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Required Assignments Response Papers [RP]: Response papers will be a key part of your written work in the class. You will be asked to write on nearly everything you will read this semester. On our schedule page under our daily readings, you will find a question or a series of questions. You will respond according to the following template, numbering both sections:
1. Summarize your general experience with the reading (How did it make you feel? Did you agree or disagree with the argument? Did it resonate with anything in your personal life? Was it difficult or easy to read and why?). Feel free to use an informal writing style and use first person. [2-4 meaty but concise sentences]
2. Your response to the specific question or assignment regarding the given text. Use a formal writing style and do your best to avoid first person. [at least a paragraph—10-12 meaty but concise sentences]I encourage you to clearly date these entries, as I will not be collecting them on a scheduled basis. I reserve the right to ask for a Response Paper by its date at any time during the semester. Therefore, please keep these things well organized (note my suggestion of a 3 ring binder). These mini-papers must follow the expectation guidelines for typed, written work (see Expectations).
The Response Papers will be graded on the basis of your interaction with the question—how much thought are you evidencing, how sophisticated are you being? I will give you either a check ++, a check +, check, or check- based on your work. A check++ is very rare—it means that you have created a flawless masterpiece. A check+ means that you are above average yet not quite perfect. A check means that you are obviously engaged with the question and are doing an adequate job. A check- means that you are slipping beneath the level of work I expect from you. Unacceptable work will receive a 0. At the end of the semester, I will then translate your collection of checks into a point total out of 100 (depending on the amount of Response Papers collected this semester).
Essays 1, 2, & 3: Each of these essays will be a 3-5 page paper focusing on a specific question directly tied to our readings or discussions. These essays must follow the expectation guidelines for written work and conform to the general writing guidelines provided online.
Research Essay: The research essay is your most important assignment. It is the primary testing ground for your writing skills and is a critical means of accumulating points. You will not be allowed to revise your research paper—if you participate in our workshops and take advantage of your conferences with me, you should not have to. The research essay must also follow the expectation guidelines for written work and conform to the general writing guidelines.
Take Charge Assignment: In a group, you will be assigning readings to the class as well as will be responsible for leading discussions on the topic.
Revision Policy: Your first two primary assignments may be revised within two weeks of being returned for additional point consideration. Your total may be raised a maximum of only one grade (from a C- to a B-). No late assignments may be revised. Please understand that a revision is not merely correcting spelling and grammar errors or adding a few sentences—that is a waste of both our times. To revise a paper is to begin from scratch, reassessing the question to create a polished argument. Anyone interested in revising an assignment must have a conference with me in order for the revision to be accepted. All revisions must also include the original, graded draft. Work that I consider to be substandard will not be eligible for revisions at my discretion—this is to prevent you from taking advantage of my generosity for allowing revisions.
Quizzes: I reserve the right to quiz you on your daily reading assignments. The number of questions will vary for each day—sometimes as few as 3 or 4 questions, sometimes as many as 10. Although these quizzes may seem a small part of the class (five points here, ten points there), they do add up and affect your grade in the long run.
In-Class Writing: In addition to quizzes, I also reserve the right to ask you to perform a writing exercise on any given day. These exercises will vary—sometimes they will be as relaxed as freewriting on a theme or a question. Sometimes they will require you to apply critical terms to a specific textual instance. These assignments will test your ability to think, process, and respond clearly and effectively in an “on the spot” situation. I may collect these at any time or ask you to hand them in with other secondary or primary assignments.
Mini Essay due February 15th:
Assignment Sheets
“The way that college students negotiate their social, economic and (often meager) political lives is governed by their interaction with the media. Whether they know it or not, the media has shaped—and will continue to dominate—their lives.”
Agree or disagree with the content, form, or assumptions of the above statement. Clearly define the most important terms for your argument while offering support for your stance. If you need to use a dictionary, please use the OED online (see the library databases). Generate at least but no more than two pages.
Take Charge Assignment due March 3rd:
After our first paper, I will be asking you as a class to generate recent texts for our discussion. You will be assigned into groups of two or three and asked to locate somewhere between three and four sources for us to discuss for your given week. You will also be responsible for helping with directing discussions during that week. Your grade of 100 points will involve all of these aspects. I also reserve the right to allot different point amounts to different members of the group.
