Sending Essay Abstracts to Xerox

During Week 13, students wrote essay abstracts.

The abstracts from all three classes will be printed into one book.

We sent the request at the end of Week 13, Friday, April 30 to be ready for the symposium at the middle of Week 15, Wednesday, May 12.

Documents sent to Xerox, xerox@colum.edu

1. Xerox print request form, available in 33 E. Congress Pkwy, suite 300
2. Cover: We used the cover designed by Creative Services and have requested it in color
3. Abstracts: We divided the abstracts by class and used our cover pages (from the essay books) as dividers. We also included a Table of Contents at the front of the book. No page numbers this time.

We requested 45 copies. Again, we will let you know if this number is too large or too small.

Sending Essays to Xerox

We sent our students' essays to Xerox on Monday, April 26, the beginning of Week 13, so they can be ready for the symposium on Wednesday, May 12, the middle of Week 15.

Each class will have its own book.

Here are the order of documents sent to Xerox via email, xerox@colum.edu:

1. Xerox print request form, available in 33 E. Congress Pkwy, suite 300
2. Cover: This is our poster image designed by Noel Cunningham in Creative Services. He restructured the image to 8.5'' x 11'' and gave it a white border. We requested Xerox print the cover in color.
3. Text Part I: Includes a cover page, a short description of the semester written by the instructor, and a Table of Contents. (We handwrote numbers on the bottom of the pages so students could flip to their essays.) We made pdf documents using the Xerox machines in suite 300.
4. Text Part II: The stack of student papers was too large to make it one pdf document.

Number of copies: 1 copy for each student + 1 copy for a friend/family member for each student + a handful for instructors, Critical Encounters, First Year Writing / English Department.

Kate: 7 students: 20 copies

Kristen & Maureen: 12 students: 30 copies

We'll let you know if those numbers were too large or too small. Since we have the PDF files, we can always request more if necessary.

Student Essays in the Chronicle!

Pick up your Columbia Chronicle today and read my current student's essay in the Fact & Faith Column True/Believer:

Rachel Ovaska: "Faith in Me"

And another current student has an essay on the CE:F&F blog

Mike James: "Atheism & Morality"


I taught Fact & Faith last fall, and a few of my students essays have appeared this semester in the same column:

Sarah Blythe: "A Turn to Prayer"
Rebecca DeKing: "On Faith and Family" (on CE: F&F blog)
Riley Hughes: "'Go Ahead, Ask Away!'"


So exciting! Congrats, Students!

Final Essays Coming Together

I can hardly believe it.

Their final essays are coming together. My numbers have dwindled in class, but all the students who came yesterday (all but one who I sent to the lab) had solid second drafts with them.

Up until the first draft day last week, I wasn't sure how their essays would come into being. Even though we read sample student ethnographies, they did not seem super confident about their writing. I did three brainstorming days with them, where I gave them writing prompts about their topics. I think this is what helped them turn the corner (if I do say so myself).

I kept reminding them to go through their Cultural Autobiographies, Research Proposal, Field Notes, and class journal with a highlighter and mark all the passages that they thought would fit into their final essays. Anything they've written for this clcass can be used in the final essay; they do not have to rewrite everything and start from scratch.

One area of concern is the academic resources. We visited the library in Week 4 or 5, and I have reminded them repeatedly to work on finding sources. I had them do sample resource reviews for two of their sources in week 7 and 8. Yet, even yesterday while talking about second drafts, students were asking me about finding sources. I have a few students who concern me because they either did not do their Resource Review or the kind of BS'd their way through it and the sources they listed were not ones they would really use. I wonder how many students went back into the library and talked to the librarians about the difficulty with their sources. I do wish the library would spend less time in the "training" talking about types of sources and help students navigate the journal databases. I don't think most students go back to the journal databases after our library session.

I'm looking forward to seeing their final products and passing them on to Kate's class to review for symposium finalists. I'm also eager to read the essays from Kristen's class, since we taught the class so differently.

I'm getting quite excited about the symposium and hearing them read and talk about their final essays.

Maureen

Promotional Materials, proof sheet

To read our previous posts about working with Creative Services to develop promotional materials, click here and here, or just keep scrolling down.

I received an email from Noel Cunningham of Creative Services at the end of Week 9 with a proof of our poster and a proof sheet that we need to sign and return. The sheet asks if we're satisfied, if changes need to be made, and if we need to view a second proof if changes are necessary.

We have posters: 200 @ 11x17 and 2 @24x36. We also have 400 postcards. Check your mailboxes!

Creative Services did an excellent job!

Kate Dougherty's Week 9 & 10

I've just posted some comments to Kristen's posts and replied to a comment she posted on one of my posts.

