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EMERGING CONTEMPORARY READINGS FOR

WRITERS

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EMERGING CONTEMPORARY READINGS FOR

WRITERS

FOURTH EDITION

BARCLAY BARRIOS

Florida Atlantic University

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For Bedford/St. Martin’s Vice President, Editorial, Macmillan Learning Humanities: Edwin Hill Executive Program Director for English: Leasa Burton Senior Program Manager: John E. Sullivan III Executive Marketing Manager: Joy Fisher Williams Director of Content Development: Jane Knetzger Executive Developmental Editor: Christina Gerogiannis Associate Content Project Manager: Matt Glazer Workflow Project Manager: Lisa McDowell Production Supervisor: Robert Cherry Photo Researcher: Kerri Wilson, Lumina Datamatics, Inc. Media Product Manager: Rand Thomas Manager of Publishing Services: Andrea Cava Editorial Assistant: Cari Goldfine Project Management: Lumina Datamatics, Inc. Composition: Lumina Datamatics, Inc. Text Permissions Researcher: Elaine Kosta, Lumina Datamatics, Inc. Photo Permissions Editor: Angela Boehler Permissions Manager: Kalina Ingham Design Director, Content Management: Diana Blume Cover Design: William Boardman Cover Image: Leonard Gertz / Getty Images

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Acknowledgments Text acknowledgments and copyrights appear at the back of the book on pages 483–484, which constitute an extension of the copyright page. Art acknowledgments and copyrights appear on the same page as the art selections they cover.

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PREFACE FOR INSTRUCTORS Emerging/Thinking One of the fundamental facts of teaching writing is that when students leave our classrooms, they go: They go to other classes, go to their jobs after school, go hang out with friends, go into their disciplines, go into their careers, go into the world, in so many ways go back to their increasingly busy lives. The challenge for us as instructors is to help students acquire the skills of critical reading, thinking, and writing that will allow them to succeed in these diverse contexts.

Emerging seeks to address this challenge. It offers sustained readings that present complex ideas in approachable language; it encourages critical thinking and writing skills by prompting students to make connections among readings; it draws from a broad cross section of themes and disciplines in order to present students with numerous points of entry and identification; and it introduces emerging problems — such as cultural polarization (in social, educational, and political dimensions), the impact of technology (from Twitter to brain science), race and social issues (such as privilege, microaggressions, and gender roles), and the dilemmas of ethics (ways to advocate change, for instance, and the relations between art and philanthropy) — that have not yet been solved and settled.

The readings are organized alphabetically to open up possibilities for connections. (Alternative tables of contents highlight disciplinary concerns and thematic clusters.) Because they consist of entire book chapters or complete articles, readings can stand on their own as

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originally intended. However, the readings in Emerging were chosen because they connect to each other in interesting and illuminating ways. The issues under discussion resonate across readings, genres, and disciplines, prompting students to think about each selection in multiple dimensions. These resonant connections are shown through “tags” indicating central concepts treated in the selections. Several tags for each piece are listed in the table of contents, in each headnote, and for each assignment sequence — highlighting concepts such as “community,” “globalism,” “identity,” “culture,” “social change” and “adolescence and adulthood.” Thus one can see at a glance the possibilities for thematic connections among the readings. Connections with other authors are also highlighted in the table of contents, in each headnote, and through the assignment sequences (included at the back of the book; see p. 463). The assignment sequences suggest a succession of readings that are linked conceptually so that one assignment sequence provides the structure for an entire semester. (Sequences are further explained on the next page.)

Emerging/Reading Because students ultimately enter diverse disciplines, the readings are drawn from across fields of knowledge located both inside and outside the academy. Political science, sociology, journalism, anthropology, economics, and art are some of the disciplines one might expect to find in such a collection, but Emerging also includes readings from photography, public health, psychology, philosophy, epigenetics, technology, and law. The author of each selection addresses his or her concerns to an audience outside the discipline — a useful model for students who eventually will need to communicate beyond the

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boundaries of their chosen fields. Many of the readings also represent cross-disciplinary work — a photographer thinking about economics, a musician thinking about education — since the walls between departments in academia are becoming increasingly permeable.

Yet despite this disciplinary grounding, the readings, though challenging, are accessible, written as they are with a general audience in mind. The readings thus demonstrate multiple ways in which complex ideas and issues can be presented in formal yet approachable language. The accessible nature of the essays also allows for many readings longer than those typically seen in first-year composition anthologies, because the level of writing makes them comprehensible to students. Yet even the briefer readings are substantive, providing numerous opportunities for nuanced arguments.

Of course, in addition to referencing emerging issues, the title of this collection refers also to the students in first-year composition courses, who themselves are emerging as readers, thinkers, and writers. By providing them with challenging texts along with the tools needed to decode, interpret, and deploy these texts, Emerging helps college readers develop the skills they will need as they move into working with the difficult theoretical texts presented in their choice of majors — and ultimately into their twenty-first-century careers.

Emerging/Writing One of the philosophical tenets supporting Emerging is that students need to be prepared to deal with emerging issues in their jobs and lives, and to do so, they not only must acquire information about these issues

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(since such information will continually change) but also must possess an ability to think critically in relation to them. The editorial apparatus in Emerging includes the following features that will help students develop the skills needed to become fluid, reflective, and critically self- aware writers:

► Part One: Emerging as a Critical Thinker and Academic Writer. Part One presents the key skills of academic success: the ability to read critically, argue, use evidence, research, and revise.

► Part Two: Readings. Each reading in Part Two includes a variety of questions to help students practice the skills of critical thinking, explained in detail on pages 2–3.

► Part Three: Assignment Sequences. In order to stress the iterative processes of thinking and writing, eight assignment sequences are included in the back of the book, each of which uses multiple selections to engage students’ thinking about a central theme, issue, or problem. Each sequence frames a project extensive enough for an entire semester’s work and can be easily adapted for individual classes, and two of the sequences prompt students to conduct outside research.

Additionally, the apparatus accompanying each reading provides substantial help for students while featuring innovative approaches to understanding the essays and their relation to the world outside the classroom:

► Headnotes. A headnote preceding each reading selection provides biographical information about the author and describes the context of the larger work from which the reading has been

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taken.

► Questions for Critical Reading. These questions direct students to central concepts, issues, and ideas from the essay in order to prompt a directed rereading of the text while providing a guide for the students’ own interpretive moves.

► Exploring Context. In order to leverage students’ existing literacies with digital technologies, these questions ask students to use the web and other electronic sources to contextualize each reading further, using sites and tools such as Facebook and Twitter.

► Questions for Connecting. Because thinking across essays provides particular circumstances for critical thinking, these opportunities for writing ask students to make connections between essays and to apply and synthesize authors’ ideas.

► Language Matters. The Language Matters questions are a unique feature of this reader. These questions address issues of grammar and writing through the context of the essays, presenting language not as a set of rules to be memorized but as a system of meaning-making that can also be used as a tool for analysis.

► Assignments for Writing. Each reading has Assignments for Writing questions that ask students to build on the work they’ve done in the other questions of the apparatus and create a piece of writing with a sustained argument supported by textual engagement.

What’s New New readings on a wider variety of topics. Fifteen selections are

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new, broadening the range of topics in Emerging. Authors of the readings include public intellectuals, many with familiar names. For instance, novelist Michael Chabon reflects on his son’s love of fashion and the universal search for community, a place where you belong. Essayist Leslie Jamison traces the complicated path to obtaining an elusive medical diagnosis in order to consider the limits of our compassion for another’s suffering. And journalist Adrien Chen explores the influence of social media on our beliefs — and makes a case for radical empathy.

An overarching theme explores the central question of our time: How can we get along? While the readings in the fourth edition span a variety of topics — and can be read and taught any number of ways — the through-line of this edition is one of the most urgent ethical and practical questions in America today: What do we do about polarization? Divergence of opinion is part of the problem; the larger part is an increasing refusal to even talk to others who are different in terms of their politics, culture, or social position. The lack of conversation stymies any solution and initiates a solipsistic cycle that only exacerbates the problem. In a diverse and connected world, we must find a way to get along. Instructors will find the materials and advice necessary to stage productive conversations across these social and political divides in order to encourage conversation, understanding, and empathy.

New multimodal assignments throughout the book offer instructors new options for students to write and compose in a variety of media.

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Four new or substantially revised assignment sequences provide a convenient way to structure selected readings into a coherent course. They ask four challenging questions to spark students’ interest and to guide them on a substantive academic project: How Do We Face the Challenge of Race?, What Does Ethical Conflict Look Like in a Globalized World?, How Can We Get Along?, and What Is the Role of Art in the World?

Acknowledgments This collection itself has been a long time emerging, and I would be remiss not to thank the many people who contributed their time, energy, feedback, and support throughout the course of this project.

I would first like to acknowledge past and current colleagues who have played a role in developing this text. Richard E. Miller and Kurt Spellmeyer, both of Rutgers University, through their mentorship and guidance laid the foundations for my approach to composition as reflected in this reader. My department chairs during my time here at Florida Atlantic University, Andrew Furman and Wenying Xu, provided reassurance and support as I balanced the work of this text and the work of serving as Director of Writing Programs. The members of the Writing Committee for Florida Atlantic University’s Department of English — Jeff Galin, Joanne Jasin, Jennifer Low, Julia Mason, Daniel Murtaugh, and Magdalena Ostas — generously allowed me to shape both this reader and the writing program. The dean’s office of the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters of Florida Atlantic University provided a Summer Teaching Development Award, which aided in the creation of the materials that form the core of the

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Instructor’s Manual.

For this fourth edition I’d like to thank as well Wendy Hinshaw, who took my place as Director of Writing Programs at Florida Atlantic University, and Janelle Blount, who serves as Associate Director of Writing Programs, both of whom enriched this project with input, suggestions for readings, and frequent conversations about the shape of this work. Thanks to Kathleen Moorhead, who has always been a committed and engaging colleague and who offered readings and assignments for this edition as well. Valerie Duff-Strautmann’s work on the Instructor’s Manual was invaluable; I thank her for coming on board with this project.

I continue to be grateful for the many reviewers who offered helpful suggestions for the first three editions of Emerging. Their valuable feedback continues to shape the book. I also wish to thank the reviewers who helped me plan the fourth edition: Bridgett Blaque, Truckee Meadows Community College; Carole Center, University of New England; Jonathan Ceniceroz, Mt. San Antonio College; Michael Cripps, University of New England; Joshua Dickinson, Jefferson Community College; Ana Douglass, Truckee Meadows Community College; Donita Grissom, University of Central Florida; Molly Guerriero, Casper College; Laura Headley, Monterey Peninsula College; Lisa Hibl, University of Southern Maine; Wendy Hinshaw, Florida Atlantic University; Michael Piotrowski, The University of Toledo; Danielle Santos, North Shore Community College; and Carlton Southworth, SUNY Jefferson Community College.

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I cannot say enough about the support I have received from Bedford/St. Martin’s. The enthusiasm of Edwin Hill, Leasa Burton, and John Sullivan for this project was always appreciated. My editor, Christina Gerogiannis, reassured me often, kept this project moving along, and came through more than once. Cari Goldfine, in her role as editorial assistant, really helped take some of the load off my plate. I am grateful to Kalina Ingham and Elaine Kosta for clearing text permissions and to Angela Boehler and Kerri Wilson for obtaining art permissions. Matt Glazer and Sumathy Kumaran, along with her colleagues at Lumina Datamatics, expertly guided the manuscript through production. I appreciate their help, as well as the work of marketing manager Joy Fisher Williams.

My thanks to Tom Edwards, who was there when this edition started, and to Tom Elliott, Trae Ellison, and Eric Bladon who offered me support as it drew to a close. I offer this edition in loving memory of my dear and dearly missed husband, Joseph Tocio, who passed away as the third edition was going to press.

—BJB

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CONTENTS PREFACE FOR INSTRUCTORS

Part 1 EMERGING AS A CRITICAL THINKER AND ACADEMIC WRITER

WHAT’S EMERGING?

