Clarifications & Corrections

Inquiry demands engagement because exigence doesn’t happen in isolation. Exploring a topic, becoming informed, and finding motivation to think and write happens in cooperation (and conversation) with other voices, ideas, research, and writing. Knowledge (episteme) is negotiated in language–it’s created, extended, and applied in the symbols we use to communicate. For that reason, you should think of language surrounding your topic as a conversation (between thinkers, ideas, positions, etc.).

To motivate and document your engagement in topical conversation, and to explore ideas in writing (and about writing), you will keep a self-directed journal from now until the end of the semester.

Assignment: Write a 4-5 page expository essay that demonstrates a functional literacy of your topic, understanding of the conversation, and your ability to perform broad rhetorical analysis.

Discussion: To do this, you must identify/explain your (broad) topic, summarize/synthesize the conversation (including it’s location/s, and major perspectives, point/s of debate, approaches to discussion, and rhetorical appeals). In other words, you must not only summarize/synthesize what is being said, but how it’s being said. In addition to providing exposition, analysis, synthesis, and summary, your essay should also answer the following questions: Who are the stakeholders? What are the stakes? Who cares? Why?

Essay 1: Surveying the Conversation (Listening In), 4-5 pages: Write a 4-5 page expository essay that demonstrates a functional literacy of your topic, understanding of the conversation, and your ability to perform broad rhetorical analysis.

Essay 2: Issues in Conversation, 6-7 pages…????: Pick an issue (important, popular, or divisive) within the conversation on your topic. Write a paper that explains various perspectives on this issue, addressing at least five different sources. Rather than presenting the issue as having two sides (those for or against something), explain more than two points of view, showing the complexity of the issue. At some point in the paper, take your own stand or articulate your own perspective, but be sure the majority of the paper explains the larger conversation surrounding the issue.

Essay 3: Add to the Conversation (Say Something), 8-10 pages: Write a well-informed[3], smart[4], conference style paper theorizing an aspect of your topic.