In-class Final Preparation, 12/10: 2:45-4:45pm

Preparing for In-class Finals

1. Organize your notes, including, use of the 3- or 4- or 5-column note chart

•  Recognize patterns in the subject text(s), including:

o   actions that get repeated (implied or overt)

o   images & events

o   …other language…

•  Recognize key examples that you can cite in your own essay.

o   What is important about the example? What does the scene/line support? Make sure to put the page number (and line number for poems) down so that you can easily cite in your essay.

• Pose questions about the meaning a reader can get out of the text, its actions and its conclusions. An effective strategy for a writer is to “predict” what he or she will be writing on based on multiple factors:

o   Teacher’s stressing ideas, certain pages, etc.

o   Reviewing your Active Reading notes and matching up what you’ve noted with class lectures and your teacher’s stresses.

2. Create a Vocabulary for the essay topic à Word Bank of language that goes with the subject you will be writing on.

•  Key words from the subject text: character names, place, larger thematic ideas

3. Draft an outline of your ideas, and supporting examples (w/ page and lines) under each point.

4a. Organize the steps you will take once you get to class.

·      What pre-writing steps will you take?

·      How much time will you spend on pre-writing?

·      How will you manage your time?

·      How much time do you need to edit your work, and how will you accomplish this?

o   Which weaknesses in my writing must I focus my editing on?

4b. Organize your materials prior to class:

• Are you allowed to use your book(s)? Yes, then an effective strategy to use is to create Post-it tabs in your book so that you can easily find pages you will cite.

• Are you allowed to use notes? Clarify with your professors in advance, and start drafting notes whenever you have time. 

o   Re-write your notes, and put ideas in an order of importance.

o   Example: I would put all vocab words together, if a teacher gave vocab terms in a class. I would put all of the theories together, if my teachers gave me all kinds of theories to review. I would note down the main ways (3-4 similarities) the multiple texts have in one place in my notes.

5. Write your own essay questions. Then, set a half hour aside and take a practice exam where you follow through on your pre-writing strategies, etc.! 

•  There is nothing like trying to visualize and mimic how you think the process is going to go down. Believe me, taking an in-class exam is stressful for every student, even the most prepared. Part of your studying for the exam is not simply to review individual ideas, but to try and practice writing the essay so that you can see how each of your ideas goes together. I would see a practice exam as a rough draft.

Sample Research Essays and Considerations

1. Here is a literary analysis essay that is similar to ours in form.

• This one introduces criticism (secondary sources) in the introduction. Though not a 100% necessity, doing so can help you frame your own research arguments going forward. 

• The danger, of course, is going into too much depth with too many sources. Nonetheless, consider doing this if you have a "thin" introduction.

2. Here is a second paper from that same instructor, one in which the actual subject text being analyzed is not much part of the introduction paragraph.

• This essay assumes the reader knows the play; therefore, the thesis is the only time they mention Shakespeare and the play. 

• In my experience, teachers are 50/50 on whether or not you can assume information--so clarify that with them. I tend to ask you, my students, to outline your subtopics in your introductions, unlike this one. I find writing cautiously with context more effective than "leaving ideas off the page." 

3. Here is a literary analysis research essay of a story. 

• They summarize the beginning and end of the plot because their GRQ and thesis is to analyze with research the cause of the character change. 

• This analysis does not have any source material within the intro, and that can work. Notice, however, that the writer tends to use signal phrases in topic sentences to frame their own answers in context of research sources.

• With a collection of poems, you will want to list a few poems that represent the collection--poems which you explicate in the essay in order to support your research argument! 

4. Here is another example of a research paper in which the integration of secondary sources comes in the body paragraphs, through signal phrases. 

• This writer organizes sources as support for their own claims! Rather than framing the argument using sources, the researcher transitions to sources once they have outlined their own claims. This organizational method (writing behavior) connotes a lot of authority in the researcher.

5. This essay is organized a bit differently than the above, too. This one posits an argument, shifts to an example, and then uses that example in the following paragraphs to answer questions about the GRQ. 

