due_dates: February 2008 Archives

Students sign up to present on two of the four forum dates.

See Topic 2.

If you have been keeping up with your blogging, this should only take you a few minutes to compile. If you've fallen behind, this assignment is a chance for you to catch up.

Generally, you should include all your entries, if only to demonstrate that you blogged each time I asked you to.  But some people blog more than they strictly have to, so I don't formally require everyone to include every blog entry they wrote. (You might, for instance, post an agenda item before the due date, but then post a longer, more thoughtful entry after the class discussion. I'd rather you put the more thoughtful essay in your portfolio.)

Content

While we are starting to talk about the printing press, and we have in class discussed the relationship between digital culture and print culture, note that this exercise asks you to focus on manuscript culture.  The book as we know it is about 2000 years old, but each book was painstakingly built by hand.  How does the standardization introduced by the printing press affect the act of writing? The act of reading? Look at Trithemius, DeRenzo, Ong, various sections of Brookfield, for evidence to support your answer. Rather than answering right away, and then looking for evidence support your knee-jerk reaction, first look through the readings for evidence. Assemble quotes, look for patterns, seek connections. (The study questions in Writing Material are a good start, and the introductions to the "Suggested Groupings" in the back of the book offer interesting ways to connect the readings.)

That's all I have to say about the content of this exercise -- I am very open, as long as your thesis is rooted in the assigned readings.  The rest of this document deals with the form of the paper.

Form

As with Ex 2, I am interested in seeing how well you can synthesize.

This means, instead of spending one paragraph summarizing what one author has to say, and the next paragraph summarizing a different author, and so on, I would rather you divide your paper up on general points, so that one paragraph might make subpoint 1, supported with quotes from authors A, B, C, and D. The next paragraph might contain an argument against subpoint 1, supported by quotes from authors B, D, E, and F.

Pick a narrow topic. "Books and the Middle Class" is too broad. "Books and the Middle Class in London, 1700-1800" is narrower.  (I don't expect you to do any outside research for this exercise; quoting from the sources we have read will be enough.)

Students sign up to present on two of the four forum dates.

The topic for Slot A should be related closely to the readings we have read so far. You are welcome to draw on the material you submitted for Ex 2, but please don't read your paper word-for-word, and please don't just walk us through the Wikipedia entry. (I have seen students bring a Wikipedia printout to the front of the room and read directly off of it.)

Instead, begin by posting a richly-linked blog entry that points to good online sources (this will be assigned reading for the class, so be sure to post SOMETHING early), and then use the time in class to spark a discussion that illuminates your subject.

Topics may include the history of writing, the function of memory in the classical era, or an analysis of a short passage from Plato (or Homer or the Bible or folklore or any other ancient oral source) that we have not discussed in class.

In about four pages, make an argument defending something of value in oral culture, which is threatened by manuscript culture. (For this particular assignment, I'm less interested in ways that digital culture disrupts oral culture, but I'll accept the occasional foray into print culture.)

I am not requiring outside research, but I do want you to demonstrate your comprehension of the assigned readings by including brief quotations and references to the assigned readings. Rather than include a long paragraph and then summarize it in your own words, I'd much rather see you make connections. Use multiple citations to support general statements. For instance, instead of, "It is commonly accepted that chocolate is a better ice cream flavor than vanilla" you might write:

Authors who prefer chocolate (Choynowski 45; Ulicne 234; Sawyer 121) often focus on its sweetness, while those who offer different opinions include vanilla purists (Rodriguez 23; Barrick 123) and those who prefer a hybrid, like Rocky Road (Knight 131) or mint chocolate chip (Jerz 234).  We may, with Cristello, presume that "authors who state no preference have none" (125), but only at the risk of what Prichard calls "privileging the politics of preference" (53).

Note the density of the above paragraph -- even small claims are sourced; the main idea is not interrupted with long quotations. even when the reference includes no quotation at all, it nevertheless places the current idea within a framework that maintains an awareness of existing thought.

Through your blogging, on a regular basis, I have been asking you to respond to ideas you have encountered in your peers' writing. Academic prose encodes a similar network of specific references.  This assignment asks you to demonstrate your ability to synthesize (see Bloom's Taxonomy).