Category Archives: Assignment

Class 15.1

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Introducing your Essay

Write a 2- or 3-¶ introduction for your upcoming essay, as follows:

  1. Write a ¶ that engages your reader in your essay’s topic, perhaps by reference to a present-day trend or phenomenon. You can start narrow, with a tight focus on a particular event. Alternatively, you can start more broadly, with a generalization or statistical anecdote. The key is to focus on something that your reader cares about—or can be persuaded to care about.
  2. Write a ¶ that discusses what prior scholars have said about your essay’s topic. These scholars provide your essay’s intellectual starting point, so choose them well. You can focus on just one prior scholar, or make a generalization about what scholars say. Either way, be prepared to name specific scholars—in a footnote if not in the main text. Note: this ¶ can be combined with the preceding ¶ or skipped entirely. If you do that, you’ll wind up with a 2-¶ intro.
  3. Write a ¶ that names at least one of your bodies of evidence and the deeper understanding that your essay will argue on the basis of that evidence. Be careful not to get sucked in too far: this is NOT a body ¶; you’re not presenting evidence. You’re simply naming the category of evidence (“news coverage of surfers in the early 1960s”) along with your thesis-level vision (“California Dreaming a male-centered fantasy”).

Once you’re done, pare the resulting intro down to the bone (3-4 sentences per ¶, ideally), so as to enable us to read & respond to as many of them as possible. Paste your artificially short intro into the comments below.

Turning in your Essay

Essays are due on Wednesday at midnight. When your Essay is complete, Print/Export to .pdf and turn it in on the Exploratory Essay assignment page linked at right.

Introducing your Essay

Write a 2- or 3-¶ introduction for your upcoming essay, as follows:

  1. Write a ¶ that engages your reader in your essay’s topic, perhaps by reference to a present-day trend or phenomenon. You can start narrow, with a tight focus on a particular event. Alternatively, you can start more broadly, with a generalization or statistical anecdote. The key is to focus on something that your reader cares about—or can be persuaded to care about.
  2. Write a ¶ that discusses what prior scholars have said about your essay’s topic. These scholars provide your essay’s intellectual starting point, so choose them well. You can focus on just one prior scholar, or make a generalization about what scholars say. Either way, be prepared to name specific scholars—in a footnote if not in the main text. Note: this ¶ can be combined with the preceding ¶ or skipped entirely. If you do that, you’ll wind up with a 2-¶ intro.
  3. Write a ¶ that names at least one of your bodies of evidence and the deeper understanding that your essay will argue on the basis of that evidence. Be careful not to get sucked in too far: this is NOT a body ¶; you’re not presenting evidence. You’re simply naming the category of evidence (“news coverage of surfers in the early 1960s”) along with your thesis-level vision (“California Dreaming a male-centered fantasy”).

Once you’re done, pare the resulting intro down to the bone (3-4 sentences per ¶, ideally), so as to enable us to read & respond to as many of them as possible. Paste your artificially short intro into the comments below.

Turning in your Essay

Essays are due on Wednesday at midnight. When your Essay is complete, Print/Export to .pdf and turn it in on the Exploratory Essay assignment page linked at right.

Class 14.2

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Homework

E-Portfolio

  1. Go to bu.digication.com
  2. Login using your BU id
  3. Click on "Create" or on the big "+" sign to start a portfolio for your CGS work
  4. When prompted to choose a Template, use "CGS Team D 2021"
  5. The tabs in this template correspond to your CGS classes. For each of the tabs, upload your favorite assignment.
Problems? I may have time for troubleshooting before or after class. You can also see me in office hours for help.

Practice Intro

Last class I had you look at two introductions to identify key moves you should consider making in your upcoming essay. Of course, these two introductions come from 25-page essays; your intro needs to be a good bit shorter, using just one or three sentences for each of the moves. Practice this by writing either:

  • a trial intro for your upcoming research essay
  • an intro for the pretend essay we worked on in lecture, where we outlined an essay on the cultural significance of chocolate chip cookies, drawing on recipes and oral interviews.

In addition to the moves discussed in class last time, consider presenting your thesis by reference to the evidence that your essay draws upon.

Post as homework, in the comments below.

Presentations 3 of 3

D5

  1. Harry H
  2. Eric J
  3. Will L
  4. Joahan S
  5. Aaron L

D6

  1. Jaz P
  2. Victoria G
  3. Joe C
  4. Kate V
  5. Lily B

D7

  1. Tiara M
  2. Sunny F
  3. Sophia C
  4. Zeya W
  5. Allison L

Class 14.1

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Homework: Essay Intros

Read the intros from each of two essays that I wrote in recent years: Flash | Black Panther.