Please fill out Student Opinion Forms for classes by 12/7: (extra credit)

Notes on Some of the Poems

Below are some notes to give you an example of how one annotates as they go alone reading poems. Since you are going to be making comparison points between one of these poets and one of the other texts we've read this term, I wanted to give you another model of "taking notes" on a text. Your insight as a writer and speaker comes from the more you look for an discuss as a reader. Allow note-taking to help you posit questions and find patterns in the work you are reading. 

Slow Lightning

• "To the Beastangel" (53) (Robert Hayden's "Bone-flower Elegy" reference)
• epigram: "unconscionable musics"=not right or reasonable (the inability to reason, or pin down)
• Couplets (like an elegy)
• juxtaposition 
• of obesity and beauty
• finch and mole (moles being icky)
• father and wreath 
• immaculateness versus hunger (ravenous--a bird pun)
• The crushing of the bird represents...
• power of the lover
• destruction of the innocent
• a deep sadness at such an evil act
• The "ash" reference...Christianity and Easter
• start of fasting (Lent)
• resurrection of JC
• "I ask..." points out the lovers frustration or...showing the speaker how demanding or needy he must be, is.

• "To the Angelbeast" (55)
• first line: that "music" is not always pretty, beautiful...happy
• the tension of reality versus fantasy
• the anticipation of the act versus the act itself

1. In both poems, the interchanging of two words indicates the two perspectives with which a person is looked at, and feels. Both the angel and the beast, the holy and the mortal, the fantastical and the plainness. Also, the tension between violence and peace, self-debaseness versus acceptance. These juxtapositions are seen throughout the collection, maximized in these paired poems. 
• "To rend me and redeem" are the last lines of Hayden's poem. The connection to Corral's work is in that final line of "The Bone-Flower Elegy"

• "To a Jornalero Cleaning Out My Neighbor's Garage" (61)
• lines are broken and indented with chiasmus (inversion of language, idea)
• "draft animals"=mules, horses...used in farming 
• The speaker is learned ("In graduate school") but seen as a stupid migrant (...a landlord asked, / Here to pick strawberries?") .
• A joke: "And I came from Hermosillo/ seeking gold and wealth" (sarcasm that plays off of the migrant stereotype, even with a very Spanish-sounding city...
• Juxtaposition of English rhythms and Corrido singers (ballad singers) with the slur...lots to say about this passage
• French horn=impressive, classical instrument; juxtaposes with "butcher"
• Lots of turning of phrase, never pinning down there person, showing the complexity of going back and forth between servitude and wealth.
• "the golden entrails of cattle" =golden v. guts; fantasy v. reality; cattle its own type of possible commentary...people as cattle, being in control...
• "Monologue of a Vulture's Shadow" (73)
• dominate v. submissive relationship
• the complicity of a relationship= "I long to return"
• Who is this female master? Nature, a mother?
• Perhaps the speaker's mother: "kept on the shelf of an armoire" like the picture of a child, her child. 
• "I ceased to blacken the earth" indicates feelings of sadness--that the speaker sees their position in society is to be a dark figure...
• America?
• "As my master ate, I ate" seems to indicate that in some way the speaker's personhood comes from how they are treated and dominated by the master. Also, the two are put together, a symbiotic relationship. ...

When My Brother Was an Aztec  

• "Of Course She Looked Back" (88)
• Biblical allusion to Lot's wife
• First Stanza
• "shivering city"=cold, problematic
• "like she owned it": something to do with control, tonally ____
• Second Stanza
• "could have": possibility, but also her necessity in turning back. What does her actual looking back mean, then, since she didn't have to?
• "had to": why?
• Third Stanza
• "like debris" and "broken shirts" and "busted red bells" all indicate a sad-looking place. Yet, anything else? 
• Fourth Stanza
• "noise" -- another sense, from 3rd stanza. 
• images of the noise are of sadness...helpless things: dogs, children, roosters
• Fifth stanza
• worries about what she's missing in those basic questions
• husband is a contrast, wants her to move on (she can't).
• Sixth stanza
• "like hot fruit in a persimmon orchard"=fruit of the gods, triumph, joy...how does that normal symbolism stand with the whole poem,  but also with this line? Is the "hot fruit" making a comment on the sins and the spoiledness?
• Seventh stanza
• What are all of the individual images leading you to. Why is it "Of course" that she looks back...
• If Lot's wife is often indicted in Genesis for looking back, does this poem support that indictment or justify his wife? 
• Look at the last stanza as you consider your answer. 
• Look again at the first line, which connects the reader to Lot's wife. Isn't that impactful! What can you write about that--explain the connection.