Week 9:

Monday: It was the first day back from Spring Break so I needed to assess their progress (mostly internal) and make the remaining schedule and our due dates clear. I handed out calendars for April 2010 and May 2010 with the assignments written in their due dates. I think this helped students visualize the remaining weeks of the semester. On the Wednesday before break we'd discussed time management. They filled out weekly calendars -- wrote in the calendar the times they have class and work, time to transport, sleep, clean, eat, complete assignments, and socialize.

We also discussed their concerns for the essay and the holes or gaps they could identify in their research.

They had a dialogue due. For this assignment they create an informal dialogue that might occur if the authors of their sources were to have a conversation. I usually find this assignment quite successful -- they can really embody their sources' points of view.

Wednesday: Their Research Log 3 and Source Essay 3 were due on Wednesday. I usually have them briefly write up four sources they've found for each research log. And in their source essays, they explore one central idea or argument in one source and create a plan for how to use that source in their essay and what other sources it could lead them to.

I'd changed the length requirements for the polished Researched Discovery Essay, but I hadn't changed the source requirements. The research felt rushed this time, and I couldn't imagine them having time to find four more suitable sources, so for Research Log 3 they needed to find at least two sources that fill the gaps they'd identified in their research. And for their Source Essay 3, they wrote a detailed draft of an outline for their essays, including what ideas from each of their sources would support or help explain each idea or section of their essay.

I decided to require 6 sources instead of the usual 8 in the polished essay. I hope the research component of the essay feels complete. If not, the altered timeline to allow time to select speakers and prepare a speech might need rethinking.

Week 10:

Monday: Their first draft of the essay was due today: 7 pages and 3 sources. Many of the students pieced these 7 pages together from previous assignments. They are extremely rough. I find this is usually the case with the first draft, and I don't know if that's a necessity -- the messy piecing together of all the work they've accomplished thus far -- or if it's a waste of their time. Maybe I should schedule one Frankenstein draft before this first draft that asks them to piece together their previous assignments into an essay as best they can. Then I can require that the first draft be a smoothing and an adding to of this Frankenstein draft.

I've talked to some instructors who are having students complete polished essays throughout the semester, and the finished assignment is a smoothed compilation of these polished essays. How's that going? Does that seem like a better organization than what you've previously used, than what I'm currently using?

Wednesday: My class is extremely small this semester. I have only 9 students now; 3 have withdrawn for various reasons. The discussions I plan for the small groups end up happening with the entire class since we're so small, especially if anyone is absent. Students had written response letters after reading a classmate's first draft. They described their classmate's draft to the class and voiced praise and concerns. That opened up interesting brief discussions, and some of the students who hadn't read the draft (though they know about one another's essays pretty well) offered some ideas for their classmates.

We also looked back at the opening paragraphs of the essays/chapters we've read by published authors this semester. We discussed what's effective, what's ineffective, what they've learned an introduction should do, and what they like to read in an introduction. Drafts of two potential introductions are due the following class period.

Midterm--Where are we?

I feel comfortable with where the students are. We are using the pilgrimage model (the stages) as our writing model. I think this is in keeping with the Fact and Faith idea. This model let us spend a lot of time "leaving home" or situating ourselves with relation to our desires, preconceptions, and misconceptions of the inquiry subject. I am asking for about 3-5 pages of the completed essay that focus on this relationship to the text--a narrative inquiry form. Then we "gathered friends or met fellow travelers" by making online polls, doing class experiments, discussing our stereotypes and ideas; this is about 2-3 pages of methodology and "development of some public sentiment or general opinion." I am hoping they can overlay their own position with the general/public opinion and, finally, with the "educated" ideas they research. So, we've finished that and they should have approx. 7 pages of generated texts.

In preparation for the journey, they had to encounter doubt or an immediate obstacle. This obstacle was the inquiry thesis and its language. We used the OED and completed word charts, keyword games, and definitions within definitions. This was fantastic and playful! Allison started relating the "cuttable" body to harvesting and fruit. Theodore started seeing how C.S. Lewis manipulated readers by giving only three language options and how one option, lunatic, comes from the word luna and a legacy of moon worship. I think this was the part of the class that excited me most but took them awhile longer to see. I've been using student packets of material to demonstrate the associative links and why leaping like this is important, academic, and interesting.

They've also set out on the journey with clarification 1 and 2, and over break the interview. The interview, for a lot of them, was another obstacle. I've noticed that the clarifications were less complicated and messy, but only a few of them were really keeping the "playful" writing of the previous exercises. I think clarification assignments and in class explanations are a work in progress.

I've let them know how soon the due date is and it caused a little panic. Then I reminded them that they have 7 pages of generated text and integration of the 2 clarifications and the interview should lead them to 11ish pages. This calmed them down a bit.

