Week 6:

• Dates: Tuesday, 10/10 and Wednesday, 10/11
• Meeting Info: This course meets in person for 100 minutes twice per week, Mondays and Wednesdays from 12:00-1:40pm, in Namm 602A. By the end of each week, I will post an agenda that will outline the next week’s work. It will include instructions for you and links to readings, discussion questions, and other work. We will work on developing community both in our classroom and in our online written community.

Objectives

• To
• To reflect on the writing process for Project 1 in a cover letter written to Prof. Rosen
• To begin our next project, we will consider how to use writing to address what matters.

To Do Before Week 6

Just in case you haven’t already, please:

• Catch up on any readings or discussions you’ve missed–you can review the Weekly Class Agendas to see what we covered. Any late work for the first half of the semester must be completed before midsemester. This includes the Introductions discussion, the Values and Goals discussion, and submitting Project 1: Education Narrative and the cover letter (paper copy distributed in class)

To-Do This Week

Monday, 10/9: College Closed

Tuesday, 10/10: Getting started with research

Texts:

• Reading/Writing Resource Essay: “Research Starts With a Thesis Statement” by Emily Wierszewski, pages 231- 235 in Bad Ideas About Writing (note that the title of the book, Bad Ideas About Writing tells us that each chapter title is a bad idea–so thinking that research starts with a thesis statement is a bad idea)
• Reading/Writing Resource Presentation “What Is Research?” by Prof. Carrie Hall

Writing:

• Annotate your copy of “Research Starts With a Thesis Statement”
• Contribute to the discussion about what matters to these authors in this week’s texts, and what matters to us.

In Class:

• What matters to the writers of the Declaration of Independence?
• What matters to Layli Long Soldier/ the speaker in “38”?
• in groups: what matters to the writers of the Declaration of Independence? what matters to Layli Long Soldier/the speaker in “38”? make a list on one of your pages of writing, with everyone’s names, too.
  • Declaration: freedom, independence, accountability, equal rights (but only for white men), a government and legal system that works, represents properly
  • “38”: the events of the past that negatively affected her people; her experience understanding her history/the country’s history; the bad treatment–esp from Abraham Lincoln.
• What matters to us, if we were to choose topics to focus on for the next 2 projects? what issues are you passionate about, feel urgency about, whether very local or more global? what’s a topic that will hold your attention for the next several weeks? write for 5 min.
  • In groups, discuss your topics. Is there any overlap? what topics are most represented in your group? Here are our ideas: events happening now, war; equality; global warming/ climate change/ climate crisis/ in particular places or ecosystems; immigrants receiving help/benefits–migrant crisis, fairness; recession/economy/ rising costs / inflation/ housing in NY; technology in our lives, AI; phagwah–celebration of the arrival of spring–or other cultural celebrations/observances; erasing and censoring of history/ banned books; human trafficking
• Freewriting, brainstorming, collaborating about our ideas for research topics
  • what’s a topic that you want to think about more, either from the point of view of your personal experience, cultural or community identity, or academic/professional field? Brainstorm about it for a few minutes on your page
  • on your page: What do you know about the topic?
  • What do you want to know about the topic? what questions do you have?
  • Research: take these 5 minutes to do some research to answer a question you have or to look into something you want to know more about.
  • sayback: what topics did we choose and what did we learn? global warming: “how can we stop global warming” “will it improve for future generations?” used climate.gov; recession: “how did this recession come about”; attention span: how attention spans have been decreasing
  • “What Is Research?” by Prof. Carrie Hall
• What topics do we want to consider for Projects 2 and 3?
• Research questions
• Research

Wednesday, 10/11: Research for the Reflective Annotated Bibliography

Texts:

• Readings TBA/Crowd-sourced Readings Based on Research Brainstorm–TBD by students
• Video: “Writing an Annotated Bibliography” (City Tech Library)
• Reading/Writing Resource Essay:  “Annotated Bibliography Breakdown” (Purdue OWL)
• Reading/Writing Resource: City Tech Library’s Guide to Developing a Research Question to help you narrow down and finalize your research question

Writing:

• Discussion for brainstorming about our research topics.

In Class:

• Reviewing Project 2 instructions and Project 2 details
• Getting started with Project 2
  • climate change (4); history of a field/key figures/future trends; effects of living in war (1); immigration/resources/policies/border crossing (1); deciding on a major (1); cultural practices, celebrations; economy/inflation/recession (1); cost of healthcare; human trafficking (1); inequality, discrimination, racism (1); fair government; AI; mental health/illness (4); homelessness, homeless youth, affordable housing; preserving cultural identity/history; food; conspiracy theories.
  • what are our 4-6 topics? climate change; mental health/illness
  • who is doing which?
  • how do our topics intersect with your major, key interests, or career path? let’s do some brainstorming.
  • what are we interested in? what are we passionate about? write for 5 minutes
  • how do we start narrowing down the topic?
  • what do we need to know about, and what questions do we need to ask?
• What is an annotated bibliography?
  • what is a bibliography? why do we use them?
  • what is an annotation? why do we use them?