Progression 2, Exercise 2
Due: Friday, 10/28 at 11:59 pm
Part 1: Choose your essay and annotate/ reading strategies
(Note: You do not need to choose the essay you presented on.)
Choose, as your focus, one of these possible essays:
● Terry Tempest Williams, “A Shark in the Mind of one Contemplating Wilderness”
● Anne Bogart “Context”
● Nuar Alsadir, “Clown School”
● Cathy Park Hong, “Stand Up”
These two apply to 4:55 ONLY:
● Namwali Serpell “The Banality of Empathy”
● Walter Benjamin “The Storyteller
Choosing your essay is your first act of interpretation. Instead of making a choice based only on what you think you already know and agree with and fervently believe, choose based on what is most intellectually stimulating. What concept(s) do you find the most compelling, troubling, stimulating, beautiful, urgent, problematic and/or obnoxious? The first act of interpretation is selecting an essay. Instead of choosing what you think you already know, agree with, and fervently believe, choose what is most intellectually stimulating. What is/are the most compelling, troubling, stimulating, beautiful, urgent, problematic, and/or obnoxious concept(s) for you?
❏ When you have chosen your essay, read it again.
❏ Go to the Progression 2 reading strategies– do any TWO of these reading strategies for your chosen essay.
❏ Make a map of this essay– a visual representation of how its parts fit together to make a whole.
❏ Please submit these reading strategy notes and your map to Google Classroom with part 2.
Part 2: Writing
Write a 2-4 page letter of recommendation in which you recommend this essay to a specific person who you think needs to read it seriously.
Your letter should represent the essay clearly and vividly to this specific person (assume they haven’t read the essay). It should explore the essay’s moments of fascination as well as its limitations, and the questions and possibilities the essay raises for you. Your letter should also explain to this person why you think they need to read this essay– what you think they will take away (and how that relates to what you take away).
While I am calling this a letter of recommendation, I don’t want you to focus on commending the essay or flattering the writer or your addressee. You should recommend the essay to someone who needs it– someone who you think needs to engage intellectually or artistically with the arguments and ideas the essay presents. You should make sure you explain why.
Your addressee has to be a specific person. It doesn’t need to be someone you personally know (though it can be). As you are crafting your letter (and especially as you are assembling the component parts enumerated below) , keep in mind that you are writing for this person– you want them to keep reading the letter and to understand what you need them to know.
❏ Requirements:
2-4 pages, double-spaced, 12 point font. MLA format– make it clear to your reader the difference between when you are quoting or paraphrasing from the chosen essay and when you are advancing your own ideas or responses.
________________________________________
The core task is described above, here is some FURTHER ADVICE if you want it
Some things your letter will need:
❏ A full but distilled and directed representation of the essay itself (this might take a few paragraphs) (but it shouldn’t take the whole 2-3 pages!) . Quote from the text and contextualize your quotations.
The representation should include some discussion of the different elements of the essay, such as the essay’s
Argument / Idea
Purpose/ Problem that motivates it
Voice or style
Structure or form
Audience of original publication / audience the writer invokes
❏ Reflection woven throughout
Including some or all of these things:
Some reflection about the value of the essay on its own terms (Follow Goulish’s lead: what are the moments of exhilaration? What is the window the essay offers onto another world?)
Some reflection on the limits and limitations of the essay– where do you see gaps? Where is there work that is left to do? What can you see that the writer doesn’t see?
Some reflection on what the essay helps you think about/ challenges you to think about: what parts are of value to you (or are unsettling/ challenging to you) and why? What questions does it raise for you?
❏ And a considered explanation for the addressee about why you think they need to read and engage with this essay. How might it aid or challenge them? What might it help them see? What might it help them do?
