Sequential Smarts
Sunday, October 31, 2004
Paper 2: Reading and grading
Hey, send me a copy of your second draft! I want to get a sense of where you are at in the composition of your essays and I'll comment--sparingly--on your draft. Indeed, the sooner you get your draft to me the more likely you are to get numerous comments; later arrivals will probably just get summary remarks, as I try frantically not to fall behind.
Grading on this essay--as I mentioned at the beginning of the semester--will be somewhat more strict than grading on the first essay, as I'm sure you could have guessed. The quality of writing that earned an A on the first essay is likely to earn a B on the second essay (and a C on the third). This isn't an exact science, of course, but I do want you to have a sense that I'm going to be a little more particular about how I evaluate your work.
I will be grading the same things, however:
- Strength of argumentation : how effectively your support backs up your claim; how convincingly you evaluate your warrants; how adequately you undermine strong counterarguments;
- Sophistication and breadth : how strikingly you see your specific argument fitting into a larger discourse;
- Analysis : how seamlessly your reading of others' arguments integrates into your own position;
- Clarity and organization : how crisply, concisely, and clearly you convey your points.
Wednesday, October 27, 2004
Tonight's final note: Peer Review 2.2
Let me know if you have any partner requests for this second round of peer review: you might, for example, ask to stick with the same person. Since we're back in the computer classroom for Monday and Wednesday of next week, this peer review will like the peer review for 1.2, with a primary reviewer and a secondary reviewer, etc.
Getting Arrested: Less Than Fun
In one of my favorite blog entries from last year, Alison Z. explains what it's like to get arrested at the Mifflin Street Block Party. Please, please don't be stupid this weekend.
Journal Moratorium
Because I am two weeks behind in journal grading--and will probably go deeper into the hole before I start to crawl out of it--I am giving you guys a weeklong break from writing journals. You can still write and post journals during this break and thereby build up a nice surplus that will allow you to coast through, for example, the last week of classes.
However, you might consider breaking this moratorium on Tuesday, November 2 on which date, after you have voted, just shoot me an email that says "Hey, I voted at [location]!" in order to receive a free check plus.
- A quick warning about voting: Voting takes time!! Don't think you can stop by the polls in the 15 minutes between classes, because it can easily take an hour to get through the line. This goes double for those of you who plan to register to vote at the polls. If your schedule permits, try to vote early in the morning.
- If you want some basic information about how and where to vote, visit College Library's Vote 2004.
My philosophy about English 100 is that it should get substantially easier as other classes become more demanding near the end of the semester. This doesn't mean that my grading will become any less strict--indeed, it will become substantially more so--but it does mean that you should find the percentage of your time that you spend on this class decreasing as we get deeper into the semester.
Saturday, October 23, 2004
Peer review part two!
As before, if you have any specific peer review requests please shoot me an email! Most of you will be working with just one other reader this time, so let me know if there's somebody you'd especially like to have read your work.
Essay status: four to go.
Thursday, October 21, 2004
Where Your Papers At
I had hoped to be able to return your papers to you tonight or at worst tomorrow after class; however, they are not likely make it back until late this weekend. I apologize for this delay, especially as it would have been helpful for you to get a sense of how I responded to your first essays before you embark on your second.
For what it's worth, I do have a couple general remarks to make about the essays I have read so far, which remarks might suggest to you specific goals for which to aim in the first draft of this second, more ambitious essay:
- It could be that "revision" is commonly synonymous with "proofreading." For me, this is not the case. When I praise an "excellent first draft," I mean that the draft shows the potential--after heavy reorganization, reimagination of the thesis, and a thorough rewriting--to become a solidly-argued, imaginative, sophisticated essay. It's like praising a fat caterpillar because it looks likely to become a glorious butterfly. Frequently, however, these final drafts look like first drafts with fewer grammatical and orthological errors: sleeker and smarter caterpillars, to be sure, but not exactly butterflies.
- Many of these essays have aimed too low. Often the thesis argues a position that few people are likely to dispute; and when the thesis is at least disputable, it isn't necessarily as expansive as it might be. To offer a common example, many of these first essays eloquently argue that parents should take responsibility for raising their own children. Tellingly, nobody has argued that parents should be relieved of having to monitor their children. Aim for controversy, folks! Argue that Grand Theft Auto shouldn't even be played by adults! Or perhaps that the popularity of GTA is a sign that Americans are trying to cope with a particularly violent era; perhaps its popularity means that American moral standards are dropping at a horrific rate; perhaps that the entertainment media will stop at nothing to make an extra buck.
Sunday, October 17, 2004
Falling Behind
As I concentrate my energy on grading your papers I will fall momentarily behind on grading your journals. I will get to your journals in time, but please be patient. If you particularly want me to look at your journal for any reason (perhaps it espouses the central claim you will be arguing in your next paper and you want to see if you're on track), send me an email to let me know.
Saturday, October 16, 2004
Deconstructing Roy Lichtenstein
In our too-brief discussion of contemporary art, we didn't touch on the pop art of Roy Lichtenstein. Now online, Deconstructing Roy Lichtenstein juxtaposes Lichtenstein's comics-inspired paintings with the originals that inspired them. Note how Lichtenstein's artist's eye subtly rearranges angles and positions.
Sunday, October 10, 2004
On Journals: The first turning of the screw Now updated!
Beginning this Wednesday, 10/13, the grading criteria for class journals are scaling up a notch. For these first 15 journals, all you have needed to get a check is a supported reasonable claim. Beginning with Wednesday's journal, to receive a check you must make not only an argument but you must incorporate analysis into that argument.
Q: What is analysis?