We have midterm conferences after break. The interview is due at the time of conference, we'll go over drafts together, and then we'll workshop student drafts up until the 21st.

I know we have to--Kate and Maureen--discuss "selecting" processes for our student readers. Do we want it to be the same process? Different for each class?

Kate Dougherty's Weeks 7 & 8

Week 7:

Monday: We meet in the library. Students conduct research and/or work on a computer there. I conduct five-minute conferences to check in with students -- they have the conference schedule ahead of time and swing by for a chat during class. No, I'm not checking in on my students to see that they're using their time wisely. It seems that most do. And I figure some might be ready for a break -- a bit of relaxation to help them focus (hopefully!) later on.

On Wednesday, they hand in a second Research Log and a piece of writing that explores and establishes a plan to use one of their sources. On Wednesday, we discuss who they plan to interview for their essays. (They were to include someone they've contacted for an interview on their Research Log that'd due.) We discuss interviews they've conducted in the past and things that have gone well and things that resulted in mini-explosions. They then interview a classmate they haven't worked with yet and write brief profiles. (We didn't have time to read the profiles. Sometimes working with computers creates more hassle than they're worth. I'm in a computer lab, and it seems perfect for an in-class assignment like this. But they were having computer issues, and I had to run to get paper so they could print.)

Week 8:

Monday: A local author and journalist named Daniel P. Smith (author of On the Job: Behind the Stars of the Chicago Police Department) visits to conduct an interview workshop. I've had him visit before, and students seem to really appreciate hearing his experiences and insights.

He also shows them some clips of poorly conducted interviews -- a journalist interviews the founder of Facebook, and another where Oprah interviews Elizabeth Taylor -- and shows us his favorite TV interviewer, Tim Russert, with Barack Obama. He outlines for students what these interviewers do poorly and do well.

Wednesday: The second round of students will present their blog postings about Critical Encounters events they've attended. We will connect these events with students' essays and the larger conversation of Fact & Faith.

Contact with Xerox, to print books of essays and abstracts

I sent an email to Xerox in December 2009 to learn about their guidelines. Here's what they told me:

• They can print no more than 250 pages in each book.
• Each book costs $1.55 for binding.
• There's no cost for color or black and white as long as they print the job in-house.
• They need 2-3 weeks for production.

I sent Xerox an email today (March 15, beginning of Week 8) about our upcoming project. Here's what I sent:

My name is Kate Dougherty, and I teach in the English Department. I sent you an email in December (correspondence included below) about a Writing & Rhetoric II project that will culminate in 4 books that we'd like Xerox to print and bind.

(1) One of those books will be all of my students' final essays. (24 copies, printed and bound)

(2) One of those books will be all of Kristen Orser's students' final essays. (32 copies, printed and bound)

(3) One of those books will be all of Maureen Ewing's students' final essays. (32 copies, printed and bound)

We plan to send those essays -- the material to be printed and bound -- by Monday, April 26. We need them available to distribute by Tuesday, May 11.

(4) The final books will be essay abstracts from all three classes, 46 students. We will need 72 copies, printed and bound. We will send you the abstracts by Monday, May 3. We need them available to distribute by Tuesday, May 11.

We know that printing is free of charge but that binding costs $1.55 per book. You will receive payment from the English Department. The cost should be $248.00. Is that correct?

Thank you so much for your help. If the dates I've listed won't work, please let me know what our deadline should be to send you these materials for printing and binding.

Sincerely,

Kate Dougherty

Creating a Poster with Columbia's Creative Services

I met with Edward Thomas at Creative Services on May 12 (Week 7) to discuss our promotional materials for the big-deal Symposium happening on Wednesday, May 12, 4-6 pm at Hokin Auditorium (623 S. Wabash, 1st floor). (Please attend and inform your students of this event!)

I suggest taking a look at their Workflow guidelines for how and where to start.

We didn't look at this site before "designing" our poster and walking into the Creative Services office (without an appointment) to drop off a disk of our materials. Like you probably saw (or skipped over, per my suggestion) in an earlier post, Kristen and I designed our poster ourselves, knowing and hoping that the design expertise of those at Creative Services would make it into something beautiful, eye-catching, "Columbia," and informative (even if that meant starting from scratch, which we were okay with).

Rather than design (no matter how great, no matter how poor), Creative Services prefers you bring them ideas and inspiration. Kristen found a photograph of decorative plates with birds on them. Her students liked those birds. Those are the birds I drew into our poster. Rather than draw them into a poster, Creative Services would prefer you bring them that particular photo and describe to them what you like about it.

