specific words. “What does it mean to lose your body?” should, instead, be read as Coates’s translation of her question. The implication, here, is that her question is meaningful only when it is translated into the language of personal and specific physical violence, directed at the individual body.

In other words, what Coates is very deliberately saying, at the very beginning of this essay, is that, for him, American progress is predicated on the plundering of his body--not a generic body, not even an abstract black body--but his. He’s saying that he feels the injustices of American history as a personal violence directed every day at him—his specific flesh; his specific blood. If “Letter to My Son” is Coates’s answer to the question of “what it [means] to lose [his] body,” we can only understand that answer by unpacking what it means for Coates to be a body, to be living in his specific body in America.

Why does Coates position himself, within the larger American debate about history and race, as a specific body? How does this clarify or change the terms of that debate?
In this essay, we’ll endeavor to answer these questions, through a close reading of Coates’s use of “body”--his insistence on the individuality of the bodies (and the specific physicality of the violence) involved in institutional racism.

So how do we go about doing this?


We could look at every single place Coates talks about the body / specific physical acts / specific bodies. But that would take a lot of looking.

If our claim is that Coates is saying that institutional racism can only be meaningfully analysed when we consider the specific acts of violence (physical and mental/spiritual/cultural) done to specific bodies, then we need to find places in the text where Coates is translating from the language of the host in the first paragraph--the language that avoids talking about bodies.

Find at least 3-4 quotes that do this.

Sample quotes/ sample notes/commentary:

Quotes in which the language of the “host”—the language that leaves out specific bodies, that elides actual real violence—is translated into the language of the question “what does it mean [to me] to lose my body”:

Coates is basically saying this exact same thing here:

“But all our phrasing—race relations,racial chasm, racial justice, racial profiling,white privilege, even white supremacy—serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth.”

What he’s saying is that the words disguise the violence. There's a difference between saying that there is racial profiling and that it is likely to lead to violence, and saying that the effects are felt as broken bones, as broken teeth. The italicized terms he lists makes real violence sterile, manageable. Hides it. Sweeps it under the rug. Easy to think about in a superficial way; easy therefore to dismiss--to say "oh, I know about that" because you're familiar with the terms/phrases. You don't have to be familiar with the actuality of it, the real effects. You don't need personal experience or listen to personal experience, in other words--you just have to have thought about the words.

          Another really obvious example here is the extended meditation on what it might have meant to be a specific black enslaved female body:

 Slavery is not an indefinable mass of flesh. It is a particular, specific enslaved woman, whose mind is as active as your own, whose range of feeling is as vast as your own; who prefers the way the light falls in one particular spot in the woods, who enjoys fishing where the water eddies in a nearby stream, who loves her mother in her own complicated way, thinks her sister talks too loud, has a favorite cousin, a favorite season, who excels at dressmaking and knows, inside herself, that she is as intelligent and capable as anyone. “Slavery” is this same woman born in a world that loudly proclaims its love of freedom and inscribes this love in its essential texts, a world in which these same professors hold this woman a slave, hold her mother a slave, her father a slave, her daughter a slave, and when this woman peers back into the generations all she sees is the enslaved. She can hope for more. She can imagine some future for her grandchildren. But when she dies, the world—which is really the only world she can ever know—ends. For this woman, enslavement is not a parable. It is damnation. It is the never-ending night. And the length of that night is most of our history. 

“Slavery”—the word—translated into individual physical experience. ("Why is he doing this? What does Coates gain by having the reader think about this?"--these are good questions to ask.)

Note the particularity of this description: the light falling in one particular spot in the woods, the specificity of the enjoyment of the place where the water eddies--lots of use of "the"; of the definite article, which implies that whatever the "the" applies to is singular, unique, real. "A favorite cousin, a favorite season" sounds like Coates is transposing his own specific likes on to this woman, fleshing her out; using details from his own life to make hers more real. In a very literal sense, he's identifying himself with her, this imagined woman. And implicitly, asking us to do the same. Imagine all of the specifics of your own life, your own body, whatever scars on your hands or feet, your own likes, dislikes, your own peculiarities, everything that belongs to you and your own unique inner life--and imagine this woman who has the same--who is just as real and just as unique. And imagine her in "endless dark." In "eternal damnation." Imagine yourself there. --is the move he's asking us to make.  

