DUE IN 12 HRS- 8 Pages

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UWP 101: Fall 2016, Professor Liz Constable Major Assignment #3: Documenting People and Places

Beekeepers in Suffolk County The rhetorical situation for your essay: Purpose: To create an informative and insightful profile of either a group of people whose lives and experiences we might otherwise not witness or understand, and/or a profile of a place and the people who inhabit it, and/or an event and the perspectives of different people on the event. Audience: Your audience for this essay is readers like yourselves: college-educated readers who are curious about everyday experiences of ordinary people, and want to learn about amateur archers, or the goings on behind the scenes at a local eatery; about a day in the life of a team of firefighters, the American River Parkway, or people’s responses to the turkey population in Davis. Role: Your role as a writer is to recreate and describe these people’s experiences, not only the external world of your subjects but also your subjects’ internal reactions to events. Context: You are asked to profile a group of people and/or a place, and/or an event and people’s responses in such a way as to reveal aspects of your subject that would otherwise remain unknown and invisible to your readers.

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Topic:

Despite the quantity of information online and in print, most of us have very little idea what other people do for a living, or how some of the everyday objects we buy are produced, distributed, sold or disposed of. Structuring a creative non-fiction essay around a day in the life of volunteers at the raptor center, or the janitorial staff on campus, or the process by which a surfboard is designed and manufactures, affords insights into lives and experiences we might otherwise never learn about or understand. Your aim is to document your subjects’ lives as fully as you can, and as faithfully as you can. Your report needs to be authoritative, based on facts and evidence and first- hand observation. And it needs to be revealing—you need to dig beyond the surface to discover truths that might not be obvious to the casual bystander.

The subject of your informative profile is open, but you need to select a group, or a place, or an event where you can conduct interviews yourself (primary sources) in addition to undertaking secondary research. Consider focusing on one of the following:

 an intriguing local place. This could be a public place, such as a government or campus building, or possibly a store or other place of business.

 an organization or recognized group of people—a campus club, a research lab, a local business.

 a significant recent event. If you choose an event, you must be able to rely on your own personal observations of the event and you must be able to interview other people who were there.

Due Dates and Length:

Length: approx. 2000–2500 words (around 8–10 pages)

M Nov 19 First Stage of Assignment #3 Due in class (2 hard copies) and uploaded to SmartSite by 4:40 p.m. Your First Stage Draft is more of a progress report than a “first draft” of your Profile. You need to include the following elements in your First Stage Draft:

● First, explain the subject of your profile, why you have made this choice, what you

already know about it. Then, describe how you plan to go about gathering both primary and secondary material. Indicate the tone you think you’ll adopt in writing this profile, and explain what you hope your readers will learn from your profile. ● Describe people you have already interviewed or spoken with, observations you have made, photographs you have taken, documents you have collected, etc. What problems have you encountered so far? How do you plan to solve those problems? What research do you have left to do? ● Include an Annotated Bibliography. List (in correct bibliographical format) sources you have found, or plan to use, for this profile, with brief description of each, explaining what it contributes (or what you think it will contribute) to your research. Describe the most interesting results you’ve found so far,

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W Nov 30 Complete First Draft Due (including Works Cited or References list). Submit to Smartsite and bring 2 hard copies for the draft workshop. For full points, you must submit your draft to Smartsite Assignments before class, bring TWO hard copies of your draft to class, AND participate fully in the draft workshop in class, writing substantial critiques of two of your classmates’ drafts.

Fri Dec 9 Final Draft of Assignment #2 Due on SmartSite by 11:55 p.m

Research Process:

Begin with field research based on primary sources: observe, talk to people, take notes on what you see and hear. You will then do background research to gather facts, statistics, historical/geographical information. And finally, as you work with both primary and secondary sources, you’ll identify the significance of your profile to ongoing debates and discussions of an issue of significance to your readers: social, cultural, environmental, political, educational,

Sources: Successful essays will engage with and integrate at least six secondary sources, and you should make sure that among your sources you include the following required sources:

1. Evidence from at least two – three primary sources (interviews, observations, official documents)

2. Graphics/Photographs: you must include at least one visual source. This must be either your own photograph, or graphic art, or a graph or chart.

3. At least two scholarly sources (journal articles, chapters from scholarly books) relevant to your topic

4. A journalistic source (newspaper or magazine article, print or online)

You must do enough research to write an authoritative, upper-division research paper on the topic you choose.

Documentation: Integrate your source material smoothly, using signal phrases (“according to…” etc.), and thoroughly documenting your sources using either MLA or APA documentation style. Rely on a reputable reference guide to get the details of documentation correct. The Purdue Online Writing Lab is a good source: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/2/.