Monthly Archives: March 2016

Literary Arts Festival (& Mary Gaitskill Reading): Extra Credit

Extra Credit, Scheduling

City Tech’s 35th Annual Literary Arts Festival is being held between 5:30 – 7:30 pm on Thursday, March 24 in the Voorhees Theater (186 Jay Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201).  As the Festival’s OpenLab page denotes, the event will include readings from students, faculty, and writer Mary Gaitskill (best known to most of us as the author of “The Other Place”).

I will offer extra credit (a letter grade bump on your lowest response paper
a D becomes a C, a C becomes a B and so forth) to anyone who attends and writes a coherent, thoughtful response paper that addresses the following points:

  1. Summary of the entire event (beyond what I could learn from a playbill/lineup)
  2. Critique of the evening
  3. Short musing on the weirdest part of the Festival (something that surprised you, made you pause, had you laughing/grimacing, etc.)

Extra credit response papers should be emailed to me by 3PM on Sunday, March 27.

Updated Grading Policy

Instructions

Lateness has become an issue this semester, so I’m updating our grading policy to address the problem.  Effective March 9, anyone who arrives more than 5 minutes late to class on the day an assignment is due will incur a ten point penalty on the work they turn in.  Further, if reporting back to class on time following our mid-class break proves to be an issue, we will no longer take this break.  Please let me know if you have any questions about our updated policy (copied below):

Grading

Ten points (which is the loss of a letter grade) will be deducted if you are more than five minutes late to class on the day an assignment is due.   No late work will be accepted.  If circumstances prevent you from being in class on the day an assignment is due, please contact or speak with me before the assignment is due so that we can strategize together.  Below please find a breakdown of how various components of our coursework will contribute to your final grade:

  • unit 1 homework: 5%
  • response papers: 50%
  • unit 5 research paper: 15%
  • unit 6 portfolio: 10%
  • classroom participation: 10%
  • final exam: 10%

Anelsy R An “American” Publishes a Magazine

Uncategorized

In the essay “An “American” Publishes a Magazine” by Wallace Shaw, the author tells us about how he shows to americans public pictures about others suffering, but they as an individual the pictures affect them, and as a sovereign they do not car. he also mention whether the government or sovereign say that they torture people because of our benefit, people just think that it is ok. the author tells that he does not believe in laws or password or immigrant that he can go whatever he wants without any permission. he sees all the countries are equals and the United States is not something interesting to him.

 

Explanatory Synthesis: A Recap

Instructions

Thanks to a fantastic question coming to me via email, I wanted to post a quick overview of what goes into creating an explanatory synthesis.  As our textbook illustrates on pages 102-103, creating an explanatory synthesis involves three basic steps:

  1. summarize your sources (for response paper 3: “Beach” and at least one other source)
  2. make judgments about / conduct a critical reading of your sources
  3. determine the relationship(s) between your sources

Steps 1 and 2 should look familiar, as we’ve just written summaries and critiques.  Therefore, step 3 is the new writing task.

Keep in mind that the goal of explanatory synthesis is to help our readers understand something by presenting facts from various sources in a reasonably objective manner.  This means that there isn’t a lot of room for our opinions when writing an explanatory synthesis.  Instead, we should work to connect the sources we are sharing with the reader — what does one source teach us about the other?

Please let me know if you have any questions as you move along through your homework!

Submission Guidelines: A Refresher

Instructions

As you prepare response paper 3, I wanted to send along a reminder about our submission guidelines.  I’m seeing a fair number of sloppy errors while I’m grading response paper 2, and I want to be sure that I help you avoid making similar such errors for the homework that is due on March 8.

The guidelines are copied below for your reference, and can also be found on page 2 of our syllabus.  Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me if you’re having trouble figuring out how to effect any of the below requirements; failure to adhere to the guidelines will result in a grade penalty from response paper 3 onward.