READING CRITICALLY

THINKING CRITICALLY

MAKING AN ARGUMENT

USING SUPPORT

ABOUT RESEARCH

REVISING, EDITING, AND PROOFREADING

SAMPLE STUDENT PAPER

Part 2 THE READINGS

KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH

Making Conversation and The Primacy of Practice

A prominent philosopher argues, “In the wake of 9/11, there has been a lot of fretful discussion about the divide between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ What’s often taken for granted is a picture of a world in which conflicts arise, ultimately, from conflicts between values. This is what we take to be good; that is what they take to be good. That picture of the world has deep philosophical roots; it is thoughtful, well worked out, plausible. And, I think, wrong.”

► TAGS: collaboration, community, conversation, ethics, globalism, identity, judgment and decision making, politics,

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social change

► CONNECTIONS: Chen, DeGhett, Epstein, Gladwell, Jamison, Lukianoff and Haidt, Southan, Stillman, van Houtryve, Turkle, Watters, Yoshino

NAMIT ARORA

What Do We Deserve?

A writer and photographer examines three forms of economic systems — the libertarian, meritocratic, and egalitarian models — asking, “‘What do we deserve?’ In other words, for our learning, natural talents, and labor, what rewards and entitlements are just? How much of what we bring home is fair or unfair, and why?”

► TAGS: economics, ethics, social justice

► CONNECTIONS: Appiah, Chabon, Coates, Fukuyama, Gilbert, Gladwell, Henig, Watters

MICHAEL CHABON

My Son, the Prince of Fashion

A novelist reflects on his son’s love of fashion and the universal search for people who will understand you and share your passions, noting, “You are born into a family and those are your people, and they know you and they love you and if you are lucky they even, on occasion, manage to understand you. And that ought to be enough. But it is never enough.”

► TAGS: adolescence and adulthood, beauty, community, culture, gender, identity, relationships, sexuality

► CONNECTIONS: Appiah, Chen, Fukuyama, Gilbert, Gladwell, Henig, Provan

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ADRIAN CHEN

Unfollow

A journalist explores the influence of social media on belief. Documenting the experiences of Megan Phelps-Roper, a former prominent member of the Westboro Baptist Church, and the way social media challenged her relationship to the group, he writes, “It was easy for Phelps-Roper to write things on Twitter that made other people cringe. She had been taught the church’s vision of God’s truth since birth.”

► TAGS: adolescence and adulthood, censorship, community, conversation, empathy, identity, judgment and decision making, media, relationships, religion, social change, social media, tradition, war and conflict

► CONNECTIONS: Appiah, DeGhett, Gilbert, Klosterman, Konnikova, Turkle, Yoshino

TA-NEHISI COATES

From Between the World and Me

A writer reflects on his experiences growing up as a black American, critiquing the American education system: “Why, precisely, was I sitting in this classroom? The question was never answered. I was a curious boy, but the schools were not concerned with curiosity. They were concerned with compliance.”

► TAGS: adolescence and adulthood, civil rights, education, law and justice, race and ethnicity, religion

► CONNECTIONS: Appiah, Cohen, Das, Fukuyama, Gilbert, Holmes, Ma, Yang, Yoshino

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ANDREW COHEN

Race and the Opioid Epidemic

A legal analyst appraises the racial dimensions of the current United States opioid epidemic, asking, “Can we explain the disparate response to the ‘black’ heroin epidemic of the 1960s, in which its use and violent crime were commingled in the public consciousness, and the white heroin ‘epidemic’ today, in which its use is considered a disease to be treated or cured, without using race as part of our explanation?” The answer? No, we cannot.

► TAGS: ethics, health and medicine, law and justice, politics, race and ethnicity

► CONNECTIONS: Appiah, Coates, Das, Fukuyama, Holmes, Lukianoff and Haidt, Yang, Yoshino

KAVITA DAS

(Un)American, (Un)Cool

A writer considers the historical roots and inherent American- ness of the concept “cool,” as well as the lack of Asian Americans represented in that category. Discussing a National Portrait Gallery exhibit, she contends that “The underrepresentation of Asian Americans in the American Cool exhibit likely has less to do with the lack of iconic and transgressive Asian Americans who embody American Cool and more to do with the fact that the exhibit’s definition of American Cool is at odds with pervasive stereotypes of Asian Americans.”

► TAGS: art, community, culture, identity, photography and video, race and ethnicity

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► CONNECTIONS: Chabon, Coates, Cohen, DeGhett, Fukuyama, Holmes, Lukianoff and Haidt, Provan, Southan, van Houtryve, Watters, Yang, Yoshino

TORIE ROSE DEGHETT

The War Photo No One Would Publish

A journalist examines the decisions around a graphic war photo that no one would publish. She writes, “Some have argued that showing bloodshed and trauma repeatedly and sensationally can dull emotional understanding. But never showing these images in the first place guarantees that such an understanding will never develop.”

► TAGS: art, censorship, empathy, ethics, judgment and decision making, media, photography and video, politics, science and technology, trauma and violence, war and conflict

► CONNECTIONS: Appiah, Chen, Das, Fukuyama, Lukianoff and Haidt, Paumgarten, Provan, Singer, Southan, van Houtryve

HELEN EPSTEIN

AIDS, Inc.

A biologist and expert in public health examines a new approach to preventing AIDS: “LoveLife’s media campaign … was positive and cheerful, and resembled the bright, persuasive modern ad campaigns that many South African kids were very much attracted to.” It was a failure.

► TAGS: adolescence and adulthood, collaboration, community, conversation, culture, education, globalism, health and medicine, judgment and decision making, media,

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politics, sexuality, social change

► CONNECTIONS: Appiah, Chen, Cohen, Gilbert, Southan, Watters, Yoshino

FRANCIS FUKUYAMA

Human Dignity

A prominent political scientist says, “What the demand for equality of recognition implies is that when we strip all of a person’s contingent and accidental characteristics away, there remains some essential human quality underneath that is worthy of a certain minimal level of respect — call it Factor X.”

► TAGS: civil rights, empathy, ethics, genetics, identity, science and technology, social change

► CONNECTIONS: Appiah, Coates, Klosterman, Lukianoff and Haidt, Moalem, Singer, Stillman, Turkle, Watters, Yoshino

ROXANE GAY

Bad Feminist

An English professor and novelist questions what it takes to be a good feminist, deciding “I would rather be a bad feminist than no feminist at all.”

► TAGS: community, gender, identity, judgment and decision making, media, race and ethnicity

► CONNECTIONS: Appiah, Chabon, Fukuyama, Gilbert, Klosterman, Lukianoff and Haidt, Serano, von Busch

DANIEL GILBERT

Reporting Live from Tomorrow

An influential social psychologist asserts that “the production of

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wealth does not necessarily make individuals happy, but it does serve the needs of an economy, which serves the needs of a stable society, which serves as a network for the propagation of delusional beliefs about happiness and wealth.”

► TAGS: adolescence and adulthood, conversation, culture, empathy, judgment and decision making, psychology

► CONNECTIONS: Appiah, Chabon, Klosertman, Ma, Moalem, Serano, Stillman, Yang

MALCOLM GLADWELL

Small Change

A journalist probes the effects of social media on social activism and protest, claiming that social media campaigns are most successful when they ask little of participants. Differentiating between the strong and weak ties that bind us, he contends, “weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism.”

► TAGS: civil rights, Facebook, social change, strong tie, technology, Twitter, weak tie

► CONNECTIONS: Appiah, Chen, Epstein, Konnikova, Turkle, von Busch, Yoshino

ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG

What Is It about 20-Somethings?

A science journalist considers the appearance of “emerging adulthood,” answering the question, “21 grow up” by tracing the emergence of this new life stage.

► TAGS: adolescence and adulthood, economics, identity, psychology, science and technology, social change

► CONNECTIONS: Appiah, Chabon, Chen, Gilbert,

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Klosterman, Konnikova, Lukianoff and Haidt, Paumgarten, Singer, Turkle, Watters

ANNA HOLMES

Variety Show

A blogger and editor discusses the way the term diversity has lost meaning in corporate and cultural environments, noting that rather than engendering social change, the term “has become both euphemism and cliché, a convenient shorthand that gestures at inclusivity and representation without actually taking them seriously.”

► TAGS: civil rights, culture, identity, media, race and ethnicity, social change

► CONNECTIONS: Appiah, Coates, Cohen, Das, Gay, Gilbert, Lukianoff and Haidt, Watters, Yoshino

LESLIE JAMISON

Devil’s Bait

A novelist and essayist writes about attending a Morgellons conference, and the nature of belief. Investigating reality, our relationships with our own bodies, and how we relate to others, she concludes, “wanting to be different doesn’t make you so.”

► TAGS: community, empathy, health and medicine, identity, judgment and decision making, psychology

► CONNECTIONS: Appiah, Chabon, Epstein, Fukuyama, Gilbert, Stillman, Turkle

CHUCK KLOSTERMAN

Electric Funeral

A cultural critic and ethicist explores the nature of villainy in a

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digital age by looking at two controversial figures, Kim Dotcom and Julian Assange, both assisted by the inevitability of technology. “The future makes the rules,” he argues.

► TAGS: culture, ethics, media, politics, science and technology, social change, social media

► CONNECTIONS: Appiah, Chen, Cohen, Gilbert, Konnikova, Lukianoff and Haidt, Paumgarten, Singer, Turkle, van Houtryve

MARIA KONNIKOVA

The Limits of Friendship

A science journalist answers questions about the limits of friendship in the digital age. It turns out there is a natural limit to how many people we can really know, a specific number known as the Dunbar Number. As we press up against that limit in social media we’re also changing the ways in which we relate to others. She asks, “So what happens if you’re raised from a young age to see virtual interactions as akin to physical ones?”

► TAGS: community, culture, identity, media, psychology, relationships, science and technology, social change, social media

► CONNECTIONS: Appiah, Chen, Epstein, Friedman, Gilbert, Klosterman, Pollan, Singer, Turkle

GREG LUKIANOFF AND JONATHAN HAIDT

The Coddling of the American Mind

An attorney and a social psychologist inspect the rising use of trigger warnings and the increase of speech restrictions on college campuses. Using the term vindictive protectiveness to

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describe the impulse to punish those who may, even accidentally, create discomfort for others, they argue the current focus on emotional well-being negatively affects student thought processes and “presumes an extraordinary fragility of the collegiate psyche.”

► TAGS: adolescence and adulthood, censorship, civil rights, education, identity, law and justice, psychology, race and ethnicity, social change, trauma and violence

► CONNECTIONS: Appiah, Chen, Coates, DeGhett, Fukuyama, Gay, Gilbert, Holmes, Klosterman, Ma, Moalem, Serano, Singer, Stillman, Turkle, von Busch, Yoshino

YO-YO MA

Necessary Edges: Arts, Empathy, and Education

An internationally famous cellist argues that the arts are essential to education, adding a necessary element of empathy. He warns us that “what is dangerous is when the center ignores the edges or the edges ignore the center — art for art’s sake or science without a humanist and societal perspective. Then we are headed for doomsday without knowing it.”

► TAGS: art, collaboration, culture, education, empathy, globalism, science and technology

► CONNECTIONS: Appiah, DeGhett, Fukuyama, Klosterman, Provan, Southan, Turkle, von Busch, Yang

ROBINSON MEYER

Is It OK to Enjoy the Warm Winters of Climate Change?

An associate editor for The Atlantic considers the individual pleasure felt in response to warmer winters. He voices the

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unease that surrounds this enjoyment, asking, “How much should we really be enjoying weather so unseasonal, so suggestive of the consequences of climate change, when we’re doing so little to combat the larger phenomenon?”

► TAGS: ethics, globalism, judgment and decision making, science and technology, social change

► CONNECTIONS: Appiah, Epstein, Gilbert, Gladwell, Pollan

SHARON MOALEM

Changing Our Genes: How Trauma, Bullying, and Royal Jelly Alter Our Genetic Destiny

A doctor explains the mechanisms of epigenetics, in which environmental conditions and lifestyle choices change our genetic code. Epigenetics explains how a regular bee becomes a queen; it also explains how bullying can have consequences across generations. He cautions, “the choices you make can result in a big difference in this generation, the next one, and possibly everyone else down the line.”

