Final Essay Due Date

· If handing in essay by hard copy, I need it by Tuesday in my mailbox (E305) by 4pm.

· If taking all the time, e-mail at cankney AT colum DOT edu by 2pm Thursday

· If you want to schedule a conference with me on Tuesday between 2-4pm, see me after class

· If you want me to comment on a draft, I must have a copy e-mailed to me by 4pm Tuesday to guarantee a reading…

Practicals – Outlines
Example

From Girls to Bromance: How to Survive the Bros

I. Preface – YouTube as inspiration

A. Bro Rape – fictional story; parody on sexual assaults on men

• “Bros” – characteristics and hobbies

1. pop music – Jack Johnson
2. video games
3. unique dress

B. Thesis: 3 major ideals: misogyny, sports and positive interactions with
other men

II. What is a Bro and Who are the Bromance?

A. A world of men

1. Sports, sex, humor

B. 3 guys: Aidan, David and Andy

1. Aidan →character
2. David→character
3. Andy→character

C. stereotypical view of manliness

III. Part 1 – Sports and Games

A. Bars, football and fantasy football

• Testing knowledge; competition

1. Horrocks (169) – competition
2. Murphy (65) – men and intimacy

B. Videogames

• Sports and gaming systems

1. Each guy has a system

• Egenfeldt-Nielsen (25) – positive social interaction
• Madden 08 – it’s own section

1. Xbox 360 – the focus
2. 21 hours of play during weekend
3. Goals: To win Super Bowl; Build up stadium, ticket prices, etc.

• Played together – subjects discussed = witty banter, women, classes

C. See themselves as stereotypical men (strength, talent, pride)

IV. Part 2 – Bro-sogyny / Anti-feminism
A. Men are dominant gender

• Murphy (100) – men’s agenda is to keep women “in place”

B. The Bros – embrace hegemonic view

• Women are servers to men, home
• Sexual objects

C. Women in their lives

• Few amongst them
• Physical relationships – men stay in charge

D. Narrative – Sunday night conversation

• Dialogue between 3, discussing a girl

E. Sexist Humor

• Constantly kidding about everything

1. Unafraid of responses from people

• Fine (86-7) – the intent behind jokes ; just for fun, so no harm done!

F. Universal female response

• Assume the guys are cool; just playing
• Never date a Bro

V. Part 3 – Dominance and Jocularity: Males in the Bro Culture …

• Maleness = Respect …….

Outline General Strategy

Structuring Your Argument – final suggestions (see Organization Patterns handout)

1. Be consistent throughout entire essay. You want to create and meet expectations in how you order the giving of information

I. Anecdote →how it represents culture→ context / authorities (secondary sources)
II. Anecdote →how it represents culture→ context / authorities (secondary sources)
III. same structure . . .

Or

I. History/secondary sources →claims on culture →specific examples
II. History/secondary sources →claims on culture→specific examples
III. same structure . . .

Or . . . however your order your content from one idea to the next, be consistent.

2. When creating an outline, make sure to plug in which authors you are going to use within the outline where you plan to use them. (Consult the outline here, for an example.)

3. Don’t rely HEAVILY on space fillers, which include but are not limited to: a. extra long quotes (3 or more lines) b. dialogue written as in a play or novel c. extra space between paragraphs (just indent!) c. don’t put personal info as a header on each page. After page 1, only should see page # and essay.

Reminder for 6/8: Take-home Reading Quiz #4

Due: Tuesday, June 8, 2010 at beginning of class (late to class=0)
Worth: 4 points=4% of final course grade
Guidelines: three-paragraph analysis; MLA format and citation,;12 point, Times New Roman font

Prompt:

Use the following guiding principle to write your analysis of a specific gesture that you see in a culture. The gesture may come from the culture you are doing your final essay on, or not!

Guiding Principle: “Gesture appears as a potential substitute or supplement for the defects of our spoken and written languages” (226).

