Expository Essay
DO NOT DO ANY RESEARCH ON THE WRITERS, THE ESSAYS, OR SUBJECT. Once again, you are to write an expository essay. Your task is to demonstrate an ability to engage productively with evidence, using it as building blocks to develop ideas, based on what you notice and how you make sense of what you see. That is, your thinking should evolve through inductive reasoning. This time, however, you are to work in depth with TWO of the essays we read in Progression 2: Rahawa Haile, Going It Alone (pp. 196-205) Jamaica Kincaid, The Ugly Tourist (pp. 227-230) Nancy Mairs, On Being a Cripple (pp. 247-259) Tommy Orange, Indian Heads (pp. 272-278) David Sedaris, I Like Guys (pp. 334-344) Brent Staples, Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space (pp. 345-348) Choose two of the 6 essays listed above, follow criteria and guidelines. Use quotes but leave citations to me as I understand you probably don’t have the 6th edition of the 50 Portable Essays of Anthology book I bought for my class. The purpose of your essay is not to regurgitate class discussion of the essays. Rather, you are to develop a conversation, one in which your thinking about the writers ideas enables you to participate in and indeed contribute to a particular social or cultural discourse you see at work in the essays. The essay itself will need to include the following elements: a title that does NOT include the authors, titles, or assignment; a 100-word encapsulation of each texts; textual analysis that addresses how the essays work; proper citation of material from the texts, both in the essay and in a Works Cited section, following MLA guidelines; Evaluation: The essay will be assessed with regard to course goals and learning objectives (see syllabus), which include inductive reasoning, textual analysis, and writing essay. In addition, I will evaluate your ability to work responsibly with outside material: encapsulating a text (ideas vs. evidence); contextualizing and integrating outside material (see citation exercise); citing all outside material, both in the text and in a Works Cited Section, following MLA style. Most important, this essay will be examined in terms of the conversation it generates among the texts. Rather than compare and contrast their content, you are to work productively with your analysis of the essays and the ideas of the writers, such that your thinking about one complicates or challenges your understanding of some aspect of the other. . This piece of writing should exhibit the thinking and writing skills appropriate to an essay, not a thesis. You will need to make a claim, one that is articulated, explored, and developed through the essays beginning, middle, and end. . A final draft must be flawless, free of ANY typographical, grammar, and punctuation errors. I will assess your essay in terms of the logic of your thinking and the clarity of your prose. 1,200 words, no less