A: Good question! Analysis is the process of reading another person's argument and incorporating it into your own. You can respond to arguments in countless ways:
- Counterargue! Attack the claimant's support or present a more convincing argument of your own. (Remember to address why your argument is the more convincing one.)
- Develop! Show how the argument could be even stronger with more support or a modified claim. Discuss the consequences of a certain argument: if Sally is right about art, what does that mean about the value of a masterfully-painted still life, or a portrait, or a landscape?
- Examine! What is the warrant to the claimant's central thesis? What are some possible weaknesses in that warrant? How do you feel about the grounding of the argument?
A: One remarkably easy way is to read and respond to your peers' blogs. Say, for example, you're reading Sam's most recent entry, about Delta Thrives. You might look at her argument--silently identifying her claim and how she supports that claim--and then respond to some aspect of her argument:
- You could argue against her position (and, indeed, several of you seem to disagree with the argument that Sam makes in this journal).
- You might agree with her position but add new detailed supports to back up her main claim. Or you might apply her argument to another comic entirely. In any case, blankly agreeing with or repeating another argument does not count as analysis.
- You might feel like taking her argument to a new level: she says some clear things about the possible disadvantages of teaching Delta Thrives to high school upperclassmen, but is there a larger picture she's not reacting to? Perhaps a bigger discussion about what high school is supposed to teach, or what English classes are supposed to teach?
A: Only if you post your response online as well. Get a blog now!
Q: Is the only legitimate kind of analysis a response to a classmate's journal? What if there are no journals I want to respond to?
A: By analysis I mean the integration of another's argument into your own. You can just as easily respond to the argument inherent in an artwork (be it Farley's "Delta Thrives" or Michelangelo's "Pieta") or in an argumentative essay (e.g. Scott McCloud's "Setting the Record Straight") or anywhere else you might encounter an argument. (Perhaps the opinion pages of one of the student newspapers, or perhaps a conversation among friends.)
Friday, October 08, 2004
Reviewing our art review
A forthcoming journal will ask you to comment on your favorite of the paintings we looked at in class today. To refresh your memory, here is what we looked at:
- Michelangelo's Pieta, 1498.
- Raphael's School of Athens, 1511.
- De Heem's Still-Life, c. 1630.
- Hogarth's Gin Lane, 1751.
- Turner's Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, 1835.
- Cezanne's Still Life with Compotier, 1882.
- Van Gogh's Pair of Shoes, 1886.
- Monet's Nympheas, 1899.
- Kandinsky's Composition VIII, 1923.
- Mondrian's New York City, 1942.
- Magritte's Empire of Light, 1954.
As you can tell from the dates, I have clear preferences for a certain era and style of art. (It just so happens that I study literature from precisely this same era, and in an earlier manifestation of today's slideshow I wanted to look at how poetry has changed over time. You should be happy that I spared you all that Coleridge and Whitman.)
Will You Remember to Vote on November 2?
Why Not Have an Author Call to Remind You?
Tobias Wolff, Michael Chabon, ZZ Packer, Dave Eggers, Ann Cummins, Glen David Gold, Gabe Hudson, Aimee Bender, Julie Orringer, Vendela Vida, Jim Shepard, Andrew Sean Greer, Anthony Swofford, Heidi Julavitz, Neal Pollack, Michael Cunningham, Jonathan Lethem, Ann Packer, Heidi Julavitz, Daniel Handler, Jennifer Egan, and many other contemporary writers are standing by to call you on election day!
To receive a reminder phone call email opohio@mcsweeneys.net from your Wisc.edu account.
Include your name, your school, and your phone number.
More information is available at StephenElliott.com
and McSweeneys.net.
Wednesday, October 06, 2004
Awesome Students Only, Read On!
If you purchased the McCloud text, now is the time to think about sneaking in some extra reading. The second chapter of Understanding Comics, "The Vocabulary of Comics," does an outstanding job documenting how the aesthetic trinary of imitation / expression / form connects to the language of comics. As you might imagine, how comics relate to larger movements in the art historical process could become one of the central arguments in the class debate. It's also a really fun read!
For some more advanced stuff, chapter three ("Blood in the Gutter") does a remarkable job breaking down the highest-level components a comics artist might manipulate in his or her text: closure is one of the most abstract concepts relevant to contemporary comics development, but it's also one of the most powerful and most important.
Chapter six ("Show and Tell") talks about the interrelationship of image and text in comics. Looking at comics across cultures--particularly American, French and Japanese--McCloud traces how different sorts of storytelling make use of different categories of closure. This is low-level anthropology and extremely interesting for anybody interested in arguing how web comics either adhere to a certain cultural tradition or else develop a new tradition of their own.
Monday, October 04, 2004
Comics
- Patrick Farley's "Spiders"
- Patrick Farley's "Delta Thrives: Set the controls for the heart of the sun"
- Demian.5 "When I Am King"
- Justine Shaw's "Nowhere Girl: Imaginary friend"
Sunday, October 03, 2004
One small step for two women...
Why aren't you online yet? If you were nervous about making the first step into public discourse then quiver no more! Both Angie and Meggie have taken that Armstrongian leap, and now it's up to you to be their Buzz Aldrin. Come join the conversation!
Saturday, October 02, 2004
Why Don't You Write Me?
Trying to teach this class without a computer at home has felt kind of like trying to conduct an orchestra without a baton. Obviously, being so technophilic has its disadvantages. Anyway, while the major problem isn't fixed yet, I do have working email access for the foreseeable future: this means that tonight and tomorrow, as you work on shaping your essay into the most perfect argument ever constructed by mortal man or woman, you can shoot me as many questions as you like!
