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A Rant

I’ll add a pool for ranking here soon…

Essays for Thursday

Sorry for the delay: I got sick over the weekend (sneeze, sneeze) and forgot to upload the essays for this Thursday’s critique session. Here they are:

That should do it. Tomorrow, we’ll be discussing your essay-writing process and I’ll be discussing formatting, since it seems (from what you’ve been emailing me) that many of you still don’t have a good handle on formatting. We’ll also discuss structure, and I’ll take questions on areas that are troubling you.

Another Comedy Routine about Tonto

Here’s a much better comedy routine concerning the relationship between The Lone Ranger and Tonto. This one is by the famous Bill Cosby:

It’s the first part, where Tonto says he doesn’t want to go to town, that I think is particularly worth considering…

For next time…

Everyone,

Here’s the question I asked you to think about for next class:

What is the relationship between “Thomas King as a Native American author”, “the white Canadians” in his story “How Corporal Colin Sterling Saved Blossom, Alberta…”, and the “Indian” characters in the same story.

I also asked you to check out The Lone Ranger. Here’s a clip I found:

I’m particularly interested in the races of the various characters in the show, which are pretty obvious from this clip:

(We’ll discuss this clip in class and try to relate it to Thomas King’s story… pay special attention to the shots of each character at the beginning, and the relationship between The Lone Ranger and Tonto.)

Here’s a clip from the animated Lone Ranger series, with a pretty standard depiction of Native Americans as primitive, exotic, primitive, magical, primitive, dangerous, primitive, superstitious, and did I mention primitive?

The dialog in this clip between Tonto and The Lone Ranger is pretty revealing:

Lustige Videos – Gratis Fun Video – Deine funny Videos bei Clipfish

Finally, for a modern response to the relationship between those two characters, and how a real Tonto might respond:

Some Interesting Stuff

Here are some things that might interest you for our class:

THOMAS KING

NALO HOPKINSON

By The Way…

Time flies when you have a deadline coming.

It was suggested today that I had posted your essay topics last week. In fact, they were posted on September 25th, which is 12 days ago today — much closer to two weeks ago than “last week,” and certainly a reasonable amount of time in which to have begun your research.

Now, I’m not pointing that out for any reason other than to note that time really moves faster than you think, especially when you have a deadline coming. This is one reason I bugged you so much last week to start researching, and also why I’m bugging you to start drafting now.  Essays that are written at the last minute are no fun for anyone, and when I’m not having no fun reading your essay, the grades I will hand out might be somewhat lower that it would otherwise be.

Just something to think about. If you want a good grade, you must hand in quality writing, and quality writing just takes time.

Your homework as of today is as follows:

  1. Submit an annotated bibliography including at least five sources. Here is an example of what I’m looking for:

    Annotated Bibliography (PDF)

    Your first annotated bibliography is due Thursday, with five sources. I expect an updated version a week from Thursday with a few more sources as well.

  2. You should have the two essays we will be critiquing read, marked-up, and ready to discuss at the beginning of tomorrow’s class. I will also discuss editing marks briefly during the class.
  3. You should write a response to the two authors whose work you are relying to using a template (as outlined here) for next Thursday’s class.
  4. You should be making a strong effort to either begin drafting your essay or begin researching immediately. You currently have twenty days, not including today, to produce an essay. Five of those days (or more, depending on your exam schedule) are midterm exam weekdays.

Don’t forget the essay-writing process I mentioned. You will seat a daily wordcount deadline of between 250-500 words, revise your work as you go along, and post your daily expansions to the Discussion Board. Please start a new discussion for your essay, titled: MIDTERM EXAM: CHULSOO LEE. (But use your own name.) You are free to read and comment on others’ essays as usual, but you must work daily (or post a reason why it was not possible, and make up the missing words on subsequent postings).

Have a nice day, and see you Thursday morning.

Disagreeing (and Agreeing), Part 2

As I said, the academic culture — and the world of essay-writing — is a great big discussion between many, many people. You don’t always have to disagree. Disagreeing is a way of adding something to a discussion, but not the only way. As Paul Fortunato points out (on page 171 of the same book by Gerald Graff that I cited last time), there are a number of ways to respond to your sources:

For the following exercise, you will use almost the same template as last time — but paraphrase the two authors in your own words — and then you will agree or disagree with their argument.

