Rough Draft
Applied Humanities
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- 1 Theme: Introduction to the Humanities (week 1)
- 2 Theme: Introduction to the Humanities (week 2)
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3
Theme: Examining the Humanities (week 3)
- 3.1 Research Two Works
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3.2
Exploration Document
- 3.2.1 Course Project: Part I: Begin Your Rough Draft
- 3.2.2 Course Project: Part I: Complete Your Rough Draft
- 3.3 A Strong Foundation
- 4 Theme: Examining the Humanities (week 4)
- 5 Theme: Impact of the Humanities (week 5)
- 6 Theme: Impact of the Humanities (week 6)
- 7 Theme: Human Culture (week 7)
- 8 Theme: Human Culture (week 8)
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Appendix
- Allegory of the Cave, The
- Araby
- Art of Drowning, The
- Because I could not stop for Death
- Colonel, The
- Dinner-Party, The
- Don Quixote: Ch 1
- Don Quixote: Ch 2
- Don Quixote: Ch 3
- Don Quixote: Ch 4
- Don Quixote: Ch 7
- Don Quixote: Ch 8
- Everything That Rises Must Converge
- Everything That Rises Must Converge: “Let’s talk about something pleasant”
- Everything That Rises Must Converge: The further irony of all this
- Everything That Rises Must Converge: He was tilted out of his fantasy again
- Everything That Rises Must Converge: Julian was thankful that the next stop was theirs
- Frankenstein: Ch 5
- Frankenstein: Ch 9
- Frankenstein: Ch 10
- Frankenstein: Ch 11
- Frankenstein: Ch 12
- Frankenstein: Ch 13
- Frankenstein: Ch 14
- Frankenstein: Ch 15
- Frankenstein: Ch 16
- Frankenstein: Ch 17
- Hamilton: Act I
- Hamilton: Alexander Hamilton
- Hamilton: Act II
- Hamilton: Aaron Burr, Sir
- Hamilton: My Shot
- Jātaka Tales: The Hare’s Self-Sacrifice
- Letter from Birmingham Jail
- Letter from Birmingham Jail: Freedom is never voluntarily given
- Letter from Birmingham Jail: Two honest confessions
- Letter from Birmingham Jail: I had hoped that the white moderate would see this need
- Letter from Birmingham Jail: Perhaps I have once again been too optimistic
- London, 1802
- Meditation at Lagunitas
- Ode on a Grecian Urn
- Power of Patience, The
- Professions for Women
- Rose for Emily, A: I-II
- Rose for Emily, A: III-V
- Song of Myself: 1-11
- Song of Myself: 12-21
- Song of Myself: 22-32
- Song of Myself: 33-36
- Song of Myself: 37-43
- Song of Myself: 44-52
- Sonny’s Blues
- Sonny’s Blues: I didn’t write Sonny... for a long time
- Sonny’s Blues: I remember I was restless
- Sonny’s Blues: I gave up
- Sonny’s Blues: I found myself wandering aimlessly
- Sonny’s Blues: “All right,” I said, at last
- Stars Over the Dordogne
- Index of Writing Templates
- References
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Now that you have five elements under your belt, this page will guide you through six of the remaining seven. The final element (your reference list) will be covered later on in this chapter, so it is not included here.
Analyze Your Works
In this section, you will use the writing templates to analyze and compare your two works in relation to your chosen theme. Let’s start by discussing the relationship between each cultural artifact and its historical context. In other words, what were the circumstances under which each artifact was created?
Remember, you don’t need to tell your reader every single thing you found. Now’s the time to make like a chef and prepare a beautiful plate with just the best bites from each of your sources—like research sushi. Looking back over your research notes, what were the highlights of the historical context? Ask yourself what surprised you, what delighted you, and what seemed especially important.
If you can find a good, brief, quotable passage, please use it. Just be sure to use quotes around the words you copy and paste (or retype) from your source. Then add the words around the quotes, which your readers will need to understand the context of the quotation.
If there aren’t any good, brief, and quotable passages, summarize the most important and most interesting selections and note the sources from which you are summarizing. By pulling from your research and clearly saying that you got something from another author, you can add all the weight of that scholar’s study and degrees to your argument.
Discuss the Historical Context of Your Works
For the historical context section, make sure to hit the following points:
- Describe the historical context for each of your works based on information from your sources. In other words, situate each of your works in the time period and setting in which they were created.
- Make sure you are basing your response on the information from your sources and not just using your own opinions.
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Evaluate Your Response
For the writing templates on this page, let me encourage you to answer all of the questions once. Then, after you’ve posted a first draft on each, scroll back up to the top of the page and start rereading. This gap between writing and reviewing will help you see the work with fresher eyes and understand how these pieces fit together.
When you do come back for the second pass on this question, ask yourself:
- Have I pulled from one or more sources?
- Have I clearly indicated where I took exact phrases or sentences from another author by including quotes and a citation?
- Have I clearly indicated where I am summarizing the points, ideas, or insights from another author?
- Have I made any claims or shared any insights that did not come from my research? (If so, you may want to remove those. The point of this section is to ground your claims in what your sources say. Unless you are in a very unique situation, possibly involving time travel, your personal insights on the historical context of these works aren’t as credible as the experts whose works you’ve been reading.)