Experience at Howl’s Moving Castle—altercation with man who says “I could have you arrested!”—which for Coates, I think, is an admission of the power differential—the white man in this case finds it easy/natural to say “I could have you arrested!”: evidence (he would probably say) for the lingering structural effects of an American history in which it is "traditional to destroy the black body." 

I came home shook. It was a mix of shame for having gone back to the law of the streets, and rage—“I could have you arrested!” Which is to say: “I could take your body.”

Alternately, quotes in which Coates is pointing out places where individual bodies are—let’s call it buried under the words:

          The distinction between “black” and “white” might itself be such an instance, for Coates?

          For example: 
“There will surely always be people with straight hair and blue eyes, as there have been for all of history. But some of these straight-haired people with blue eyes have been ‘black.’” 

Actual body irrelevant to category of race, in this instance; actual body ignored in the same way that the host’s question ignores bodies.

For Monday,

... there's no new reading.

HOWEVER, please come to class having re-read "Letter to My Son," by Ta-Nehisi Coates--we'll be doing a number of close reading exercises that will require you to have a good working knowledge of the whole of the essay.

(Close reading, as I emphasized yesterday, always involves looking at details within the larger context of the work as a whole.)

Likewise, there's no response paper this week--instead, please concentrate on handing in any work that you owe me. Share it on Google docs no later than noon on Sunday, which is your final deadline.

Any work handed in after noon--anything that has a timestamp after 12:00:59 PM--will not count toward your final grade. I'll still comment on it, because I think that's the right thing to do. But I will not give it a pass.

Your journals and weekly response papers are pass/fail. If you hand them in (and they adequately address the assignment), you pass. If you don't, you fail. Together, they account for 25% of your grade.

If you don't hand in these three papers (and three journals!), you'll be missing out on approximately 6-8% of your final grade. That may not sound like much, but if your attendance is also spotty, and you don't absolutely ace your graded papers, it'll mean the difference between being able to use this your grade in this class in order to satisfy your requirements--and having to take it again.

More importantly, these assignments give me a chance to know you, and your writing, and to help you with comments--all without the stress of letter grades.

Also, a final word of warning:

These papers also help you get to know me, and get a sense of what my expectations are like, for your writing.

If you want to go into your first letter-graded assignment without having some sense of what I will and won't like about your writing, that's your deal.

But it's a terrible, terrible idea.

For Monday

For Monday, please listen to this interview with Michelle Alexander:

http://www.npr.org/2012/01/16/145175694/legal-scholar-jim-crow-still-exists-in-america

As you listen, think about Baldwin on "innocence" and Coates on the "Dream" (and on what he calls the "tradition" of destroying the black body). Take notes while you listen.

Also, read this: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/03/new-jim-crow-war-on-drugs

Come to class having:

• shared with me on Google Drive/Docs all of the work you currently owe me. By Monday that will be: a total of three weekly response papers and three weekly journal entries.
• Three discussion questions (on the interview; on connections/correspondences/similarities between Alexander/Baldwin/Coates/Lorde, on differences/contrasts between A/B/C/L; anything else connected to our reading/listening for this class)
• prepared yourself to talk for two minutes on Michelle Alexander

For your weekly response, I want you to pick a pair of quotes (one from Coates and one from Baldwin) that appear to speak to each other, and compare/contrast.

Here's an example of such a pair of quotes:

“They are in effect still trapped in a history which they do not understand and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it. They have had to believe for many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men.Many of them indeed know better, but as you will discover, people find it very difficult to act on what they know. To act is to be committed and to be committed is to be in danger. In this case the danger in the minds and hearts of most white Americans is the loss of their identity. Try to imagine how you would feel if you woke up one morning to find the sun shivering and all the stars aflame. You would be frightened because it is out of the order of nature. Any upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it so profoundly attacks one's sense of one's own reality. Well, the black man has functioned in the white man's world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar, and as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are shaken to their foundations.” (Baldwin)

“And there it is—the right to break the black body as the meaning of their sacred equality. And that right has always given them meaning, has always meant that there was someone down in the valley because a mountain is not a mountain if there is nothing below. [...] You and I, my son, are that “below.” That was true in 1776. It is true today. There is no them without you, and without the right to break you they must necessarily fall from the mountain, lose their divinity, and tumble out of the Dream. And then they would have to determine how to build their suburbs on something other than human bones, how to angle their jails toward something other than a human stockyard, how to erect a democracy independent of cannibalism.” (Coates)

While you're thinking about your pair of quotes, remember this rule of thumb: when you're writing, ALWAYS go for what’s going to surprise your reader. 