► TAGS: adolescence and adulthood, food and agriculture, genetics, health and medicine, science and technology, trauma and violence

► CONNECTIONS: Appiah, Chabon, Chen, DeGhett, Fukuyama, Lukianoff and Haidt, Pollan, Serano, Stillman, Watters

NICK PAUMGARTEN

We Are a Camera

A journalist documents the rise of the GoPro, a point-of-view

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video camera. Popular among skiers, surfers, and increasingly just everyday folk, these cameras allow us to record our lives. But how are these cameras changing the nature of experience? “Now the purpose of the trip or trick is the record of it. Life is footage.”

► TAGS: art, culture, economics, empathy, media, photography and video, relationships

► CONNECTIONS: DeGhett, Klosterman, Ma, Provan, Singer, Southan, Watters

MICHAEL POLLAN

The Animals: Practicing Complexity

An award-winning professor and journalist explains, “‘Efficiency’ is the term usually invoked to defend large-scale industrial farms, and it usually refers to the economies of scale that can be achieved by the application of technology and standardization. Yet Joel Salatin’s farm makes the case for a very different sort of efficiency — the one found in natural systems, with their coevolutionary relationships and reciprocal loops.”

► TAGS: collaboration, economics, education, food and agriculture

► CONNECTIONS: Appiah, Fukuyama, Gilbert, Ma, Moalem, Wallace

ALEXANDER PROVAN

The Future of Originals

A magazine editor examines our conception and valuation of the concept “original” in a time when technology makes

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copying easier and copies of a quality nearly indistinguishable from the original. What is the role of museums in a world where digital images and 3D reproductions proliferate? Concerned by the relationship between representation and technology, he writes, “I’m unsure what, if anything, ‘original’ and ‘copy’ mean, given that everything so frequently and promiscuously manifests as objects, images, texts, series of zeros and ones.”

► TAGS: art, culture, ethics, science and technology, tradition

► CONNECTIONS: Das, DeGhett, Klosterman, Ma, Paumgarten, Singer, Southan, van Houtryve, von Busch

JULIA SERANO

Why Nice Guys Finish Last

A biochemist and transgender activist reveals the ways in which our culture’s treatment of men contributes to rape culture. The idea that “nice guys finish last” subtly encourages men into offensive behavior. We need to dismantle that system of thinking in order to combat rape culture. She writes that “we won’t get to where we want to be until the men-as- predator/sexual aggressor assumption no longer dominates our thinking. It’s difficult to imagine getting there from here,” she admits, “but we’re going to have to try.”

► TAGS: culture, empathy, gender, identity, media, race and ethnicity, relationships, sexuality, social change, trauma and violence

► CONNECTIONS: Appiah, Chabon, Coates, Epstein, Gay, Gilbert, von Busch, Yang, Yoshino

PETER SINGER

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Visible Man: Ethics in a World without Secrets

An ethicist examines issues of privacy in the connected digital world: “The modern Panopticon is not a physical building, and it doesn’t require the threat of an inspector’s presence to be effective.”

► TAGS: censorship, ethics, law and justice, photography and video, politics, science and technology, social change

► CONNECTIONS: Appiah, Chen, Gilbert, Klosterman, Konnikova, Paumgarten, Turkle, van Houtryve, von Busch, Watters, Yoshino

RHYS SOUTHAN

Is Art a Waste of Time?

A freelance writer and blogger evaluates the relevance of art within the philosophical framework of Effective Altruism, whose goal is “doing as much good as you possibly can with your life.” He asks, “if we were to consult our magic utilitarian consequences calculator, how often would it tell us to bother making art at all?”

► TAGS: art, community, economics, empathy, ethics, globalism, judgment and decision making, social change

► CONNECTIONS: Appiah, Das, DeGhett, Epstein, Klosterman, Ma, Paumgarten, Pollan, Provan, von Busch, Wallace, Watters

SARAH STILLMAN

Hiroshima and the Inheritance of Trauma

A journalist unearths the trans-generational effects of trauma on families and communities by looking at survivors of the atomic

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bombing of Hiroshima. She observes, “A wide range of studies have examined evidence of ‘secondary trauma’ in the children of Holocaust survivors, the wives of Vietnam veterans, and, more informally, in the families of U.S. veterans who’ve faced PTSD after deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.”

► TAGS: genetics, health and medicine, psychology, trauma and violence, war and conflict

► CONNECTIONS: Appiah, Coates, DeGhett, Epstein, Gilbert, Lukianoff and Haidt, Moalem, Paumgarten, Serano, Turkle

SHERRY TURKLE

The Empathy Diaries

A sociologist specializing in science and technology investigates the effects of social media and personal devices on the development of empathy, arguing that technology inhibits conversation and personal development. “But these days we find ways around conversation. We hide from each other even as we’re constantly connected to each other. For on our screens, we are tempted to present ourselves as we would like to be.” The solution? Put down the phone, and have a conversation.

► TAGS: adolescence and adulthood, conversation, empathy, relationships, science and technology, social media

► CONNECTIONS: Appiah, Chen, Epstein, Gilbert, Jamison, Klosterman, Konnikova, Ma, Mann, Paumgarten, Provan, Singer, von Busch, Watters, Yoshino

TOMAS VAN HOUTRYVE

From the Eyes of a Drone

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A photographer explores the weaponization of drones in words and images. “The trend of drones used by government security forces is only likely to increase, and some companies such as Amazon are lobbying to put drones to commercial use too.” How do we reconcile the artistic and recreational potential of drones with their deployment in war?

► TAGS: ethics, photography and video, science and technology, war and conflict

► CONNECTIONS: Das, DeGhett, Klosterman, Paumgarten, Provan, Singer, Southan, Stillman

OTTO VON BUSCH

Crafting Resistance

A professor of integrated design argues for the connection between crafts and activism, examining how crafts can resist consumer culture and the underlying power structures of society: “Fashion may be an identity struggle between belonging and independence, but it is a struggle manifested as part of our social skin, and it is often made from materials open to our intervention.”

► TAGS: art, beauty, civil rights, collaboration, community, culture, economics, globalism, social change, tradition

► CONNECTIONS: Appiah, Chabon, Ma, Provan, Southan, Turkle, Yoshino

DAVID FOSTER WALLACE

Consider the Lobster

A famed novelist and essayist ponders the moral complexities of enjoying the Maine Lobster Festival: “And it takes a lot of

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intellectual gymnastics and behaviorist hairsplitting not to see struggling, thrashing, and lid-clattering as just such pain- behavior.”

► TAGS: empathy, ethics, food and agriculture, judgment and decision making

► CONNECTIONS: Appiah, Fukuyama, Ma, Moalem, Pollan, Watters

ETHAN WATTERS

Being WEIRD: How Culture Shapes the Mind

A journalist examines the work of an anthropologist who argues that much of the work done in the social sciences erroneously assumes that American minds represent certain universals. What happens when researchers use Americans as models? “Given the data, they concluded that social scientists could not possibly have picked a worse population from which to draw broad generalizations. Researchers had been doing the equivalent of studying penguins while believing that they were learning insights applicable to all birds.”

► TAGS: community, culture, economics, education, globalism, psychology

► CONNECTIONS: Appiah, Das, Epstein, Fukuyama, Gilbert, Holmes, Konnikova, Lukianoff and Haidt, Ma, Serano, Southan, Turkle, von Busch, Wallace

WESLEY YANG

Paper Tigers

A contributing editor to New York magazine looks at Asian culture and its effects on Asian American self-esteem and

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success. “It is a part of the bitter undercurrent of Asian- American life that so many Asian graduates of elite universities find that meritocracy as they have understood it comes to an abrupt end after graduation.”

► TAGS: adolescence and adulthood, civil rights, community, culture, economics, education, identity, race and ethnicity

► CONNECTIONS: Appiah, Das, Gilbert, Holmes, Ma, Watters, Yoshino

KENJI YOSHINO

Preface and The New Civil Rights

A professor of constitutional law argues, “The reason racial minorities are pressured to ‘act white’ is because of white supremacy. The reason women are told to downplay their child- care responsibilities in the workplace is because of patriarchy. And the reason gays are asked not to ‘flaunt’ is because of homophobia. So long as such covering demands persist, American civil rights will not have completed its work.”

► TAGS: civil rights, community, conversation, identity, law and justice, politics, race and ethnicity, social change

► CONNECTIONS: Appiah, Chabon, Chen, Coates, Cohen, Das, Epstein, Fukuyama, Holmes, Lukianoff and Haidt, Serano, Southan, Watters, von Busch, Yang

Part 3 ASSIGNMENT SEQUENCES

SEQUENCE 1

How Is Technology Changing Us?

MARIA KONNIKOVA, The Limits of Friendship

SHERRY TURKLE, The Empathy Diaries

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NICK PAUMGARTEN, We Are a Camera

ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG, What Is It about 20- Somethings?

CHUCK KLOSTERMAN, Electric Funeral

PETER SINGER, Visible Man: Ethics in a World without Secrets

Assignments

1. KONNIKOVA

2. KONNIKOVA AND TURKLE OR KONNIKOVA AND PAUMGARTEN

3. KONNIKOVA, TURKLE, AND HENIG

4. KLOSTERMAN AND ONE OTHER OR SINGER AND ONE OTHER

We tend to think of technology as a neutral tool for connection, but as the readings in this sequence make clear, technology such as social media influences our growth, development, and the ways in which we connect to others. These assignments examine the impact of technology not only on our world but also, more profoundly, on what it means to be human.

► TAGS: community, conversation, culture, empathy, ethics, identity, media, photography and video, psychology, relationships, science and technology, social media

SEQUENCE 2

How Do We Face the Challenge of Race?

ANNA HOLMES, Variety Show

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TA-NEHISI COATES, From Between the World and Me

ANDREW COHEN, Race and the Opioid Epidemic

GREG LUKIANOFF AND JONATHAN HAIDT, The Coddling of the American Mind

KENJI YOSHINO, Preface and The New Civil Rights

ETHAN WATTERS, Being WEIRD: How Culture Shapes the Mind

WESLEY YANG, Paper Tigers

Assignments

1. HOLMES

2. HOLMES AND COATES OR COHEN

3. LUKIANOFF AND HAIDT, HOLMES, AND COATES OR YOSHINO, HOLMES, AND COHEN

4. WATTERS AND ONE OTHER OR YANG AND ONE OTHER

Race remains a contentious issue even after decades of work toward civil rights and despite the reality of a diverse and deeply interconnected world. Notwithstanding any progress made in legal and political arenas, race continues to have fractious social and cultural implications. This sequence of assignments considers the factors that cause race to persist in order to foster conversations on why racial categories continue to have such critical relevance to our world.

► TAGS: civil rights, community, culture, diversity, education, empathy, globalism, identity, psychology, race and ethnicity, social change, tradition

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SEQUENCE 3

How Does Gender Shape Us, and How Do We Shape Gender?

JULIA SERANO, Why Nice Guys Finish Last

ROXANE GAY, Bad Feminist

MICHAEL CHABON, My Son, the Prince of Fashion

MALCOLM GLADWELL, Small Change

DANIEL GILBERT, Reporting Live from Tomorrow

Assignments

1. SERANO

2. SERANO AND GAY

3. CHABON, SERANO, AND GAY

4. GLADWELL AND ONE OTHER OR GILBERT AND ONE OTHER

Gender is a fundamental category of identity that can be simultaneously enabling and disabling to our growth as human beings. But although gender works to determine who we are and who we can be, we also have the ability to change the meaning of gender for ourselves and our world. These assignments explore the consequences of our current system of gender and the ways in which we can work to alter the meaning, function, and relevance of gender.

► TAGS: adolescence and adulthood, community, culture, gender, identity, judgment and decision making, psychology, relationships, sexuality, social change, tradition

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SEQUENCE 4

What Does Ethical Conflict Look Like in a Globalized World?