• "A Wild Life Zoo"(101) 
• wild life=separated words indicates?
• epigram: a poem, thematically indicting of life's pains...
• Prose poem form
• First stanza
• What does a lion represent? The poem centers around him (lion, not lioness) and his actions, so the allegory or meaning has to be about his actions and what causes them...
• What is shocking and ironic about "The man had earned this feast..."?
• Second stanza
• images indicate the simple power of the beast--its warning against man
• Third stanza
• "didn't want to do it--" means?
• "sleep"
• crowd's disbelief
• lion's mouth being "the six of a cathedral" gives the lion what type of character? How does the description indicate speaker sides with the lion, not the man torn apart? Explain!
• "like large pink wigwams at a war party" -- comparison of lion's mouth to a Native image means...! WRITE IT! The lion is a metaphor for white culture disturbing the "beast".
• the rest of the "zoo" metaphor is implied by the references to "pagoda" and "koi pond" -- the stealing of other peoples' cultures...
• Fourth stanza
• "like a mortal wound" infers that the wound isn't really mortal. The man really isn't  mortally impaired by his actions, no is he really wounded. But how could that be!?
• Fifth stanza
• "SWAT gear and khaki shorts" are seemingly juxtaposing images: one is of the law and one is of business, but both are together. What does that connote? White culture. Casualness put together with seriousness. A show. A play. A front. 
• "Saint Michael"=protector, leader of the army against evil! Another indictment of Christian perspective. 
• Sixth
• What were the Crusades? 
• Animals ready to get "revenge" or to "revolt"
• "I believed the lion..." means....
• This poem is a propos to Ferguson! 
• Of course a set of people looks like villains and their anger looks like hate when they are replying to subjugation. How else does one fight being dominated by another? 
• The poem's use of "the king of the animal world" is quite interesting--
• because of both its royalty connotations 
• and because of what gives the lion its royalty (the physical prowess)
• a point and two reasons come out here

HW for Wednesday

Pose one question about either research or your final. Bring all four of the books we've read this semester.

• The final is an in-class essay in which you will thematically connect either Diaz or Corral's work to that Beah or Jensen's work.

• You will have a choice of prompts

Thinking of Secondary Sources...

How are thinking about secondary sources? 

• directly
• indirectly

What are you trying to use sources for?

• to support your understanding and arguments of their aesthetic (lyric, narrative, rhyme, etc.)
• to support your understanding and arguments of their subject matter...

• to provide historical context

• for the time period itself
• for the poet as part of a larger poetic movement

Which sources are the most important to your research?

• contextualize all sources before you use them...

• authority of each author: what are their credentials?

• Not all sources are to be equally used--which one's do you find most important to structuring your argument?

• spend more time integrating those authors into your essay sentences if they help drive home your claims!

A Few Important Poetry Critics

Hellen Vendler

Jaswinder Bolina

Harold Bloom

Stephen Burt

William Logan

A Helpful Database for criticism:

• Modern American Poetry 

Re-emphasizing 3rd person & other small writer things in research

Keep the focus on your subject matter. Many of you have shifted focus sometimes away from the text, or you attempt to make universal points without attaching them to the pieces themselves. Try and make your universal points within claims about the author and their work, starting sentences with  subjects like...


The author [Replace with full name/last name] seems most interested in exploring ...

The poet ...

The critic...

The sociologist...

According to the study, _____ [verb] ...

The poet twists expectations for...

The writer cleverly ... by...

The speaker wishes...

The speaker withholds ..

[writer's] first goal

The writer uses [enjambment] to [emphasize]

The writer emphasizes [economic class] through...[violent metaphors involving ...]

The speaker defies expectations by/in/when...

