With Assignment # 3 due on Wednesday June 7th, your Artist’s Statement is more important than ever: this is the last piece of writing I’ll be reading from you this term! Especially if you’re writing fiction or creating a comic for Assignment # 3, make sure you’re taking full advantage of the additional opportunity to show me your close reading skills through your Artist’s Statement!
Be sure to include:
links to your expectations, your pre-draft, your rough draft, and the name of the two people whose work you peer reviewed (if you emailed me any of these things, let me know so I can look it up easily, and if you gave me a physical copy, submit it back to me)
a 600 word artist statement.
This artist statement should include answers to the following questions:
What inspired you to choose the format you did for this project?
Who is your audience for this project? What should they know before diving into your work?
What do you want them to learn from your project?
Do you think they’ll be able to learn that? Why? Why not?
What emotional impact were you going for?
What specific panels of Ms. Marvel inspired the type of project you created?
What did you learn about your own writing/creation process through doing this project?
What unique perspective did you bring to your close reading of Ms. Marvel that someone else might not have? What is the value of this perspective?
What did you learn through this project?
What did you not learn?
What would you still like to learn?
What, if any, role did class discussions and your peers play in your project?
If you had another week to work on your project, what would you do with it? How would you change it?
What will you take with you from this project into future projects?
The last thing you want to tell your audience before they dive into your project is…
For your third assignment, you will conduct a close reading of one scene (or several related scenes) from Ms. Marvel: Volume 1. This close reading should demonstrate not only an understanding of what happens in the text: it should probe deeply into the text’s form (for example: how do the images and the fonts interact with the words that are written to create meaning?), its implications, and its nuances. You can present your analysis in any of the formats listed in the Assignments section of our course blog: but remember that your close reading must be clearly demonstrated through your project and your artist statement.
Due Dates:
Wednesday, May 17th — Comment on this google doc (or directly on this blog post) with any questions, ideas, suggestions, or objections you have regarding this assignment.
Monday, May 22nd — Draft your expectations for Assignment 3 and email it to me before class. These expectations need to include: what grade you are aiming for; what specific things, according to the grading contract, you are going to do to earn that grade; how much time you are expecting to put in; what kind of effort you expect to put into your peer reviews; what kind of help you expect from me; what format you are thinking about creating your assignment in; what questions or insights reading Ms. Marvel has inspired for you so far.
Wednesday, May 24th — Pre-draft for Assignment 3 posted to the blog before class. Answer the following: What did you learn in class on Monday that impacted how you approach reading comics and/or understanding Ms. Marvel? Did it impact your choice of format for this assignment? What format are you thinking of using? What is unique about this format that will allow you to learn more about the comic than what is expressed on the surface? What questions or concerns or excitements do you have about creating a project in this format? What is Ms. Marvel teaching you about writing so far?
Wednesday, May 31st — Rough draft for Assignment 3 posted to the blog before class. Try to have as many of your thoughts/analysis expressed in your draft as possible. Include with your draft at least 5 specific questions that you would like your peer reviewer to answer.
Monday, June 5th — Post your peer review commentary and answers as a comment to two of your classmates’ Rough Draft posts before class.
Wednesday, June 7th — Post your most recent, edited and revised project to the blog before class, along with your 600 word reflective artist’s statement.
With Assignment # 2 due on Wednesday May 10th, be sure to include:
links to your expectations, your pre-draft, your rough draft, and the name of the two people whose work you peer reviewed (if you emailed me any of these things, let me know so I can look it up easily, and if you gave me a physical copy, submit it back to me)
a 600 word artist statement.
This artist statement should include answers to the following questions:
Who is your audience for this paper? What do you want them to know before reading your piece?
What do you want them to learn from your piece?
Do you think they’ll be able to learn that? Why? Why not?
What unique perspective did you bring to your analysis that someone else might not have? What is the value of this perspective?
What did you learn through this paper?
What did you not learn?
What would you still like to learn?
What, if any, role did class discussions and your peers play in your project?
How has your thinking changed about research (if it has) since working on this project?
If you had another week to work on your research paper, what would you do with it? How would you change it?
The last thing you want to tell your audience before they dive into your paper is…
We do research every day: when we hear a snippet of a new song by our favorite artist, we look it up; when we watch a TV show and recognize an actress but can’t tell from where, we google their character to figure out where we know them from; when we need to go somewhere we haven’t gone before, we google maps our way there (yeah, I used it as a verb).
