Make a explicit claim about a contact zone within a landscape you inhabit or have inhabited.

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Reading as a Critical Encounter D. Smyth Exploring a “Contact Zone” 9/17

The Assignment Reading for college often involves engaging with new types of texts-sometimes longer or denser than what you’re used to; sometimes surprising in their content; sometimes loaded with new concepts and vocabulary; and sometimes just opaque and confusing. Reading for college in many ways is not so different from meeting new people in college. Meeting new people requires that you pay attention to and learn about who’s in front of you, maybe listen in before contributing to the conversation, and perhaps asking questions in order to position yourself more comfortably and confidently. Meeting new people also means that at some point you have to figure out what you know and understand and think. Your new acquaintances will expect to hear your voice and ideas.

In this first essay I’d like you to carefully read and consider the ideas of our recent readings and compose an essay that demonstrates your engagement with those ideas. The essay will require you to do several things: you’ll need to determine a point of entry for yourself-that is, decide which ideas in which texts are worth further attention and exploration; and you will eventually need to take stock of your own ideas and offer them up. In other words, you’ll “find a place to stand” in relation to the texts. Some of this work will already have been accomplished depending on how deeply you have read and considered the text we have encountered thus far.

Writing this essay requires you to identify and articulate the arguments of the writer(s) you are engaging with and also that you understand the purpose of what you read-to ask yourself, for example, what is the text doing in the “real” world? What impact might if have on particular readers and communities? Do not confuse this invention work with your paper itself. Remember to consider audience, purpose, genre and context.

The assignment also asks you to synthesize, to create something new out of several different elements. You might find yourself agreeing with one text, and disagreeing with another; you might appreciate one writer’s ideas, but still want to qualify those ideas (yes, such-and-such is true, but…); you might find yourself generating an entirely new perspective as a result of seriously considering what others have said or argued.

Summary and synthesis are two of the primary critical reading and writing strategies required of you in this assignment. You will practice those skills in a variety of ways as you read and annotate.

Ultimately you will write an academic essay that draws on the readings. Your essay should make a claim that demonstrates critical thinking and goes

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beyond cultural commonplaces and clichés- not, “poverty is a social problem that everyone should take seriously,” but “one of poverty’s impacts is that is makes people’s worlds smaller; it diminishes opportunities and reduces available choices.” The first claim could easily arise without a writer doing much, if any, new thinking; in fact, a writer could make the claim without having done any reading, or having participated in discussions, or having grappled with complex issues and ideas. It’s that broad and imprecise. The second claim would likely arise only after a writer had a chance to engage with the ideas of others-other writers, classmates, teachers-and took the time to carefully compose a new idea of his/her own.

The essay should reflect ways in which your thinking has evolved from summer to now.

It should include

*An explicit claim about a “Contact Zone” within a landscape you inhabit or have inhabited;

*Close work with the texts, in which you present the claims of the texts and select key

passages to explore more deeply or use as evidence for your ideas;

*An examination of how the other texts elaborate on, complicate, reframe, and/or participate in discussion with one another;

*Development of your ideas in relation to the other material. (If I had to quantify how much of the essay should be devoted to your ideas, your thinking, I

would say a minimum of 60%.

Format and Length The essay should be three to four pages, 12-point font, double-spaced.

Use MLA format in order to properly cite the sources from which you have obtained ideas.

Re-read requirements for formal papers in syllabus.