The speakers reinforce [the theme] ...


Writing about multiple texts...making your Research Essay Claims Large...before supporting a larger reading of the author's work, start your major point paragraphs with discussion of the poet's work "as a whole":


In each poem [piece, work],...

In many of [author's] works...

While "..." demonstrates..., "..."  [and "..." ] exemplify....

[Author's] poetry explores/subverts/criticizes/mocks/satirizes...

Corral on "To Robert Hayden"

Here is an interview in which the poet gives, in essence, a reading of his own poem.

Annotated Bibliography Redux (Due 12/1)

Due: Wednesday, November 19, 2014  Now, Monday, 12/1 (FOLLOW DIRECTIONS)

Worth: 25 points 

Requirements:

• One complete page, minimum
• MLA Format, including: 12 point font size in either Times New Roman or Cambria font; double space
• Two proper MLA end citations, each annotated in two paragraphs
• MLA in-text citationà Make sure to acknowledge authors, and to insert parentheses with proper information in the annotated paragraphs

What is an annotated bibliography? An AB can be considered a reflective Work Cited page. Instead of simply listing the publishing details, you follow each end citation with an annotation of the source’s topic and its thesis point, followed by the source’s importance/application to your research.

The basic information found in the annotation: (paragraph 1) what is the source’s main point, and (paragraph 2) how is it important to your research.

Generic Format

Proper Work Cited citation of your source  (Review Rules for Writers)

            A paragraph that provides analytical summary of the source: provides context for the source; provides its main point, and its main example used to support its thesis.

            A paragraph that connects the source’s main point to your research. How do you see the article supporting your essay? How are the author’s points helpful?

Student Example:

Weber, Ian. “Shanghai Baby: Negotiating Youth Self-Identity in Urban China.” Social Identities. 8.2

            (2002): 347-368. Web. 14 Apr. 2011.

            Ian Weber’s “Shanghai Baby” is a cultural analysis of Wei Hui’s novel Shanghai Baby, especially its impact on urban youth identity construction in modern China (348). Weber posits that Wei Hui’s narrator’s journey is “a metaphor for the ongoing struggle by Chinese youth to reconcile individualistic and collectivist orientations” (366). The reconciliation Weber refers to is between Chinese teenagers – especially females – wrestling with their sexuality and individuality and the government’s vision for submissive citizenship. Weber comments frequently about the sexual encounters experienced by Wei Hui’s narrator being counter to the type of citizen China wants to portray (349; 355). The Chinese government has debated censorship (350) of the novel, and Weber argues that it is because sexual freedom contradicts socialist equality (366).

            Weber’s analysis supports one of the assumptions that I had going into my research of the rebellious first generation American youths in Amy Tan’s short stories: that there is a cultural conflict in regards to the Chinese elders’ views of individuality and their sons and daughters. One cultural difference I need to consider in my analysis of Tan’s portrayals of Chinese youth is that equality in the US is based on a democratic system, not socialist one, and this allows me to analyze characters’ behaviors in regards to this difference. Weber has helped me better show that Tan’s teenagers live in a new society, one that supports individual expression, which is in direct conflict with their family heritage. I now understand that there are reasons the Chinese elders have their beliefs.

HW for 11/24

With your 1.5 Response 1 due and being a poetry explication, you will need to read these webpages further for more clarity:

1. Duke University's explanation of what explication means.

2. University of North Carolina's model (scroll down) for how to write an explication.


For Group A, B, and C: be ready to lead the discussion on your poems, based on explications!

• Make sure to contact each other over the weekend (use e-mail and Canvas, etc.)

• Discuss your readings of the same poems. Help each other see things in the poems (that is one of the main reasons we are doing this--teamwork). 

• Your entire group will take the front of the class. Each of you needs to contribute to the discussion.
• You can ask the class questions about the poems, but make sure you have your own answers to those questions.

•  If you need to use the computer to show anything, please e-mail Professor A. ahead of time so that he can either post it to the blog or have it ready for you at the start of your presentation. 