SARAH STILLMAN, Hiroshima and the Inheritance of Trauma

TORIE ROSE DEGHETT, The War Photo No One Would Publish

TOMAS VAN HOUTRYVE, From the Eyes of a Drone

KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH, Making Conversation and The Primacy of Practice

DAVID FOSTER WALLACE, Consider the Lobster

Assignments

1. STILLMAN

2. STILLMAN AND DEGHETT

3. STILLMAN, DEGHETT, AND VAN HOUTRYVE

4. APPIAH AND ONE OTHER OR WALLACE AND ONE OTHER

Living in a globalized world doesn’t mean we all have to get along; it does mean, however, that we must learn how to mediate cultural differences in order to solve the problems we face in common with others. War, conflict, and terrorism are the alternatives. This sequence of assignments examines an array of issues related to peace and conflict. The essays and assignments suggest tools and concepts needed to advocate for ethical solutions to conflict in a globalized world.

► TAGS: censorship, community, culture, empathy,

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ethics, globalism, law and justice, media, photography and video, politics, trauma and violence, war and conflict

SEQUENCE 5

How Can You Make a Difference in the World?

MALCOLM GLADWELL, Small Change

RHYS SOUTHAN, Is Art a Waste of Time?

KENJI YOSHINO, Preface and The New Civil Rights

NAMIT ARORA, What Do We Deserve?

HELEN EPSTEIN, AIDS, Inc.

ROBINSON MEYER, Is It OK to Enjoy the Warm Winters of Climate Change?

Assignments

1. GLADWELL

2. GLADWELL AND SOUTHAN

3. GLADWELL, SOUTHAN, AND YOSHINO OR GLADWELL, SOUTHAN, AND ARORA

4. EPSTEIN AND ONE OTHER OR MEYER AND ONE OTHER

Few of us are completely happy with the world around us, but each of us can work toward the world we want to see. Advocating for change is a fundamental ability we can choose to exercise. The readings in this sequence offer strategies and tools for creating small- and large- scale social change.

► TAGS: art, civil rights, collaboration, community,

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conversation, culture, economics, empathy, ethics, identity, judgment and decision making, law and justice, politics, psychology, race and ethnicity, relationships, social change, tradition

SEQUENCE 6

What Should Be the Goal of an Education?

YO-YO MA, Necessary Edges: Arts, Empathy, and Education

MICHAEL POLLAN, The Animals: Practicing Complexity

TA-NEHISI COATES, From Between the World and Me

WESLEY YANG, Paper Tigers

DANIEL GILBERT, Reporting Live from Tomorrow

GREG LUKIANOFF AND JONATHAN HAIDT, The Coddling of the American Mind

Assignments

1. MA

2. MA AND POLLAN

3. MA, POLLAN, AND COATES OR YANG

4. LUKIANOFF AND HAIDT AND ONE OTHER OR GILBERT AND ONE OTHER

Education is a political act, since the choice of what is taught, studied, and learned encodes a set of values and a particular way of looking at the world. As students, you might have a particular investment in the ends of education and, certainly, you have ideas about the goals for your own education. These assignments explore

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education as it exists today and as it may take shape in the future.

► TAGS: adolescence and adulthood, art, community, culture, education, empathy, identity, psychology, race and ethnicity, relationships, social change, tradition

SEQUENCE 7

How Can We Get Along?

FRANCIS FUKUYAMA, Human Dignity

SHARON MOALEM, Changing Our Genes: How Trauma, Bullying, and Royal Jelly Alter Our Genetic Destiny

LESLIE JAMISON, Devil’s Bait

ADRIAN CHEN, Unfollow

SHERRY TURKLE, The Empathy Diaries

Assignments

1. FUKUYAMA

2. FUKUYAMA AND MOALEM OR FUKUYAMA AND JAMISON

3. FUKUYAMA, MOALEM, AND CHEN OR TURKLE

4. RESEARCH PROJECT

Polarization is an increasing problem. People aren’t simply disagreeing with each other; they’re refusing to listen as well. This lack of communication often leads to conflict and only exacerbates issues of polarization. The readings in this sequence of assignments explore what happens when we don’t get along while offering tools of

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empathy and understanding that each of us can use to resolve this problem.

► TAGS: adolescence and adulthood, community, conversation, culture, empathy, ethics, genetics, identity, judgment and decision making, psychology, relationships, social change, social media, trauma and violence

SEQUENCE 8

What Is the Role of Art in the World?

RHYS SOUTHAN, Is Art a Waste of Time?

TORIE ROSE DEGHETT, The War Photo No One Would Publish

TOMAS VAN HOUTRYVE, From the Eyes of a Drone

KAVITA DAS, (Un)American, (Un)Cool

ALEXANDER PROVAN, The Future of Originals

OTTO VON BUSCH, Crafting Resistance

Assignments

1. SOUTHAN

2. SOUTHAN AND DEGHETT, VAN HOUTRYVE, OR DAS

3. PROVAN, SOUTHAN, AND DEGHETT, VAN HOUTRYVE, OR DAS OR VON BUSCH, SOUTHAN, AND DEGHETT, VAN HOUTRYVE, OR DAS

4. RESEARCH PROJECT

We may think of making art or other creative activities as somehow set apart from the “real world.” Aesthetic

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activities might appear to be about pleasure and recreation. These readings instead ask you to consider the ways in which the arts can change the world and reveal the deep connections between creative activity and politics, culture, and social change.

► TAGS: art, community, culture, economics, ethics, politics, science and technology, social change, tradition, trauma and violence, war and conflict

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ALTERNATIVE CONTENTS BY DISCIPLINE

ARTS

MICHAEL CHABON, My Son, the Prince of Fashion

KAVITA DAS, (Un)American, (Un)Cool

TORIE ROSE DEGHETT, The War Photo No One Would Publish

YO-YO MA, Necessary Edges: Arts, Empathy, and Education

NICK PAUMGARTEN, We Are a Camera

ALEXANDER PROVAN, The Future of Originals

RHYS SOUTHAN, Is Art a Waste of Time?

TOMAS VAN HOUTRYVE, From the Eyes of a Drone

OTTO VON BUSCH, Crafting Resistance

BUSINESS

NAMIT ARORA, What Do We Deserve?

HELEN EPSTEIN, AIDS, Inc.

ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG, What Is It about 20-Somethings?

NICK PAUMGARTEN, We Are a Camera

MICHAEL POLLAN, The Animals: Practicing Complexity

OTTO VON BUSCH, Crafting Resistance

ETHAN WATTERS, Being WEIRD: How Culture Shapes the Mind

WESLEY YANG, Paper Tigers

EDUCATION

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TA-NEHISI COATES, From Between the World and Me

HELEN EPSTEIN, AIDS, Inc.

GREG LUKIANOFF AND JONATHAN HAIDT, The Coddling of the American Mind

YO-YO MA, Necessary Edges: Arts, Empathy, and Education

MICHAEL POLLAN, The Animals: Practicing Complexity

WESLEY YANG, Paper Tigers

ENGINEERING, TECHNOLOGY, AND COMPUTER SCIENCE

ADRIAN CHEN, Unfollow

FRANCIS FUKUYAMA, Human Dignity

ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG, What Is It about 20-Somethings?

CHUCK KLOSTERMAN, Electric Funeral

MARIA KONNIKOVA, The Limits of Friendship

YO-YO MA, Necessary Edges: Arts, Empathy, and Education

ROBINSON MEYER, Is It OK to Enjoy the Warm Winters of Climate Change?

NICK PAUMGARTEN, We Are a Camera

ALEXANDER PROVAN, The Future of Originals

PETER SINGER, Visible Man: Ethics in a World without Secrets

SHERRY TURKLE, The Empathy Diaries

TOMAS VAN HOUTRYVE, From the Eyes of a Drone

HEALTH, MEDICINE, AND NURSING

ANDREW COHEN, Race and the Opioid Epidemic

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HELEN EPSTEIN, AIDS, Inc.

LESLIE JAMISON, Devil’s Bait

SHARON MOALEM, Changing Our Genes: How Trauma, Bullying, and Royal Jelly Alter Our Genetic Destiny

SARAH STILLMAN, Hiroshima and the Inheritance of Trauma

HUMANITIES

KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH, Making Conversation and The Primacy of Practice

NAMIT ARORA, What Do We Deserve?

ADRIAN CHEN, Unfollow

TA-NEHISI COATES, From Between the World and Me

KAVITA DAS, (Un)American, (Un)Cool

HELEN EPSTEIN, AIDS, Inc.

FRANCIS FUKUYAMA, Human Dignity

ROXANE GAY, Bad Feminist

DANIEL GILBERT, Reporting Live from Tomorrow

MALCOLM GLADWELL, Small Change

ANNA HOLMES, Variety Show

LESLIE JAMISON, Devil’s Bait

CHUCK KLOSTERMAN, Electric Funeral

MARIA KONNIKOVA, The Limits of Friendship

GREG LUKIANOFF AND JONATHAN HAIDT, The Coddling of the American Mind

YO-YO MA, Necessary Edges: Arts, Empathy, and Education

SHARON MOALEM, Changing Our Genes: How Trauma,

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Bullying, and Royal Jelly Alter Our Genetic Destiny

ALEXANDER PROVAN, The Future of Originals

JULIA SERANO, Why Nice Guys Finish Last

PETER SINGER, Visible Man: Ethics in a World without Secrets

RHYS SOUTHAN, Is Art a Waste of Time?

SARAH STILLMAN, Hiroshima and the Inheritance of Trauma

SHERRY TURKLE, The Empathy Diaries

OTTO VON BUSCH, Crafting Resistance

DAVID FOSTER WALLACE, Consider the Lobster

WESLEY YANG, Paper Tigers

KENJI YOSHINO, Preface and The New Civil Rights

NATURAL SCIENCES

DANIEL GILBERT, Reporting Live from Tomorrow

ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG, What Is It about 20-Somethings?

MARIA KONNIKOVA, The Limits of Friendship

ROBINSON MEYER, Is It OK to Enjoy the Warm Winters of Climate Change?

SHARON MOALEM, Changing Our Genes: How Trauma, Bullying, and Royal Jelly Alter Our Genetic Destiny

NICK PAUMGARTEN, We Are a Camera

MICHAEL POLLAN, The Animals: Practicing Complexity

SARAH STILLMAN, Hiroshima and the Inheritance of Trauma

DAVID FOSTER WALLACE, Consider the Lobster

ETHAN WATTERS, Being WEIRD: How Culture Shapes the

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Mind

SOCIAL SCIENCES

NAMIT ARORA, What Do We Deserve?

ANDREW COHEN, Race and the Opioid Epidemic

TORIE ROSE DEGHETT, The War Photo No One Would Publish

HELEN EPSTEIN, AIDS, Inc.

FRANCIS FUKUYAMA, Human Dignity

DANIEL GILBERT, Reporting Live from Tomorrow

MALCOLM GLADWELL, Small Change

ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG, What Is It about 20-Somethings?

CHUCK KLOSTERMAN, Electric Funeral

MARIA KONNIKOVA, The Limits of Friendship

NICK PAUMGARTEN, We Are a Camera

JULIA SERANO, Why Nice Guys Finish Last

PETER SINGER, Visible Man: Ethics in a World without Secrets

SARAH STILLMAN, Hiroshima and the Inheritance of Trauma

ETHAN WATTERS, Being WEIRD: How Culture Shapes the Mind

WESLEY YANG, Paper Tigers

KENJI YOSHINO, Preface and The New Civil Rights

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THEMATIC CONTENTS AESTHETICS

MICHAEL CHABON, My Son, the Prince of Fashion

KAVITA DAS, (Un)American, (Un)Cool

TORIE ROSE DEGHETT, The War Photo No One Would Publish

HELEN EPSTEIN, AIDS, Inc.

YO-YO MA, Necessary Edges: Arts, Empathy, and Education

NICK PAUMGARTEN, We Are a Camera

ALEXANDER PROVAN, The Future of Originals

RHYS SOUTHAN, Is Art a Waste of Time?

TOMAS VAN HOUTRYVE, From the Eyes of a Drone

OTTO VON BUSCH, Crafting Resistance

CATEGORIZING PEOPLE

MICHAEL CHABON, My Son, the Prince of Fashion

TA-NEHISI COATES, From Between the World and Me

ANDREW COHEN, Race and the Opioid Epidemic

KAVITA DAS, (Un)American, (Un)Cool

HELEN EPSTEIN, AIDS, Inc.