Anyone can look at the Baldwin and the Coates and see the similarities: both letters to loved ones, both talking about institutional racism, et cetera. 

Saying that they’re different--and pointing out how they're different--is the more surprising, and better--and more impressive, because it takes more work, and more likely to get a better grade, because more impressive--claim.

In the pair of quotes above, for example, Baldwin and Coates are saying very similar things, but their emphases, I think, are subtly different. Coates chooses to emphasize the physical violence done to the black body, for instance, where Baldwin might focus a bit more on cultural or mental or spiritual violence--harm done to black identity.

For Monday,

Please read:

1. "My Dungeon Shook," by James Baldwin, from The Fire Next Time, originally published as "A Letter to My Nephew," here:

http://progressive.org/news/2014/12/5047/letter-my-nephew

Here's a video of Chris Rock reading it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3ZC7XpnVEE

Also, a couple of videos of Baldwin himself talking:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnIjXmfTSYg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_hYraYI2J8

2. While you read/listen, think about how to relate Baldwin's "A Letter to My Nephew" to "Letter to My Son," by Ta-Nehisi Coates.


As an aid to your thought, here are the questions I gave you in class yesterday:

In “Letter to My Son,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates:         

• What is the “Dream”? Find a specific place where he defines it, and paraphrase/explain what he says, in your own words. (It may help if you re-read the essay and try to highlight all of the places where he either mentions the Dream, or is talking about something related to it.)  
• How does the “Dream” relate to the facts of history, as Coates sees it?        
• Coates says that American history has been understood according to a “comfortable narrative.”  What is that narrative? (According to him.) 
• How does the “Dream” relate to the “new and different history, myth really,” that Coates shows up to Howard University with? (What does the Dream ignore? What does the "new and different history" ignore?) 
• What does Ralph Wiley mean when he says, as cited in Coates, that “Tolstoy is the Tolstoy of the Zulus […] unless you find a profit in fencing off the universal properties of mankind into exclusive tribal ownership”? 
• What do you think Audre Lorde would say about the relationship between the “new and different history” and the “Dream”? What do you think she would say about “Tolstoy is the Tolstoy of the Zulus,” as opposed to “Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus”? 
• What does Coates mean when he says that he realized that “black blood wasn’t black; black skin wasn’t even black”? What does he mean when he says that “without [the power of domination and exclusion] […] ‘white people’ would cease to exist”? Why are there quotation marks around “white people”?

(^^A full answer to any of these questions would make a good weekly response paper.)

It might also help you to read some of these--they're all articles that are responding in some way to Between the World and Me, the book that "Letter to My Son" is excerpted from:

http://www.theatlantic.com/special-report/the-brutality-of-a-country/

Reading Assignment; suggestions for Weekly Paper #1

For Monday, please read: 

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/tanehisi-coates-between-the-world-and-me/397619/


As you read, please think about possible connections (connections between ideas, rather than connections between events) between Coates and Lorde (and Broderick).

For instance, in Lorde's "The Master's Tools [...]," the examples of the "tools of the master" that she gives include: the "either/or model of nurturing," and the equation of marriage with prostitution without regard for the experience of women who have been forced into (actual, non-metaphorical) prostitution. 

If you had to identify the tools of the master in Coates's essay, what would they be? 

Are they the same "master"? If not, what are the differences?

Also think about connections to your personal experience. Try to think of specific events in your life that inform your understanding of the essay.


For your first weekly response paper--I've thought about our class yesterday, and I think that maybe I was a little too hasty trying to get you to make text-to-text connections on the fly. Probably it's easier to start out with trying to apply ideas that you encounter in a text to your own experience, rather than to your interpretation of another text.

So:

Re-read Audre Lorde's "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House." As you read, think about times in your life when you might have felt disadvantaged, dealt with unfairly.  (Or times when you've seen somebody else treated unfairly.) Pick a specific quote from Lorde to talk about, and while you're explaining it, work in your story into your explanation.

(^This is more of a strong suggestion than an actual assignment--please feel free to write about other things. No matter what you write about, though, please make sure that you are responding to something specific in the text. And quote what you're responding to!)

Reading for Wednesday: Audre Lorde

http://collectiveliberation.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Lorde_The_Masters_Tools.pdf

3 Steps Eng 111

Believe I left my books and notes behind in class.... if anyone picked them up please let me know...

anyone write down the 3 step method, would like to send?