1. In a few phrases or sentences, clearly identify the focus of the topic you’re working on. It can be as broad as “Gender and the Media” or as focused as “Representations of Women’s Bodies in the Media” or even “Women and Sexuality: How Sex in the City redefines modern stereotypes of women.” [Hint: If you’re working on something for another class, thinking about your major, or considering what to work on for your research paper, you might be able to figure out a way to kill two birds with one stone by making us work on it as well.] Keep in mind that our focus will always be on how the content is being delivered and the assumptions behind the given argument. We therefore spend less time on the details of the issue and more time on the argumentative qualities surrounding the representations—less time on the content and more time on the form
2. Provide me with some primary texts. You must find a) at least two print or online, quality essays--not random fansites or Wikipedia, but journalistic sources. These should contain obvious and debatable arguments. Two excellent databases to check out are Academic OneFile and LexisNexis Academic Give me a copy, but ideally it should be available online, so provide me with the url; b) at least one text that is not written media (podcasts, films, TV shows, documentaries). If you don’t own it or it’s not downloadable, make sure our library has it by searching DELCAT. I’m not buying any new movies or PBS specials for kicks (unless, they’re....you know...good).
Here are a few topics I’ve been playing with as a warning of what I will be assigning: Middle East and America; 9/11 and the Media; Party Politics and the State (think the media frenzy already going on over next year’s elections); Reality TV vs Reality; The Dangers of Media Feeding Frenzies; Infotainment as Protest; Education Reform; Blurring Lines: Docu-dramas that go too far; America and Latin America; Health and Africa; EU Politics and Foreign Economies.
For this essay you have 3 questions to choose from. You must turn to at least one of our readings for evidence, as well as provide at least one additional, qualitative source (qualitative as in a substantial essay or selection from a book--something more than a dictionary entry or Wikipedia article).
Note that you do not have to answer every question within a given cluster; the first prompt is the most important while the following questions are there to help you get your intellectual ball rolling. Remember to always go beyond the confines of our class discussion in your own paper. Please choose the best possible quotations to illustrate and support your argument. Avoid first person to the best of your ability.
1. Using examples of form from our recent texts, generate a rubric on the nature of argumentation. What qualities do we find in a good argument and how do we recognize them? Do your best to define the word “argument” in your own words as your own argument dictates, and then use evidence from some of our readings to illustrate your definition. Notice that your definition need not recognize any of these essays as “perfect” in regards to argumentation, though that is one strategy for dealing with this topic. Instead, consider using examples that illustrate good or adequate qualities of argumentation while suggesting techniques for improvement.
A few but by no means all the things you could consider discussing in your rubric are issues like organization, quality of evidence, techniques for presenting evidence, transitions and connections within the argument, fallacies, and clarity of language.
2. What abilities must readers bring into play when confronting journalistic pieces? What is the responsibility of the audience in regards to understanding and interpreting the media? Looking at the content and the form of our recent texts, designate what sort of skills are required by readers in the “information age” for them to best digest the materials presented to them.
Some of the ideas you might focus on are passive versus active audiences, skepticism and the media, trusting particular forms of media over others, reading skills and the detection of fallacies, and textual verses visual (or aural) processing.
3. What is journalism’s relationship to objectivity in the postmodern age? Is the ideal of journalistic integrity a thing of the past, or has it ever existed? Using evidence from our recent texts, locate what role, if any, objectivity should play in the actions and products of the media. Clearly define your most important terms and delineate the scope of your discussion.
Some of the issues you may consider touching in this paper are the necessity of objectivity, the dangers of a changing media, the need for both traditional and non-traditional forms of journalism, the connections between satire and objectivity, the benefits of subjective approaches, and the responsibility of journalists to the state and its citizens.
I’m looking for three to five pages of double spaced text in 12 point Times New Roman font. One inch margins all the way around, please. Include your name, my name, the class, and the date in the upper left hand corner of the first page. Every following page should have your last name and the page number in the upper right hand corner. Remember to include a Works Cited page at the very end (to practice your MLA format as well as get in the habit of always informing your reader of your sources).
Please read through the MLA Citation and Plagiarism page for Works Cited page guidelines as well as a general discussion as to how to avoid any accidental plagiarism. Also checkout the online edition of the Bedford Handbook for general citation information as well as the sample paper they provide.