Key moves that these essay intros have in common:

  • Orient reader:
    • by reference to something familiar
    • by reference to an engaging anecdote
  • Puzzle to be pondered in the essay that follows
  • Ref to prior scholarship (this can also happen as a lead-in to the puzzle)
  • Thesis claim asserted in the face of a prior understanding

Choose ONE of these two introductions and annotate it to identify where it:

  1. orients the reader (highlight in green)
  2. presents a puzzle to be pondered or a question to be answered (pink)
  3. references prior scholarship (yellow)
  4. asserts its thesis claim (blue)

Upload as Homework, in the comments below.

Presentations 2 of 3

D5

  1. Crystal Z
  2. Caroline M
  3. Izzy D
  4. Rachel W
  5. Megan C
  6. Coco P

D6

  1. Alex H
  2. Minji K
  3. Hanwen M
  4. Omar H
  5. Tiana M
  6. Gardner K

D7

  1. Steven K
  2. Angela M
  3. Sophia P
  4. Claire A
  5. Sungmin L
  6. Ed R

Lecture 13

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Midpoint Transition

One crucial move you may need to undertake in your essay is a transition from one body of evidence to another. If you have sources from the 1920s and the present day, it generally makes sense to present one set of sources first, then shift to examine the other—rather than looking at both sets simultaneously. If you think about it, this transition involves more than just a change of scenery; you need to gather up the threads of your initial analysis to form a midpoint understanding, then introduce the second half of your essay as an effort to complicate that understanding.

As an example of what this can look like, look at how Brett Harvey (link to Blackboard) shifts from (A) the “drift” into motherhood to (B) the hurdles women experienced when seeking abortion or contraception. Both A & B draw upon oral-history interviews with women, but what does Harvey do to mark the shift from (A) to (B) on pp 92-93?

For HW, I invite you to create a trial-run transition for the essay you’re writing. (I realize that you may not have written very much of your essay yet, so you’ll need to fake it a bit when you sum up the findings from your first body of evidence.) In the comment section below, paste the ¶ that leads into the transition along with the ¶ that makes the transition.

If you don’t have two bodies of evidence, do this alternative HW: a 2-¶ sequence where the first ¶ presents and analyzes primary sources, but then the second ¶ draws on secondary sources to introduce crucial background information that reframes the your evidence to give it a new or perhaps intensified significance. For an example of what I’m talking about, see the middle two ¶s on p92 of Harvey.

Class 13.1

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Slideshow Draft

Create a draft of your slideshow and start writing your script. “Pecha Kucha” presentations emphasize visual storytelling, breaking us out of the tired formulae of PowerPoint. In a Pecha Kucha format, you have 20 slides timed at 20-second intervals. Slides should contain images, not words—though it’s okay with me if you track source dates in the lower right corner.

Start building your slideshow at slides.google.com. I recommend using a relatively spare theme, to give prominence to the evidence you present. You will probably want to create your slides and script in parallel with one another. Use the sample script linked at right to get a sense of how long each slide narration should be. Number your ¶s to keep your script synched with the slides.

Use the 1-2 slides to introduce your topic and, if possible, announce your thesis. Then get busy telling your story. For purposes of this draft, see if you can get 5 or 10 slides done.

In a comment below, post a link to your slides as follows:

  1. from the File menu, choose “Publish to the Web”
  2. in the pop-up window, choose auto-advance slides every 10 seconds, leaving the auto-start and auto-replay options unchecked
  3. click Publish
  4. copy the resulting link and paste it into a comment below
  5. before publishing your comment, edit the link to change “delayms=10000” to “delayms=20000”

Lecture 12

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Presenting Evidence in Deepening Sequence

This assignment asks you to draft two paragraphs that might appear early in the body of the upcoming essay. Keep both ¶s brief for purposes of this HW, so we can focus on the ¶ structure and not get lost in the body of either ¶.

The first ¶ should be a brief version of the 2-3 source mashup we did for the previous class (D4|D5|D6). For the first ¶ of today’s HW, you can create a new ¶ OR revise your old one:

  1. Start with the collection of sources that make up your body of evidence. What pattern do you see? Write a topic sentence that names that pattern.
  2. Follow up with sentences presenting 2-3 samples in quick succession, one sentence each. Aim to name each piece of evidence briefly (“”In a 1967 editorial”) to give some sense of the granularity of your evidence. Use the rest of each sentence to provide a quick description that shows how this piece of evidence fits the pattern.
  3. End the ¶ with a conclusion that leaves a blank, “_______,” to be filled in once you’ve written your second ¶.

The second ¶ should do one of two things:

  • Zoom in to examine a similar example from your body of evidence, in an effort to explain the pattern identified in ¶1;
  • Identify a contrary trend using a different set of 2-3 sources from the same collection, complicating our understanding of the pattern identified in ¶1.

