Cion Blog #4: The Obits

For this final Cion blog assignment, you're going to be creating an obituary entry for a character from Cion. It doesn't have to be one of the main characters, and it could be a character from the past (although slaves probably wouldn't have obits written for them). Have a little fun with this, but be sure to include the proper information - date of birth, death, where he or she is from, surviving family members, possibly how they died, maybe a little bit about them and their occupation, etc.

This will be due on Sunday evening at 10pm.

Thursday, March 5: Discourse Communities

All of us are members of many discourse communities, whether or not we realize it. This activity requires you to think about those discourse communities you are a part of, and what their conventions are.

Part 1: At the top of your blog post, write out as many discourse communities that you can think of that you are a member of. For example, I'm a member of the following DCs: American, academic community, white, male, graduate student, first-year composition instructor, computer programming, video gamer, and so on.

Part 2: Pick three of these discourse communities to talk about in depth. For each of these, answer the following questions:

• What are the conventions of this discourse community? i.e. What are the purposes and goals of the community and norms for "good writing"?
• Texts: what are the typical genres used by members of this discourse community?
• Topics: what subjects are written on in this discourse community?
• Terminology/lingo: what specialized language is used and why is it used? Provide examples.
• Joining the discourse community - how does one become an insider? What are the writing activities and roles of discourse community members?

Example - the family discourse community of a Hispanic student. Texts include: letters to family, cards, to-do lists. Topics: everyday life, food, holidays. Conventions: Language should be in Spanish for most communication, especially with the older generations. Informal language; greetings the obligatory "how are you" in letters and all communication. Joining the DC: you can only be in this discourse community if you are born or are married into it.

This will be due by midnight tonight.

Cion Project Groups

Group 1: Corey

Ben
Brittany
Melissa
Sacha

Group 2: Tom
Nick
Mackenzie
Nicole Benzinger
Ricardo

Group 3: Ryan
Nicole Bersani
Ashley
Liz
Melanie

Group 4: Jordan
Harrison
Abie
Paige
Derek

The Kilvert Community - Group 4
Magic Realism in Literature - Group 3
The Ridges - Group 2
Quilting - Group 1

Please let me know if I got your groups' topic wrong via blog comment.

Cion Blog #3 - Fugitive Slaves

Apologies for the late posting of this. If you can, post tonight; if not, I understand. Post it tomorrow afternoon.

First of all, as I mentioned, I'd like you to post on THIS blog post (as a comment) which of the topics for Essay #3 you'd like to write on and why (briefly, it doesn't have to be a terribly academic reason right now). I've uploaded the extra articles for the topics on blackboard, if you want to look over those first. If you don't make this comment, I won't give you credit for the Cion blog post.

For this blog post, I'm going to have you recreate a Fugitive Slave Poster for Nicodemus and Abednegro. Based on the following examples, make a post in the style of the fugitive slave posters, offering a reward for their capture, their suspected location, physical description, what they had on them, etc. This forces you to use some information from Cion while still exercising some creativity.

Samples:

Blog Post #4 - It Tastes Like Book-Burning

In your Exploring Language reader, read the essay "The Freedom to Read" by the American Library Association on page 446; afterwards read Jeff Jacoby's essay "Book-Banning, Real and Imaginary" on page 451. After reading these two essays and pondering deeply about the situation, respond to the first writing assignment on page 453:

"Is censorship of written materials ever permissible? If so, under what conditions? If not, why not?" Write out your response to this as a comment on this blog post OR respond to a comment somebody else has already made. However, if you do respond to a comment, make sure you're not just saying "Yeah I agree". Either point to specific points you disagree with and why, or support the points being made with your own examples. Try and comment by Sunday afternoon so that people have time to comment. Also, feel free to comment more than once if you really have something to say. As you work on this, think about how the authors make and support their arguments. We'll be working out of Exploring Language for Essay #3, the classical argument, and we'll be talking a lot about what makes a good argument.

Cion Blog Post #2

In the early chapters of Cion, Toloki frequently makes reference to a "sciolist", a shady, mystical character. A sciolist is defined as something of a charlatan, a pretender to knowledge - which I read to be a self-deprecating jab by the author at himself. Toloki mentions that he was conjured up by this sciolist. What does he mean by this? Describe a character that you or somebody in your family conjured. If you can't remember ever doing so, make one up now. Describe your character and also describe his or her (or it's) purpose.

