ENG251culture

Ah…your final assignment for ENG251.  Your blogging portfolio is to be a relflective blog post that looks back over your last thirteen weeks of blogging through commentary, links, and  insight.

due:  by midnight on May 8th

Guidelines:

• Begin by reflecting back on your initial thoughts about, reactions to blogging and becoming a “blogger.”
• Choose a few (at least three) of your most impressive blog posts, link to them, and provide commentary on why you are pleased with these particular pieces of writing.
• Find at least one post that you find is  not as effective as your other posts.  Link to it.  Write about what makes this post weaker than some of the others.
• Write about your experience in the blogosphere.  Here you can link to comments you left on the blogs of others, to blogs that you’ve been reading or found interesting (or not), and to any other spaces on the web that contributed to or affected your blogging.  Describe your experience in the blogosphere through these links, and explain how and why these particular sites, comments, etc. played a role in your blogging.
• Feel free to include anything else that you feel was/is important to your blogging experience.  Sign off and say farewell, if you’d like, or if you plan to continue blogging, invite your readership to check back and keep reading!

Here are a couple of example of blogging portfolios.

Here is the article for Kelly’s discussion starter.

Here is one (Sam’s) article for discussion on Tuesday.

Please read this for Stephanie’s discussion starter on Thursday.

Choose one: letter to the editor, op-ed piece, essay for radio, or poem as social commentary
4/19 bring a draft to class for workshop
due: 4/24

Commentary — you are commenting on something you’ve noticed (had a “huh moment”), read about, thought about, seen on TV, etc.

A commentary

• makes a clear and concise argument
• says something compelling
• is part of an ongoing conversation
• opens up further conversation
• is short and to the point
• makes connections amongst issues and ideas in a way that hasn’t been done already
For the letter to the editor you will need to choose a specific publication and an article published within it to which you are responding. Please include a cover page that indicates the publication you are writing to and gives a citation for the original source/article. If possible, attach a copy of the original article. Letters to the editor tend to be short — 250-500 words.

The op-ed piece should also be written with a specific publication (and therefore audience) in mind. Please include a cover letter indicating the publication. Most op-ed pieces run about 500 words, but some featured pieces might be longer (750-1000 words).

The essay for radio or poetry pieces should be written with an “ear” toward how the piece will sound when read aloud but also how readily the piece (and its argument) can be followed by an audience who might only be listening to it.

**Use the texts we’ve read in class as models**

Relevant links:
“Tips for Writing a Strong Commentary”
“What is an Opinion Piece?”
“Ten Tips for Writing Opinion Pieces”

Here is the link to Tessa’s discussion starter article.

Please also remember to have questions prepared to ask Megan Fulwiler, author of the piece you’re reading for tomorrow — “In Defense of Free Time.”

Extra credit if you bring in an example of a letter to the editor and are able to articulate why you find it to be an in/effective letter.

See you all tomorrow!

Please watch this video for Chris’s discussion tomorrow.

April 5th: revision of prospectus due

April 17th: “rough” draft of “final” paper due

April 24th: revision of essay #1 (video/song/album/movie) due

Here is one discussion starter for Tuesday. There will be a second article, which I will post as soon as I receive it.

due: posted to your group wikispace by 3/20 at noon–this is a collaboratively written text

3 – 5 (750 – 1250 words) pages in length (not including bibliography)

Your prospectus should be a foward-looking, foward-thinking piece that begins to formulate your thinking on your topic but also shows what you already know about it.

Introduction: Overview of your topic; what you already know about it; any hypotheses you have about it; potential arguments you want to make about your topic.

Description:  Your plan-of-action.  You have already been given the framework or method of cultural analysis with/in which you’ll be working–that is the circuit of culture, as laid out in your Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the SONY Walkman book: representation, regulation, identity, production, and consumption. In this section you should begin to formulate your thinking about your topic in terms of each of these five cultural processes. How is your object represented? What social identities get associated with it? How does your object get produced? In what ways does it get consumed? How does its distribution and use get regulated?

Your research plan: What do you still need to know or find out about your topic? What are your plans for attaining this information? What kind of resources will you be using?

Include a bibliography that includes the sources you plan to use for this project.

For other information on writing a prospectus check out this and/or this.