We will culminate our reading and discussion (most weeks) with a short writing assignment that moves you from initial reading and responses toward the more substantial reading, writing, and research you will pursue in the Seminar Project. In Emerson’s terms, this is an assignment where you brace your mind with some additional labor and invention, illuminating the pages of our course book through further interrogation and application of the concepts to which you want to give more attention.

Guidelines: approximately 500 words, more or less. Here, you take key ideas and interests from the week’s reading and discussion and perform (and practice) two critical moves. Posted to the blog (unless otherwise indicated) by Friday at Noon. I will expect you to come to class Thursday with ideas and initial drafting underway; following Thursday’s class work, you can then take some additional time to expand and/or revise your thinking and edit your writing.

1. Interrogation: Take a critical concept from the week’s reading (perhaps attached to a keyword, a critical figure or theorist, a particular problem) and interrogate it further. Provide basic context for that concept, related to our reading; paraphrase, cite , and quote where relevant and effective. Situate it the concept in the larger context of the critical theory we are studying that week. Take a question from your Commonplace Book and our discussion and go further with it. Explore its complexities and complications–to use Spivak’s phrasing, its “double bind.” Begin to suggest or hypothesize an answer to the question, or a possible resolution to the problem you have interrogated. You can think of this assignment as a reading quiz that you make for yourself, demonstrating how well you are reading the texts assigned.
2. Application: An important way to interrogate the concept further is to test it out, apply it to a “text” of your choice. How does that text, or a particular part of that text, exemplify, extend, complicate, confirm, or counter the concept you are interrogating. Based on this application, what conclusions can you draw at this point about the concept? Where might you go from here, if you were to develop this further for the Seminar Project, or maybe an SCE? What would be the uses and the limits of using this critical perspective for whatever that longer project might pursue or seek to argue? This “text” can be anything of interest, of relevance, and that might be useful for a future SCE. I like and will follow Spivak’s broader definition of literature: orature, film, hypertext, videography as well as more traditional forms in print.

Evaluation: I will be evaluating two things—the effectiveness of your reading/critical thinking as well as the effectiveness of your writing. In older, rhetorical terms: your “invention” as well as your “style” and “delivery.” While you don’t need to engage in revision as extensively as you will for the various parts of the Seminar Project, I recommend at least some basic revision (Ask, after an initial draft: What else might I say? What might I clarify or expand? What’s a good title for this? What are my keywords, my “tags”?) as well as basic editing for sentence clarity. You will also be expected to use proper MLA citation format (good practice) for all references: provide an in-text citation and a works cited list at the end.

Scale (10 points):

10: Everything from the 9-level plus brilliance—the thinking and the writing delight readers in addition to persuading and informing us.

9: Everything from the 8-level plus persuasion—the thinking and the writing move/bend readers to a better or deeper understanding, in addition to informing us.

8: The thinking and the writing fully inform the audience in both the interrogation and application. The Further Reading is submitted on time, meeting all expectations. It provides a good demonstration of the scholar’s grasp of the reading and effort with writing.

6-7:  While mainly informative, the thinking and/or the writing demonstrate some limitations that can be improved upon for the next submission. Conference with the professor or Writing Center is recommended to guide improvement.

1-5: The Further Reading is limited, submitted late, or otherwise does not meet expectations.

0: No submission.