ROXANE GAY, Bad Feminist

ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG, What Is It about 20-Somethings?

ANNA HOLMES, Variety Show

LESLIE JAMISON, Devil’s Bait

GREG LUKIANOFF AND JONATHAN HAIDT, The Coddling of the American Mind

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JULIA SERANO, Why Nice Guys Finish Last

WESLEY YANG, Paper Tigers

KENJI YOSHINO, Preface and The New Civil Rights

FEELING AND THINKING

KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH, Making Conversation and The Primacy of Practice

MICHAEL CHABON, My Son, the Prince of Fashion

ADRIAN CHEN, Unfollow

TA-NEHISI COATES, From Between the World and Me

TORIE ROSE DEGHETT, The War Photo No One Would Publish

HELEN EPSTEIN, AIDS, Inc.

FRANCIS FUKUYAMA, Human Dignity

ROXANE GAY, Bad Feminist

DANIEL GILBERT, Reporting Live from Tomorrow

MALCOLM GLADWELL, Small Change

ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG, What Is It about 20-Somethings?

LESLIE JAMISON, Devil’s Bait

MARIA KONNIKOVA, The Limits of Friendship

GREG LUKIANOFF AND JONATHAN HAIDT , The Coddling of the American Mind

YO-YO MA, Necessary Edges: Arts, Empathy, and Education

ROBINSON MEYER, Is It OK to Enjoy the Warm Winters of Climate Change?

NICK PAUMGARTEN, We Are a Camera

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JULIA SERANO, Why Nice Guys Finish Last

RHYS SOUTHAN, Is Art a Waste of Time?

SARAH STILLMAN, Hiroshima and the Inheritance of Trauma

SHERRY TURKLE, The Empathy Diaries

DAVID FOSTER WALLACE, Consider the Lobster

ETHAN WATTERS, Being WEIRD: How Culture Shapes the Mind

GETTING ALONG

KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH, Making Conversation and The Primacy of Practice

NAMIT ARORA, What Do We Deserve?

ADRIAN CHEN, Unfollow

TA-NEHISI COATES, From Between the World and Me

ANDREW COHEN, Race and the Opioid Epidemic

KAVITA DAS, (Un)American, (Un)Cool

HELEN EPSTEIN, AIDS, Inc.

ROXANE GAY, Bad Feminist

DANIEL GILBERT, Reporting Live from Tomorrow

MALCOLM GLADWELL, Small Change

ANNA HOLMES, Variety Show

LESLIE JAMISON, Devil’s Bait

MARIA KONNIKOVA, The Limits of Friendship

GREG LUKIANOFF AND JONATHAN HAIDT, The Coddling of the American Mind

YO-YO MA, Necessary Edges: Arts, Empathy, and Education

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MICHAEL POLLAN, The Animals: Practicing Complexity

JULIA SERANO, Why Nice Guys Finish Last

SHERRY TURKLE, The Empathy Diaries

KENJI YOSHINO, Preface and The New Civil Rights

GLOBAL PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH, Making Conversation and The Primacy of Practice

NAMIT ARORA, What Do We Deserve?

TORIE ROSE DEGHETT, The War Photo No One Would Publish

HELEN EPSTEIN, AIDS, Inc.

ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG, What Is It about 20-Somethings?

YO-YO MA, Necessary Edges: Arts, Empathy, and Education

ROBINSON MEYER, Is It OK to Enjoy the Warm Winters of Climate Change?

SHARON MOALEM, Changing Our Genes: How Trauma, Bullying, and Royal Jelly Alter Our Genetic Destiny

NICK PAUMGARTEN, We Are a Camera

MICHAEL POLLAN, The Animals: Practicing Complexity

RHYS SOUTHAN, Is Art a Waste of Time?

SARAH STILLMAN, Hiroshima and the Inheritance of Trauma

TOMAS VAN HOUTRYVE, From the Eyes of a Drone

OTTO VON BUSCH, Crafting Resistance

DAVID FOSTER WALLACE, Consider the Lobster

ETHAN WATTERS, Being WEIRD: How Culture Shapes the

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Mind

WESLEY YANG, Paper Tigers

GROWING UP

MICHAEL CHABON, My Son, the Prince of Fashion

ADRIAN CHEN, Unfollow

TA-NEHISI COATES, From Between the World and Me

HELEN EPSTEIN, AIDS, Inc.

DANIEL GILBERT, Reporting Live from Tomorrow

ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG, What Is It about 20-Somethings?

MARIA KONNIKOVA, The Limits of Friendship

GREG LUKIANOFF AND JONATHAN HAIDT, The Coddling of the American Mind

SHARON MOALEM, Changing Our Genes: How Trauma, Bullying, and Royal Jelly Alter Our Genetic Destiny

JULIA SERANO, Why Nice Guys Finish Last

SARAH STILLMAN, Hiroshima and the Inheritance of Trauma

SHERRY TURKLE, The Empathy Diaries

WESLEY YANG, Paper Tigers

ME AND WE

KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH, Making Conversation and The Primacy of Practice

MICHAEL CHABON, My Son, the Prince of Fashion

ADRIAN CHEN, Unfollow

KAVITA DAS, (Un)American, (Un)Cool

HELEN EPSTEIN, AIDS, Inc.

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FRANCIS FUKUYAMA, Human Dignity

ROXANE GAY, Bad Feminist

MALCOLM GLADWELL, Small Change

ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG, What Is It about 20-Somethings?

LESLIE JAMISON, Devil’s Bait

MARIA KONNIKOVA, The Limits of Friendship

JULIA SERANO, Why Nice Guys Finish Last

RHYS SOUTHAN, Is Art a Waste of Time?

SHERRY TURKLE, The Empathy Diaries

ETHAN WATTERS, Being WEIRD: How Culture Shapes the Mind

WESLEY YANG, Paper Tigers

KENJI YOSHINO, Preface and The New Civil Rights

MEDIA AND CULTURE

MICHAEL CHABON, My Son, the Prince of Fashion

ADRIAN CHEN, Unfollow

KAVITA DAS, (Un)American, (Un)Cool

TORIE ROSE DEGHETT, The War Photo No One Would Publish

HELEN EPSTEIN, AIDS, Inc.

ROXANE GAY, Bad Feminist

DANIEL GILBERT, Reporting Live from Tomorrow

CHUCK KLOSTERMAN, Electric Funeral

MARIA KONNIKOVA, The Limits of Friendship

YO-YO MA, Necessary Edges: Arts, Empathy, and Education

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NICK PAUMGARTEN, We Are a Camera

ALEXANDER PROVAN, The Future of Originals

JULIA SERANO, Why Nice Guys Finish Last

PETER SINGER, Visible Man: Ethics in a World without Secrets

RHYS SOUTHAN, Is Art a Waste of Time?

TOMAS VAN HOUTRYVE, From the Eyes of a Drone

ETHAN WATTERS, Being WEIRD: How Culture Shapes the Mind

WESLEY YANG, Paper Tigers

RIGHTS AND WRONGS

KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH, Making Conversation and The Primacy of Practice

NAMIT ARORA, What Do We Deserve?

ADRIAN CHEN, Unfollow

TA-NEHISI COATES, From Between the World and Me

ANDREW COHEN, Race and the Opioid Epidemic

TORIE ROSE DEGHETT, The War Photo No One Would Publish

HELEN EPSTEIN, AIDS, Inc.

FRANCIS FUKUYAMA, Human Dignity

MALCOLM GLADWELL, Small Change

ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG, What Is It about 20-Somethings?

ANNA HOLMES, Variety Show

CHUCK KLOSTERMAN, Electric Funeral

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MARIA KONNIKOVA, The Limits of Friendship

GREG LUKIANOFF AND JONATHAN HAIDT, The Coddling of the American Mind

SHARON MOALEM, Changing Our Genes: How Trauma, Bullying, and Royal Jelly Alter Our Genetic Destiny

JULIA SERANO, Why Nice Guys Finish Last

SARAH STILLMAN, Hiroshima and the Inheritance of Trauma

TOMAS VAN HOUTRYVE, From the Eyes of a Drone

OTTO VON BUSCHE, Crafting Resistance

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EMERGING CONTEMPORARY READINGS FOR

WRITERS

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Whenever we solve problems or make decisions, we use critical thinking because we gather, evaluate, and apply knowledge to the situation at hand.

Part One EMERGING AS A CRITICAL THINKER AND ACADEMIC WRITER

IN SOME CLASSES, such as biology, sociology, economics, or chemistry, what you learn and what you’re tested on is content — a knowledge of terms and concepts. In contrast, what you need to learn in a composition class is a process — an approach to reading and writing that you will practice with the essays in this book, in class discussions, and by responding to essay assignments. This class is not just about the readings in this book but also about what you can do with them. What you will do with them, of course, is write. And yet it’s not entirely accurate to say you’re here to learn how to write, either. After all, you already did a lot of writing in high school, and if you couldn’t write, you wouldn’t have gotten into college. But you will learn a particular kind of writing in this class, one that may be new to you: academic writing — joining a conversation by researching, weighing, and incorporating what others say into your own work in

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order to make a point of your own. You’ll use academic writing throughout your college career, and the skills you learn in this class will also help you throughout your life. That’s because academic writing involves critical thinking — the ability to evaluate, assess, apply, and generate ideas — an essential skill no matter what career you choose. Thriving in a career — any career — is never about how much you know but about what you can do with the knowledge you have. College will prepare you for your career by providing you with knowledge (your job here is part memorization), but college will also help you learn how to evaluate knowledge, how to apply it, and how to create it. These are the skills of critical thinking.

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What’s Emerging? The Readings College is also, of course, a time for change. You’re not just moving into your career — you’re moving into a new phase of your life. In this sense, you might think of yourself as an emerging thinker and writer, one who builds on existing skills and expands them in an academic context. In some ways, emerging is also very much the theme of the readings. Each was chosen to give you an opportunity to practice critical thinking through academic writing. But each one also concerns an emerging issue in the world today, something you might have already encountered but also something you will have to deal with as you move on in your life.

Take, for example, Kwame Anthony Appiah’s selections “Making Conversation” and “The Primacy of Practice,” taken from his best- selling book Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. Although Appiah is a noted philosopher, he’s also very skilled at writing to everyday readers like you and me. At the same time, his argument — about how to get along with others who are different from us — requires a lot of thinking. Comprehension is not so much the issue. Appiah lays out his argument logically and supports it with many kinds of evidence (as you will learn to do as well). But the ideas he proposes about cosmopolitanism, about the relationship between what we do and what we value, and about how practices change over time, will require you to think about the implications of his argument, and that kind of work is the start of critical thinking. Figuring out what’s in

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the text is challenging, but even more challenging is figuring out what’s not in the text: the examples that would challenge Appiah’s argument, or new areas where his ideas have value, or modifications of his argument based on your experience or on other things you have read. That’s critical thinking.

Other essays invite you to do critical thinking to unearth the ideas that drive the essay. For example, Michael Chabon’s “My Son, the Prince of Fashion” appears on the surface to be a simple narrative about a father taking his son to Paris Fashion Week. As a narrative it’s easy to follow and maybe even enjoyable to read. But it also works with several ideas about masculinity, sexuality, fashion’s relation to hip-hop culture, identity, and family. You just need to do a little critical thinking to find them. What follows will help you do that thinking.

The Support To support you, each of the readings comes with a set of tools to help you develop your skills as a critical reader, thinker, and writer:

Tags. If you look in the table of contents and at the end of each headnote, you’ll find that each reading comes with a number of tags. These tags give you a quick sense of the topics — such as gender or technology — covered in the reading.

Headnotes. The headnotes that appear before each reading provide context. In addition to finding out about the author, you’ll learn about the larger context of writing from which the reading is taken, so that you can have a sense of the author’s overall project or the other issues in conversation at the time of the essay’s

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publication. Headnotes help you prepare for the reading by giving you a quick sense of what you’re about to encounter.

