ANNOUNCEMENTS and ATTENDANCE Talk about late papers/comment sheets - Book review is worth 14 pts, and final essay is worth 35. There will be one point for every 6-hour period that they (or a draft, or comment sheets) are late. SI essay is worth 14 points; I will deduct 1 point for being late - period (1/2 point for the peer review) Due Dates: Book Review Drafts: Monday, November 29, 2010 – 23:59 Book Review Comment Sheets: Tuesday, November 30, 2010 – 23:59 Final Book Review: Monday, December 6, 23:59 Final Essay Draft (for culture students): Wednesday, December 8, 23:59 Final Essay Draft (everyone else): Monday, December 13, 23:59 Final Essay Comment Sheet: Monday, December 14, 23:59 Final Essay – January 31, 2011 – 23:59 If you want me to read another draft, it must be delivered by January 24, 2011. *IMPORTANT NOTE: Students sitting for the State Master’s Exam on January 28, 2011 MUST submit their essays by January 17, 2011. REFERENCES – I will mark down half point for every incorrect reference from now on. - Any questions before we start? 1) Assignment – Book/Article Review Choosing a book or article – go around the room and see what people have chosen. Suggest that you can review Alexander’s book as a book using just chapters we have read – 1, 4, 6 and 8. Since I cannot possibly know what you are reading, you will be graded on the form and the style of the essay and a bit more strictly on the English. And on the references. How it works – the journals have books to review or you can suggest one. It counts as a publication, but not as much as an article. Look at other reviews of books in similar fields or by the same author. For example, you can find plenty of reviews of Jeff’s books right now – but know that I will be looking that there has been no “borrowing.” J How to read: sit with paper and pen. Trust me you will never find that perfect quote you want to use again! Some questions to keep in mind as you are reading: 1. What is the book’s argument? 2. Does the book do what it says it is going to do? 3. Is the book a contribution to the field or discipline? 4. Does the book relate to a current debate or trend in the field and if so, how? 5. What is the theoretical lineage or school of thought out of which the book rises? 6. Is the book well-written? 7. What are the books terms and are they defined? 8. How accurate is the information (e.g., the footnotes, bibliography, dates)? 9. Are the illustrations helpful? If there are no illustrations, should there have been? 10. Who would benefit from reading this book? 11. How does the book compare to other books in the field? 12. If it is a textbook, what courses can it be used in and how clear is the book’s structure and examples? It can be worthwhile to do an on-line search to get a sense for the author’s history, other books, university appointments, graduate advisor, and so on. This can provide you with useful context. The article by Belcher that I had you read talks about book reviews being 600-1200 words. I would like this one to be 800 words maximum. Classic book review structure is as follows: 1. Title including complete bibliographic citation for the work (i.e., title in full, author, place, publisher, date of publication, edition statement, pages, special features [maps, color plates, etc.], price, and ISBN. 2. One paragraph identifying the thesis, and whether the author achieves the stated purpose of the book. 3. One or two paragraphs summarizing the book. 4. One paragraph on the book’s strengths. 5. One paragraph on the book’s weaknesses. 6. One paragraph on your assessment of the book’s strengths and weaknesses. Avoiding Five Common Pitfalls 1. Evaluate the text, don’t just summarize it. While a succinct restatement of the text’s points is important, part of writing a book review is making a judgment. Is the book a contribution to the field? Does it add to our knowledge? Should this book be read and by whom? One needn’t be negative to evaluate; for instance, explaining how a text relates to current debates in the field is a form of evaluation. 2. Do not cover everything in the book. In other words, don’t use the table of contents as a structuring principle for your review. Try to organize your review around the book’s argument or your argument about the book. 3. Judge the book by its intentions not yours. Don’t criticize the author for failing to write the book you think that he or she should have written. As John Updike puts it, “Do not imagine yourself the caretaker of any tradition, an enforcer of any party standards, a warrior in any ideological battle, a corrections officer of any kind.” 4. Likewise, don’t spend too much time focusing on gaps. Since a book is only 200 to 500 pages, it cannot possibly address the richness of any topic. For this reason, the most common criticism in any review is that the book doesn’t address some part of the topic. If the book purports to be about ethnicity and film and yet lacks a chapter on Latinos, by all means, mention it. Just don’t belabor the point. Another tic of reviewers is to focus too much on books the author did not cite. If you are using their bibliography just to display your own knowledge it will be obvious to the reader. Keep such criticisms brief. 