Groups for Poetry Leads

Group A: Diaz, "When My Brother Was An Aztec" (1), "Downhill Triolets" (52) & "A Brother Named Gethsemane" (64)

• Ana Colon
• Connor Chaney
• Rebecca Steinberg

Group B : Corral, "Self-Portrait with Tumbling and Lasso" (21), "& both Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome" poems (4, 71)

• Kayla Boucek
• Ruth Cachola
• Michael Garfield

Group C: Diaz, "Mariposa Noctorna" (60), "Monday Aubade" (83), & Corral, "To Robert Hayden" (63)

• Stephanie Horchler
• Corrin Johnson
• Haley O'Shea

Group D: Corral, "To the Beastangel" (53), "To the Angelbeast" (55), & "To a Jornalero Cleaning Out My Neighbor's Garage" (61)

• Barbara Cheakalos
• Levi Peresta
• Rachel Rasicot

Group E: Corral, "Monologue of a Vulture's Shadow" (73); Diaz, "Of Course She Looked Back" (88) &"A Wild Life Zoo"(101) 

• Marissa Colea
• Rylee Rucker
• Austin Weller

HW for Wed., 11/19

Work on your Annotated Bibliography. Read the post over on how to cite poetry, and incorporate those points in your bibliographies.

On Wednesday, I will assign each of you to a Group (ABCD or E) and you will be given specific poems to explicate. 

Citing Poetry: some easy rules

• The ideas about any quoting of sources are still relevant with poetry. You still need to lead-in to your quotes, attaching them to your own ideas with a sentence. Never drop a quote! 

• Use the line number in your in-text ( ) citation, rather than page. The line of a poem never changes! 

• Don't quote more than three lines of poetry at a time, within a sentence. Your points will be harder to understand because there will be way too much language to unpack in those lines. Plus, quoting too much takes up your thought space. 

• You don't have to, nor should you want to, always quote entire lines. With poems, you can practice quoting just important images or a figures of speech within a line or lines.

• Example:  The speaker's first piece of advice includes the idiom to "keep your head" (line 1). The idiom refers to the listeners need to stay calm and focused.

• Example: A major theme of the poem includes self control, as seen in the speaker's advice to the son to "trust yourself" (3), "don't give way to hating" (7), and do not "make dreams your master" (9). Such advice continues for the rest of the poem, including in the final stanza, where the speaker reminds his son not to let neither "foes nor loving friends" (27) emotionally change the way he acts. 

• Mechanically, if you are integrating two lines of poetry into your own sentence, you need to indicate the line break with a forward slash:   .../ ...

• Example:  "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock" beings with the command, "Let us go now, you and I, / When the clouds are spread out against the sky/ Like a patient etherized upon a table," with that image setting the poem's sombre tone (lines 1-3).

• If the first word of each line is capitalized, make sure you do so in your own quote. Here, all three lines begin with words capitalized: Let, When, Like.  

• If you are quoting the last line of one stanza and the first line of the next stanza in the same quote, you use a double forward slash: ...// ...

• Example: Look at Robert Hayden's poem "Those Winter Sundays."  (Hayden is a Corral favorite)

• The son shows the tense childhood relationship with his father, "and slowly I would rise and dress,/ fearing the chronic angers of that house,// Speaking indifferently to him" (lines 8-10).

Studying Reviews for concepts

A good source of both understanding an unfamiliar text and for modeling your own analytical sentences is to look for direct reviews of your subject--with your poetry collections, you should have been able to find one on-line pretty easily. 


Here is a review of Natalie Diaz' collection at MUZZLE. Though you will NOT use first person in your Research Essay, and though the review is not 'perfect,' you can still learn a lot about your subject from reading a few of these such reviews

• Pay attention to how a reviewer discusses theme and imagery on a sentence level
• Pay attention to how a reviewer summarizes a text
• Pay attention to how a reviewer integrates quotes into their own claims (as we have discussed) and how he or she mechanically cites poem line and stanza breaks.

Warnings

• Reviews often give the short end of any one poem. The purpose for reviews is to be more generic, and though they often concern themselves with a writer's themes they often ignore an in-depth look at that theme. 