Questions for Critical Reading. As you read the headnotes, you may find that you are already developing questions about the selection you’re about to read, questions that can serve as the basis of your critical thinking. Your own questions can be supplemented by the Questions for Critical Reading at the end of each selection, which are specifically designed to focus your reading and thinking in ways that will develop your critical thinking skills while helping you produce the writing asked of you in this class.

Exploring Context. The Exploring Context questions use technology to deepen your understanding of the essay and its context in the world. These questions also underscore the fact that the readings have a life outside of this text where their ideas are discussed, developed, refuted, and extended — a life to which you will contribute through your work in this class.

Questions for Connecting. These questions prompt you to apply your critical reading and thinking skills by relating the current reading to other selections in the book. Connecting the ideas of one author to the ideas or examples of another author is a key skill in critical thinking.

Language Matters. The Language Matters questions at the end of each reading will help you practice skills with language and grammar by asking you to look at how meaning is created in these readings. Thinking critically about the language used by these authors will help you think critically about the language you use in your writing as well, so that you can take these insights back to

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your own writing.

Assignments for Writing. These questions provide opportunities to join the conversation of these essays. Your instructor may assign these to you or you may wish to use them more informally to help you develop a deeper understanding of the text. Occasionally, these assignments might be multimodal, which means you might respond to them using other tools besides just writing.

Assignment Sequences. There are also a series of assignment sequences in this text; your instructor may choose to use or adapt one for your class. They’re termed sequences because each assignment builds on the one that came before. In this way, you’ll get to see how your understanding of a reading changes as you work with it alongside other readings from the text. As you return to previous readings while developing a central theme of thinking through these assignments, you will refine your critical thinking skills by paying close attention not only to each text but also to the relationships among groups of texts.

Fortunately, just as you’ve entered class with many writing skills, so too do you enter with skills in critical thinking. Critical thinking, after all, involves processing information, and we live in an information-rich world. So chances are that many of the things you do every day involve some kind of critical thinking; this class will hone those skills and translate them into the academic realm.

For now, it might be helpful to focus on six skills you might already use that correspond to aspects of academic writing and that also will

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enable you to thrive in the world at large: the abilities to read critically, think critically, argue, support, research, and revise.

The Writer As you develop these skills in this class, you will emerge not only as a stronger thinker and writer but also as an individual ready to enter your chosen discipline and thereafter your career. The writing you will do within your field may look very different from the writing you do in this class, but the moves you make within your writing for this class — your ability to form and support an argument — will remain the same. Moreover, you will come to find that people working within a discipline never write only for members of that discipline; they write for the general public as well. An engineer will write very specific, very complicated documents for other engineers but will also need to communicate with business associates, salespeople, managers, customers, and investors. No matter what you end up studying, you will need to communicate the concerns of your discipline to others.

The readings in Emerging offer good examples. Contrast, for example, the way neuroscientist Sharon Moalem writes in “Changing Our Genes: How Trauma, Bullying, and Royal Jelly Alter Our Genetic Destiny,” intended for a general audience, with the way he writes in “Hemochromatosis and the Enigma of Misplaced Iron: Implications for Infectious Disease and Survival,” which he wrote with Eugene D. Weinberg and Maire E. Percy for the journal BioMetals. Notice, first, that he writes with others when publishing within his field; collaboration is very common in the sciences. Notice, too, the difference in the opening of the journal article, which I have included

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with its MLA citation:

Hereditary hemochromatosis is a genetic condition whereby too much iron is absorbed through the diet (Jazwinska 1998). In people with hereditary hemochromatosis, iron overload of parenchymal cells may lead to destruction of the liver, heart, and pancreas. Two mutations (C282Y and H63D) in a “non-classical” HLA class-I gene named HFE have been found to be associated with hereditary hemochromatosis (Feder et al. 1996). (135)

Moalem uses a very different, very specialized language that probably only makes sense to others in the discipline (parenchymal, HLA class-I gene), and he and his coauthors cite others in their field as they begin to make their argument (“Jazwinska,” “Feder et al.”). The article also includes tables that summarize their research and has a full works cited page. Moalem does not use any of these features when writing for us as general readers. Yet in both pieces he works to articulate an argument and support it with evidence: What differs is how it is written and how it is supported. In this class, you will learn the basic ways of thinking and writing necessary for academic arguments. Should you become a neuroscientist like Moalem, you will learn the specific elements of writing like a neuroscientist in your discipline.

Writing is a lifelong skill. As you practice academic writing, you will emerge as a stronger thinker, one capable of communicating your own ideas. You will take that ability with you as you move through your college career and then later as you move into your profession.

And it all begins with reading critically.

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Reading Critically We live in a world saturated with information. Mastering the ability to read critically is crucial to managing these demands, since doing so allows us to select just the information we’re looking for. So crucial is this skill to our survival today that we don’t even think about it anymore. Indeed, you probably read for information on the web or on your phone every day, and you probably find what you need, too.

Yet while it seems intuitive, reading involves a kind of critical thinking. Though reading is a way to find information, you may find it difficult to find the information you need in these readings. They are probably not the kinds of texts you’ve read previously in your life or educational career, so they might feel very difficult. That’s OK. They’re supposed to be challenging, because dealing with difficulty is the best way to develop your skills with critical thinking. Critical thinking is like a muscle: You have to work it in order for it to grow. In other words, if you didn’t have to think about what you read in this class, you wouldn’t be doing any critical thinking at all.

Strategies for Reading Critically There are a number of steps you can take to help you read these essays critically:

Acknowledge that the reading is hard. The first step is to acknowledge any difficulty you’re having — recognizing it forces you to activate consciously your skills with critical thinking. That is, when you admit it’s hard then you can work hard on it.

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Keep reading the essay. The second step is to just keep reading, even if you feel you don’t understand what you’re reading. Often, the opening of an essay might be confusing or disorienting, but as you continue to read, you start to see the argument emerge. Similarly, the author might repeat key points throughout the essay, so by the time you complete the reading, what seemed impossible to understand begins to make sense.

Write down what you did understand. After you’ve completed the reading, you might still feel confused. Write down what you did understand — no matter how little that might be and no matter how unsure you are of your understanding. Recognizing what you know is the best way to figure out what you need to learn.

Identify specific passages that confused you. Identifying specific passages that you did not understand is an important strategy, too. By locating any points of confusion, you can focus your critical thinking skills on those passages in order to begin to decode them.

Make a list of specific questions. Make a list of specific questions you have, and then bring those questions to class as a way of guiding the class’s discussion to enhance your understanding of the reading.

Discuss the reading with peers. The questions accompanying the reading will give you some help, but your peers are another valuable resource. Discussing the reading with them allows you and your classmates to pool your comprehension — the section you didn’t understand might be the one your peers did, and vice versa.

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Reread the essay at least once, or more. Finally, reread the essay. Reading, like writing, is a recursive process. We read and reread, just as we write and revise, and each time we get a little more out of it.

Annotating While reading, one of the things you’ll want to search for is the author’s argument, the point he or she is trying to make in the selection. In addition, you’ll want to search for concepts, terms, or ideas that are unique or central to the author’s argument. Reading with a pen, highlighter, laptop, tablet, or sticky notes at hand will help you identify this information. In academic terms, you will be annotating the text, adding questions, comments, and notes while highlighting material you feel is important in some way; annotation is the start of critical reading because it identifies the most important information in the essay, and that’s exactly the information you need to think about.

You might think of annotation as keeping a running guide of your thoughts while reading. That way, when you return to work with the essay, you have the start of your critical thinking. There are a number of things you might want to pay attention to during this process:

Look for the author’s argument. What is the overall point the author wants to make? Consider this one of the central tasks of your reading and annotation, both because you will want to engage this argument and because it will model for you how you can make your own point about the issue.

Mark key terms, concepts, and ideas. Pay special attention to

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any words or phrases in italics or quotation marks. Often this indicates that the author is either introducing an idea and will then go on to define it or making an especially important point. Critical thinking often involves ideas, so it’s important for you to locate and identify the ideas of the essay and crucial points often relate to the argument.

Mark information you will need again. For example, there may be certain quotations that strike you as important or puzzling. By annotating these, you will be able to find them quickly for class discussion or while you are writing your paper.

Mark words you don’t understand. Look them up on the web or on your phone. This process will enhance your comprehension of the essay.

Ask questions in response to the text. Don’t assume that the author’s words are gospel truth. Your job as a critical thinker is to evaluate everything the author says based on your knowledge and experience. Whenever you locate a mismatch between what the author says and what you think, note it with a question about the essay.

Summarize key points in the margin. Summarizing the key points will help you map the overall flow of the argument. This process will help you comprehend the essay better and, as with locating the argument, will help you see how to structure your own writing as well.

HOW TO ANNOTATE A READING

Read with a pen, a highlighter, or sticky notes at hand.

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Use your laptop, tablet, or phone to take notes.

Look for the author’s argument.

Mark key terms, concepts, and ideas.

Mark information you will need again.

Mark words you don’t understand.

Ask questions in reaction to the text.

Summarize key points in the margin.

Let’s look at an example, an annotated excerpt from “Electric Funeral,” Chuck Klosterman’s essay about fame and infamy in the digital age:

Let’s look at how these annotation strategies work. For example, in this passage you would want to mark any terms you don’t understand, such as postmodern, as well as terms the author may be using to form ideas, such as non-monetary capitalism. Another set of strategies, though, involves questions you have in reaction to the text, each of which can serve as a point for rereading the text, and relations you see between

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the text and other essays you have read or your own life experience. Each question you ask or comment you make during your initial reading of the text gives you a new direction for reading the text again — both for an answer to your question and for support for any alternative position you want to take.

Returning to the text and reading it again refines your reading, making it more critical. Rereading is not something we usually do if we’re just reading for comprehension; generally we understand enough of what we read that we don’t have to read it again. But in an academic context rereading is essential, because critical reading goes beyond comprehension to evaluation — determining the accuracy and applicability of the information and ideas of the text. And before we can evaluate, we have to know the key points that need evaluation. The Questions for Critical Reading located at the end of each selection will help you in this process by focusing your rereading on a significant point in the essay — a particular term, concept, or idea that will allow you to read and think critically. Rereading Klosterman’s essay with these questions in mind might cause you to pay attention to those parts of the selection where he discusses villainy and examines two internet figures, Kim Dotcom and Julian Assange. These discussions might feel like stories when you read the essay for the first time, but returning to the reading through the Questions for Critical Reading might prompt you to look more closely at how Klosterman uses these two figures to discuss the nature of villainy in relation to technology.

Glossing the Text Each of these texts is taking part in a larger conversation about a

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particular topic. You might find parts of a reading confusing because you are jumping into the middle of a conversation without knowing its complete history. At times, then, you will want to go beyond annotating the text by using a skill called glossing. A gloss is a quick explanation of a term or concept — think of it as a quick summary of the conversation that has come before what you are reading. You probably already know what a glossary is — a list of terms and their definitions. Some words have already been glossed for you. When you provide your own glosses for a text, you’re building your own sort of glossary, filling in technical details you need to understand the text as a whole. There are a number of techniques you can use to gloss parts of the text while you read and annotate it:

Look at the context. Often you can determine a quick sense of a term or concept by looking at the surrounding context or the way the author uses it.

Use your phone. Using a smartphone to look up a word or term can help you confirm what you learn from the context.

Use Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a controversial tool in academia because it has no single source of authority. Instead, everyone writes it, everyone edits it, and anyone can change it. In most cases, you won’t want to use Wikipedia as a source for your writing. For one thing, your writing is about critical thinking, which is about ideas, and Wikipedia is more centrally concerned with factual information. At the same time, because it contains so much knowledge, it’s a useful source for glossing because it can give you a quick sense of not only a technical term’s meaning but also its history.

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Use a search engine. Wikipedia is not the only source for information on the web. Indeed, each of its entries includes links to other sites used in compiling the information on that page. Thus you can also do a web search to find a quick gloss.

Let’s look at an example of how you might gloss a text as you read and annotate it. Here’s a short passage from Francis Fukuyama’s “Human Dignity”:

The context of this quotation helps, too. Fukuyama is discussing how Nietzsche foresaw the implications of natural science for human dignity — specifically the possibility of a ranking or hierarchy of humans. These glosses can help you understand Fukuyama’s larger argument about human dignity.

