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Sequential Smarts
Monday, April 26, 2004
 
Peer review, Steep & Brew style

Please remember that I will be at the Steep & Brew on State Street during classtime on Wednesday morning.

It could be very useful for you to use this space to conduct a peer interview with your peer review partner(s), so that you can talk through your paper's claim and argument and develop a conversation about what work you need to do to go forward with your research. This discursive style of peer review is especially fruitful in helping work through the tough argumentative knots that crop up in the early stages of paper planning.

And, of course, I'll be on hand if you have any questions.
 
Picket lines, updated

Something I have been unclear about until today is whom the picket lines are directed towards. Months ago it seemed as though the TAA was only interested in suggesting that TAs not enter buildings during any potential work stoppage. However, Katie's most recent journal entry hinted otherwise, so I asked my steward.

It seems, from the ensuing discussion, that there is some disagreement about what to recommend to undergraduates. Hence, allow me to broadly answer a couple of hypothetical questions on this matter.

If the TAA votes to continue its job action this week, what does it intend the picket lines to accomplish?
The picket lines are in place to demonstrate solidarity and to quietly disrupt the ordinary functioning of the University such that students, faculty, and administrators take notice of the presence and commitment of members and supporters of the TAA.
Should undergraduates cross picket lines?
The official position of the TAA is that, because the TAAis interested in disrupting the ordinary functioning of the University, undergraduates should not cross picket lines; in fact, undergraduates are welcome to join the picket lines. However, picket leaders have been instructed to not let the picket line harass undergraduates. (I've been asked to point out that picket lines will not physically harass anyone; the lines are meant to be a sort of psychological barrier, nothing more.) Therefore, the decision about whether or not to cross picket lines is entirely in your hands, as undergraduates.
At the very least, students should not use the TAA job action as an excuse to skip class and play video games.

This situation has provided a basic example of argumentation in action. Why might you choose to cross picket lines, and why not? What are the arguments in both directions?
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
 
CommEnts

I wanted to point towards a couple particularly articulate arguments in this discussion about Gen Ed requirements.

I feel that Jeremy does an especially good job outlining the purpose and value of Gen Ed requirements. He offers a rationale for (nearly) each requirement, although Comm B is suspiciously absent from his list. Kelly offers a slightly more specific argument suggesting that the library training you receive in Comm A (and also Comm B) introduces you to an extraordinary academic resource with which you might not otherwise interact.

From the other camp, Sarah P. offers a well-formulated capitalist argument against academic requirements of any kind. She (persuasively, I think) argues that college is a purchased commodity, and that consequently the customers should be allowed to pick as they will from the vendor's products. How might we argue against this (increasingly prominent) position, or should we?
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
 
A Discussion about Comm A

Yeah, so I know that I'm at least a week behind on grading your journals, but I only have three more papers to grade and I'm still waiting on the authors before I can respond to two of them, so hopefully my journal-grading machinery will be revving up again soon. (Well, after I look at your faux essay exams and forthcoming annotated bibliographies.)

In the meantime, I have a question I'd like you to think about answering--argumentatively, analytically--in your journals:
What do you see as the purpose of the University's General Education requirements, particularly Comm A? How useful are these requirements?
I would really like to see a discussion (or even, dare I wish it, a debate) about how you perceive these General Education requirements, and, in particular, Comm A. Consider reading over the Gen Ed background given to faculty and instructors to get a sense of the program's mandate and rationale.
Thursday, April 15, 2004
 
Exercises in Style

Matt Madden, at least a little inspired by Scott McCloud, shows us how many ways comics can communicate the information contained within one scene. His exercisesinstyle.com reminds me a little of Chris Ware's "I Guess," which we read about in Gene Kannenberg's essay.
 
I'm Procrastinating

While I haven't gotten around to grading this week's blog-journals yet, I have looked them over and am delighted to see that as a class you are getting the hang of analysis. One good example of this that caught my eye is Alison Z.'s recent entry, in which she takes an explicitly anthropological tack in engaging with Dave's exceptionally interesting argument about pedagogy and indoctrination.

And then there's Kaylan. Oh lord.

You know, I think the syllabus says that journals need to be "at least 100 words long." And I seriously expected to be using a lot of my time counting the number of words in student journals to make sure people weren't slacking. Most of you are writing upwards of three pages for me a week in journals alone. I suspect that's why the average grades in this class are so high.
Tuesday, April 06, 2004
 
Analyze This.

I've been having a very difficult time explaining all the check minuses that have resulted from the new, inflexible stricture requiring analysis to accompany your arguments. I think I have gotten to the point that I can define it well enough, but I really wish I could offer some clear examples. Here, for now, is the best I can do.

On Monday night, Sarah posted a response to Zak's popular pet post. Observe how the first sentence of Sarah's journal delimit the course of the argument:
As Zak mentioned, the “perfect pet” should ideally be inexpensive and low maintenance.
By agreeing with Zak's terms of pet comparison she explicitly defines the terms of her argument: she first counterargues Zak's claim on the grounds of these criteria, and then advances her own counterclaim, using these same criteria to justify her (somewhat eerie) conclusion.

Please ask me for clarification in class tomorrow if you like!
Sunday, April 04, 2004
 
Grading: A reminder

Please remember that the +5 grading scale applies only if you respond to somebody else's argument and post that response online. Email responses are graded on the usual scale, as are ordinary journals posted online. This isn't to discourage you from either sort of journal, though.
 
When we officially begin Unit 3 tomorrow, journal expectations will go up one final notch: to receive a check, a journal must make an argument supported by analyzed evidence, or it must offer an insightful argument. While the quality of journals I have been receiving since spring break suggests that you as a class won't have much trouble meeting these new expectations, I would like to steer you towards a particular style of discourse that encourages a higher level of argumentation. In particular, I'm concerned that recent discussions about the seasons* have been a little too superficial, in that each argument looks for pieces of evidence to support why one season might be more pleasurable than another without trying to reframe the terms of the argument.

Here, however, are a couple examples of discussions which have very successfully reframed the terms of the argument:
  1. A week and a half ago, Danielle used a discussion of heredity to suggest that alcoholism should not be attributed simply to genetics. To support Danielle's argument, Kaylan posits the existence of a non-genetic, environmental "heredity". Kaylan's response demonstrates really sharp analysis and focused argumentation.
  2. Last week, Danielle gave a straightforward but thorough argument explaining why the Yankees are the best team in baseball. On Wednesday she offered a solid counterargument, in which she was joined by Alison F. and Alison Z.. What's important here is that none of these responses simply sought to argue on the terms of Danielle's original journal--after all, using pure statistics to argue about baseball would inevitably have lead you back to the conclusion that the Yankees are the best. Instead, each response changes the terms of the discussion to suggest that, in another light, other teams (or, in Alison Z.'s case, any team at all) might be considered the best.
* Here are the advocates for summer, fall, and winter; I received a defense of spring via email.

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