There's a form you need to fill out. Make an appointment with Edward Thomas. Send him the form and a Word document (not a PDF) with the verbiage for your promotional materials. (Forms and contacts are available on the Workflow website). Bring inspiration and ideas to your meeting.

Info for form: Critical Encounters Fellow Eric Scholl suggested we print 200 posters. We said we needed the posters by April 21 (Wednesday of Week 12) for our May 12 event (Week 15).

Creative Services is in the process of creating our posters, looking for images that match the qualities we liked about the birds -- something drawn or painted, which we liked for its handmade quality, and something (like birds) that can represent the religious and the natural.

I'll let you know how the process continues.

class still struggling to find precision

In the clarifications, all students are admitting to refined subjects, but they are not making that precision clear or explicit in the writing. I am noticing a real tendency to talk around an idea or without specificity.

They seem to see detail and specifics, the work of making something particular as akin to repetition. Or they think the reader "already knows."

The library was helpful, for me because I saw them discuss--for the first time--their subjects without my guidance. This was scary too: a few of them really didn't seem to grasp their subjects and looked to me for help. I am working to make them more dependent on peer groups for this "help" status.

Next class, I am rewriting their "topics" and "questions" on the board and showing them the ways they've already specified it. Then, asking, if this was accidental, if they were aware of that precision, and why they are returning to "large idea" instead of really interesting inquiry.

Scott McCloud's Ted Talk on comics is something I imagine will help.

Creating a poster for the symposium

Before, after, or instead of reading this posting, read our guidelines for working with Creative Services to develop promotional materials at this posting: "Creating a Poster with Columbia's Creative Services."

During Week 6 we've created a poster to bring to Creative Services to promote our symposium on Wednesday, May 12, 4-6 pm in the Hokin Auditorium, 623 S. Wabash, first floor. (Please join us! Tell your students about this event!)

Kristen and I (Kate) asked our students about design ideas and preferences. Kristen had a more extended conversation with her students which she might share on the blog or within this post. On Monday I passed out a photocopy of an idea that Maureen and I had discussed the previous week. I wanted them to have something they could take apart and reconstruct.

I was inspired by this fantastic Critical Encounters poster:

Isn't it fantastic? I liked the idea of the squares because I feel like we have so much information to get across with this poster -- that it's sponsored by both Critical Encounters & First Year Writing, that it's Writing & Rhetoric II students presenting, time & location, etc.

Maureen and I visualized photos of our students, some boxes with obscured text to communicate that we're a writing class, a photograph of a microphone, and all of the information I included above -- the departments, the class, time, location.

Here's what our sketch looked like:

This is what Kristen and I gave to our students to reconstruct.

Kristen's students wanted the poster to show ears, people listening to express that the students presenting will be speaking to an audience. One of her students drew a close-up of a profile speaking to other students, seated, listening.

I told my students that I had searched for images that conjoin fact and faith or even science and religion (though we try to encourage/remind them that science and religion are not the limitations or only definitions of fact and faith) but that everything I found was pretty horrible. One of my students drew Jesus in a lab coat. Apparantly there was some mix up in the English Department because I didn't find her drawing in my mailbox before Kristen and I needed to nail down a design for Creative Services.

Kristen and I met up and discussed our students' responses. Kristen's students had also mentioned an interest in birds and trees -- both images of science and religion. So we went with that idea. Here's our sketch of the ad:

We're taking it to Creative Services tomorrow. We'll let you know how that goes.

Critical Encounters Mini-Grant

We'd like this blog to be useful for instructors in the future, so I'm pasting below our mini-grant application and, below that, Critical Encounters Fellow Eric Scholl's response to our mini-grant. (We received the $500 mini-grant.)

(Since I've copied and pasted the application, the formatting is a bit altered in some spots. If you'd like a .pdf of the application, send me an email.)

Critical Encounters Mini-Grant Application

By receiving a mini-grant we agree to include the Critical Encounters: Fact & Faith logo and statement “in collaboration with Critical Encounters: Fact & Faith” on all print and advertising materials.

Project/Proposal Title: Writing & Rhetoric II presents Fact & Faith: A Symposium

Department/Student Group: English Department, First Year Writing Program, Writing & Rhetoric II students

Primary Contact: Kate Dougherty, kdougherty@colum.edu, katedoc@gmail.com, (312) 576-8550

1. A brief (500 words or less) description of your proposed event/project/reason for requesting the mini-grant funding.

In Writing & Rhetoric II, students work the entire semester toward a 12- to 15-page researched discovery essay. This semester, we will require our students to select a topic or line of inquiry that falls under the umbrella of Fact & Faith.