5. Don’t use too many quotes from the book. It is best to paraphrase or use short telling quotes within sentences. SUMMARY – I should hope you know how to do this J ANALYSIS- going beyond what the author says and looking at the relationships – relationships between evidence and conclusions, between concepts in the text, and between the concepts in the work being analyzed and other texts. For example, asking what devices the author uses to convince the reader that her or she is correct? --logical reasoning (e.g., if then statement, analogy) --anecdote --appeal to authority --controlled study --rhetorical virtuosity EVALUATION - How well does the author answer his or her question and verify that answer? This is last; you can’t judge till you know what the author is doing. --Is the argument of the text clear? --Does the author make valid assumptions? --How well does the text use evidence? Is the evidence adequate to the conclusions? --Are the conclusions and implications supported by other works? --Is the craftsmanship of the writing sound? The Johnson text suggests a slight different way of looking at the structure of a book review: --Enticement --Examination --Elucidation --Evaluation It also refers to two types of book reviews – the reflective and the analytical – you are doing the former, whereas the latter involves looking at the reviews of others. ARTICLE CRITIQUES You should cover four areas: 1) Thesis 2) Methods 3) Evidence 4) Evaluation – Who will benefit from reading this article? What will the benefit be? How important and extensive is that benefit? What is your evaluation of the article? What suggestions do you have for repeating this study or one like it? Literature Reviews – * How much is known about this subject? * What is the best available information and why is it better than other information? * What research methods have been used successfully in the relevant studies * What are the possible sources of data for further investigation on this topic? * What important information is still unknown, in spite of previous research? * Of the methods used, which are the most effective for making new discoveries? Are new methods needed? * How can the concepts being researched be more precisely defined? The review tells us the following: --the best available information on the topic --What these studies conclude about the topic --The methodological strengths and weaknesses of these studies --what remains to be discovered --What appear to be the most effective methods for developing new information on the topic What you should do if the review is part of your paper is to place your study in the context of all these others and tell why it is necessary – what gap does it fill? What will it tell us that we don’t already know? How will it be similar and/or different? Annotated Bibliography – this would be really helpful as a way of taking notes, and every now and then you can get it published. As a teacher, it’s a good step to ask for while students are writing a research paper. 2) EXERCISE – FREE WRITING ON FINAL TOPIC – (10 MINUTES) 3) Turabian General Comments Taking notes – as C. Wright Mills says, First, they not only help you comprehend what you are reading, but also represent a “prod to reflection.” The second type of note helps you to “grasp the structure of the writer’s argument.” It’s a systematic re-statement. Refer to template on page 57. Tips from this chapter: --Take your notes analytically – write in the margins of books or photocopies --Record the relevant context of the note – helps avoid misstating and plagiarism. --Record keywords that will help you sort your notes --Record how you think the note is relevant to your argument --WRITE AS YOU READ!!! -- Think about if and when if might be useful to start over – reverse engineering – you now have the answer but need a new question. Re-sorting your notes by category can help MANAGE NORMAL MOMENTS OF PANIC – page 63 Assembling the Core of your Argument: Think about your reader’s point of view and the possible questions they might come up with. Readers raise two kinds of questions; 1) Pointing to problems inside your argument Read from pp 69. 2) Pointing to problems outside your argument Ditto Acknowledging and responding to potential arguments: Read from pages 70-71 Use warrants – Hand out and read example with all five parts of the argument – claim, warrant, reasons, evidence, acknowledgment of alternative point of view, response, claim restated. -What are you claiming? -What are your reasons? -What evidence supports your reasons? -But what about other points of view? -How are your reasons relevant to your claim? A) Converting a Storyboard into an Outline: Read from page 76. B) Four-Part Scheme for your Introduction: 1) Current Situation (what your readers now think or do) 2) Research questions (what your readers need to know but don’t) 3) Significance of the Questions (Your answer to SO WHAT?) 4) Answer (what your readers will now know) EXAMPLE FROM MY OWN WORK: People in the Unites States have always differentiated between the native-born and the foreign-born; however, these days there is a new way of thinking about people – as “illegal.” How does this discursive change happen in a small city where large numbers of immigrants have changed the demographic makeup in the past decade? By revealing the ways in which this process occurs in the small city of Danbury, we learn about the process of inclusion and exclusion in the civil sphere. Residents of Danbury use both moral and legal criteria to decide who “belongs” in their city (or in the United Sates at all) by drawing symbolic boundaries around three categories of people: Americans, immigrants or Aliens. C) Identify Key terms that unite your paper: for every major concept, identify a key term. My key terms are; moral and legal boundaries; structures of meaning; process of inclusion and exclusion; what immigrants deserve; faith infused meanings; virtual interaction rituals. D) Find the key terms Distinctive to Each Section E) Order your sections by ordering your reasons: read from page 81 F) Sketch in a brief introductions to each section and subsection G) Sketch in evidence and acknowledgements