In either case, deepening understanding comes from giving a second look to the same body of evidence.

Once you know where you plan to take analysis in ¶2, you can go back and fill in the blank you left in the conclusion of ¶1. Sum up what ¶1 argued while at the same time setting up the new insight offered in ¶2. Avoid naming the new insight—naming the new insight is the job of ¶2’s topic sentence. It’s like a comedy routine: the concluding sentence plays the role of straight man, while the topic sentence of the following ¶ gets to voice the punchline.

Paste your 2-¶ sequence into the comment below. Be sure to give two ¶ breaks between paragraphs, so as to help the website format your HW properly.

Quick Video for Class Discussion

In an effort to make some connection to current discussion in Hum and Soc Sci, please watch this short clip from a BBC documentary, Racism: a History and come to class ready to discuss.

Class 12.2

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3-4 Source Mash-Up

This assignment gives you practice in identifying and reporting a trend you’ve identified three or more sources from your body of evidence.

  1. Start with 10-15 fragments that make up your body of evidence. You can make do with fewer, but lots of instances provides confidence that any patterns you notice are meaningful ones.
  2. What patterns do you see? Try to identify three patterns, then choose one that seems especially odd. Alternatively, focus at the outset on a simple pattern, saving really odd/interesting patterns as a place you might take analysis later in your essay.
  3. Write a topic sentence that names the pattern. In doing so, use language like “most” or “many” or “8 of 10 ads” to convey a sense of its prevalence.
  4. Follow up with sentences presenting 3-4 samples in quick succession, one sentence each. Aim to name each piece of evidence (“In a New York Times article dated 10/16/63″ or “In a 1967 ad”) to give some sense of the granularity of your evidence—but leave most bibliographic details to the footnote. Use the rest of each sentence to provide a quick description that shows how this piece of evidence fits the pattern. For example, if I was interested in how ads present women in supporting roles: “A 1965 Norelco ad shows not just a clean-shaven husband, but his admiring wife.”
  5. End the ¶ with a conclusion that finds new significance to the pattern—a restatement of the opening claim that raises the ante or shifts the focus to a further insight.

Put your finished ¶ in the comments, below.

3-4 Source Mash-Up

This assignment gives you practice in identifying and reporting a trend you’ve identified three or more sources from your body of evidence.

  1. Start with 10-15 fragments that make up your body of evidence. You can make do with fewer, but lots of instances provides confidence that any patterns you notice are meaningful ones.
  2. What patterns do you see? Try to identify three patterns, then choose one that seems especially odd. Alternatively, focus at the outset on a simple pattern, saving really odd/interesting patterns as a place you might take analysis later in your essay.
  3. Write a topic sentence that names the pattern. In doing so, use language like “most” or “many” or “8 of 10 ads” to convey a sense of its prevalence.
  4. Follow up with sentences presenting 3-4 samples in quick succession, one sentence each. Aim to name each piece of evidence (“In a New York Times article dated 10/16/63″ or “In a 1967 ad”) to give some sense of the granularity of your evidence—but leave most bibliographic details to the footnote. Use the rest of each sentence to provide a quick description that shows how this piece of evidence fits the pattern. For example, if I was interested in how ads present women in supporting roles: “A 1965 Norelco ad shows not just a clean-shaven husband, but his admiring wife.”
  5. End the ¶ with a conclusion that finds new significance to the pattern—a restatement of the opening claim that raises the ante or shifts the focus to a further insight.

Put your finished ¶ in the comments, below.

Class 12.1

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Up from the Details

Writing HW By this point you have assembled on a collection of primary sources for your research project. Prepare a brief (1 sentence) response to each of the following:

  • the principle that defines your collection (i.e. images of children at play from Life magazine ads in 1961, 1966 and 1971)
  • the open-ended question you hope to use the collection to answer
  • what patterns you expected to see, given what you’ve learned about your topic over the past few weeks
  • one way in which your collection has confirmed expectations
  • one way in which your collection has surprised you

Paste your responses into the comment space, below, along with a sample from your growing body of evidence.

Up from the Details

Writing HW By this point you have assembled on a collection of primary sources for your research project. Prepare a brief (1 sentence) response to each of the following:

  • the principle that defines your collection (i.e. images of children at play from Life magazine ads in 1961, 1966 and 1971)
  • the open-ended question you hope to use the collection to answer
  • what patterns you expected to see, given what you’ve learned about your topic over the past few weeks
  • one way in which your collection has confirmed expectations
  • one way in which your collection has surprised you

Paste your responses into the comment space, below, along with a sample from your growing body of evidence.