The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing
This is one of my favorite books for helping college students understand how to work with secondary sources. You can download it and consult it. The templates are really quite useful.
Is reading a thing of the past?
Literature is changing before our eyes. Our parents and grandparents used to read books and magazines, but by and large we don't read as many books and magazines in 2021 as we did before the advent of personal networked computers. Now we mainly experience literature mediated through our phones and devices, not through printed books. Is this a good thing, a bad thing, an inevitable thing, a complicated thing, or maybe not a thing at all? For all of recorded history, old people like me have chastised young people like you, "These days the kids don't know how to read or write." Maybe the kids are just taking a different route (electronic) to literature, and their parents and teachers are learning how to deal with it. As a sidenote, it's interesting to remember that the age of mass literacy in America has been fairly brief. Until the middle of the 19th century, about 170 years ago, very few people read for leisure, and many people never learned how to read. Maybe that's where we're returning.
The Electronic Literature Organization is exactly what it sounds like. Check out all of their information. Some of it, alas, no longer works because the technology is changing so fast. This, perhaps, is a problem.You don't need a special machine or software to be able to read a book page, you just need a bit of reflected light. Even pages printed 500 years ago are as legible as the day they were printed. An entire genre of electronic literature, the Flash Poem, was killed off when Flash was no longer supported by Adobe. Goodbye forever.
In this unit you are going to write a persuasive argumentative essay with a research component that takes a position on the debate outlined above. The paper must be between 5-7 double-spaced pages and formatted in correct MLA style with a separate Works Cited page. The final is due no later than 3:00 pm on Tuesday, November 16.
Module Five: Schedule
Tues, Oct 26: What is research? Why do we
research? Discussion board entry and responses.
Thurs, Oct 28: What is a scholarly source? Why
does it matter? (see blog and Populi for details)
Tues, Nov 2: MLA format, a painless
introduction (see blog and Populi for details)
Thurs, Nov 4: Draft of research essay due by end
of class (upload to Populi)
Tues, Nov 9: One on one conferences (Sign-up on
Tues., Nov 2)
Thurs, Nov 11: Workshop (continued)
Tuesday, Nov. 16: FINAL DUE
We are spending more time on this assignment so your final version will be something you'll be proud to put into your DCAD Writing Portfolio. Some of the questions that you might address are the "coming together" of literature and video gaming. Are video games our culture's new novels? Are they something entirely different? How about a meme? Are they like modern-day haiku? Why do young people think reading is boring? What specifically about reading printed books and magazines is boring? Do you disagree with these new trends and prefer to think of literature in its classic sense? There are so many other questions I could have posed in this part of the assignment, but I want you to explore them on your own and with your classmates.
To support your non-obvious position or argument, you will need to incorporate the voices of at least five other scholars into your writing. I like to think of this as a sort of weaving.
There's no shortage of scholarly work on this subject. Here is a link to pages and pages of search results on Google Scholar. And here is a link to search results from Jstor.
Of course, printed books will not disappear from our culture, but they will take on a different status. Already, we see publishers using digital platforms to promote, market, and distribute literary works by poets, novelists, and essayists. This, however, is not exactly what is meant by digital or electronic literature. Digital or Electronic literature must take advantage of the multi-media tools at nearly everyone's disposal. You don't even need a subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud.
The printed "book" changed the world back in the 1440s, but it took about fifty years for printed books to be disseminated widely. Maybe we're at about the same point with the "computer" and the digital literature it makes possible?
Literary or "close" reading takes time. It's not immediate. We all know that the closer we examine something the more information it yields. I'm going to show you some strategies for how to do this, and more importantly how to transform your close reading into critical writing.
While there might be an opportunity to use your first-person or "I" voice in the introduction or conclusion, the bulk of your essay will focus solely on the work of literature itself (either the story or the poem). You, the writer, will be in dialogue with the literary work. You will share with your reader your interpretation or interpretations and you'll give your reader direct evidence, quoted material, to support your position. For this assignment, we're not going to deal with MLA documentation and a Works Cited page. Our next module will thoroughly cover those issues.
Everybody will read two very different classics of American literature: Charlotte Perkin Gilman's short story "The Yellow Wall Paper" and Langston Hughes' poem, "Let America be America Again."
We will discuss both works in our next class on Thursday, October 14. Your assignment is to read both of these works very carefully and be prepared to discuss your thoughts, feelings, and interpretations about them.
You will have the choice to write your literary analysis on either Gilman's story or Hughes' poem, but not both.
Your essay should be approximately 1,000 words or three full double-spaced MLA-style pages. This might seem like a lot, but it truly isn't.
Do you want to meet with me for a one-on-one tutorial? I'd love that. Send me an email message to csmith@dcad.edu.
MODULE SCHEDULE
Oct 12: Introduction of the new unit, assign reading.
Oct 14: Reading quiz, discussion. Outlining draft.
Oct 19: Finished Draft Due no later than 3 pm (Upload to Populi). This is required, not optional. It will count for half of your final grade.
Oct 21: FINAL essay due no later than 3 pm (Upload to Populi), Critique.
This is a pretty great website from the UK.
These tips give you practical considerations to think about. How can a single image "tell" a complex story like Lispector's "Amor"?
Most if not all of the art and design featured on this site is generated digitally. Remember that you are free to use traditional methods. When it comes to uploading, take a careful and professional picture of it. Better yet, use a scanner if you have access to one.
Lispector "Bonus" Stories
Some of you might really love short fiction and want to read more stories by Clarice Lispector. Here are two free stories for your reading enjoyment. Note: This is not an assignment.