MLA Citation:

Yelle, Robert A. "The rhetoric of gesture in cross-cultural perspective." Gesture 6.2 (2006): 223- 240. Communication & Mass Media Complete. EBSCO. Web. 20 Apr. 2010

1. Pre-writing Strategy: [Respond to assumptions and elements of the guiding principle]

• What is one gesture that you think in your culture replaces or enhances spoken words?
• How does the gesture do so? In other words, what does the gesture replace?
• What is a possible “defect” in spoken/written language that makes it necessary to replace/enhance through gesture?

2. After the pre-write, type up a structured three-paragraph analysis integrating the given guiding principle. Use today’s in-class strategies AND Chapter 6 techniques (specifically, p. 203, which has a good chart, and p. 206-208)

Practicing Analysis (with Ads)

Writing Exercise: Some Basic Topic Sentences for Analyzing Advertisement (use book examples):

• Make a claim about how an image in your advertisement uses a specific emotional appeal.

• Make a claim about how the slogan/headline makes an emotional appeal. (How does the slogan connect to the emotional appeal? Explain yourself!)

• Make a claim about how the arrangement/placement of objects (words and images) in the advertisement support the emotional appeal you’ve claimed the ad is using…

• Make a claim about why the emotional appeal and specific content in the ad (things you’ve already discussed, perhaps) imply that the ad is geared to a specific audience – and, yes, identify within your claim who that specific audience is.

• Make a claim, reflecting again on the emotional appeal and target audience, about what the ad implies people value. To be even clearer in your claim also mention the product being sold!

***Your answers for each of the above can be what you use to guide your reader through your essay. Logically, if these become your topic sentences you can re-order them according to how you see them clarifying your larger thesis statement. (Each becomes a section of your larger essay, and you can transition between each topic with "hinge sentences"!)

• And you can also make sub-topic sentences for paragraphs that fall under each topic – this is how you can develop your essay. Use paragraphs to get as much in on the topic as necessary

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Writing Exercise 2: Global Introduction to Analysis on Emotional Appeal of an Ad

• Clarify “Who is being targeted in the ad?” and how you see this being the target audience. What does this say about what advertisers think this audience values?

• What emotional appeal is used the most? Identify and also explain why you answer this way by referring to characteristics of the ad.

• What part of the ad most represents the main emotional appeal, and what is the main reason for this claim? (Thesis statement)

Example Practice: Look at the Chris Brown “Got Milk?” ad as an example. Answer the three prompts above in a rough draft analysis of this ad. (We will share. If this Internet is not working we will use an ad from the back of the book.)

Upcoming Schedule

Reminder: We will not have regular class meeting on Thursday, 5/27. The assignments to work on and to prepare for Tuesday's class:

Thursday, May 27, 2010: Library Research Day | Use time to visit your culture and make observations…. Goal: Find secondary source, and if you don’t already have a primary source to analyze, find this!

Tuesday, June 1, 2010:

1. Bring in a guiding principle to use as an analytical starting point for writing on your culture.
2. Read Chapter 13, introduction (654-657) and Jib Fowles’ “Advertising’s Fifteen Basic Appeals” (657-674)

Reading HW for 5/13

Read the introduction to Chapter 9 (Psychology): Obedience to Authority as well as the first two essays in our textbook, Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum, 10th ed.:

"Opinions and Social Pressure," Solomon E. Asch.
"The Perils of Obedience," Stanley Milgram.

***There will be a reading quiz in which you answer the following question, using your text as support. However, because this is so, you have a very short time limit of 20 minutes, and are expected to have come prepared for the short quiz:

Milgram justifies his experiment by the value of his results. Discuss the extent to which Milgram inflicted suffering on the participants in his experiments.

_______________________________________________________________________________

I also recommend reading ahead, the essay "The Stanford Prison Experiment" by Philip K. Zimbardo, if you have time. We will ultimately read and discuss this essay, as we work towards the next step in research -- putting together an Annotated Bibliography -- which we will start work on Thursday.


You might further be interested in our textbook's website. It has a Student Resource section full of extra insight into the readings and strategies we work on in our class.