Research — in its many forms — allows us to answer questions (and find new questions!) that itch, questions that ache, questions that we can’t quite get our minds around. As we read Intersections, the play will surely inspire a lot of questions in us. Some of these questions are going to be ripe for research: together, we will generate our own research questions that will guide our investigations, and you will use your research to help you write a deep analysis of Intersections and the exigent issues it evokes. You will need to cite (in MLA format, which we will discuss in class) at least three sources (aside from Intersections), one of which must be a scholarly article published in an academic journal. Your essay must be at least 750 words long (5 pages double spaced).
Due Dates:
Wednesday, April 5th — Draft your expectations for Assignment 2 and email them to me before class. These expectations need to include: what grade you are aiming for; what specific things, according to the grading contract, you are going to do to earn that grade; how much time you are expecting to put in; what kind of effort you expect to put into your peer reviews; what kind of help you expect from me; what format you are thinking about creating your assignment in; what you are interested in from Intersections so far. Additionally, comment on this google document (if that’s not working for you, comment right on this post) with any questions or suggestions you have for this assignment.
Wednesday, April 19th — Pre-draft for Assignment 2 posted to the blog before class. Answer the following: From what you’ve read of Intersections so far, what kinds of research do you think its playwrights had to do in order to write it? How might some research of your own help you conduct a deep, specific analysis of Intersections? What kinds of sources might you want to examine? What about Intersections has grabbed you (or not) so far? How might different forms of research enhance and/or challenge your initial impressions? What does “research” mean to you? What do you think research should be guided by? What should motivate it? (There’s no right answer: I’m genuinely interested in your thoughts!)
Wednesday, April 26th — Rough draft for Assignment 2 posted to the blog before class. Try to have as many of your thoughts/analysis expressed in your draft as possible. Include with your draft at least 5 specific questions that you would like your peer reviewer to answer, and cite at least 2 sources (aside from Intersections). Include your works cited list.
Monday, May 1 — Post your peer review commentary and answers as a comment to two of your classmates’ Rough Draft posts before class.
Monday, May 8 — Post your most recent, edited and revised project to the blog before class, along with your 600 word reflective artist’s statement regarding what you learned, what you didn’t learn, how you can use what you learned in the future, if anything in your research surprised you, how your research impacted your emotions and thoughts about the play, and how you think you could have pushed your analysis even further.
With Assignment # 1 due on Monday March 27th, be sure to include:
links to your expectations, your pre-draft, your rough draft, and the name of the two people whose work you peer reviewed (if you emailed me any of these things, let me know so I can look it up easily, and if you gave me a physical copy, submit it back to me)
a 600 word artist statement.
This artist statement should include answers to the following questions:
Who is your audience for this project? What do you want them to know before reading your piece?
What do you want them to learn from your piece?
Do you think they’ll be able to learn that? Why? Why not?
What unique perspective did you bring to your analysis that someone else might not have? What is the value of this perspective?
What did you learn through this project?
What did you not learn?
What would you still like to learn?
What, if any, role did class discussions and your peers play in your project?
How has your thinking changed about poetry (if it has) since working on this project?
If you had another week to work on your project, what would you do with it? How would you change it?
The last thing you want to tell your audience before they dive into your project is…
In a comment on both of your teammates’ rough drafts on the blog (or in an email — cc me — if you or your partner(s) have trouble with the blog), answer each question that the writer/artist has posed to you.
Also answer the following. Remember that the more you elaborate, the more help you are giving your teammates.
My favorite part of your project so far is…
I would love it if you expanded on these two specific ideas…
It seems like your target audience is…. I can (or I can’t) tell because…
Here are two ideas to help you reach (or define) your audience even more effectively…
Two things that you haven’t done yet that I really think would make your project more powerful are…
(If applicable) I’m not sure what you meant here… Can you please elaborate or explain?
For this first assignment, you will conduct a deep analysis of one of the spoken word pieces we will be reading/viewing/interacting with in class. This analysis can be presented in any of the formats listed in the Assignments section of our course blog (under Calendar). An important part of this assignment — and we will work on it in class together — is coming up with a specific question to investigate about the poem. You can come up with this specific research question by asking yourself starter questions, such as: What are you burning to know more about in the poem? What did you not understand in the poem? What did you notice about the poem that you think others might not have? Are there different, maybe even contradictory, layers of meaning in the poem? How does the artist express them or deal with them?