Reading Visuals You may notice that many of the texts you read contain visual elements

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such as images or graphs. These, too, are opportunities for critical reading. After all, every text is an image and every image is a text.

Consider the page you are reading now. Though not readily apparent, it has a number of visual elements — the font selected for the text, the color of the print, the amount of empty or white space around the text and in the margins. Normally, we don’t pay attention to the visual elements of printed texts. That’s because printed texts are designed to minimize their visual elements so that you can focus on the meaning of the words on the page. But imagine how the meaning of these words would change if they were printed in bold or if they used a

.

Visual texts often invert this relationship, bringing the visual elements into the foreground and letting words sit in the background or letting them work with or against the meaning suggested by the visual elements. The words and the images together make meaning and, as in all the texts you will read, this meaning is open to interpretation and analysis. In this sense, reading a visual text isn’t all that different from reading any other kind of text, and you will want to use many of the same skills with critical reading that you would use with other selections in this book:

Identify the elements. To begin reading a visual text, make note of each of its elements — not only any words it might contain but also each visual item included in the overall image. Each object you see is an element. Think of each element as a sentence. Together, these elements express meaning just as the sentences of a paragraph do. When you identify each element, you are using

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your skills with annotation.

Identify the connections. Once you’ve located the elements, think about the relationships between them. Do the visual and textual elements reinforce each other or do they work against each other? What meaning is the author trying to convey in each case? Remember, authors don’t include visual elements randomly. If it’s there it has some sort of connection to the point the author wants to make or to the feeling the author wants the reader to have.

Analyze and interpret the whole. Just as you would with other readings in the book, you will want to analyze and interpret the visual image as a whole. This again involves critical thinking because you will need to think about not only the explicit meanings — what the image as a whole says — but also the implicit meanings — what the image as a whole implies.

Reading Arguments Finding an author’s argument, as we’ve already noted, is a basic goal as you approach each reading. But reading an author’s argument involves a broader set of skills. Identifying the argument — locating and summarizing it — is the first step of that process. After that, there are a number of questions you can ask yourself in order to understand not only the argument but also its context and the ways in which the author has chosen to pursue that argument. Working through these questions will help you understand the essay more fully; it will also make you more aware of these issues in your own writing.

After reading the essay, ask yourself:

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What is the larger conversation? Each of the essays you read here is part of a larger discussion about an issue: ethics, race, digital life. Where do you see the author acknowledging, including, and joining that conversation? How do you imagine you will join it as well?

What other voices are in this conversation? Where does the author bring in other voices? How does the author use quotation? How might you use quotations from this author as you write about the essay?

What counts as evidence for the author? Each discipline has a different standard for evidence, and the standards for evidence in academic and public writing differ as well. Does the author rely on anecdotes or statistics? Does the author use other credible sources? What sources should you use in your own writing?

How does the author acknowledge counterarguments? Why might an author make or avoid this move? When should you acknowledge opposing positions?

How does the author acknowledge audience? What sort of contextual information does the author provide? How does the style of writing reflect the needs of a particular audience?

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Thinking Critically Once you’ve completed a critical reading, you’re ready to do some thinking. Imagine the essay is raw material. Critical thinking is the process of doing something with this raw material, making something out of it in order to join the conversation of the text. There are a number of methods you can use to help with your critical thinking. Responding to the essay is a good start because it allows you to record your thoughts and reactions. You can follow that by figuring out how the essay connects to other essays you’ve read or to your own ideas. Seeing connections is a way to begin to identify the relationships between ideas. Synthesizing these ideas then offers you a means to add to the conversation.

Responding You can start the process of critical thinking by taking some time to respond to the reading and connecting what you read to your own life, to what you know and think and how you feel. Your instructor might ask you to keep a reading journal or a blog where you can record these initial connections.

For example, here’s a short response assignment Risa Shiman, one of the instructors in the writing program in which I teach, recently gave students in one of her classes before they started discussing Peter Singer’s “Visible Man: Ethics in a World without Secrets”:

Do the benefits of increased access to information provided by technology outweigh the costs? Why or why not?

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Notice that the question isn’t long or complicated. The goal is just to get you writing in response to the issues raised by the essay. Here’s how one student responded:

I believe that the benefits of increased access to information provided by technology outweigh the costs. The world as a whole is becoming a more dangerous and unstable place, and any efforts our country can make to protect us should be taken. Threats to the United States are becoming more frequent, and with terrorists successfully executing their 9/11 attacks, I believe we need to do whatever we can to prevent future occurrences from happening. Social media has definitely made it easier to monitor the world’s views, thoughts, and opinions, and I wish that information were only used to monitor potential threats. But as Singer points out, corporations use what we put out into the world through social media so they can target their ads according to our consumer habits. But if getting Target coupons in the mail for Pampers diapers and Gerber baby food after you announce your pregnancy on Facebook is one of the things we have to deal with to make our country safer, then that is a small thing I am willing to give up. I also think that having organizations such as WikiLeaks provide a sort of checks and balances on our government is a good thing. Clearly Hillary Clinton was so upset over WikiLeaks’s airing the government’s dirty laundry because the government got caught, and it’s embarrassing. I do understand that leaking some government documents can have a negative effect on our country. But it has been known that there are many corrupt dealings happening on Capitol Hill, and if that sort of threat makes

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politicians and government officials think twice before making a potential shady deal, then it’s about time.

This student starts by articulating his or her beliefs about the issues, relating those opinions to Singer’s discussion. These opinions can then become the basis for an argument as they are refined into a definite position and then put more closely into relation with Singer’s text.

Connecting as Critical Thinking Once you’ve considered your own responses, then it’s a good idea to look for connections. Each of the essays you will read here is already connected to the conversation taking place around that author’s particular topic. When you read, you might be able to guess some of these connections, but as you think critically about these readings, you will make new connections of your own, which is essential to critical thinking.

The strongest way to evaluate the information in an essay is to test it against other information, such as the ideas expressed in another essay. Connecting the readings might mean using a concept from one piece, such as Francis Fukuyama’s idea of “Factor X,” to explain another essay, such as Sherry Turkle’s “The Empathy Diaries.” But it might also mean using the ideas from one essay to modify the ideas in another: elaborating Michael Pollan’s idea of the “holon” through Daniel Gilbert’s concept of “super-replicators,” for example.

Connecting is a kind of critical thinking used by the authors of the essays in this book, too. In “AIDS, Inc.,” Helen Epstein uses this move

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in discussing HIV prevention programs in Africa:

Ugandans are more likely to know their neighbors and to live near members of their extended families. This in turn may have contributed to what sociologists call “social cohesion” — the tendency of people to talk openly with one another and form trusted relationships. Perhaps this may have facilitated more realistic and open discussion of AIDS, more compassionate attitudes toward infected people, and pragmatic behavior change. (p. 129)

Epstein, a molecular biologist and specialist in public health, connects a concept from sociology, “social cohesion,” with HIV prevention in Uganda. In making that connection, she uses the idea to support her argument and to create a new idea about what an effective prevention program should look like. It’s the connections between ideas that allow authors like Epstein — and you — to make an argument.

In working with these readings, you might feel like there simply are no connections between them, that the topic of each essay is unique. But keep in mind that a connection is not something you find; it’s something you make. If the connections were already sitting there in the essays, there wouldn’t be much critical thinking involved, because there wouldn’t be much thinking involved at all. The process of making connections between disparate ideas is part of critical thinking. Sociology and public health might not seem to have much in common, but when we make connections between them, we generate a new understanding of how to slow the spread of HIV.

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Strategies for Making Connections When making connections between the readings for this class, you might want to try a few different strategies:

Draw the connections. Start by listing the important terms, concepts, and ideas from each essay on a sheet of paper. Once you’ve done that, you can literally draw lines between ideas that have some relation.

Use clustering. You might also try a technique called clustering. Put the main concept of each essay in a circle on a sheet of paper. Draw other circles containing related or subsidiary ideas and connect them with lines to the circles containing the main ideas of the readings. When you find ways to connect the branches of these separate groups, you’re locating relationships between the essays that you might want to pursue. Through figuring out exactly what these relationships are, you not only utilize critical thinking but also start the process of forming your own ideas, which you will express in your writing for this class.

Use the questions with the readings. The Questions for Connecting at the end of each reading will also help in this process by asking you to think specifically about one essay in terms of another. These questions will direct you to think about both essays, giving you an opportunity to use each reading to test the concepts and ideas of the other.

Compare the tags. The tags for each essay show key concepts, some of which overlap with the tags for other selections. Use the

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lists of the essays’ tags in the table of contents to help you see some of the connections between the readings.

Synthesizing Connecting defines relationships. Synthesizing goes one step further by combining different sources of information to generate something new. Synthesis happens a lot in the real world. For example, a doctor might combine test results, a patient’s medical history, and his or her own knowledge to reach a diagnosis; and a businessperson might use a marketing report, recent sales figures, a demographic study, and data on the current economic outlook to craft a business strategy. Whenever you combine multiple sources of information to create new information or ideas, you’re synthesizing. Synthesis always creates something new; because you’ll be using it in this class to create new ideas and thus new knowledge, you’ll use it to demonstrate your critical thinking.

All of the authors in this text use synthesis, because all of them are working from what’s already been said and written about a subject to say and write something new. You’ll do the same. After you’ve read a piece and connected its ideas to other contexts, you will synthesize the ideas into a new idea, your own idea. That idea will form the center of the writing you do in this class.

Strategies for Synthesizing There are several techniques you can use to synthesize the ideas of these readings:

Combine ideas. You might, for example, use ideas from two

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authors and combine them into a new concept that you use in your paper.

Apply ideas. You might instead use a concept from one essay to show the limitations of another author’s argument. In this case you would apply the first idea to the second, and in doing so, you’d produce something new, which would be the synthesis you create between the two.

Invent your own term. You might even invent a term all your own, defining and deploying it through your analyses of the readings in the papers you will write. You can define the term using ideas that you pull from multiple readings, connecting and synthesizing them into a new understanding represented by your term.

Pay attention to similarities and differences. When synthesizing, you want to ask yourself not simply how the two elements you’re working with are alike but also how they’re different. Paying attention to both similarities and differences allows you to discover how different ideas fit together in different ways.

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Making an Argument Introduction to Argument All the processes we’ve discussed so far take place before you actually start formally writing in response to an assignment. You need to read (and reread), respond, connect, and synthesize in order to begin the process of critical thinking that forms the core of academic writing. Once you’ve done all that, it’s time to form an argument. In academic terms, argument involves joining a conversation, taking a stand, or making a point. When you write in this class, you’ll be doing all of these things.

You may already be familiar with this academic sense of argument, though you may have been introduced to it in different terms. In the grading criteria we use at my school, we make the meaning clear:

When we use the term “argument” … we mean the central, problem-solving idea that drives the paper, a concept that many of us learned to think of as a “thesis.” We might also think of this as a “position” or as a “project,” all of which suggest that there is a central point the student is trying to make in the paper. The argument will usually show up in a thesis statement on the first page of the paper, but this is not the sole defining characteristic of an argument.

The student should have a goal in a paper, something he or she is trying to accomplish, often defined by a specific, argumentative

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statement. But even when this statement is absent, the goal is often still apparent, whether as a summation in the conclusion or an underlying/recurring theme of the paper.

An ideal argument will be spelled out in a clear thesis statement and will provide both a direction for the paper and a motivation for that direction (a problem to solve, a goal to accomplish, a position to defend, a project to complete, etc.).

Forming an argument can be really challenging, in part because the word itself can mean so many things — an argument between lovers is quite different from an argument in a courtroom, which is also different from a scientific argument. Rather than thinking of your argument as the position you defend, like an army protecting its territory, try thinking of it as the words you send out into the world, like a participant joining a conversation.

Some Models for Argument It might be useful to consider some models for argument to give you some sense of how you might think about your own argument. Many of these sound very similar, and that’s because they are. Approaching argument from slightly different angles might be all it takes for you to get the hang of it:

Conversation. We’ve already considered argument as a kind of conversation. With this model, you use the ideas and terms and concepts from one essay to discuss or evaluate the ideas from the other. That is, you put the authors in conversation to make a point about the larger issue.

