Project 1: Writing about Place—Recalling the Past
Eudora Welty writes of the Sessions’ grocery, “But I didn’t know there’d ever been a
story at the Little Store, one that was going on while I was there.” It is only in retrospect
that she comes to understand the importance of this place and story.
Assignment: Write a personal narrative--you can think of it as a memoir--of 3 pages or so
(at least 600 words) about a place that has had some special meaning in your life. In
addition to providing specific detail about the place, your essay should attempt to reveal
the “story” you hadn’t realized was there. Choose a topic that you feel comfortable
sharing with me and with others in class.
You may find it useful to review the essays by Woiwode, Welty and Lee to see how these
authors use sensory description, dialogue, and reflective passages to make their writing
vivid and interesting. These essays also suggest ways that you can order and pace your
own narrative. (What information will you summarize? Dramatize? Will you use a
flashback? A flashforward? What kind of tone are you aiming for? Serious? Comic?)
The audience for this essay is our class. Give your readers enough context and
information so that they will be able to grasp why the place you are writing about holds
significance, but don’t overlook the value of subtlety. Small “telling” details, figurative
language, and thoughtful reflection convey far more than any last sentence
“announcement” of the meaning of it all.
English 115 – Rhetoric
Writing Project #2: Synthesis/Analysis Paper
Description: For this project, you will make a shift from your personal experience of
place to the experiences recorded by other writers. Synthesis and analysis are two
techniques you can expect to use frequently in college writing. Professors often assign a
synthesis paper so that you can demonstrate your understanding of multiple perspectives
on a given issue as well as its context. To write a synthesis, you must be able to
summarize and analyze essays so that you can make connections among ideas, texts,
theories, etc. A synthesis depends on a thoughtful and compelling thesis and entails
selectively combining information from several sources into a coherent discussion. You
will be identifying, analyzing and then explaining how you surmise that two or more
writers are “talking” to each other about a similar theme or topic, and you will also
participate critically in the conversation. In other words, your goal is not only to analyze
the relationships among texts/ideas but to contribute some insights of your own to the
discussion. Your final draft should be three to four pages in length.
Choice of texts: Guterson, Sanderson and Ford essays. You must use two or all three of
the essays.
How to get started:
1) What similarities, differences, and/or connections do you see among these writers’
audiences, subject matters, narrative strategies, points of view and purposes?
2) What main point is each trying to make?
3) What other issues or topics of debate concern the writers?
Consider how the authors’ positions relate to each other: Do they have similar views or
opinions? Contrasting opinions? Does one elaborate on the idea of another or extend the
discussion in a slightly different discussion? Does one writer name causes of a
phenomenon mentioned by another or further develop potential (or real) consequences of
another writer’s position?
Organizing the essay: For your first draft, write an introduction that identifies the issue
that focuses your paper, contextualized by the larger discussion in which it participates,
and find a working thesis which you will then develop in the essay.
The body of the paper should be organized by the subpoints that explain the relationships
between the texts or authors’ treatment of the topic. Whenever you interpret something
an author said, support your interpretations by quoting the author’s own words (using
parenthetical references to cite page numbers, MLA style). By the time you come to your
conclusion, you should have demonstrated why your thesis claimed what it did.
ENGL 115
Brief Descriptions of Projects 3 and 4
Project 3: Capturing Memorable Moments (Chapter 3 in text)
Choice A: (For complete description, see page 143, Writing # 2) What would you call
the defining moment of your generation so far? Write an essay in which you first explore
the circumstances of your personal experiences with that event, and then explain its
impact on your generation. Find an image or images associated with the event.
Choice B: (For complete description, see page 147, Writing # 2) Choose a publicly
printed photograph or image of a “memorable moment” that made a profound impression
on you. Write an essay that, like Isabel Allende’s (p. 145), describes and explains both
your first impression and what that image means to you today.
Project 4: Writing in the Age of the Image (Chapter 8 in text)
What consequences do you think the new “age of the image” has for writing and reading?
Write an essay based on your reading and research that focuses on one possible response
to this question. The essay presents your speculation—your argument—supported by
evidence and reasoning. (Readings for this unit explore how television networks and
other media corporations influence American life; the relationship between subject and
style, typography and meaning; the fate of the book in the era of technology; writing and
cyberspace.) Choose an aspect of this topic to research and explore further. Your
bibliography must include a minimum of three sources, of at least three different kinds:
newspaper or magazine article; journal or book article; internet site; etc.
Project 4: Writing in the Age of the Image
Objective: To write a 4-6 page researched argument in response to the question posed on
page 456 of our text: What consequences do you think the new age of the image has for
writing and reading?