Here’s the main template:

TITLE: ________________________

The general argument made by AUTHOR X in his or her essay, ____________________________, is that _____________________________________. More specifically, X argues that ________________________________________________________________________. She/He writes, “__________________.” In this passage, X is suggesting that ____________________________. In conclusion, X’s belief is that ______________________.

In AUTHOR Y’s view, X is wrong/right, because___________________. More specifically, Y seems to believe that ___________________________________. For example, Y writes that ” ____________________________.” Y seems to disagree with X on the issue of _____________. X thinks that ___________________________, while Y maintain that ___________________________________. Therefore, Y concludes that __________________________________________.

Then you can add your own opinion!

Here are some templates add-ons for those moves, which you can append to the previous template:

disagree with some key statement

In fact, I disagree with X [or Y]‘s claim that ___________________. I think that _____________________. X [and/or Y]‘s claim that, “___________________,” is wrong because _____________________. In fact, _________________________. Therefore, I must conclude that _______________________.

agree with something the [author] says, and then say even more about it than he or she did

In fact, I strongly agree with X [or Y]‘s claim that ___________________. I think that _____________________. X [and/or Y]‘s claim that, “___________________,” is correct because _____________________. In addition, it is worth considering  _________________________. For example, ________________________. Therefore, I must conclude that _______________________.

point to something the critic says that seems to go contrary to something else he or she says

In fact, I think there are problems with  X [or Y]‘s argument that ___________________. X [and/or Y]‘s claim that, “___________________,” but then he [or she] contradicts himself [or herself] by arguing that ____________________. In fact, _________________________. Therefore, I must conclude that _______________________.

point to something the critic says and give a counter example…

In fact, there are problems with X [or Y]‘s argument that ___________________. X [and/or Y]‘s claim that, “___________________,” is not absolutely true. For example, ________________________. In fact, _________________________. Therefore, I must conclude that _______________________.

argue with the critic by showing that he or she is leaving out some key aspect of the [issue] or some key issue of the argument

In fact, I think there are problems with  X [or Y]‘s argument that ___________________. When X [and/or Y] claims that, “___________________,” he [or she] ignores the fact that ____________________. For example,  _________________________. Because of this, we must agree that _______________. Therefore, I must conclude that _______________________.

blow [the author] out of the water by showing that he or she is totally wrong

However, X [or Y]‘s argument that ___________________ is wrong. When X [and/or Y] claims that, “___________________,” he [or she] doesn’t have the facts straight. In fact, _________________. For example,  _________________________. Therefore, because X [or Y] has based an argument on false information, I must conclude that _______________________.

praise [the author] for making an extremely important point, and then add something important to that point.

In fact, I strongly agree with X [or Y]‘s claim that ___________________. I think that _____________________. X [and/or Y]‘s claim that, “___________________,” is correct because _____________________. But that’s not all! It is important to consider aspects of SUBJECT that X [and/or Y] did not address, such as _____________ and ______________________. For example, ________________________. Therefore, I must conclude that _______________________.

Your newest template response paper is due a week from today, but more importantly, you should start thinking about how to use these kind of rhetorical patterns in your midterm essay. Think about whether you agree or disagree with the sources you’ve found so far, and consider how you might amplify or counter the arguments used in those sources!

Sample Images

We agreed to test the theory that students could produce quality art “imitating” sample images of characters, and I said I would upload two sample images.

As discussed, all students should draw one picture of each, to the best of their ability. The characters should be doing something completely different from what they’re doing in the picture above. (Rising a bicycle, dancing, kissing a puppy, running, taking a shower, whatever…)

The background should be relatively simple, though suited to the characters. (Superman’s background should be a little more realistic, while Marjane’s — the girl in the second picture, from Persepolis  — can have a simpler background.)

Your sample drawing should be 1/4 of an A4 page. It is due on Wednesday, along with your scripts. On the basis of the quality of the pictures, we will again discuss whether to use hand-drawn art or photography, or, as Sora suggested, some combination of both, if it seems practical.

Here they are:

Superman

Persepolis

HDRI Links to explore

Here’s a pile of HDRI links to explore. I’ll be using a few of them in class to discuss this option, and bringing a few graphic novels to demonstrate alternatives:
 

Next Week’s Crits

Here are the essays for next week’s critique session:

You will critique these essays on the morning of October 9th. Please have your comments written up, and your copy of the essay (with editing marks, if any) on hand so you can give them to the authors. If you are working from a computer in class (Sunjun!) that’s fine, but make sure you have printed any comments you have for the authors before class. (You can add newer comments or thoughts using a pen.)

See you on Tuesday morning.

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