Due Dates:
Monday, March 13th — Draft your expectations for Assignment 1 and email it to me before class. These expectations need to include: what grade you are aiming for; what specific things, according to the grading contract, you are going to do to earn that grade; how much time you are expecting to put in; what kind of effort you expect to put into your peer reviews; what kind of help you expect from me; what format you are thinking about creating your assignment in; which spoken word poem from our class you might want to analyze
Wednesday, March 15th — Pre-draft for Assignment 1 posted to the blog before class. Answer the following: How can the format you’ve chosen for your assignment best be used to demonstrate a deep analysis of the poem? What is unique about the format you’ve chosen that will allow you to learn more about the poem than what is expressed on the surface? What questions or concerns or excitements do you have about creating a project in this format? What questions do you have about the poem itself? What pieces of it do you want to analyze? Why?
Monday, March 20th — Rough draft for Assignment 1 posted to the blog before class. Try to have as many of your thoughts/analysis expressed in your draft as possible. Include with your draft at least 5 specific questions that you would like your peer reviewer to answer.
Wednesday, March 22nd — Post your peer review commentary and answers as a comment to two of your classmates’ Rough Draft posts before class.
Monday, March 27th — Post your most recent, edited and revised project to the blog before class, along with your 600 word reflective artist’s statement regarding what you learned, what you didn’t learn, how you can use what you learned in the future, why you chose the assignment format that you did and how you think this helped you analyze the poem, and how you think you could have pushed your analysis even further.
I’m excited to get to know all of you through our class and writing this term.
We’ll be using this blog — and google docs — to communicate when we’re not in class; to share ideas, links, gifs, thoughts, insights, inspiration. The blog will largely become whatever we make it: I’m eager to learn how you all are going to choose to build it out.
A bit about me: I’ve spent a bunch of years teaching high school students, and taught several writing classes at CUNY Queens College last year. I’m a massive nerd (comic books, sci-fi/fantasy, you name it) and I write YA fantasy fiction. I’m very passionate about the ways that race and dis/ability interact in the classroom, and that’s what my research mostly focuses on (the other thing you should know about me: I’m getting my PhD in English at the CUNY Graduate Center).
Fun facts? I love basketball, fall weather, and swimming in the ocean, but not in pools. Also, I wrote a 90-page thesis on The Hunger Games, so any Katniss Everdeen references you want to shoot my way will thrill me.
Katniss Everdeen stands with her bow in hand in her Mockingjay suit in front of a burning hospital, shouting “I have a message for President Snow.” Gif from media.giphy.org
There are loads of resources on this page to help you. Scroll through this post at your leisure, and feel free to post your own tips as term goes on!!!
Code-Meshing Multiple Englishes:
As you’re learning to write at the college level, it is vitally important to remember that there is not (as you may have learned in school so far, and may continue to learn in other classrooms) one “proper” form of English.
Daenerys from Game of Thrones stating that she “didn’t come here to argue grammar.” Gif from wifflegif.com
While there is a tremendous amount of power and privilege associated with “standard” English, there is also great power and beauty in the various Englishes that exist: arguably, students have the right to not only bring their own languages into the classroom, but to learn to make these languages flourish. Learning how to integrate the Englishes that you might speak into your writing is called code-meshing.
There is no one way to effectively code-mesh, but several of the pieces we will be reading in this class exemplify these strategies (the works of Elaine Richardson, Junot Díaz and Barbara Mellix come to mind). Explained extensively here, code-meshing (or the more conservative style of code-switching) is not only possible in writing: Barack Obama is frequently cited for code-switching, as are Beyoncé and Comedy Central’s Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele (see references and videos for all four of these folks here).
A frequently cited gif of President Obama offering a less familial handshake to a white man than to a Black man. Gif from usathebiglead.files.wordpress.com
Becoming fluent code-meshers is definitely something to practice in this class: keep code-meshing in mind as you read through the rest of the links on this page.