Reminder: Midterm due Tuesday

Using Synthesis in, and for, Plan of Attack part of Research Proposal:

1. What have authors you’ve collected (and will have read) said on a subject?
2. From what you’ve read and synthesized, what kinds of sources should you be going after from here on out?

• Have you only read up on one side of an argument?
• What other questions do the authors you have read bring up that you will pursue?
• What type of sources have you found, and what seems to be missing? What types of sources will help you? (Ex.: Perhaps you’ve synthesized three articles, realizing each gives three different theories of why people in a culture act a certain way, but you’ve noticed that historical background isn’t provided. Then your synthesis of read material can help you think and propose what kinds of sources you feel you need to attempt to find.)

Homework: Midterm Research Proposal is due on Tuesday at 2pm. I will collect them in our normal classroom, will hand out the next assignment, and our class will be done at 2:20 or so! Make DARN sure the Proposal is printed and in my hand when I collect them at 2pm on Tuesday! Any late Research Proposals means you’ve failed the class, as I do not accept late major papers (consult the syllabus for this policy).

Research Proposal Drafting Strategies

Quick Workshop of Introductions to RP

• What are some suggestions you can provide them to help them better write about their culture? Give the author a few suggestions to consider – other characteristics they may have overlooked, your own ideas about culture, etc.
• What are two questions you have about their subject of Cultural Inquiry or thesis statement?
• What are some smaller topics on their subject that relate to the thesis? Provide suggestions to your fellow writer on where they could go for research.
• What do you think makes their topic relevant to a larger world – and where can they look for examples to support their research?
• Do you know of any secondary sources (books, documentaries, articles) or primary sources (places or people, organizations in Chicago) they could go to for further research? Provide a suggestion to them.

_________________
Synthesis: a written discussion that draws on two or more sources. Basically, in synthesis you use source material to make a larger discussion of a subject (such as a cultural inquiry), by discussing your ideas on subject along with the sources being used in.

• What is the relationship of theses sources’ main points to your own?
• How are you using these sources to understand the subject?
• What questions on subject are inspired by reading these sources?

_________________
Synthesis and Plan of Attack for Research Proposal

Use your thesis statement you wrote for RP to contextualize what kinds of sources you plan to go after.

• Example: If you chose to look up sexuality in high school culture, what are some key topics that are relevant? What kinds of sources are you, then, going to pursue?

What are some specific sources you have already read, and what are their main points on subject?

• What “side” are the authors on? What are you going to do to find out?
• What function/ purpose does the source serve on your topic? Is the author providing historical information? Are they making theoretical arguments? Are they using theories to persuade you?

What are some other some other general viewpoints on the subject that you want to investigate? Are there other authors you already know about that write on subject? Are there specific texts? (If you have no idea, start plugging away at the computer, at EBSCO!)

Transitional Devices

One of the writing tips we will go over briefly in class today is transitions. From sentence to sentence, the coherency of your points is maximized by good transitions. The Purdue OWL website has some great points that you SHOULD come back to, especially since today we are not spending as much time on transitions.

Despite not spending the time today in class on transitions, readers do expect writers to integrate good transitions in their work, so DO NOT DISMISS. We will come back to subject, but get a head start on using these devices to improve your writing!

Edit of Visual Source Watched

Those in class know this, but for those who missed Tuesday, we watched Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations, "Paris," yesterday due to Internet issues.

You can find the episode in part on YouTube (click this link) though we watched it on dvd.

If you do not have a worksheet, I would e-mail me or ask a student that came to class.

Summarizing Visual Media

Today in class, if all goes according to plan, we will be watching an episode of a show called Taboo to practice objective Active Reading of visual media sources. In doing this activity, I have chosen a visual source that may test your ability to be objective. The purpose for choosing a less benign piece on culture is so that we can practice pushing beyond our own biases (our own prejudices and opinions) to be able to focus on what points the source is trying to make.

The specific episode we will be watching is called "Body Extremes." You are expected to take notes on the handout, and we will use these notes to practice summary and summary techniques next class.