• Instead, reviewers spend more time on craft and on making a decision on whether the book is great or not. Your job is to not get lost in the "greatness" or lack thereof of the work. Your job is to focus your research more on unpacking the subject matter's actual social statement.

• For instance, the reviewer does not go in-depth in her statements such as: "Image driven poems like “Cloud Watching” (“Betsy Ross needled hot stars to Mr. Washington’s bedspread— / they weren’t hers to give. So, when the cavalry came, / we ate their horses. Then, unfortunately, our bellies were filled / with bullet holes”) and “Dome Riddle” sit well alongside the more narrative pieces. The poems about the speaker’s family range from the myth- and fantasy-laced title poem to the brutally direct and unornamented “Why I Hate Raisins.” Your Research essay would want to address what makes those images powerful--what do they comment on. Your job would be to discuss what the myth-like quality of Diaz' poetry is being used for.

Research: Breaking Down Language

With Eduardo Corral's work, we must work hard to understand its code-switching and its allusions to other artists if we want to get a fuller understanding of his poetry and its contributions.

One of the central poems of the collection is "Variations On A Them By Jose Montoya," which is actually smack-dab in the middle of the book! We must learn to read Corral's work using this poem's various forms as research challenge:

• switching language
• allusion to another artist  (Jose Montoya)
• Italicized lines--where do they come from? 
• outside sources used
• section breaks and different stanza forms
• the poems repetition of the opening stanza

Looking the poem up, one can find this review of Corral's work: "Our Man In New York:..."

• From this article, Munoz uncovers more about Montoya. Therefore, to get the reference, one must look up this Jose Montoya and his work, too. That leads to an essay on Montoya: "By the People and For the People"

HW for Monday, 11/17

We will discuss Corral's "Variation on a Theme by Jose Montoya" (33) and a few poems from the first section.  From Diaz' collection, we will discuss "Cloud Watching" (21), "My Brother at 3am" (43) and "Zoology" (45).

We will be continuing discussion of themes and poetic techniques seen in each poet's work.

Next week you will be assigned Essay 3 that will be a comparison of Corral and Diaz's work.

On Corral's "Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome" poems

These two poems invoke metaphor, as we have discussed, which beg us to ask the question, how is AIDS anything like those images presented in the poem? What connotations result from the various images that we encounter?

What types of ideas do you have about the juxtaposition of different images as seen in the first of the two poems (page 4-5)?

As a reader whose is intimately familiar with HIV/AIDS, having written extensively about my relationship to sexual practices using condoms, to Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, and to the relatively recent death of my great uncle to complications from AIDS, these two pieces stood out for their ability to reinvent gayness through the uniqueness of Corral’s vision. In the piece of writing I penned at the residency, it became clear these poems used metaphor as way of creating a disjunctive twisting of memory into the present. This is to say, in the dreamlike imaginings on AIDS, Corral is able to pull the memories of loss—whether it’s for communities or specific individuals remains unclear—from the virus into ways in which he (or better yet) his body can hold onto this loss as he dreams of new possibilities beyond it.

HW for Wed., and cancellation of today's class

Due to an emergency, we will not be having class today. You will still be responsible for the homework for Wednesday.

1. Check Canvas for Essay 2 grades. Please e-mail me with any concerns about finishing or polishing up the Research Proposal.

2. Make sure to respond to the discussion questions posed on Canvas. I am listing them below for you to get a head start. Answering these questions will allow us to efficiently start our delayed discussion of the poetry of both authors and how they represent our last unit: Marginalized American Voices. 

Canvas Questions (Answer questions ASAP):

1. What are some powerful images of white culture impacts on Indian life from at least three of Natalie Diaz' poems? How are each of the images amongst the three poems similar in theme (don't just restate that phrase of "white cultural impact"--but define what those impacts are, thematically)?

2. What does a "coyote" symbolize? How do Diaz and Corral use the symbol of the coyote differently? Of course, cite the poems and their lines in your answers.

