Upcoming Assignments

Complete all surveys below:

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  13. https://virginia.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_5pwuLqERHk871op

For Monday, 10/5:

  • Sign up for your conference time with me for next week.

  • Complete ALL the surveys from our class, as posted on Friday. Please complete ASAP, to help your peers with their work.

  • Revise your empirical design worksheet as needed, per Friday’s discussion.

  • Prepare for your conference. Instructions for what to bring and what to expect are on the sign-up sheet, but I’m also reproducing those here for quick reference—

    • What to bring with you: 1. Your (probably revised) research design worksheet (informal is fine) ; 2. all of your sources so far (in digital or hard copy for now, with any notes you've made already); 3. your draft of your slides-in-progress, with MLA citations in place (and MLA questions you're having)--just available to screenshare is fine; you don't need to send any attachments separately; 4. anything else you want to discuss!

    • What to expect: In most cases, I'll start by discussing your field notebook entries to date; those are graded on completion, so we’ll check in on that grade at this time. I will then return your first papers with comments, and go over the revision policy again for clarification. We can set up follow-up meetings to discuss specific revisions as needed, and for regrading. Then we'll focus the rest of our meeting time on your current research--discussing how it's going, questions you have about the research process, and questions you have about the presentation/essay in advance of actually delivering/submitting those items.

For Monday, 9/21:

  1. Complete this survey from our UVA librarians.

  2. Complete the Wood between the Worlds exercise (this exercise is also notebook entry #4). 2 pages in your journal.

  3. Finish adding your data into the Water Sampling spreadsheet. Here is the color guide to help you read your results. (Colors are most vibrant immediately after dipping and fade pretty quickly, sometimes within 10 minutes).

  4. Complete notebook entry #5. Prompt is as follows:

    • What would you do with the water sampling data, given the assignment to turn it into either a report or a reflective essay (as you prefer)? Feel free to engage ethical issues if any have compelled you, or to go in another curiosity-driven direction. (We’ll return to ethical issues again next week.)

  5. Review Major Assignment #2 and contact me if you have any questions.

For Friday, 9/11:

  • Take this Assignment #1 quiz and email me your responses. Letter answers only are fine, and feel free to ask questions. This is my way of making sure we’re all on the same page about what you’re doing before you get too far into the essay writing. :)

  • Your outlines are due! You can upload them to this folder.

  • Review these broad notes toward your essays. (Includes some thesis statement templates and more.)

  • Check out this example outline. Note that it is ONE example; you have flexibility here. But DO plan to build in LOTS of specific references to your authors’ texts—the draft material and published versions of things. Usually, 2-3 references per body paragraph (usually, none in the intro or conclusion).

For Monday, 9/7:

  • You now know that one of your authors is Rachel Carson, and on Monday, we’ll discuss her work in more detail. But you also have all the envelopes open from your other authors, and you have free reign to search online. So:

    • Figure out who your authors are, and

    • Text me at least 2 of their names (yes; Carson can count if you need hers to be 1 of them).

      • Text me at 615.509.7448. Include YOUR name, as well as 2-4 of your authors’ names.

      • If you’re correct, I will text you a URL and password, so you can get into their bigger archives (which you need for writing your papers next week).

  • Watch the 1962 CBS special, “The Silent Spring of Rachel Carson,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gaBczHKtWo

  • Read Silent Spring, Ch. 3, in which Carson lays out the major chemicals (and chemical groups) that are causing medical problems and why they’re unsafe. (Keep in mind that she’s writing primarily for a general public audience, with the knowledge that the scientific community is watching to make sure she keeps all her facts right, etc. Her task is not small.)

  • Go through these additional archival materials, all letters and notes from her Silent Spring period—she worked on that book for 4 years prior to its publication.

    • Look through the PDF and make note of the MAJOR CATEGORIES of works (correspondence, bibliographies, plus some of her sources and her notes on those sources, and of course, her own original notes, some personal, plus drafts and edits).

    • Choose any 1 of those categories and read through those materials more closely (so, read all the letters, or whatever strikes you).

  • Read “The Desolate Year” (Monsanto, 1962) and “The Right and Wrong of Rachel Carson” (2018 review of Silent Spring by Charles C. Mann, published in the Wall Street Journal).

For Monday, 8/31:

  1. Complete notebook prompt #2:

    • Reflect on our time in Special Collections on Friday. Write about whatever struck you most (again, about 2 handwritten pages, single-sided).

      *If you’re not sure what to write about, a few things you might consider:

      • What kinds of materials did we get to see in connection with each “text”? (As in, for Mark Twain’s Jumping Frog, which we might otherwise just think of as a single book, what all did we see?) With all those different pieces in mind, what counts as “a text” anyway? If I told you to go read Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, which edition would you think I meant and why?

      • What did seeing so many steps involved in creating the texts we saw in person (from Phillis Wheatley, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, William Faulkner, Willa Cather, Charles Darwin, and others—I’ll post the complete list of artifacts when I get it from the librarians)—what did seeing all that make you think about in terms of your own research and/or writing?

  2. Bring your boxes to class. Don’t open the envelopes until we’re all together and I give you the go-ahead.

  3. Spend time with the following, about “the writing process”:

    • Read: https://writing.ku.edu/writing-process

    • “Read” the attached article, “Modeling and Remodeling Writing” by John Hayes. A few notes, though:

      • The presentation of this article is probably excessively boring. It’s not you.

      • Know that John Hayes has been a key writing researcher for decades; his research has influenced the shape of this class, however obliquely, just because his ideas/findings have been “in the ether” of the rhet/comp world for so long.

      • I’d recommend you READ the abstract, SKIM the headings to get a feel for the content, and then actually take 10-15 minutes to STUDY Figures 1 and 2, which are his old and updated models of “the writing process,” based on extensive study. Can you figure out what’s going on in these? You may need to turn to the running text for some definitions, etc., but we’ll focus on the Figures for a little bit in class on Monday.

For Friday, 8/28:
*As a reminder for this first round of work-out-of-class, you should expect to average about 2 hours out of class for every 1 hour in class. Take your time on the assignments below. If you find that you are exceeding 2 hours, stop and submit whatever you have.

  1. Be sure you have completed:

  2. Bring your field journal (or something else to write on/with, if you haven’t yet received your course box)

  3. Read:

  4. Complete notebook prompt #1:

  • Reflect on your own experiences as a thinker. How have you chased down ideas, explored them, tried to test them and work them out?
    *Please HANDWRITE your responses in your field notebook, then take photos and upload them here.

    Note from the syllabus (emphasis added):

    Notebook Assignments (15%)
    You will keep active journals all semester, based on part on prompts that I will provide in class. You are always welcome to write more, but not less, than assigned. For each assigned prompt, you should write about 2 pages (handwritten, single-sided). You should also take notes on the course, on your ideas outside of class, on general observations and reflections; drawings and “off-topic” notes are encouraged, as well. I will evaluate notebooks twice: first, during individual student-professor conferences, and again at the semester’s end. These are graded based on completion, with minimal completion of the all prompts warranting a C+ to B; notebooks that go “above and beyond” will receive grades of B+ to A.