Guidelines: Try to focus on one possible consequence in your paper rather than many of
them. Read around in our textbook for ideas for topics as much of the text addresses
issues related to the question for this assignment. Don’t forget about the web site
associated with the text. It has great information about evaluating sources as well as
useful links to sources. Feel free to quote from any of the readings or to refer to the
images in our text if they are relevant to your topic (be sure to cite them in your Works
Cited).
Requirements:
In addition to any material from our text that you cite in your paper, you must refer to at
least three other sources of varying kinds (a newspaper, an essay from an anthology, an
article from a magazine, a book, an interview, a television show, etc.). You may use
electronic or print versions of the sources, but anything cited must be documented
accurately in your Works Cited according to MLA style guidelines.
**Include copies of the sources from which you cited when you turn in your essays.
Possible kinds of topics?:
Will we all be reading e-books in another ten years? Hyper-text fiction?
If anyone can publish on the web, how will we know what works are worth reading?
Are graphic novels (novels told through images) the wave of the future?
Should visual literacy be part of the college curriculum?
How will/should academic assignments change in the next ten years?
Does writing e-mail hurt our writing in other forms?
If no one is writing conventional letters anymore, how will we access history in the
future?
How do images in newspapers (in print or on-line) affect the way we read or perceive?
Is internet research a poor substitute for textual research (as some professors believe)?
What are counter-arguments to essays by Gitlin, Rock, Birkerts, Johnson?
Do we read less now? Do we read differently? Write differently?
The above are broad topics to get you thinking. You aren’t limited to them, but your
topic must address writing or reading in the age of technology and images.
Schedule:
Nov. 16: Library workshop on using electronic databases. Use any extra class time to do
some initial researching. Order any books though Ohio Link that you think might be
useful to you (most arrive within three to four days).
Nov. 17 to 20: Decide upon a topic or two and research in earnest. Make a list of
questions that might drive your research and help you to formulate an argument. Print off
copies of articles and find other sources related to the issue you want to write about.
Think about your own reading and writing habits in relationship to the readings in chapter
eight.
Nov. 21-22: Make a final decision about the topic for the project and start thinking about
the form of the essay and the kind of argument you want to make. Spend some time
filling out the “Determining Conflicts” handout.
Nov. 23-26: Spend time with family and eat turkey (or veggie burgers). Try out your
topic on the relatives! See if there are differences between the responses of different
generations. Pay attention to tv, ads, web sites—whatever media might be related to your
paper.
Nov. 27: Get to the library if you need to and locate any other sources you might need.
Write a rough, rough draft—at least the introduction and a skeleton outline for the other
paragraphs. Create a working bibliography for your sources (you might not use them all).
Nov. 28: Bring your copies of sources/working bibliography to class, along with your
handbook and your rough, rough draft of the paper.
Nov. 30: Bring in a complete rough draft, with a copy for me if you want my feedback.
Final Draft? We can negotiate this date.
Rhetoric: Final Essay Assignment—“Figuring the Body”
Please choose one of the following topics and write a 3-4 page essay in response. The
official due date is Thursday, Dec. 18, at our scheduled finals week meeting (10:30), but
you may turn the essay in early if you prefer. Bring a rough draft (or introductory
paragraph and outline) to our final class meeting.
Topic A: The Private Body
Write a portrait or story of your body, using the essays by Lopate, Cofer and Kusz for
ideas about how to structure and focus this narrative. Note how those essays explore
specific themes (tension between private and public bodies, visibility vs. invisibility,
conformity vs. nonconformity, and so on). Make your narrative interesting by using
vivid details, anecdotes, or relevant references to our readings in this chapter. Your goal
is to convey your relationship with your body, or some part of it, and to show your
understanding of some of the issues discussed in the opening pages of Chapter 4.
Topic B: The Public Body
Write an essay that examines or accounts for American culture’s preoccupation with the
body. Your essay might focus on gender or identity issues, aesthetics (concepts of
beauty), or health and diet obsessions, for example, especially as shaped, constructed, or
“figured” by images of bodies in the media. As the introduction to Chapter 4 indicates,
the body is “at once an anatomical object and a social-construction” (200). Try to convey
understanding of this observation in your essay as you analyze your specific topic. Use
lots of examples to illustrate your observations and feel free to draw upon any of the
images or readings in Chapter 4 to develop your discussion.
We won’t finish our readings in the chapter until the last day of class, so you may want to
read ahead if you think doing so would give you a better sense of all the issues that might
inform your paper.
There is no need to turn in your entire folder with this final assignment, but do include all
the material related to the final project.