WE USE THE BOOK “How Scholars Write”
Progression #1 – Critical Essay
Wrote about finding a scholarly problem in the article “Save the Robots”
(mine was about how Ford’s writing style became progressively more robotic)
Progression #2 – Conversation Essay
Wrote about Gender norms for music, costumes, and ability in Figure Skating.
(Nathan Chen’s “Rocket Man” Olympic Program accepting or refuting gender expectations in the sport, does he represent the future or the past?)
TOPIC for Progression #3 is OUR CHOICE:
I am a 37-year-old woman who works full-time as a Figure Skating Coach.
I have ADHD and suffer from other co-morbidities, and my interests involve:
Neuroscience, Environmentalism, East Asian Languages, Cultures & Music.
Progression Three: The Research Essay
Writing Like Sources
· Length: 2,500-3,000 words ·
Part of the motivation behind my work…has been a fantasy that readers or hearers would be variously–in anger, identification, pleasure, envy, “permission,” exclusion– stimulated to write accounts “like” this one (whatever that means) of their own, and share those.
~Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, “A Poem Is Being Written”
What am I being asked to do?
Select an outside text, or set of texts, to serve as your object of analysis, or object source. Find and select context sources to provide background on your object source. Find and select critical sources, if any, that comment directly on your object source. From your research, develop a project by analyzing your object source within the existing conversation to raise a scholarly problem. If necessary, find, select, and use theory source(s) to unlock new understandings of your object source and the conversation around it. From your past reading (whether for this class, other classes, or your own reading life), select one or more sources to serve as your method source(s). Adopt and adapt approaches from your method source(s) to realize your project. Articulate the exigence of your project. In other words, create an essay that illustrates the nuances of an existing conversation, moves that conversation forward through your own contributions, and brings the reader to a new understanding of your object source in relation to that conversation. Your final draft should be roughly 2,500-3,000 words and follow MLA style.
What things should I keep in mind while drafting my research essay?
Keep in mind that you are being asked to write a “research essay” and not a “research report.” The main difference between the two is that a research report presents the existing conversation on a specific topic whereas a research essay pursues a new project, i.e., a problem-based inquiry you’ve been writing all along. Your project should be interesting, compelling, and complex enough that you have a motive to contribute to and propel the existing conversation. Nevertheless, your project should also be narrow enough in scope to allow you to focus your attention and demonstrate your depth of analysis. Your object source can (and probably should) be as small and discrete as the one you chose to write about in past progressions.
As with P1 and P2, strong research essays guide readers through a scholarly problem and its reconciliation. They demonstrate:
Strong ethos by showing the writer’s mastery over the conversation. Essays that do this will select not merely a quantity or variety of sources but the key sources that have influenced the conversation about this object source and scholarly problem. They will also do justice to their sources by properly and ethically incorporating them into their project.
Strong logos by educating readers on the conversation surrounding the object source and scholarly problem in a way that looks beneath the surface and elucidates nuanced analysis. They will display sustained engagement with a modest number of sources and warrant connections between them. I am far more interested in how you are using your sources (as well as the quality and diversity of those sources) than how many you find.
Strong pathos by connecting with readers to the extent that they identify with the issue at hand and feel they have an intellectual or personal stake in it.
Strong nomos by demonstrating the writer’s belonging to a research discourse community. They will follow MLA style, including proper citation, and acknowledge the material labor of those (e.g., research librarians, writing consultants, classmates, friends, or family) who provided feedback and assistance. N.B. The nomos of a writer’s research community will inform their ethos, logos, and pathos.
How will I develop my project?
We will continue to learn strategies for practicing radical revision by completing multiple in-class activities, homework exercises, and drafts before submitting the final draft. To meet the more complex goals of this progression, you will learn new radical revision strategies. But don’t forget about the revision strategies you learned in past progressions. Build on what you know.
You will also continue to learn more strategies for practicing descriptive feedback. As with past progressions, we will conference on your formal draft. But unlike past progressions, these conferences will be individual one-on-one conferences with me. My feedback on your formal draft will show you how one reader experiences your project. Thus, I highly recommend also seeking descriptive feedback outside of class from one or more of the following:
one of your classmates
a writing consultant at The Writing Center
a research librarian
As with past progressions, your classmates, writing consultants, research librarians will gear their descriptive feedback to where you are in the process. Likewise, I will calibrate my feedback to where you are in the progression. The aim of my feedback is not to tell you how to produce a perfect paper; that would overwhelm both of us. Instead my goal is to help you move from wherever you are to one step further. So that you can guide your own development as a writer, you will often be asked to include a note to me and your classmates at the beginning of a draft, identifying one or two specific issues on which you would like feedback. You will write these notes in your project docs.
Who is my intended audience?
Your default audience is the UW community. Don’t assume that your audience is familiar with your object of analysis or has read the other sources you are writing with. You will have to do some summary of each source’s project in order to introduce your reader to it. If you want to articulate a different rhetorical situation and audience for your research essay, please consult with me first.
What does this have to do with the rest of my college education?
Many times in college, you will be asked to research a particular issue and then communicate the fruits of that research to a set of interested readers. Such projects require a tremendous amount of thought, time, creativity, and independence. The research progression is your opportunity to pursue a sustained research project of your own design. Research enables you to pursue the scholarly problems you raise with greater depth and specificity, as well as situate your project in the current conversation. It represents your opportunity to do what scholars do, i.e., join an existing conversation, practice rhetorology, identify an interesting problem, and create a project that will let you say something exigent about that problem. In other words, you get to advance a conversation.
How will my project be graded?
Building on the goals from Progression One and Progression Two, a successful research essay will:
Generate a scholarly problem by selecting and analyzing an object of analysis within the context of an existing conversation
Research the existing conversation by finding and selecting sources to serve as context, critical, and/or theory sources
Address that problem and contribute to the conversation by developing a project
Approach that project by adopting and adapting method source(s)
Realize the project by making at a claim about your object of analysis
Support that claim with evidence
Generate that evidence by analyzing your selected object, critical, and theory sources
If using theory source(s), warrant the conversation between your object of analysis and theory source(s), demonstrating how that conversation advances your project
Do justice to sources by properly and ethically incorporating them into your project
Articulate the exigence (i.e., importance) of your project
Guide readers through your project by crafting reader-based structure and reader-based prose
Demonstrate genre awareness by crafting a persona and structure that fits your project
Demonstrate your belonging to a research community by following MLA style and acknowledging the material labor of those who provided feedback and assistance
Your project will be graded both qualitatively and quantitatively. Qualitatively, your project will be evaluated on how interesting and important it is. Quantitatively, your project will be evaluated on your development as a writer. You will demonstrate that development by making a good faith effort in completing all assigned exercises, drafts, conferences, and class activities in your project doc.
Why is this project necessary in life?
The rise of disinformation and dogmatism. The invention of new information technologies. The discovery of new worlds and new sciences. The essay as a genre came into being during a time much like our own. Just as the writing of essays proliferated during the late Renaissance and Enlightenment, “essay writing flourishes in our contemporary contentious, polyphonic culture,” according to essayist Susan Sontag. The essay as a genre gives us tools for navigating our brave, new world. Writing essays helps us make sense of the steady stream of information and understand one another in this cacophonous, polyphonic democracy.
