For kim woods: 5 page- Rhetorical Analysis (Reckoning) Essay

RECKONING ESSAY

Rhetorical Development of the Essay

Problem => Project => Argument=> Idea

http://www.thewhitereview.org/features/i-cant-stop-thinking-through-what-other-people-are-thinking/

When it comes to your project, remember that the reckoning essay is an essay about essay.

Write a first draft of reckoning essay by following a set structure (see the instructions below). Later, as you edit these drafts, you will have a chance to be creative and adjust that structure.

Reckoning essay is and how it works: In this 5-7-page essay, you will make an interpretive argument about a primary text (David Shields). Along the way, you must demonstrate a confident and thorough understanding of your selected text, representing both what the author says and how the author says it. This kind of work is sometimes called rhetorical analysis. The focus and shape of your specific analysis will in part be determined by the ancillary texts that you select. You should use 2-4 ancillary sources using them in different ways as outline in the BEAM method.

Here are the steps that I would like you to take (if you have already completed some of them, cut and paste that work into the document for this assignment):

1.Write two or three sentences in which you spell out the question, problem, or puzzle that you are motivated to figure out in reading your primary text. Try to keep you focus on the text itself and not the author's own sources or the general topic the author addresses.

-It’s helpful to think through the complexities and contradictions here (and to consider which are productive and which are just confusing).

These are MY EXAMPLE: OR Some examples that I think can be example;

He is talking about originality and he thinks that nothing is original. And we understand from the text that he thinks it is ok to plagiarism. But how come he also says that he is not anti-copyright activis.

How did he think about writing an essay on plagiarizing when he is in Academia? Isn’t this a fundamental thing?

Isn’t someone plagiarized considered stealing someone elses ideas and making a profit out of it?

2. Read your chosen primary text one more time with that specific problem in mind. Write out an MLA-style citation for the text. Underneath that, copy down at least three key terms, two short passages (no more than a couple of sentences), and one long passage (an entire paragraph or several lines) that speak to that problem.

3. Choose three ancillary(Outside) sources that can help you think through the problem you are exploring. Write out a citation for each one. Identify each one as a Background, Exhibit, Argument, or Method source. And for EACH source copy down at least three key terms, two short passages (no more than a couple of sentences), and one long passage (an entire paragraph or several lines) that might be useful. See the BEAM method below;

Sources:

http://harpers.org/archive/2007/02/the-ecstasy-of-influence/

Joseph, S., & Rickett, C. (2014). David Shields’ way of making: Creative manoeuvre or HDR nightmare?. Creative Manoeuvres: Writing, Making, Being, 127.

Find one more source to use.

4. Now read over your notes from the previous steps and consider all of the evidence in front of you. Give some thought to the specific argument that you want to make in your reckoning essay. That argument should be an answer or a hypothesis that your propose in response to the problem (which might have taken the form of a question) that you posed above. Write out this argument in two or three sentences.

5. Now write! Use all of the steps above to help you write a 4-6-page draft of your reckoning essay in the following format:

• Paragraph 1: Introduce and explain the problem
• Paragraph 2: Represent your primary text
• Paragraph 3: Use your first ancillary source to consider the problem and interpret the primary text, according to its function in the BEAM method.
• Paragraph 4: Use your second ancillary source to consider the problem and interpret the primary text, according to its function in the BEAM method.
• Paragraph 5: Use your third ancillary source to consider the problem and interpret the primary text, according to its function in the BEAM method.
• Paragraph 6: Introduce and explain your argument.

Please include all steps 1-5 in your document.

(My notes:

-He is not saying that you can’t use this or you can’t do this, instead he says that you can do this you can borrow this and you can use this

-Shields seems particularly interested in blurred lines.

-Shields does not believe that writers and other artists are lying in the incorporation of other people’s work. Instead, he believes that that incorporation is essential to art, that we find originality not in inventing new things but in combining old things in new ways.

-With that final example of Muddy Waters and Alan Lomax in your mind, take a look and focus on the last page of the Jonathan Lethem: http://harpers.org/archive/2007/02/the-ecstasy-of-influence/. Ifyouread carefully, you will find a lot of ways that what Lethem is doing further contextualizes and complicates Shield’s essay.

-Shields’s position is unexpected: it’s a celebration of (and a deliberately provocative one) of practices that many writers, teachers, and public thinkers criticize: borrowing others’ work without attribution.

-One way to approach this, if not necessarily solve it, is to puzzle through Shield’s argument, and the Colbert Report appearance can help here too. Is he arguing that we should all be plagiarists? Well, sort of, but he seems to be more interested in how we perceive copyright and fair use, and for that matter how we understand originality. So perhaps this is an article more about originality than it is about theft…

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/ohefue/the-colbert-report-david-shields

BEAM METHOD

·       Background: using a source to provide general information to explain the topic. For example, the use of a Wikipedia page on the Pledge of Allegiance to explain the relevant court cases and changes the Pledge has undergone.

·       Exhibit: using a source as evidence or examples to analyze. For a literature paper, this would be a poem you are analyzing. For a history paper, a historical document you are analyzing. For a sociology paper, it might be the data from a study.

·       Argument: using a source to engage its argument. For example, you might use an editorial from the New York Times on the value of higher education to refute in your own paper.

·       Method: using a source’s way of analyzing an issue to apply to your own issue. For example, you might use a study’s methods, definitions, or conclusions on gentrification in Chicago to apply to your own neighborhood in New York City.