To extend all the paper writing skills – close-reading, argumentation, narrative structure – we have learned in this class to the scope of a comparative essay.
To reflect on the overall theme of the class: the relationship between image and text.
Step 1: Free-Write to Find Your Topic (30 minutes)
Do a 20-minute free-write, reflecting on the following questions:
For which texts that we’ve read this semester has the relationship between image and text been most interesting to you?
Thinking about the texts we’ve read this semester – Blake, Rankine, Sebald, Bechdel, Sacco – can you group them into categories based on their use of image and text?
Which texts seem like they use the image in the most different ways? Which texts seem like they use the image in the most similar ways?
Which text feels like an outlier in its use of the image?
Which text feels emblematic in its use of the image?
After your free-write you should have some idea of what texts you want to focus on. This assignment is a little different from our other papers insofar as it begins with a prompt (i.e. you do not need to make up your own question):
Choose two texts that we have read this semester. How does each text use the image? How is the relation between image and text similar, or different, in each text?
Write this question and your two texts at the top of a blank document.
Step 2: Generating Data (180 minutes)
For each text, generate a list of passages that you could use to address the relationship between image and text. You should have at least 5 passages per text. Try to choose a diversity of passages (i.e. passages that use the image in different ways, rather than all passages that use it in the same way). (60 minutes)
Perform an extensive close-reading of at least 3 passages per text (6 total: 120 min = 20 min/passage)
Since you are already focused on a particular question – what is the relationship between image and text? – your close-reading will look a little different than our previous textual close-readings.
You should assess both the text leading up to/describing/present in the image based on the categories of our close-reading handout: Speaker/Narrator, Imagery, Language, Line-breaks/Rhyme/Structure, Context, and Chronology. Your close-reading can be in the form of a few paragraphs for each passage (rather than individually breaking it down into each category).
But you should also close-read the image itself, describing not just what it shows but how it is portrayed. If you are looking at a photograph or artwork (from Rankine or Sebald), describe the perspective, the focus, anything you notice. If you are looking at a comic, recall the McCloud, describing not only perspective and focus but the use of the line and the placement of the text.
Step 3: Thinking Through Your Data (120 minutes)
Spend 120 minutes free-writing before you begin writing your draft. This step does not need to happen in one go – and in fact is usually better if you return to it on several different occasions. This is where the thinking happens! Use the following questions to prompt your thought:
Think about the passages individually:
What does each passage literally say?
What are the most important or interesting formal characteristics of each passage or image? Why?
How do the formal characteristics of the passage or image change/augment/explicate the literal meaning of the passage?
How does the image change/augment/explicate the literal meaning of the passage? What is the relation between image and text in this passage?
Think about each text individually:
Do all the passages from this text suggest something similar about the relation between image and text? Do they suggest something different?
Can you “group” or relate the passages to each other? Are some of the passages suggesting a similar relation to the image, while others are suggesting something different?
Think about the relation between texts:
How is the relation between image and text different between these texts? How is it similar?
As for all your papers thus far, our goal is to keep our ears open for ambiguous, confusing, and contradictory meaning. As you free write, keep these transitions in mind: “And yet,” “But,” “Even so,” “On one hand,” “On the other hand.” At the heart of a great argument is tension. Each time you make a claim, ask yourself: what evidence doesn’t fit into this claim?
Step 4: Forming Your Argument (~240 min – at least 1200 words)
Important Advice: **Even though you are writing a comparative paper, your thesis must still be specific and argumentative! You should not claim that the texts use the image in totally different ways or totally similar ways. A stronger argument will assess what specifically is different vs. similar about the use of image and text in these texts and why (i.e. relate those differences to the overall meaning of the each text). Your argument (at minimum in the space of the conclusion) should also assess why and how this is the case. It should not just describe the use of image/text but make an argument about the way image is incorporated, and why the integration of image and text is critical to these works.
Open a blank document or get out a blank piece of paper. At the top, write your question.
Beneath your question, begin to write your introduction. Your introduction should follow this format:
1. Initial Survey: Introduce your text and topic, based on how it would appear to the most superficial reading.
2. The Turn: Unsettle this reading by describing how closer examination of your topic actually introduces a question, tension, or problem in the text.
3. The Thesis: The thesis is your specific, argumentative answer to this question, tension, or problem. HOWEVER, your thesis should be the last part of the paper that you write or revise. For now, in the place where your thesis will go, put in brackets a “working thesis,” or, if you do not yet have one, put your initial question.
Write Your Body Paragraphs: You do not have specific introductions for this step. Hopefully, you will already have a good portion of your paper written from Step 3. Here are some guidelines:
Remember that your introductory paragraph introduces a question, tension, or problem in the poem, and your thesis answers it. Your paper should walk us through how you get to that answer. It should not repeat the same point over and over again so much as show us a mind in movement on the page, working through a question.
Every paragraph (other than the introduction and conclusion) should have at least one close-reading.
You should have a clear and argumentative thesis. That doesn’t have to mean taking “one side” of an argument. Remember and refer to our model from the thesis workshop of the thesis’s “evolution”:
1) formulate an idea about your subject
2) use your thesis to explain as much evidence as it can
3) locate evidence that does not fit with your thesis
4) make explicit the mismatch between your thesis and the evidence that doesn’t fit
5) reshape your claim to accommodate what doesn’t fit
6) repeat
Remember that your thesis should be specific, and exhibit tension (the push-pull between two ideas – “Although exercise is good for you, too much exercise will hurt you”). Try formulating your thesis with a “While” or an “Although.”
After you finish writing the main body of the paper, write your conclusion. In your conclusion, address the following question:
Why is the integration of image and text critical to these works? Why must we analyze their use of the image in order to fully understand them? What does this suggest about the different capacities of image/text?
Step 5: Line-Edit Paper (30-45 min.)
1. Read your paper aloud, slowly and clearly. Listen for any moments where the prose sounds awkward. Revise them.
2. Read your paper one more time, silently, for typos.
Step 6: Final Reflection (30-45 minutes) With this assignment, you are required to submit a final 500-word reflection on our class’s assessment system. Feel free to write on anything you’d like, but here are some suggestions to get your mind going:
What did you like about this assessment method? Was there anything you disliked? Please be specific. Why?
Was it useful to refer to your homework, projects, and time as labor? Why? What have you learned from thinking in these terms all semester?
Were you motivated to improve your work over the course of the semester, even though there weren’t any grades assigned? What was motivating you?
Has studying under this particular assessment method changed any of your perceptions about yourself as a student, your education as labor, or your relationship to grades, time management, and the classroom environment, etc.? If not, that’s OK! Don’t need to make things up. :-)
Were you skeptical at the beginning of the semester with respect to this system? What were you skeptical about? How have your worries changed or remained the same?
Anything you’d like me to know for the future with respect to this system? Should I do something differently? Check-in on the logs more often, less often? Any final thoughts?
In order to be considered complete, you must turn in to me by the following dates:
Step 1’s free-write and question (DUE FRIDAY, APRIL 27)
Step 2’s passages and close readings (DUE FRIDAY, APRIL 27)
Step 3’s 120 minutes of writing (DUE FRIDAY, MAY 11)
Step 4’s at least 1200-word paper (DUE FRIDAY, MAY 11)
Step 6's 500-word final reflection (DUE FRIDAY, MAY 11)