We, Kristen Orser, Maureen Ewing, and Kate Dougherty, would like our selected Writing & Rhetoric II students (2 from each class, 6 total) to present Fact & Faith essay findings at a Critical Encounters event symposium at the end of the Spring 2010 semester.

We’d like their bound essay abstracts (all three classes bound together) and their bound essays (one book for each class) to be available to Columbia faculty, staff, administration, and students, and for our students’ friends and family who attend the event.

As writing instructors, we encourage our students to imagine their intended audience. We believe that creating an actual audience – the readers of their texts and those who attend their symposium – will aid our students’ learning and make their writing more purposeful to both them and the Columbia College community.

We request the mini-grant funding to cover the cost of binding students’ abstracts and essays. The expenses are outlined below, but we’ve found an economical way to bind through Xerox: Xerox prints for free, and it costs just $1.55/copy for binding. Remaining funds would allow us to document and archive the project for future use for Critical Encounters and the First Year Writing Program. We’ll need to pay a videographer to document the symposium and pay the library for archival quality inks and paper to document our students’ writing. We’d like to also provide modest catering at the event.

Interim First Year Writing Program Director Dr. Ames Hawkins has agreed that the program’s budget will match funds in support of the Critical Encounters mini-grant application.

2. A statement regarding the way your event/project will enhance Critical Encounters.

By publishing our students’ researched discovery essays in response to Critical Encounters: Fact & Faith, Columbia will obtain documentation that reveals how students engage with Critical Encounters’ topics in a meaningful way. Their writing will show that Critical Encounters is worthwhile fodder for a writing classroom. Our students’ writing and their recorded symposium will create a digital archive for the library.

Our students will communicate about their essays and Fact & Faith throughout the semester through a blog. We can link their blog to the Critical Encounters blog, which might be of use to other classes engaging Fact & Faith. These classes might have reason or interest to attend our symposium.

The symposium will offer a unique opportunity for first-year students to be involved in Critical Encounters. As they continue with their coursework at Columbia, they will have an enhanced understanding of the time and effort that goes into creating a Critical Encounters event. They will feel more connected to Critical Encounters and more likely to become involved in the initiative as an active participant and audience member in the future. Their involvement in the symposium will also encourage other students, friends, and family to attend the Critical Encounters event. The students’ family and friends will have a better understanding of the sort of community that Critical Encounters helps foster at Columbia.

3. An estimated budget.

We’d like to bind our students’ essays, as well as abstracts for their essays, so that they are available both for the students who’ve written them and for other interested parties – the students’ family and friends, other Columbia students, Critical Encounters faculty and staff, other Columbia faculty and staff, and Columbia administration.

Xerox prints for free. It costs $1.55 to bind each book.

Kate Dougherty’s Enhanced Writing & Rhetoric II: 12 students

Kristen Orser’s Writing & Rhetoric II: 18 students

Maureen Ewing’s Writing & Rhetoric II: 18 students

Total: 48 participating students

Expenses

1.) Book collecting the students’ completed essays:

Each of the three classes will have their own books, so each unit below is a multiple of three.

(48 students + 3 instructor copies) x $1.55 binding fee = $79.05

15 faculty/staff/admin. (5 available for each class) x $1.55 binding fee = $23.25

24 friends/family/students (8 available for each class) x $1.55 binding fee = $37.20

Subtotal: $139.50

2.) Book collecting students’ abstracts:

(48 students + 3 instructor copies) x $1.55 binding fee = $79.05

10 faculty/staff/admin. x $1.55 binding fee = $15.50

10 family/friends/students x $1.55 binding fee = $15.50

Subtotal: $110.05

Subtotal to print books: $249.55

$250.45 remaining for #3-6.

3.) Videographer at symposium:

Covered by Critical Encounters budget (according to Eric Scholl, First Year Writing plenary, 1/22/10).

4.) Advertisements (10 posters on gloss paper that advertise symposium with Columbia logo, Critical Encounters logo, and First Year Writing Program):

Covered by Critical Encounters budget (according to Eric Scholl, First Year Writing plenary, 1/22/10). We plan to contact CPS with text and images 4-6 weeks before we’d like the posters printed during Week 6, Monday, March 1, 2010.

5.) Invitations for Columbia faculty, staff, and administration:

Covered by Critical Encounters budget (according to Eric Scholl, First Year Writing plenary, 1/22/10). We plan to contact CPS with text and images 4-6 weeks before we’d like the posters printed during Week 8, Monday, March 15, 2010.

6.) Catering (fruit, cheese, crackers, drinks for 60-70) at symposium: ____________

Any remaining funds could be reserved for additionally requested texts of student writing.

Interim First Year Writing Program Director Dr. Ames Hawkins has agreed that the program’s budget will match funds in support of the Critical Encounters mini-grant application.