Thanks

Annotated...copies of Ryan Broderick

Outline, Paraphrase and Evaluate

Response

Ryan Broderick essay "We must bulldoze what's left of the nerdy white man's internet"
is a confusing  rant by a internet commentator against other internet users and commentators.
It is hard for me to pull all my thoughts together in way that sounds reasoned, because Broadrick makes broad statements, isolates a few incidents then re-projects them back onto whole groups of people.

He begins with his musing about an  adolescent T.V. show from 13 years ago about nerdy gifted kids and
associates them with the "teenage boys who created the first mainstream Internet Culture." He then goes on to further define these teenagers internet culture as "...the frothing manic id of thousand teenage boys...".

Broderick then jumps six years forward to an internet that has reached a gender parity...online while "men still spend more time plugged in"... one is not connected to the other.

He further confuses the issues with  the various Platforms (?) on the internet and its diverse users. Somehow he is trying to make the point that the evolution of the internet as it progressed and grew from the way people used them. Internet based college accounts grew into broader based sites. Blackberry mobile users for another group. He seems to make his arguments as if there was something wrong. Different people with different needs and different means of access would seem like it should be a good thing, yet somehow Broadrick makes it appear that different is wrong.

Then  with maddening convolutions of statistics (27 million people gathered? Where? Across the world of 7 billion?) 6 million for Game of thrones? In a country of over 300 million, its not a lot.
Then there 68% of females on Instgram... ok, whats the significance? 68% of all females in the world? Or 68% of the 50.4% of the population in America? Or on smart phones? Is there a significance that 32% are not on Instagram? Really useless information, but it appears good.

He has an beef with "Gamergate" which is understandable and reasonable people will conclude it was about harassment.
One of the issues that Broadrick does not mention at all is the money being geneated by all these sites. Its as if the internet is a land of purity and innocence, when in reality it is finance driven as all businesses.  (After all isn't that how Broadrick earns a living working internet commentary?

Nerds, nerdy white men, monosphere, seems Broadrick wishes to be in a virtual "safe space".
But, as Broadrick comments attest to the internet can be just as cut throat, competitive, petty as the real world. Maybe I should take a selfie with my puppy make me feel better.

Reading for Monday

• Broderick, Ryan. "We must bulldoze what's left of the nerdy white men's internet." The Kernel.<http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/headline-story/11843/angry-white-male-internet/>

• Axelrod and Cooper, pages 294-316.

Using the methods detailed in Axelrod and Cooper, please:

• annotate, outline, paraphrase, and evaluate the Broderick essay. This will work as your first weekly journal entry.
• Write about a page in response. Do you agree with the general claims of the essay? Why/why not?

Shitty First Draft Anne Lemott

“Shitty First Drafts”   Anne Lemott

Anne Lemott discusses the constant difficulty of writing a first draft. Though a professional writer, she expresses the constant difficulty of facing a blank page.

At the beginning of her essay she brings along potential writers that all writing takes effort. She acknowledges to some that writing may seem effortless to professional writers who have this wealth of knowledge and talent and that words just flow natural from them without much effort other than to write them down.

She describes it as “…fantasy of the uninitiated.”   

Her process is to write everything down knowing that no one really is going to see it. Just start it, as if it was “child’s play” and pour out what ever may come… even “Mr. Poopy pants”.

The point I believe she is making is just start, don’t get bogged down in too much pre-thinking. No first draft in reality is meant for public reading, rather it is an exercise in just getting going on it, have some fun, look for things to expand on later.

While reading Anne Lemotts essay, it reminds me of Julia Cameron’s “the Artist Way” in that Cameron sets up exercises for blocked “creative’s” to three pages of stream of consciousness writing. The idea is just to write and through that act of writing you will find what possibly is stopping you.

As a painter, I can understand what Lemott means. It’s the “blank canvas”, when face with a blank canvas what are going to do? You get it dirty, throw a colored wash on it, scribble on a page whatever, and just to have it not blank and intimidating.

 (note: I am not sure that this is what the Assignment was. I couldn't find it on the blog page, so went on the internet and found "Shitty First Draft " there.)

Assignment 1

Just checking in. I am such a dinosaur when it comes to computers... it will become part of my learning curve. Posted answer to Assignment Friday. Now, I don't see it, which gets me to wondering about my blogging, this is also new. Think I may have posted on as reply on someones post. Will re post my answer, hope its the same content, not sure since re writing from notes...then see if it works.

