Hello everyone, thanks for your patience with this Module. Here’s the recording of my lecture this week. Access code: $0AAoK6h. Watch it at your leisure, but I recommend watching it before continuing with the work of the Module.
Please read this page chronologically, and read all the way through to the bottom for multiple assignments.
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This week your main task is to begin writing your research paper.
A draft of 2 pages is due this Sunday. Before beginning, please read these two handouts on Research Paper Introductions: CARS (Create a Research Space) and Methods for Arrangement for Longer Papers.
Then, you have 2 options:
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- Upload the draft of the introduction/ first 2 pages of your essay to your working group folder
- Upload this Building Your Intro worksheet using complete sentences/ paragraphs. Use specifics and write as if you are writing directly into your paper. This worksheet directly references the CARS model of introductions.
Whichever option you choose, there should be 2 full pages of writing in your Working Group folder by our first workshop next Monday.
Synthesizing and Organizing
Here’s some important things to review:
Here’s my slides from this week about synthesizing and organizing. There’s some helpful information in here about organizational structures for your paper, synthesizing other voices with your own, and fixing up your outline.
Please review the Incorporating Your Sources Tip Sheet.
Please look over/ review the Writing Process Tip Sheet and the Research Paper Assignment page.
Weekly Blog Post (Plus some extra words from yours truly)
I’m sorry that I didn’t make time for us to talk about The Case for Reparations in our Zoom call. I want to thank all of you who wrote blog posts and comments in the past couple of weeks about this long article. Your blog posts were universally brilliant; the depth of thinking through this complex and painful issue was astounding to me. Thank you for contributing honestly and openly during this semester; I know most of you are getting little gratification in the form of response and immediate feedback.
America has such a tough time admitting the harm we’ve caused because we as a country fear that admitting our past harm will somehow tarnish our future image. Coates alleges that reparations made to descendants of enslaved African Americans will prove to be a small price to pay for the prize of reckoning with past harm, “to see ourselves squarely.” The facts are clear: America not only kidnapped over 11 million people and held them enslaved for 2 centuries, but the implicit hierarchies born by slavery were never fully dismantled, resulting in a 2020 in which accumulated wealth is unavailable to most Black Americans, 1 in 3 Black men are incarcerated, and Black people are consistently murdered by police in the streets.
Coates asks us not only to consider reparations because it will legitimize America’s claims of equal opportunity, but because acknowledging the depth of harm is the first step in moving forward. When we scale the situation down to a more personal scope, it isn’t hard to imagine: someone wrongs us, and when they sincerely apologize, only then can we move on. Maybe they wrong us irreparably, but even then they might experience other meaningful relationships in their life, hopefully learning and growing. We can hold the nuances in the people we love–we admit that to “cancel” someone is to inhumanely dispose of them. If we all know this to be true, why is it so difficult for us to reckon with the fact that we as a nation are far from perfect, and yet that imperfection does not disqualify us from life, freedom, and happiness? Isn’t freedom a freedom to be human, in all its flaws and contradictions? Acknowledging the fullness of harm done is one of the most difficult human tasks.
Moving forward, please read A Legacy of Incoherence by Amira Rose Davis this week. Take your time reading and really chew it over, as I believe this piece touches on one of the most complex questions of our time: what do we do when someone we love causes harm? TW: mentions of sexual assault.
Write a blog post including your response to the piece. No specific prompt this week, just pull a specific quote that stood out to you and jot down some thoughts. Due Thursday 11/19 at noon. Write 2 comments by the next day.
And Finally:
Here is a scan of a Baruch student Research Paper. In “Avoiding Misconceptions: Immigrants Are Beneficial to Society,” Baruch student Suhaib Qasim uses research to dispel negative stereotypes about immigration in America. Might be helpful for you to see a student demonstrate this assignment (and if any of you are writing about a similar topic, the bibliography might be of use!).
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NEXT TIME: Next week we’ll begin workshopping and conferencing, a format we’ll more or less continue until the end of the semester. Onward!