Critical Encounters Fellow Eric Scholl's response to our application

Thanks for applying for the Critical Encounters minigrant. We'd love to support this very worthwhile project.

The $249 for the books is totally fine. We pay these grants through reimbursements, so if you could send us receipts as you incur expenses, that would be great.

The other $251 I had some questions about. You listed posters & invitations, which we can help you design & which we can get printed without cost. I would need some image suggestions or actual images very soon to get the ball rolling. Also, for video, we usually pay a shooter to tape our events. Would you like us to do that for this? And if so, should I assume you would not need funding for those two aspects of the project?

I am looking into food. As you've probably heard, Columbia is not so crazy about paying for food these days, but I'll see what I can do. So, I'd say start spending the $250 now for the book, get me some images & info on verbiage for the posters & invitations, and I can arrange a shooter. I'll let you know as soon as I get an answer on food.

Kate Dougherty: through Week 6

During Week 6, students worked on a six-page assignment that expresses their personal connections to their inquiries.

Week 6 was a strange week -- lots of students and instructors were out sick, and that was true for my class, too. I only had six students on both Monday and Wednesday; five of those six were the same students each day. We took advantage of the extra time and had a long conversation about each student's topic and how the topics connect to one another. This group felt much more confident in the six-page assignment than students in previous semesters. I'll try to give the class more time to have conversations like these in future semesters. (It's usually something I build into Writing and Rhetoric I more than II.)

Taking the Time to Breathe

We had a busy, confusing week last week due to a library snafu (both I and the library share guilt on the snafu!). So, I wanted to calm things down a little today.

Their Field Notes 1 were due today, and do to the snafu, they had to peer review each other's rough drafts over the weekend and email comments. This was mildly successful because not everyone did what they were supposed to do. Shocking!

I love when I'm reminded how nice it is to sit back and breathe in class, to just talk about how things are going, to ask questions, to reflect. It's nice to not rush through something like we've been doing (too many ingredients to get chopped into the pot at once).

So, we did a great free-writing exercise today so that they could talk about fact & faith and their topics. The first day of class we made a list of the possible topics that could fall under fact & faith. Today, I wanted to really dissect what "fact" and "faith" could mean. I wrote "Fact" on one side of the board, then "&" in the middle, and "Faith" on the other side. Then i drew a dotted line down the middle.

For "Fact," they came up with:

meaning of life
realistic
statistics
logic
science
evidence
real
absolute truth
perception
permanence
stability
concrete
assurance
doubt

For "Faith," they listed:

mysterious
meaning of life
unrealistic
belief
conceptual
intangible
interpretation
individual
subjective
evidence
fact
trust
hope
religion
science

And under "&" in the dotted line/in between:

evidence
perception
assurance
doubt


Then, I asked them to write "Fact" "&" "Faith" again to start a new page. I asked them to do the same thing for their topics. How does {your topic} break down under "Fact" "&" "Faith." What are the evidence, truths, perceptions, etc. of your topic? What are the beliefs, intangibilities, hopes, etc. of your topic?

A few shared their brainstorming, and I reminded them that their topics should look large and complex and complicated. How will they take a few of these and explore in detail in their research and writing?

A brief note about the readings:

Their readings the past few days were centered around different academic approaches: literary, psychological, and sociological. The students really reacted strongly on Oasis against the sociological, the language used, the statistics. I brought this up and asked/urged/implored them to not turn away from a source just because it's language is different than what they use. What's the audience for the source? If they are writing for other sociologists, doesn't that language make sense? It's so easy for students to turn away from great academic sources because they are intimidated. I'm hoping they challenge themselves/I challenge them to look for a wide variety of sources, not just the easy to read in 5 minutes.


PS. The student who got so upset at me two weeks ago, "I didn't sign up for a religions class," withdrew.

topic reconsidered

Like my students, I've been tweaking my own inquiry thesis. I had started with an interest in stigmata and "worn" religion. After a few of my students picked up self harm and suicide questions, I started thinking that wearing religion doesn't need to be so "seen." Like my students, I got a little "cloudy" and struggled to say what I wanted to say. I found myself writing around ideas instead of into ideas.

I moved into an interest in doppelganger in mythology and started seeing that this was an extension of my interest in "self as other." Again, it doesn't have to be outside of the self or seen, I wanted this to be more about interiority. I was looking at and discussing, at the same time, Atwoods' Edible Woman. I haven't read the book yet, but I am basing my idea around the concept of a woman's body being consumed.