Monday, Jan 26th - 'Obviously, you're not a golfer'

Free-writing at the start of class: Spend around 10 minutes trying to write out any and all problems or controversies you can come up with that relate to your field. If you are currently in one major and thinking of switching, write about your choice of one or both of these majors. If you're not sure of your major and can't even think of a field you MIGHT be into - then try and write about some CURRENT issue going on in the world right now. Some questions that might help you brainstorm issues - what does it mean to be a student of this field? What are potential jobs I could get after I get my degree? Are there any gender issues related to this field?


Homework: In preparation of our visits to the library this week, you'll be making a blog post explaining one or two issues you think you'd like to explore. First, read pages 147-158 and the sample student Exploratory essay on pages 163-167. Then make a post that details what you think you'd like to explore. Obviously, these aren't set in stone, but I want everybody to have something they can research. I'd like you to try and come to these things organically, but if all else fails and you can't come up with anything, try a google search for your field with terms like "issues" "controversy" or "problems".

January 20th - Thesis Exploration

Alright class, I asked for you to have some idea of what your thesis for Essay 1 will be for tomorrow. I understand you're still in the drafting stage, and the thesis won't necessarily be set in stone. Honestly, it shouldn't be, I don't expect it to be - though if it is, great. I want you to make a comment on this post tonight and paste your tentative thesis. I'll make a little bit of time tomorrow to go over as many of them as I can, and we'll talk about them as a class - what's working, what's not working, what could be improved.

January 13th: Rhetorical Appeals

Logos! Ethos! Pathos!

We're going to watch three short TV commercials in class today and analyze how they make use of the rhetorical appeals of logos, ethos, and pathos.

High-Fructose Corn Syrup spot:


Camel cigarettes ad:


ASPCA spot:


In your groups, talk about how each commercial uses the rhetorical appeals. Questions to answer for each commercial include: which appeal does this commercial make the most use of? Is it effective, or does it work against the goal of the commercial? What other appeals does this commercial employ? How could these appeals be more effective, considering the desired audience? One group member will take notes on what your group talks about, to be shared with the group as a whole.

Blog Post: Please title this "Cion Blog #1" or give it some other title that lets me know this post relates to Cion. Toloki is unfamiliar with the rituals of Halloween on Court Street and, as an outsider, his description is surprising and funny. With the first chapter of Cion and "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema" by Horace Miner (link here) in mind, write your own description of a ritual, sporting event, or gathering, in which you pretend to be an outsider unfamiliar with the customs of that event.

Homework for Monday, January 12th

For tonight's homework I would like you to read Chapter 6 in your Allyn & Bacon Guide. It's skipping ahead a bit, but Chapter 6 covers Summary and Strong Response writing, the focus of your first essay assignment. Pay particular attention to the criteria for an effective summary on page 119, the explanation of an Rhetorical Critique on page 122, and the explanation of a Ideas Critique on page 124. These are really the meat and potatoes of this chapter, though you'll want to take a good look at the example essays they sprinkle throughout, like Tony Chachere's on said meat and potatoes. Um, anyway.

After you've read the chapter, think back to Tannen and August's essays. Which do you think you feel more strongly about? As you'll notice when you read the chapter, that doesn't necessarily have to be the one you disagree with more - you can have a strong response that is in agreement with the essay you're responding to, but I'll warn you that those run the risk of simply repeating what the author has said. I think you'll have a tougher time writing a powerful strong response if you solely agree with the author. Start thinking about which of the three methods you might want to use for whichever essay you respond to: Ideas Critique, Rhetorical Critique, or the combination of both.

In a blog post, explain which of the two essays you think you'll write on, then look on pages 122 and 124 (at the big yellow boxes with Question-asking Strategies in them). Pick two questions from each group to answer. Spend a decent-sized paragraph on each question, and play around with it. Write whatever you can think of to answer the question and don't worry if what you write isn't that great. The point is to start thinking about the essay in ways you might not have before. Post your blog after you've written a response to a total of four questions - two from the Ideas Critique section and two from the Rhetorical Critique section. The deadline for this post is midnight tonight, please title it "Essay 1 Pre-write".