Helpful “Cheat” Sheets:
Queens College has a fantastic website devoted to helping students adapt to writing in college. Creatively called Writing at Queens, this site has an excellent list of handouts on writing that are sure to be helpful when adjusting to writing in college.
College Writing Guide:
Wondering how to dig into academic writing? This Writing in College guide from the University of Chicago has tips explaining the differences between high school and college writing; drafting papers; revising papers; and avoiding common pitfalls.
A 4-paneled gifset of Spongebob spending a lot of time putting pencil to paper… all to write one ornately decorated word: “The.” Gifset from media.giphy.com
Writing Across Disciplines:
English classes aren’t your thing? Did you know that different fields in academics write differently? Just like poetry, novels, and short stories all often have different conventions of writing, so do the subjects of your potential majors throughout college. Biologists, for example, write differently than historians. The Writing at Queens website has a great set of guides to writing in different disciplines (ranging from computer science and philosophy to music and sociology).
(How to Avoid) Oops… I did it Again:
Wondering about that fine line between plagiarism and using on other scholars’ work to push your own thinking forward? Again, Writing at Queens can help.
Close Reading:
To write effectively, one of the number one tips you’ll find is… read! Read more! Read most! For tips on reading literature (academic and otherwise) as a scholar, peruse these tips on close reading strategies:
Harry Potter trying to hold a book away from his face as it bites at him. Gif from dailydot.com
Research Questions:
Even though a lot of writers (myself included!) want to immediately pin down a thesis and “prove” it throughout the paper, more thoughtful, groundbreaking papers usually start with intensive research questions rather than the answer we find easiest to prove. The following links can help you hone in on research questions that are relevant to the world and interesting to you. One thing to keep in mind is always: do I know (or think I know) the answer to this question? If yes, perhaps I’m asking the wrong thing.
A little-known but hugely important writing fact: revising and editing are not the same things. Learn about the differences and how to effectively use them both to bring your writing to the next level (hopefully without stressing too much).
Penny from the Big Bang Theory, hair mussed and unwashed, staring up from her laptop with an exhausted expression, saying “Oh my god I need help.” Gif from gifsec.com
Penny from The Big Bang Theory looking disheveled and exhausted with her laptop in her lap, saying “Oh my god I need help.” Gif from blogs.coventry.ac.uk
Rachel Cayley’s “Explorations of Style”, a blog on academic writing, has tremendously helpful resources for improving academic writing. Some highlights are here:
Committing to Extensive Revisions: “Rather than worrying that your writing requires an exceptional amount of revision, try thinking that all writing requires a great deal of revision”
Revising Out Loud: “This past fall, I accidentally published a very rough draft of a post. I still don’t know how I managed to hit Publish instead of Save Draft, but I did.”
Reverse Outlines: “Exposing the internal structure of a piece of writing by creating a reverse outline”
Paragraphs: “Treating paragraphs as important units in your writing”
Transitions: “Making effective transitions between sentences, paragraphs, and sections”
Verbs: “Expressing the actions in your sentences with strong verbs”
Subjects: “Using the characters in your sentences as clear subjects”
Conventions of Academic Style:
Many people argue effectively that academic style is constraining and colonizing, while others assert that it is necessary for students to learn if they are to have any hope of succeeding academically. Some of these links will explore how to use academic writing for social justice, while others will focus solely on explaining the dominant conventions of academic writing.
Michaela from How to Get Away with Murder telling Connor over her shoulder in a crowded courtroom: “You should pay attention. You might just learn something.” Gif from mtv.com
First and foremost, we’ll be spending our Wednesday class sessions in the computer lab, so hopefully that kind of collaborative experience will be helpful for all of us.
Most importantly, if you don’t have steady access to internet outside of school, let me know as soon as you can so that I can make sure you get what you need to fully engage with your classmates and assignments through our course blog.
We’ll spend a bit of our time in the computer lab helping each other through the mechanics of blogging. But, for those moments when you’re at home or on the train thinking, ‘how do I do this thing on the course blog?’, here’s a Blog-Start-Up-Kit for you. Of course, if you have questions that this doc doesn’t address, and google also fails you (it happens!), let me know and we can work it out together.
Should you have any concerns about your privacy, you can choose a username that is not, in fact, your name; you can password-protect your posts; and you can always chat with me about any additional concerns you might have so we can find the best way to make this course blog a positive experience for you.