I am studying the social conditioning of the kitchen and its permeation in American dialogue regarding women's bodies. I will be looking at my own experiences to position the observations of women in the kitchen, women as "food objects." Then, I will ask other people for experiences and descriptions of women being described as "tasty" or food equivalents. I will look for literary examples and study the psychology of kitchens and the social norms of kitchen culture. I am hoping to get into the physiology of taste and consider why taste is equated with sexuality as a larger, more reaching question.

speed of the class

I've noticed that all of us have mentioned the speed of the class. As you both know, I am fast paced. This semester, I have totally gotten off the syllabus in an effort to let them manage their own paces. I can't pretend that I'm not upset about this because my research and readings were awesome and, to me, the class feels "dull." However, all the students have mentioned really enjoying this pace because it is letting them practice mental revision of their topics and small tweaks that, to them, make all the difference and seem to make them almost giddy.

I am wondering, when we are writing the paper, how will we keep this desire and joy with revision. It seems like "the topic" gets so much revision, but the attention to discussion of the topic doesn't maintain the same levity when they are revising writing.

I have started using language to emphasis immersion within the subject and the pace of immersion. I've noticed that this language (water metaphors about dipping toes, drowning, etc. and words like languish and luxury--deep l and vowel sounds) seem to be pushing them into the research and the pleasure of sitting with something. "Egypt" really helped. Really helped. They saw that Butor doesn't even begin discussing his topic until page 4 because he is so busy developing pathos and relating and positioning himself to and with the subject.

To work at their pace, I have considered revisiting my thesis and, like the majority of them, changing it. I want to see how this need for change and constant perfection will impact my own study and develop more empathy between their position as learners.

I'll let you know, later today, what my new topic is.

Topics and the Research Begins

Here are the topics that my students will research this semester:

Maya: Buddhism (she will be narrowing this down once she begins her research)

Matthew: Religion and Sex Laws, particularly age of sexual consent

Darnell: Church and the Economy (looking at what money people give to churches)

Drew: Jewish Traditions/Ceremonies (he will narrow down as he researches)

Mike: Why do people lose their faith?

Rachel: Color and Religion, particularly red and white (she will narrow down to see how these two colors are used in a few religions)

Wilson: "What Goes Around Comes Around:" How this phrase is observed in various religions

Sarah: Death Masks: Artistic and Religious Purposes in select religions/cultures

Cory: Interpretations of "Messiah"

Jennifer: Who has the right to pass judgment?

Alex: What are the responsibilities of the Creator/Parent? He will look at Buddhism in particular

Elle: Neuroscience, Brain and Faith

Fran: Gay Marriage and Proposition 8

Greg: Commercialism of Holidays (he has not yet narrowed it down to a holiday, possibly St. Patrick's Day)

Matthew 2: Scientology (he has not yet narrowed down but will when he begins research)

Qapre: Does truth affect faith?


I have reviewed and returned all their research proposals. Quite a few still had not narrowed down their topic enough for this paper (i.e. a whole religion vs. one practice/tradition). They will be going to the library today to begin their research. They will turn in a review of one source in two weeks, another the week after.

I have had mixed reactions from students about the Fact & Faith topics for this class. Many are excited to be starting with religion and a few are quite put of by it. However, I continue to reiterate to them that they do not need to do a religion for their research. Some, as you can see by the list above, have branched out. On the first day of class we made a list of possible Fact & Faith topics, and students could see how large this umbrella is.

Our showing and analysis of Contact proved to be as rewarding as it was last semester. Students were surprised by it (and not just by Matthew McConaughey) and the various messages throughout. I also have seen students reference this film in their Oasis postings and their research proposals.

Due to the speed of the class, we have not had much time to discuss our readings in class. However, their Oasis postings on the readings and their responses to each other have been excellent. I'm much more impressed with their engagement with each other's ideas than I have been in past semesters.

catching up to my own syllabus

Jeff: Are documentary films capable of objectivity?
Yusef: He has missed several classes and has no proposal at this point.
Tanya: How is birth control addressed by religion (specifically Catholic traditions), the law, and science? Is there any place where these three meet?
Jen: How does a person's personality limit or assist progress?
Allison: When does a body become "cuttable"? (her own term)
Betsy: What are the ethics and considerations of self harm?
Mary: How does silence acquire its own discourse?
Nick: What is the cult of personality and how does it relate to celebrity worship and, possibly, celebrity martyrdom?
Steve: Is religious music more or less "marketable"?
Ally: What are the values of homeopathic medicine? Why do we "trust" medicine?
Jake: Does chaos beget order?
Mike: What is the origin of the "virgin cure" and how does it fit into models of human reasoning?
Brittney Porter: What are practices of mourning and how do mourning practices reveal a culture's consideration of the afterlife?
Lily: Is Milwaukee fundamentally racist?
Brittany Tyus: Is questioning religion necessary to religion? (considering that questioning religion is "modeled" by religious leaders and stories)
Theodore: What does C.S. Lewis' trilemma tell the contemporary Christian thinker?
Meghan: How does fashion uphold religious thought?