There was not much writing from me in English. As I recall, freshman English was a non event. Ms G and I disagreed on my first book report. Book reports, papers and tests from that point on only consisted of my name and date written at the top. I failed every quarter that year and ended up having to take two English classes the following year. It was difficult falling behind so far, never really caught up. Commenting on what my best and least writing attributes is difficult because it was a long time ago and really only seems I did enough to get by.

I don't know what to expect from College writing, but look forward to finding out.

Answer to the questions.

1. As a writer in high school I was very good at painting a picture of what I was writing about by being very descriptive. Also I was very good at coming up with a thesis statement. I feel as a writer I need to improve on not making some many spelling and grammar mistakes. Also I need to expand on my vocabulary and not use the same word some many times.
2. I expect college writing to be a little bit more difficult because the professor is expecting more from you than a high school teacher would. An example is your professor will expect you to be an expert on what your talking about. Also you will need to use more difficult vocabulary words and not make minor spelling and grammar mistakes. Ideas should come from the writer and his research. My assumptions about college writing come from college students I talked to.
3. Every essay has a introduction, body and conclusion. In the introduction you will find the thesis statement and the background information. In the body of the essay your will find your main ideas. Finally in the conclusion you find the thesis again and a summarize version of your main points.

EMAILS

I have emails from five of you--you know who you are, because you got an blog-author invite.

The rest of you: please send me emails with your responses to the questionnaire, ASAP!

Syllabus!

Sam Cha

sam.cha@gmail.com

Office hours: by appointment

SYLLABUS

COLLEGE WRITING I

ENG 111-MH (SPRING 2016)

M-W 10:00AM – 11:15 AM

Malden High (room TBA)

THE MOST UP-TO-DATE VERSION OF THIS SYLLABUS, ALONG WITH ANY LAST MINUTE CHANGES TO ASSIGNMENTS, WILL ALWAYS BE ONLINE AT THE CLASS BLOG: http://eng-111-mh.blogspot.com/

Please check the blog every Friday morning, at 11:00 AM, and leave a comment on the latest entry so that I know that you have done so.

REQUIRED MATERIALS & TEXTS

• Hacker, Diana and Nancy Sommers. A Pocket Style Manual. Boston and New York: Bedford St. Martin's Press, 2015.
• Axelrod, Rise and Charles Cooper. The Concise St. Martin's Guide to Writing.
• Other materials, via email / handouts / class blog.

• A notebook, for in-class writing exercises.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course emphasizes writing as a process, from planning and drafting through revising and editing. Using personal experience, readings, and other sources, students write unified, coherent, well-developed essays and practice paraphrasing, summarizing, and using sources responsibly. To be eligible to take College Writing II (ENG112), students must pass the College Writing Exam and earn a grade of C or better for this course. The course meets General Education College Writing Requirement Area 1.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS & EVALUATION

Attendance & Participation: 35%

Come to class: 2 unexcused absences = one letter grade off of your final grade. If you have 4 or more unexcused absences, you risk failing the course.

Come to class on time: More than 10 minutes late = tardy. 2 tardies = 1 absence.

Come to class on time, prepared. You won't get anything out of this class unless you: i) know what the reading is, ii) are fully informed of any changes to the assignment (check the blog!), and iii) have done the reading. 

Come to class on time, prepared, with at least one thing to say about the reading: Say what you have to say, listen to what your classmates have to say, and respond to what they say. The goal is to say something that will help other people learn.

Phones must be turned off, unless I ask you to turn them on.

Writing: 65%

Weekly Journal (Pass/Fail): 10%

You can't become a better writer without reading. Also, you can't become a better writer without writing. To this end, each week you will choose and read an article, an essay, a story, or a poem.

In 100-200 words: i) summarize what you read (i.e., “tl;dr,” except you will have read). ii) Say something about your response to what you read: did you like it? Agree with it? And iii) give a reason for your response.

Your journal entry must do all three things in order for you to receive a “Pass” for that week.

Weekly Paper (Pass/Fail): 15%

500 words. Usually this will take the form of responses to the week's reading; I will occasionally give you more specific assignments.

Three 5-6 page papers: 30%

Final portfolio: 10%

Everything above collected + your chance to revise 2 of the 3 longer papers for a better grade.

Plagiarism & Academic Honesty: If you plagiarize, you fail.