ENGL 200 D: Reading Literature: Literature in the Marketplace

Here are the conference guidelines, in case you missed today’s class or have misplaced your own.

Conferences will be held in Parnassus Coffee (if it’s noisy, we’ll grab one of the tables outside the main room).

You need to coordinate with your other group members to choose a conference slot. When you know which slot you want, have one person from your group comment on this post to claim it. If absolutely none of these slots work for your group, then please let me know ASAP, and we’ll find a time that *does* work.

There is no class on Wednesday or Thursday of next week.

Conference slots

Wednesday:

10-11 a.m.: Caitlin, Theresa, Inez, Phillip.

11:30-12:30 p.m.: Vivian, Nathan, Becca, and Chelsea

1:00-2:00 p.m.

2:30-3:30 p.m.

Thursday:

10-11 a.m.

11:30-12:30 p.m.: Thomas, Averi, Ashley, David.

1:00-2:00 p.m.

2:30-3:30 p.m.

The optional reading, an excerpt from Alain de Botton’s Status Anxiety, is here, as well as being linked on the Course Readings page. It’s a section titled “Meritocracy,” and in it, de Botton writes about the history of how our conventional concepts of what it means to be poor and rich have changed over time. By “what it means to be poor,” I mean our assumptions about whether the poor and rich are useful, and on what basis we say that they deserve their fate.

The whole reading is about 26 pages, but I particularly recomnmend that you read pp. 47-54, which I think you’ll find especially useful and interesting for the coming weeks.

You have a choice between two options for your Week #3 Blog post:

#1: pick two of the authors we’ve read so far (including Duck and Collier), and choose one point of economics (value, labour, property, credit, etc.) that you think they might have a conversation about. Perhaps they would strongly disagree; perhaps they would agree for entirely different reasons. Write about what they would say to each other. (You can be very creative with this if you wish, but you can also be quite straightforward, and say “Duck’s view on using credit would be…while Addison would say…” (The only restriction is that you may not use Swift AND Montagu, or Duck AND Collier — the idea being not to rehash the disagreements in their texts.)

#2: Read the optional reading (de Botton), which is about merit. Write about one place in one of the texts we’ve read so far where consideration of merit is either obviously important, or is strangely lacking.

These groups are the groups with which you’ll have your first writing conferences in Week 4. I may adjust them after that, but unless otherwise notified, you’ll be working with the same groups for the rest of the quarter.

You need to make sure that you read the blog posts from your group members each week. I think it’s a good idea to read everyone’s, of course — but reading your other group members’ posts is especially important, because reading them will help you give better feedback in conference peer review.

Writing Group 1

Chelsea Hewitt

Becca Prashner

Vivian Yu

Nathan Matson

Writing Group 2

Caitlin Lockhart

Theresa Wang

Inez Tapia

Phillip Leland

Writing Group 3

Ashley Kim

Thomas Gerhardt

David Liang

Averi Kitsch

This week, for your blog post, I’d like you to respond to the following prompt:

Choose one of the texts we’ve read so far (up through Swift and Montagu), and choose two words within it that you think are important. Write a paragraph for each word, describing how the author of the text uses it, and what it means to him/her, according to your interpretation.

What makes each word important to the author’s point? Is there anything unique or unusual about the way that a word is being used in the text? Does it contrast with the meaning that we use for the term today?

After you’ve written both paragraphs, write one more, to communicate to your readers why you chose the words, what connections exist between them, and why understanding them is important to reading the texts.

And, of course, tag your post with week2blog.

You’ll write a total of 8 blog posts over the course of the quarter. Two of those posts, you’ll revise and submit as a portfolio at the quarter’s end. Blogging comprises 25% of your final grade.

Blogging: Each week, I’ll ask you to make a post of 250-300 words on the class blog. While academic essay writing is often oriented towards advancing an argument, blog writing is often oriented towards being informative, or process-oriented – it’s an opportunity for you to work through an idea in draft form.
 
Sometimes, these posts will be in response to a specific question or set of instructions, other times, it will be your job to decide what to write about. Either way, your goals in writing posts should be to:
• Remain focused on a specific topic or question
• Present a balance of evidence and commentary, using quotations and citations
• Explain why your subject matter is important – why it matters to this class, and why it needs to be written about, and discussed.
 
Posting is not the end of the assignment. After posting you need to foster the discussion you are initiating. When people comment you need to give substantive responses. Try to engage everyone who comments in some fashion and try to use the comments to sustain a conversation you began at the end of your post.
 
Blog posts will always be due by Tuesday at 8 p.m., so that there is time to read them before Thursday’s class session. This includes your introductory blog for the first week.
 
In order to get credit for blog posts, you must tag them, using the following formula: Week 1: week1blog; Week 2: week2blog, etc. See the blog for an example.
 
Commenting: Each week, I’ll ask you to make at least one substantive comment (25 words minimum) on one of your classmates’ posts, by Wednesday at 8 p.m. Substantive means that you need to respond to the specific idea that the original poster introduced, and extend the discussion further. (While I encourage you to support your classmates, brief comments that say nothing more than “Great post!” will not be given credit.)

Each blogpost is due by 8:00 p.m on Tuesday night.
If you’re new to blogging, here are a couple of videos that may be useful to you.

How to post links on WordPress

How to add tags to WordPress posts (don’t worry about categories, which are also discussed.)

How to add images to WordPress posts

Your blogging assignment for this first week is to introduce yourself to the rest of the class, by answering the following questions:

1. Who are you?

2. What are you studying?

And two more questions. There is no right answer to these, but you should consider them practice for the critical thinking that you’ll be doing for the rest of the quarter, and answer them accordingly.

3. What is money?

4. What is the economy?

Remember to tag your post! (The tag is week1blog).