We are working towards making these inquiry questions "statements."

So far, we have read Li Tsung-Yuan's "Is there a God" to address that a question need not be answered. We have modeled lists from "The List of Ziusudra" and "The Pillowbook" to see that language can generate thinking, admit biases, and offer a new way of saying what seemed unsayable.

We have worked in small groups with "diary entries" (drafts of the proposal) to see where personal connections could be made (we used Mary Shelley's diaries as models) and we have peer edited proposals so that students who were in class that day received a letter from a peer looking at peer connections and suggestions for development.

We have looked at Piss Christ to discuss the fact and faith of art and how we can see "art" as similar to "religion" since they are both caught up in symbolism, schools of thoughts, and other parallels. We also deconstructed flood myths to see cultures that shared the same belief, how things change overtime to accommodate time, culture, and needs. They've had the extra credit option of reformatting their own myths.

We are now off the syllabus quite a bit. We are still discussing Michel Butor's "Egypt" today to discuss how writing can appeal to pathos and how to keep "observations" and a priori and a posteriori knowledge. We will, this week, read Anne Carson's "Mythoplokos" and they will do an experiment with definitions based on the model so they can start to see how caught up language is in the process of inquiry.

Today, they are discussing "Egypt," receiving Clarification 1 (and a model from last semester), and refining thesis statements. We are going backwards a bit to re-address GOALS and MOVEMENT of the course (also to address being off the syllabus). Clarification 1 is due 3/1.

Wednesday, they will receive Carson's "Mythoplokos" and the assignment corresponding to it and we will go over how to use the OED (hysteria will be the example of a word whose meaning matters and questions "fact and faith"), and how to reserve library books through interlibrary loan. I imagine we will need some time to discuss surveys and work they are doing to get other people's opinions regarding inquiry subjects.

Kate Dougherty: my students' inquiries

Shalynn: Should the fight for gay rights be compared to African Americans' fight for civil rights?

Coop: Why are light-skinned blacks treated better than dark-skinned blacks?

Bobby: Why did the human species evolve to have emotions?

Anna: Are the media to blame when it comes to violence, or are people just weak-minded and easily influenced?

Alyssa: Why do some teenagers believe in cutting?

Serenity: Does your life control you, or do you control your life?

Vanessa: Is depression really an illness? If so, how do we know, and if not, why is that? Looking onward, why do anti-depressants not have a middle ground? Are they really considered a quick fix? Why are people for and against them?

Jazz: Why do we believe what we believe?

Victor: How can we question religion without being stigmatized?

La'Quan: Why is the hardest part of life making a decision? (How do we make decisions? What makes some decisions easier than others?)

Xochitl: Why do we believe in justice?

My students completed the same brainstorming assignment twice. With this assignment they list questions, select one or two, and explore what they already know or suspect about this question, who they could interview about the question, what questions they would ask, and what sources might provide insight into this question.

The first version was due at the beginning of Week 2. Professor and Critical Encounters Fellow Eric Scholl visited our class that day. They wrote their questions on the board. They were concerned that their questions didn't fall under the umbrella of Fact & Faith, but Professor Scholl discussed the questions with them and encouraged the students to pursue their questions with Fact & Faith in mind.

They read "The Falling Man" by Tom Junod (Esquire) and completed the same brainstorming assignment from Junod's point of view -- the process he'd undergone before and while writing this essay. (This is also an example of an essay that begins with a clear question that isn't perfectly answered at the end of the piece. "Who is the falling man? Well, turns out, he might be this guy.")

Then they completed the brainstorming assignment a second time, due at the beginning of Week 3.

They discussed both brainstorming assignments in small groups and wrote response letters to a classmate's assignments, responding to the 2-4 questions their classmate had written about thus far.

They've also read texts that have to do with my sample question, Why do we believe in race?: "Relations" by Eula Biss (from Notes from No Man's Land), the prologue to I'm Down by Mishna Wolff, and "Why Genes Don't Count (for Racial Differences in Health)" by Alan H. Goodman, PhD ( American Journal of Public Health). They've written in response to these texts, compared how they approach the question from different points of view, discussed where they fall on the spectrum from popular to scholarly, and how one might use these texts as sources in an essay that responds to this question. (more or less)

At this point, the beginning of Week 5, they've pretty well settled on the question I've typed above with their names, though some are working on how to phrase, narrow, or broaden their questions.

We've visited the library (information session with April Levy), and they are beginning their research logs and writing to understand and make plans for how to use their sources.