You should also look at the Writer's Checklist on my Writing site. This will give you clues as to how to go about putting the paper together, what I expect from a good paper, and what my pet peeves are about grading papers (i.e. how to avoid upsetting me for no good reason).
Lastly, inspect the descriptions I give of my own Grading Standards, so that you know what I'm looking for when I put grades on your papers.
This Essay is due on Monday, March 10th. Good luck!!!
Breaking News Research Paper: Investigating the Media
This essay will be argumentative in nature and based on a debatable issue that involves some aspect of the media in popular culture. Focus your topic on ideas, themes, or events that interest you. Then, examine how this topic is presented in the media. Remember that "the media" is a very broad term here; don't limit your possibilities (that's my job). Your purpose, as always, is to analyze how the media goes about creating meaning (and convincing us of that meaning) regarding your topic.
Your thesis statement for this paper should consist of a persuasive statement about the topic you have chosen. Remember your thesis must be as focused as possible on a debatable subject for which you supply evidence to prove your thesis. Remember that you are not writing an encyclopedia article. You must define a thesis and prove it through presented research.
Required Length: 10-12 pages minimum.
Required Primary Sources: Your primary source or sources must be clearly identified by the scope of your project.
Required Secondary Sources: Minimum of 6—At least 2 books, at least 2 Scholarly Periodicals (scholarly rather than popular). Books may take the place of Periodicals. Any online sources (not including periodicals retrieved from online databases) must be in excess of the 6 required sources (unless your topic warrants an internet focus).
Required Source Packet: As part of my never ending program of cruelty, I am asking you to turn in with your paper a photocopy of the pages from which you are citing or summarizing text. In other words, you will photocopy the page in the book, journal, magazine, or database where the quote you use appears. The quote will be highlighted or underlined and the page reference (the page the quote appears in your paper) will be written in the top or lower right-hand margin of the photocopy. These pages do not have to be clean of all your other marks—as long as I can quickly locate the quote you are using in your paper, I do not care how messy they are.
Required Steps:
1) a. You will blog and e-mail me your final topic and 2-3 potential theses (so that I may approve your focus) by 5 pm on Friday, November 2nd(-10 points). b. You will then respond to at least three of the people in your blogging group (see the blog page; all the people in your column are in your group) by praising (or disparaging) their topics and suggesting how their potential theses could be made better (clarity, specificity....which thesis do you think is best and why) by 5pm on Monday, November 5th (-10 points).
2) Bring in a bibliography of at least ten sources to class on Wednesday, November 7th (-15 points).
3) E-mail me an annotated bibliography of at least ten sources by 5pm on Friday, November 9th. This is merely your (perhaps changed) bibliography but this time with a paragraph (5 to 10 meaty but concise sentences) following each entry that summarizes the argument of the source and makes it clear how you intend to use (or attempt to use) it (-20 points).
4) You will bring a mini-draft of your introduction and conclusion, along with a topic sentence outline of your paper to class on Monday, November 12th (-20 points).
5) Bring a mini-draft & working outline of your paper to class on Wednesday, November 13th. This outline must include a. a revised draft of your introduction and conclusion along with b. the topic sentences to your paragraphs, and c. your quotations. The exact format of your outline is optional--organize the outline in such a way that it works for you. My only requirement is that your quotes, introduction, and conclusion are typed (the font and format are again your choice). Be prepared to present your organization strategy to the rest of the class (-25 points)
6) You will provide another blog on your topic by Thursday, November 14th. In the blog you will describe a. your final thesis, b. the necessary steps in your arguments, c. the type of sources you are looking at, d. your favorite source, and e. one interesting fact or thing you learned about your topic. (-15 points)
7) There will be a mandatory 15-minute conference on Friday, November 15th or Monday, November 18th at which point you will present to me a. the paper as it stands so far [should be very close to done], b. a final draft of your works cited page [including only the sources you are using in your paper], and c. your source packet. (-20 points)
8) The paper, your outline, and your source packet are all due at the beginning of class on Wednesday, November 21st.
Failure to complete ALL of these steps on the aforementioned dates means that points will be deducted from your final possible total. Remember, there can be no “Rewrites” for the research paper.
