essay draft

Essay 2:  Six Degrees of Inspiration ( make your own title)

Four page rough draft, five real page final minimum ( does not count header and biblography; hard copy to me (optional: final version uploaded in Canvas).  Three sources minimum, one scholarly.  Use a MLA format/bibliography

History is routinely rated the least-liked subject in high school, which is rather puzzling because humans are fundamentally interested in each other, and even about asking the big questions in a quest for meaning: who am I ? Who is my "tribe? How does the world work? How did it get that way? (Some of us ask, how do we make it work better?).   History is about stories that inspire us to be great, show us pitfalls to be avoided, but fundamentally about heroes and villains.  This is your opportunity to get to know anyone who ever lived intimately.  Parenti's theory about what's wrong with high school is that it's a bloodless abstract inevitable march to the perfect us (although it never quite gets to now, because that's politics, thus dangerous).  Another problem is the Great Man Theory of History, that somehow these superhumans just spring up and change the world by themselves through sheer will. So let's break all those rules and look deeper.  No one can do anything without their network.

Brainstorming questions to help you pick: who is under-appreciated (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. ?  Over-rated?  Who was/will  be a role model/pioneer for your path/tribe?  How did this person win/fail?  What social network did they have (lack?)?  What can we learn about creativity ? ( Maybe pick someone connected to the object paper we'll write next, or counter-history, or the Least You Should Know about some "tribe"?)

 

Once you have someone in mind, find two solid detailed articles and mark them up, then try out   Pentadic  questions (best to use ratios).

 

 

 Taking a Network Approach:

Your intro needs to include Gladwell context (what is his thesis/ overall argument, and how is it relevant to your thesis?).  It's common in university writing to lay out at the start what method you are using (and perhaps why you chose it).  The obvious approach would be to demonstrate your person's network set off a Tipping Point, what that was and why it matters.  In order to do this, you need full definitions of a Tipping Point, the three roles, and any other concepts you're using from Gladwell (note all three roles' definitions have two parts, both important).  Though your paper will probably focus on one person, you need detailed info on everyone in order to understand what role they played (beware getting all of your info from sources about your main person, as they can be biased or too general regarding other people).

The Tipping Point (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.  by Malcom Gladwell USE REQUIRED text;  (TEDtalks (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.) 

 

Innovators 1 required (Innovators 3 highly recommended).

Your analysis (not just a story) should be five pages, and you should have three (at least one  scholarly )  research  sources.   You must apply Gladwell (min. THREE paragraphs, use all three roles in the network).  I will not read any papers that don't USE Gladwell, as we do in university as a basis for thinking, since there's no point.  

Good resources are on the  Big History pages or in  Gale Virtual Reference (good to start with),  CQ Researcher  or  Academic Search Complete (all available from library page ). A good basic guide is  “ Start Your Research .”  You best bet is to go to the  reference desk .