WRT 105: Analysis Essay |
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| Course Schedule | Links WRT 105-FALL 2004 | Unit 2-Homeland (In)Securities Unit Readings Web Sites Introduction For Unit 2, I would like each of you to explore this landscape, focusing
specifically on the spaces from which you emerged as well as the particularities
and peculiarities of those spaces. Like social cartographers, we will
devote the greater part of the next six weeks to an ongoing investigation
of this omnipresent "culture of congestion" in an attempt to
determine the role it plays in our designed environment, as well
as the rules it presupposes for social interactions in such Writing Assignment 1) attempt to understand your hometown in relation to its broader social
and political context; Unit 2 is also intended to serve as an introduction to the conventions of academic discourse. We will spend significant time over the next six weeks practicing critical reading strategies-annotating, summarizing, paraphrasing, unpacking, responding-by carefully reading and grappling with some complex texts. We'll also examine each not just for what the author says but also for how the author says it. In other words, we'll be reading these texts rhetorically to begin making sense of the contexts-historical, social, political, cultural-in which these texts were written, the author's explicit and/or implicit reasons for writing the text, the structure of the essay, the claims and evidence, and so on. We'll work at making analytic claims, writing rich descriptions, and recognizing and articulating connections between personal experiences or memories and larger cultural issues (like race, gender, class, ability, sexuality, ethnicity, education, etc.). From our careful readings and discussions of these texts, and from your own "memory work," interpretations, and observations, you should be ready to richly describe, analyze, and make claims about the connections between your hometown spaces and larger cultural, social, and political spaces. Just because there is pressure on you (the "I" of the essay)
to be critical in your It will be important for you to move beyond narration and description, in order to examine the details of your location carefully enough to be able to explore what it means, what it suggests, and why it seems significant. As Rosenwasser and Stephen claim in Writing Analytically: "the process of noticing, of recording selected details and patterns of detail, is already the beginning of interpretation" (39). There is no predetermined formula to follow or structure to imitate as you attempt to organize your essay, but your writing and critical thinking are bound to be more successful if you adhere to the following suggestions:
[1] How well does the title provocatively and productively focus the reader's attention? [2] How effectively does the writer organize the essay, with a focusing idea, thesis, or umbrella claim, and with good transitions between sections? [3] How well does the writer provide a rich, detailed description of the site as well as analysis variations related to "while this space appears to be x, it is really y" and "so what"? [4] How well does the writer develop specific, analytical claims about a particular place while providing precise, nuanced evidence, including memory work, to nest the claims? [5] Does the writer frame the analysis with formal citations to at least two carefully chosen and appropriately supportive outside texts, either from the assigned reading or the recommended web sites? [6] How well does the writer make things explicit (e.g., details, not generalizations; claims, not clichés)? [7] How well did the writer address surface level matters related to grammar, style, and usage? |