Summary

* Reading &Writing Strategies for Summarizing

Include in All Summaries you do:

1. Thesis of a Summary – writer’s main purpose of writing, and their stance on subject

2. Sub-ordinate points – points that are addressed in regards to writer’s thesis

3. Relevant Content – for thesis and each sub-ordinate point, what is the main example used as support?

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Critical Reading Exercise:

1. Actively Read the following article: “Spinning Songs from Movies”

- Pay attention to everything, including title! Highlight the thesis…

- Underline 2-3 of the strongest sentences that clarify understanding of article for a reader.

- Note in margin when author transitions to a “new” point (keys: 1. Look at each start & ending of each paragraph. 2. Pay attention to verbs (and other language) that indicates shift in way of looking at subject (transitional phrases like “however, but, also…)

2. Now, create a brief Summary Outline

- First, what is the thesis of the article read? Clarify the author, title of piece, and their thesis in your own summary thesis statement:

o Use verb phrases that clarify type of writing author uses, as well as what they’re specific purpose is in the piece…

o Example: Barbara Graham attempts to persuade readers in “The Future of Love” that marrying for love is outdated and illogical. (see how this summary thesis claims what the source’s thesis is, using a verb that indicates type of writing of BG)

- Second, what are the main “stages of thought” of the article? What are the 2-3 main points that author outwardly claims, or implies, in writing on their chosen subject?

o Make 2-3 topic sentences that all CLAIM what a large part of the essay is about.

o Order these 2-3 topic sentences one of two ways: most important to least, OR chronologically as author went through them.

3. After the Outline of Topic sentences: Support-specific language

- For each topic sentence, put one supporting example from the original source

o One representative example of those used by author to make point

o One quality quotation from source that supports your claim

o State how the author used that example, and why à provide your rationale for what you see the author doing

§ Start sentences with original author’s name, and use a verb that clarifies how they used the support…

§ Example: “Graham enhances her argument by quoting professional psychologists such as…” OR “Graham includes discussion of biochemical issues in physical attraction, citing…”

Periodicals

- These are journals, magazines and newspapers that come out…periodically!

- Periodicals are good starter places for seeing what topics are relevant in today’s world

- Big city periodicals often focus on larger cultural, national trends (opposed to local news)

- Also, academic disciplines may have their own journals for you to research within: Psychology, Anthropology, Sociology, Music, Literature, Biology, Popular Culture(!), Urban Culture, etc.

Cultural Inquiry Research Essay

- What is a cultural behavior or belief that can help you better understand a culture? You can inquire into any culture (ethnic, religious, counter-culture, etc.) with permission!

- For our time, mostly secondary inquiry, but you may do primary research (interviews, surveys, etc.)

- Your own interest in topic will guide your inquiry, and determine strength of doing project

- Don’t do standard blaaaaaaah topics à be inspired with your topics!

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Homework for next two class meetings:

Thursday, by e-mail [cankney (at) colum (dot) edu ]: ***Class is not meeting in the class, do outside research and send**

1. Relevant publishing info of an article on a cultural issue that interests you; one you found and read from one of the following on-line periodicals: The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Boston Review (some of these are linked through the blog).

2. One solid paragraph that explains your interest in the topic addressed in the article, and two to three questions about the topic that the article inspires you to want to research further.

Tuesday, 4/20: Bring in the actual article from Thursday’s homework. Have read Chapter 2. We will start off the day practicing summary of these articles, and then share them.

In-class Essay

Diagnostic Essay (30 minutes || 5 points): Answer the following prompt in essay form. Take all of the time allotted, and make sure your ideas are well-organized, clear language, and be creative and engaging (if you can!):

What is one “thing” about American society that you just don’t understand as well as you’d like? Who, within larger society are you referring to? Why does this particular “thing” interest you? What kinds of questions would you ask people to figure out this “thing” better?

1. “Thing” can include:

o A specific general belief (doesn’t have to be spiritual; could refer to any kind of belief)

o A certain way of dress

o A certain cultural rule

o A contradiction you see in America

o A behavior

o A fascination that America seems to have

o ???