3. How do the speakers in Corral's poems maintain a sense of their ethnic identity? Cite a few supporting examples. 

4. Who are the marginalized (socially disadvantaged) communities explored in these two poets' work, and what are two disadvantages expressed in the poems? Again, cite specific poems that support specific disadvantages. 

another interesting article that may be of use

If not "Devotions: Coming Out on Matters of Faith," Southern Humanities Review may have another article on contemporary poetry that may be of use in the following weeks. Check back there for more.

HW for 11/10

1. Research Proposals

2. Read "Natalie Diaz, selected by Adrian Matejka" (click the link)

3. Read Carl Phillips introduction to Corral's work in the book.

4. Read the rest of the first section of each poet's collection.

Starting Research

Planning a Research Project

·       Guiding Research Question à inspired by essay prompt’s question(s), but that is more specific and allows you to analyze a specific aspect of subject

o   From American culture (what is “culture”?), what do you want to focus on that is one aspect that makes up culture? Some examples:

§  Views of mental health & family; mental illness; disability

§  Class & economics

§  Racism

§  Appropriation of Language

§  Educationà educational opportunity; education & class; education & gender

§  Christianity

§  Social Networks

§  Pop Culture/Media and impact on society

§  Privilege

o   Break down the prompt’s language to help clarify purpose: What is “social commentary”?

·       Pre-Writing Strategies: Brainstorming Terms for a “Research Word Bank”

o   What are some of the words that come to mind in thinking about the subject matter?

o   What are some other words come to mind when you think of “culture” or “society” or more? 

Finding Sources

·       Start library search for texts with the key words from Word Bank à literary criticism databases, sociology databases; ethnic/gender studies databases; documentary films

o   Record vital information of sources found on databases à

o   Eating a text à skimming a text for cues of relevance to your research project

o   Actively Read your sources: annotate, pose questions, write down main ideas, other authors cited

o   What types of sources to go for in academic research? (Guide to research sources)

o   COLLECT NEW TERMS from indexes, T o C’s, and from the texts themselves…

Analytical Insight

·       A bulk of your Research Essay should be you a FOCUSED ANALYSIS of a major social commentary theme in the poet’s collection, including how they use poetic techniques to engage in that subject matter

·       Use found articles to further research questions and answers. Look for the many types of claims – about culture, about contemporary poetics, about your author’s work!

o   Example: “A Machine Ate My Language” by Carmen Gimenez Smith

§  “contemporary vanguard poetry”

§  “In my poetry I attempt to disturb the surface of the canonical affect with my race and gender (inevitably and more often than not tied to class) through the signals that popular culture make of me.”

§  “the diction of resistance”

§  “the material culture that a hyper-capitalist culture”

Research Proposal Further Considerations:

Introductions

• Identifying the subject (author and book) and subject matter (what themes are relevant in their work).
• What is your GRQ? Why do you want to study this poet and this book of poems? 

Prior Knowledge & Making Sure You Cite with Summary and Paraphrasing

Whether you have or haven’t used summary or paraphrasing, you are to revise your prior knowledge paragraph with cited sources. To get better at integrating sources without quoting, use today’s class to experiment with summary and paraphrase.

• Make sure you boil down the articles related to your essay subject into 1-3 sentences of pertinent info. Don’t let your summary of an entire article be over three sentences in your proposal.
• Accuracy is key to not getting long-winded and going into too much detail on sources. If you can really understand the article thesis statement, you can rephrase that into your proposal and focus on how that author’s thesis connects to your GRQ…

Last Paragraph of Proposal: Significance of Research àthe “Why” others should care about the findings

• More than likely, you could say more about why anyone should care about your research. However, this part of a proposal is extremely important to your research. You have to explain what the value of your project is!
• What are reasons your research will help others, not just you?  Be a bit risky and creative in explaining the importance of what you hope to find. Also, be practical in thinking about what happens to people when we don’t know or don’t think about the subject.
• Example reasoning:  “With Native American tribes being the original people to this land, Americans must not ignore the negative impacts the US government and white culture has had, intentionally or not. Christians who are afraid of Muslims attacking America should be able to understand the mindset of a Native American, whose life was terrorized by European men. Furthermore, anyone who has seen a movie like Independence Day where aliens come to take over Earth should be interested in learning about how an indigenous writer views history from that position of defense.”