Compare Your Two Works
In this next section, you’re going to consider how your selected theme is expressed in the two works you are comparing. Just like the historical context section, this section is about your research. Make sure to address the following points:
- If at all possible, give explicit attention to at least one example of how your two works addressed the theme similarly, and at least one example of how they did it differently. (This makes life much easier for your grader.)
- Make sure you are basing your response on the information from your sources and not solely using your own opinions.
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Evaluate Your Response
On your second pass through this page, ask yourself:
- Did I include at least one similarity?
- Did I include at least one difference?
- Did I cover the most important information?
- Is every claim (or almost every claim) I make attributed to a credible authority from my research?
Discuss the Medium of Each Work
In this last research-heavy paragraph, you want to use your sources to inform your reader about the ways in which this artist, writer, or composer uses his or her medium. In this section, be sure to do the following:
- Describe the medium, such as type of literature, music, or sculpture, used to create each work.
- Discuss how the medium for each work communicates some aspect of its meaning.
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Evaluate Your Response
Much like the history section, this is where I personally find myself very grateful for being able to fall back on the work, insights, and words of people who have spent their careers thinking about how music, words, shapes, and colors present meaning.
On your second pass through this page, ask yourself:
- Do I refer very specifically to the artist’s use of the medium? For visual art this might include the materials used and how they were used—color, line, shape, juxtaposition, balance, asymmetry, and the like. For music this might include timbre, orchestration, tempo, dynamics, key, and so on. Use at least two specific examples to help your reader see the choices the artist made in this specific medium to create meaning in this work.
State Your Thesis
You’ve done a lot of research. While you were answering the above questions, you probably found some gaps that sent you back into your research or even looking for some additional sources. This is all part of the process.
Now, after doing all of this reading and carefully attending to the opinions of others, it’s time to form an opinion of your own and declare your thesis. Your thesis is a claim you are willing to make about these two works and the theme you selected. Given those constraints, your thesis is likely to fall into one of several patterns:
- It might take the form of “Work A and work B both express theme X.”
- Or perhaps it will take the form of “The theme of X is presented in very different ways in work A and work B.”
- Or maybe it will take the form of “We can learn something important about theme X by examining work A and work B.”
You may have another pattern in mind, but your thesis will need to meet the following criteria:
- It must make a claim. That is, it must be something a reasonable person could disagree with.
- It must relate to your theme and your two artifacts.
- It must be specific, something you can use evidence to defend and someone else could marshal different evidence to argue against.
So, what’s your thesis?
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Evaluate Your Response
On your second pass through this page, ask yourself:
- If, for some bizarre reason, I walked into a crowded restaurant, got the attention of all of the diners, and proceeded to declare my thesis loudly and with confidence, would they think, “Oh, that’s a bold claim. I look forward to hearing how you substantiate it”? If so, you’ve got a winner.
Consider Your Audience
In this section, you will use the writing templates to identify and analyze the audience for your final presentation.
Granted, the busy restaurant full of interested diners is a stretch, but who can you think of who would be interested in your argument, or in the theme that you’re exploring? Or maybe you can think of a group that would be interested in how the principles of the humanities can build essential skills for people who work with humans—a group of cops, for example, who take a day to go the Met in New York.
Identify Your Ideal Audience
This exploration document (which you are almost through drafting) is designed to prepare you to build a presentation. If you could give that presentation to anyone, who would it be? For this section, be sure to do the following:
- Identify your ideal audience.
- Explain why the audience would be interested in (or how they would benefit from learning about) the theme, works, or humanities analysis in your presentation.
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Evaluate Your Response
On your second pass through this page, ask yourself:
- Did I identify an audience?
- Did I explain why I think that audience would be interested?
Make Adjustments for Your Audience
Here’s an amazing thing about communication: what you say depends on whom you’re talking to. Maybe it seems obvious, but think about all the research you’ve done and everything you’ve written on the past two pages. Sure, you know you’re supposed to be writing for someone who is new to the topic, but deep down it’s hard to ignore the fact that your instructor will be the one reading your work. Instead, think of an audience who would be interested in what you’ve learned, and you should be doing some sudden recalculations.
Think about that audience and what you’ll need to do to bring them up to speed on your works. These works might truly be new to them, and your analysis almost certainly will be. How much do they know about the principles of the humanities? Will you need to defend the very idea that art can contain a theme? Will this audience make you want to talk even more about how the medium is used in these artifacts, or skip over that part of the explanation as quickly as possible? What specialized terms will you need to introduce and define (e.g., timbre), and which ones can you drop while still getting your point across?
These are some of the questions you’ll need to be thinking about as you prepare your presentation. But for now, just focus on the following elements:
- Describe how you will tailor your presentation so that it will be understandable to your specific audience.
- Include specific examples of what you will include or exclude from your presentation in order to tailor it for your audience.
- Explain why these edits need to be made for your audience.
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Evaluate Your Response
On your second pass through this page, ask yourself:
- Have I clearly defined an audience?
- Have I done a thorough job of empathizing with them and how they’ll hear this presentation?
- Have I described specific choices I should make to tailor this message to this audience?
Okay, that’s it. Head back up to the top of the page for your second read through. When you get back to this sentence, you’re most likely done for the day. Seriously, you will want to sleep before you start the next page—you’ll need fresh eyes to do the work well.
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