Reading Response #24- Anzaldua / Collected Works Portfolio

For the reading response on Anzaldua, please write

• a  summary
• a synthesis (keep in mind the conversation on dominant/minority discourses: Gee, hooks, Delpit, Smitherman, Heilker and Yergeau, Alexander, Cixous, etc)
• personal response

Then answer questions # 1 and 2 under Applying and Exploring, found below: 

1. Anzaldúa describes Western culture’s art as “individual” in contrast to the more communal nature of tribal art (221). What is the significance of this distinction? Is current literacy and/or art culture becoming more communal or more individual? Explain your reasoning.|
2. Anzaldúa utilizes an approach which is very much in the realm of creative writing(poetic language, metaphor, etc.), would it have been more effective if it was written in a traditional academic format? Why or why not?

Congratulations! You made it to the last Reading Response. Make sure you hit a home run on this last one. Show me what you can do in terms of summary, synthesis, and engaged response!

Note: This isn't due until Friday, 11/30. For Wednesday, please bring a flash drive with everything you've collected for your portfolio (final essays, peer reviews, etc). We'll work on collecting all your various pieces into folders. Collected Portfolios will be due to me via e-mail by Friday 11/30 at 12pm. Your Portfoios need to include:

• Reading responses, compiled in a single document and labeled by number 1-24 (copy/paste to Word)
• Process work for each essay, organized by project (Intro/conversation, rough draft, topic proposals, etc)
• Final drafts for each project with my Feedback (for Project 2- your cover letter to me with a link to your group project)

Organize these in a folder (with multiple subfolders), zip them and send to me via e-mail. This is your Collected Works Portfolio from which you'll choose your best work for your Selected Portfolio. 

Reading Response 23: Cixous

For the Cixous  Reading Response, please respond to the following:

• Sunmary
• Synthesis (Think specifically about Flynn and Alexander here)
• Personal Response

And do the following Questions from the Apparatus:

Questions for Discussion and Journaling

1. Did this piece make you uncomfortable? Why or why not? Do you think Cixous was attempting to create a level of discomfort in her reader? Why or why not?
2. What does Cixous mean when she implores her female readers to "write themselves"? What is she suggesting writing can do with regard to identity?

Reading Response 22: Alexander

For the Reading Response on Alexander,

Please complete the following:

• Summary
• Synthesis
• Personal Response

Applying and Exploring Ideas #3 and #4:

3.       What significance trans pedagogy hold for everyone within a composition class, according to Alexander? In other words, what can “normally” gendered students gain from exposure to trans theory in their composition classrooms? Does this significance hold true for every minority discourse we have read in class?

4.       On page 200, Alexander describes gender as a “construct” that is “deeply personal and profoundly political.” What does Alexander mean when he calls gender a “construct?” What are the implications of such a construct being both “personal” and “political” and why then might we need to address this construct in the writing classroom?

Final Drafts of Project 3 - The Ethnography are due Tuesday  (11/20) before 8pm. Please email them to me as an email attachment.

Reading Response 21: Delpit or Smitherman

For Friday (11/16), please read both Delpit and Smitherman (as we'll discuss both) but you may choose to do a reading response to either one. Whichever you choose, your response needs to include: 

• Summary 
• Synthesis: Think about Gee, Brandt, and the Flynn we just read, but what's really important here is that you to compare the reading you choose with the other assigned reading. E.g., if you choose to respond to Delpit, include a comparison of Smitherman in your synthesis. Think about the major differences in how these two authors respond to the same issue. 
• Personal Response

If you choose to write on Smitherman, respond to Questions 2 and 3 in QDJ:

1.     How is Smitherman using Black Idiom (BI) rhetorically?

2.     How does language promote power for specific races and classes?

If you choose to write on Delpit, respond to Questions 3 and 4 in QDJ:

1.     Do you agree with what Delpit is arguing? What are some effective parts of her argument? What are some weaknesses or shortcomings?

2.     Name the things that Delpit suggests teachers should do to help students "master the dominant discourses and to transform them?"

Peer Review Project 3 / Reading Response 20

Hi Everyone,

After talking with a few you I've realized most of you are still in the preliminary stages of your drafts and I've decided to push back the draft due date so you can send your peers something more "finished." Drafts are now due to Safe Assign and peers by Sunday 5pm.

However, I'm not going to push back the peer review due date. Peer Reviews (which should take you less time to complete) are due Tuesday 5pm. Remember to look over the Responding to Peers Assignment sheet and make sure you hit all of the criteria:

•  A summary of your peer's essay, 
• Marginal comments that identify where the writer is meeting specific criteria
• Blue highlight for well constructed sentences/passages
• Bellow highlight for sentences/passages that need work
• A letter to the writer where you tell them how they are successful but also how they could improve the piece to meet the project goals and criteria. This means you need to reference the assignment sheet to do this. 

You can do all of this inside the document. Be sure to rename the file before you send it back to your peer, and be sure to CC me (or send me another e-mail with the attached peer review).

We won't meet on Monday due to the holiday, but you have a Reading Response due Wednesday over Flynn (ROW 156-168). For the Reading Response, please do the following:

• Getting Ready to Read: What have your experiences been with gender differences in the classroom? Did your teachers relate to or treat male and female students differently? How so?
• Summary: Focus mainly on "Composing as a Woman" but you'll want at least a line or two on how she updates/contextualizes that piece in the second selection. 
• Synthesis: Think mainly about works we've read that deal with identity. Villanueva, Heilker & Yergeau, Gee, Wardle, etc. 
• Questions for Discussion and Journaling: 1. Flynn says that "Women's perspectives have been supprressed, silenced, marginalized, written out of what counts as authoritative knowledge. Difference is erased in a desire to universalize" (157). What does this mean? How does the silencing of women's voices relate to the marginalization of other minorities?

Have a good weekend!

Project 3 Rough Drafts, Reading, and Peer Review

***UPDATED - DRAFTS NOW DUE SUNDAY 5pm******

Project 3 drafts are due to Safe Assign and peers by Sunday 5pm. Drafts should be ready to show your peers! Don't forget that these initial drafts need to contain a cover letter to your peer. Check out the assignment sheet for what the cover letter should include. Please upload your essay file in Blackboard ("Post Drafts"). If you are having trouble uploading your essay, just e-mail it to me as a .doc attachment. You also need to e-mail your draft to your assigned peer. We'll exchange e-mails in class. You don't need to cc me on this e-mail, but if you don't receive a draft from someone let me know.

Before class Friday, I'd like you to read Sean Branick's "Coaches Can Read Too" in WAW. No reading response due but this is another good example (from a first year student) of an ethnography. Pay attention especially to how he organizes his essay as we'll talk about this in class.

If you want to meet with me to chat about your draft, just let me know. I can usually work something out.

A separate post/instructions on the peer review is forthcoming. 

Reading Response 19; Villanueva

For Reading Response 19, over Victor Villanueva's article "Memoria is a Friend of Ours: On the Discourse of Color" (ROW 169), please do the following:

• A Summary of the article
• Synthesis-Think especially in terms of identity and its effects on Discourse/discourse community as well as secondary/primary discourse
• Personal Response
• Questions for Discussion and Journaling #7: Using the concept of Discourse from the James Paul Gee's "Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics," what are Villanueva's primary and secondary Discourses? Are these straightforward categories or is it more complex than Gee's article accounted for?
   
  
  
  Due to your blogs before class Wednesday November 7