Choose a chapter from your pop culture anthology How I Met Your Mother and Philosophy: Being and Awesomeness that involves a philosophical method or toolkit. Please summarize and write about this chapter as instructed and model the sample summary paper.
Your summary papers should be a product of careful reading. For this assignment, you are summarizing the arguments and ideas, not the narrative of the reading itself. Please note the assigned reading for each of the papers are on the tentative course schedule. These writing assignments, although they are not traditional essays, should include a bibliography and proper internal text citation.
Prepare the paper in four parts (each part should be developed according to suggested instructions below) and organize your essay with each part marked: A) Thesis, B) Points of Fact, C) Points of Discussion, and D) Reflection.
A) Main Thesis of the Text: This should be a concise paragraph of the author’s most important claims or major thesis as explicitly stated. Your summary of the author’s thesis should be constructed from a close reading of the text and not just a copied and pasted passage. Compose what you think is the explicit ‘main concern’ of the author, but you can include here the implied main concern. The thesis can come from different parts of the whole text and should always be referenced with the corresponding page numbers [In-text citation with author and page, for ex., (Nochlin, 27); for internet citation, author and paragraph, for ex., (Squier, ¶3)]. Do not include your opinion of the thesis in this part of the summary paper — that is for a different section.
B) Important Points of Fact: Points of fact include names, dates, ideas, and forms of ‘evidence’ used by the author to support the particulars of their thesis. Please articulate how the supporting points and arguments help the author ‘make’ the thesis. This should be three to four paragraphs of connecting primary claims to secondary content that the author provides. This does not have to be a comprehensive review of the author’s evidence.
C) Important Points of Discussion: Comment on an issue or issues raised by the text but are not developed by the author. What kinds of questions are raised by and could be raised by the text? It is at this point in the paper to bring in an outside text or reference that can help you respond to this point(s) of discussion and that might lead to an interesting discussion. Think of how you might invite your reader to think about the material of this chapter in a creative, novel way. This section can be underdeveloped but merely indicate other paths of discussion, yet please be sure to cite your sources appropriately. Try to avoid criticism of the author’s work or rhetorical questions. This is the section of the summary paper in which you give a philosophical examination of the ideas raised in the text beyond what the author intended.
D) Reflection: Be free to comment on the text in whatever way you like and state your opinion in reflection of the author’s arguments. Make a personal connection to the author’s work with your own point of view and experiences or knowledge that you think add a unique reading of the content discussed.