Submission Guidelines

All work is to be typed and printed out before class unless otherwise noted; please use 12-point type, double spacing, 1-inch margins all around, no extra spacing between paragraphs, and Arial, Calibri, or Times New Roman font.  Please title your work; the title should be in 12-point font and centered, with no quotation marks, bolding, italics or underlining.  No cover page is necessary; instead, create a heading in the upper left-hand corner of your first page:  using single-spacing, please list your name, ENG1121, E115, the name of the assignment, and the due date.  Use of page numbers should begin on the second page.  After an initial warning is given in writing, failure to adhere to these guidelines will result in a grade penalty.

An “American” Publishes a Magazine, Gustavo Solano

Uncategorized

In the article, “An “American” Publishes a Magazine” by Wallace Shawn, he address the issues with the characteristic of an American. Where “American” find it normal now that soldiers are torture, strip of their dignity, for the result that many get to live with benefits and a carefree life, as the people aren’t shock of this cruelty that is happening to the soldiers. Yet United State is a sovereignty nation where law are made so one can get permission to do even the simplest thing. Although being born as an “American”, doesn’t agree with how the United states has handily thing, immigration, no reaction from the people about the soldiers, and like as a whole country we aren’t any different from any other country in this world.

Response Paper 2

HW due March 1

In “An ‘American’ Publishes a Magazine” by Wallace Shawn, Shawn discussed the matter of pictures surfacing to the United States public showing American soldiers torturing people. Yet in a matter of weeks, the topic became simply something that gets covered up in dust within time, with the government and the citizens accepting it for what it was. From this, Shawn proceeds to queston what it meant to be “Americans and living in the United States” (50). He isn’t exactly someone you can call an American patriot, he simply states that he was born in the United States and that was that, he was an American. The “boring men” as Shawn calls them, refers to the men that was getting things done “behind the scenes.” In truth, there are many things happening within our country that aren’t exactly clean and full of sunshine and there are always people, the “boring men”, that are going to get the job done.

Kevin Darius Summarize ” An ‘American’ PUBLISHES A MAGAZINE

HW due March 1

In 2014, Wallace Shawn published a magazine called ” AN ‘AMERICAN’ PUBLISHES A MAGAZINE”. Wallace wanted to address one issue he had with “Americans”. Wallace states that he viewed the reactions of the president and political officials after them viewing the pictures that contained American soldiers torturing, degrading, and mocking  people (pg 49.). Wallace was not very fond of the fact that the President and political officials weren’t viewing these actions as being terrible and seen that these people viewed these actions as to be in fact normal.  Also Wallace mentions if he were to have been in power wouldn’t  require that people need people need a passport to touch United States ground. Believing no man or woman should need permission to go anywhere they please as stated in (pg51).  Wallace gives us his opinions on the terrible things and the things he appreciates about the United States. Wallace also does mention New York CIty as a small part of the United States but not really basically allowing readers to understand United States cannot be determined as a whole when states like NYC differ amongst other states.

An American Publishes A Magazine

HW due March 1

In the essay An “American” Publishes A Magazine by Wallace Shawn he talks about the deeper meaning of being an American. After viewing these group pictures of American soldiers being tortured he questions how America would react to the issue. Also, with the thought of how we have to think about being Americans living in the United States. Wallace then talks about his point of view on how he doesn’t feel the states are very United and that the term United States is inaccurate.

 

response paper 2- ” An American Publishes a Magazine”

Uncategorized

In An American Publishes a Magazine by Wallace Shawn, Shawn dwells on the interplay between American detachment and sovereignty. By doing so, his essay ends up raising more questions rather than answers.

In the beginning of the passage Shawn introduce readers to the idea of being Americans living in America. As Americans we are a sovereign nation (govern by power,rules and laws). When it comes to crimes committed by the soldiers of the sovereign nation Americans as individuals reacted with shock but as a sovereign public there was no cry of outrage or lament over the torment or torture by the soldiers on the people in chains.this passage raises a lot of doubt on the mind of the readers about what the United States stand for. Is it a country of peace which helps those that are helpless? Or is it the cause of all the problems.