Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill [62]
* * *
4. Analyze Two Representations of Inner City Life. This assignment was designed by Political Science Professor Brian Mello for his course entitled The Wire: Money, Drugs, & Life in Urban America. You can adapt this assignment for your own use by comparing two representations of inner city life: photographs, videos, songs, and so forth. Analyze these by locating patterns of significant detail and by making the implicit explicit. Dr. Mello’s assignment follows:
Your task is to find your own representation of inner city life, and bring it to the last week of class where you will be asked to share this with your peers. This representation could come in the form of a photograph (or series of photographs), a song (or a music video), a poem, a passage from a work of literature, or a passage from a non-fiction text.
This assignment points us back to the central theme of this course— examining what assumptions are made by, and what implications should be drawn from the representation of socioeconomic concerns in The Wire. As Thomas Bender pointed out in his lecture, representations of urban life are never apolitical—they always create for the viewer certain assumptions and interpretations about life in urban America.
Compare the story that gets expressed in the representation of urban life that you have selected to the story that gets told in any one of the following course texts—The Wire, The Corner, Cop in the Hood, or Gang Leader for a Day. You should focus in on specific passages or scenes from these texts. Insofar as a different interpretation of urban life emerges from the representations that you bring into class, what explains this difference? How can or should one reconcile these different interpretations? Insofar as there are similarities, what are they, and why might it be interesting or important that common representations emerge in multiple contexts? What do these representations tell us about who gets to represent urban life?
5. Compare Two Cultural Documents That Reveal a Current Cultural Divide. Here is an assignment designed by Communications Professor Dr. Jefferson Pooley for his writing-intensive course, 1968. You can adapt this assignment by locating two contemporary documents that reveal a cultural divide in America now. Be sure to explain how the details of the documents disclose this cultural rift. You could also choose two political cartoons from different points of view on the same subject. Note: please refrain from taking a stand on the cultural divide that your documents embody. Focus instead on careful description and inferring implications. Here is the original assignment:
In a three-page paper use the attached transcript from the “Chicago Seven” trial—the circus-like prosecution of prominent DNC protestors— to support the thesis that the exchange between Abbie Hoffman (Yippie leader) and Julius Hoffman (judge) represents, in microcosm, the cultural divide then gripping America. (The excerpt is a verbatim transcript from the infamous 1969 trial of Hoffman and six other New Left leaders.)
Your task in this paper is to organize your evidence in some coherent way. The legal theatrics of the Hoffman-Hoffman exchange provide you with an abundance of material to work with. A strong paper will discuss the trial transcript according to some organizing logic, though the specific structure is up to you.
* * *
Chapter 4
* * *
Toolkit of Analytical Methods II: Going Deeper
A TEACHER COMMENT found in the margins of many essays and famous for bewildering students is the single word “develop”—or just “dev.” Faculty who write that term seem to be saying they want more thinking, that what’s on the page is too simple or uncomplicated. But it’s no easy matter to develop your ideas. This chapter offers you tools for