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Framing. Think about your argument as using the ideas from one essay to “frame” the ideas from the other. That is, you examine the second essay using terms and concepts from the first, as though examining the second essay through a frame or lens provided by the first. Your goal would be to change how your readers understand the second essay by helping them view it through the frame provided by the first; thus we learn something new about the second essay from what you write as well as something new about how the ideas of the first essay can be applied in new contexts.

Theory and case. Your argument might use a theory about something from one essay and test it using another essay as a particular case. That is, you evaluate how effective the first author’s ideas are when applied to a second text. This is similar to framing, but whereas with framing you are teaching your readers something new about the second essay and its ideas, with this model you are teaching them something new about the first essay and its theories.

Application. An argument might also apply the ideas of one essay to the ideas of the other. That is, you take a term or concept and apply it to the new essay, learning something new either about the term or about the new essay. Consider this a middle ground to the two models discussed above, one where your application of ideas could change the way your readers think about either essay.

Strategies for Forming an Argument

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As you begin to work out what you want to argue, there are a number of matters to consider that can help you articulate your argument:

Think about the larger conversation. The connections you find between essays are not just specific terms or ideas or concepts or quotations. There’s also a connection in terms of the larger issues. Start by identifying the larger issue shared between the essays, and then think about how each of these essays addresses this issue. For example, if the issue is civil rights, then what does each author say about civil rights, in a larger sense? How does what each says about the topic relate to larger public debates? How might you join in?

Think about what you’re trying to prove. Locating the points of connection between essays does show critical thinking. But it’s not enough just to prove a connection between two authors. Yes, that takes some thinking, but you also want to think about what the connections mean.

Think about what we’re learning from your paper. What have you discovered by bringing these essays together? Do the ideas of one author extend the ideas of the other author into a whole new area? Are the ideas of one author limited because of what the other author shows? Can you raise new questions based on ideas from both authors? Adding your voice to the conversation means that you are saying something new about these issues and these essays. Think about what that is.

Points to Consider When discussing argument in the classes I teach, I share with students

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the kinds of questions I ask about argument when reading students’ papers:

And so? An argument has to have a point. It has to first assert a connection between the two essays but then also answer the question “and so?” Essay A is like (or unlike) Essay B, and so …

What are you trying to achieve? I often use the term project in class instead of argument. When you write, you should have a project, something you want to achieve. Other instructors might use terms like controlling purpose or motive. Regardless, anyone who reads your argument should have a good sense of what you want to achieve in the paper.

What knowledge are you making? An argument is a way of making new knowledge. How do you learn something new? You think about what you know, and then you come to a conclusion. That conclusion is a new piece of knowledge that you can express. Your argument might be: If we just read Essay A we learn X, but after reading Essay B we now learn Y about Essay A. Your argument tells your readers something new, something they haven’t thought about before.

Practical Help Finding your argument is not as hard as it sounds, because you’ve already done a lot of the work necessary by the time you get to thinking about your argument. In forming an argument, you will probably want to draw from:

The assignment or prompt. We’ll talk more about these later in

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this section and offer some tips on how to decode the focus of an assignment, but for now, consider the assignment a foundation on which you can build your argument. It offers a central focus that you can use to organize your critical thinking and join the conversation.

Your annotations. You will want to go back to your annotations of any selections connected to the assignment. Since you noted the important ideas and concepts in each essay and, most crucially, your own questions or concerns, these annotations will give you a preliminary sense of how you want to respond to each text.

Another rereading. You might find it helpful to read the essays again with either the writing prompt or your specific argument in mind. You might find new areas to annotate with this more focused reading, and that in turn might help you make your argument clearer and stronger.

Your connections and synthesis. Many times strong arguments are built out of the connections you make between the texts. You may, for example, build an argument around the application of an idea from one essay to an example from another. In the process, you will offer a new insight into the essays, which represents your synthesis and your addition to the larger conversation of the texts.

Writing an Argument All of these tips are meant to help you conceive of your argument. As you start the process of drafting it in writing, keep these points in mind:

Don’t hide it. Unlike some other forms of writing that build up to a central point, academic writing places the argument right at the

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beginning, usually in the introduction, so that the reader can follow the pursuit of that argument and the process of your thinking through the paper. Someone reading your paper should be able to point to a sentence and identify it as your argument. You may have learned to call this type of sentence a thesis statement for your paper.

Be specific. Avoid broad statements. Instead, make your argument as specific as possible.

Use the essays. One way to make sure you stay specific is to incorporate the terms from the essays or the names of the authors in your statement of argument.

Make a map. A really strong, clear argument serves as a map for the entire paper. Your reader should be able to predict the organization of the paper from reading your argument. Your argument should tell you exactly what you need to do in the paper and should also tell your reader exactly how you will proceed in the paper.

From Argument to Draft Once you have a good sense of your argument, you’re in a good position to start drafting your paper. Let’s look at a student’s argument from a class I taught recently:

A new civil rights can be achieved by replacing idle conversations with meaningful discussions that aid the presence of our true selves through websites that offer a safe place for human interaction.

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Given this argument, it’s clear the first thing the author will need to discuss is the idea of a “new civil rights,” a concept from Kenji Yoshino’s essay. In the next body paragraph, the author will need to discuss how “idle conversations” prevent these new civil rights and then how “meaningful discussions” can help create them. Next the author will need to argue that such discussions support our “true selves” (another concept from Yoshino) before looking at how all of this can take place on websites that “offer a safe place for human interaction.” The argument, in essence, contains an outline of the whole paper.

Once you have a good sense of the shape and flow of your paper as suggested by the map of your argument, it’s time to think about how you will support that argument.

Organization and Transitions As you begin to write your draft, you will want to make sure that your paper has a clear, logical organization. In many ways your paper is a step-by-step record of your thinking which led to the conclusion that is your argument. A well-organized paper lets the reader follow that thinking. In doing so, they will likely reach the same conclusion you did, which in turn means that you will have persuaded them of your argument.

Many writers find it useful to create some sort of outline to help them with their organization. You might start by writing your argument at the top of the page and then breaking down each of its components, as we did just above. Each of these components will be a paragraph in

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the paper. This outline doesn’t have to be formal at all. It just needs to provide you a good guide on what you need to write.

As you write, pay particular attention to your transitions between paragraphs. These act as signposts that help guide the reader through your thinking. You might want to start with strong transition words or phrases. Most handbooks will have a list for you to use. But you may also want to work from the outline you made, taking each point and using it to frame the paragraph you are writing.

Some transitions are red flags for a poor organization, which may confuse the reader and obscure your argument. For example, if you find that you are starting each paragraph with “Another,” then you may just be making a list of connections you see between the readings without explaining how those connections work together toward a larger point, your argument.

A good way to test the strength of your organization is to take the first sentence of each body paragraph from your completed draft and copy them into a new document, forming a paragraph made from your topic sentences. This paragraph should read more or less as a paragraph. It should sound fluid (one point moves to the next) and it should make sense. If it doesn’t, then you may need to revise your transitions, rearrange some paragraphs, or work on making your argument clearer.

One tip to make especially strong transitions is to write one sentence about the point made in the previous paragraph and then one sentence about the point you want to make in the paragraph using this transition,

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and then combine those two into a single sentence that serves as a transition and topic sentence for your paragraph.

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Using Support Working with Quotations As you lay out your thinking, you’ll need proof to support, or provide evidence for, your point in each body paragraph, which in academic writing happens through working with quotations from the texts. When you use quotation in your writing, you support your words and ideas through the words and ideas of others. Quotation supports critical thinking in two ways. First, it provides evidence for your argument, thesis, or position, showing the reader how and why you thought that way and reached the conclusions that led to your argument. Second, integrating quotation into your text itself requires some critical thinking. That’s the difference between “having” quotations in your paper and “using” them. It’s not enough to drop in a quotation every now and then. You need to think about the function of every quotation you use, its purpose in your paper. Is it defining a term? Supporting an assertion? Connecting ideas? To make that function clear, you will want to explain each quotation you use. That doesn’t mean you should summarize or reiterate each quotation; it means you should write about what that piece of text does for your overall project. Think of it as connecting that text to your own text. You might also analyze the quotation in this process. Analyzing a quotation means explaining what it says and what it means.

Here’s a pattern you can use to incorporate quotation into your paragraphs in ways that show your critical thinking through connection. When I share this with my students, I call it “Barclay’s

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Super-Secret Formula” (though I suppose it’s not so secret anymore):

Cl→I→Q1→E→T→Q2→Ce

This pattern for a paragraph is a great way to connect and synthesize quotations from two essays in support of your argument. Let’s break this formula down:

1. C is your claim. Begin your paragraph with a sentence that contains the main idea you want to make or the connection you want to show between two essays. You might have learned to call this a topic sentence. Regardless, the key is to start with a sentence that lets the reader know exactly what the paragraph will be about. Your claim should be related to your argument and should offer the reader a clear sense of how this paragraph proves a part of the argument.

2. I is an introduction. After you state your claim for the paragraph, introduce the first quotation. Sometimes you will need a sentence to set up the quotation; other times you might just use an introductory phrase like “Das writes” or “According to Yoshino.”

3. Q is your first quotation. After you introduce the quotation, provide it. You will want to make sure it’s completely accurate and, of course, you will want to provide proper citation (we’ll discuss this more below).

4. E is an explanation of the quotation. After you provide the first quotation, add a sentence that explains that quotation. This can be particularly useful if the quotation contains an idea or concept. You may want to take another sentence or two to explain that idea

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even more so that your reader completely understands it.

5. T is a transition sentence. Before you move on to the next quotation, offer some sort of short transition sentence. This transition should provide a sense of the kind of connection you’re trying to make in the paragraph as a whole. For example, you might have a sentence like “Cohen’s analysis is useful for explaining the spread of HIV in Africa.”

6. Q is your second quotation, most likely from another essay. This second quotation needs only a brief introduction or signal phrase.

7. C is your explanation of the connection. Finally, add several sentences that explain the connection you see between the quotations and the way in which this connection supports your overall argument. This part of the formula is, in many ways, the most important part of the paragraph. These sentences should also explain how the relationship between the quotations supports your argument. These sentences record your critical thinking, allowing you to use the connection you’ve made between these two authors to support your project for the paper.

Here’s an example of what this kind of paragraph looks like:

The political climate of our current moment is one in which people see those of opposing political parties as inhuman beings that don’t need to be treated with a certain level of respect, which is dangerous because it forces people to hide their political beliefs in order to be accepted as humans. Francis Fukuyama states, “We accord beings with Factor X not just human rights but, if they are adults, political rights as well — that is, the right to live in

2

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democratic political communities where their rights to speech, religion, association, and political participation are respected” (138). Fukuyama explains that every being that we see as human is supposed to be treated with certain basic rights, leveling the playing field and giving all people the opportunity to be themselves without risking the loss of human dignity. While this should be the way people are always treated, in today’s politically charged climate, members of opposing parties must cover their identities or risk being treated as inhuman. Kenji Yoshino writes, “Americans have come to a consensus that people should not be penalized for being different along these dimensions. That consensus, however, does not protect individuals against demands that they mute those differences” (453). What Yoshino sees as the demands to “mute those differences” complicates Fukuyama’s argument that all beings are accorded certain rights. With the elections right around the corner, Republicans and Democrats are busy calling one another stupid, inhuman, uninformed, moronic, and immoral in attempts to strip the opposition of their Factor X and make it OK to devalue human life based on a political orientation.

This student begins with a claim about the ways in which political partisanship affects our perceptions of humanity. To prove this claim, the student begins with an idea from Francis Fukuyama: that all humans should have fundamental political rights. He or she then connects this idea to one from Kenji Yoshino about the ways in which we pressure people to hide their differences (such as differences in political points of view). Using both of these ideas, this student is able

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to show how political slandering devalues the humanity of those involved.

About Citation It is absolutely essential that you acknowledge the words of others when you use them. In the real world, failure to do so can result in expensive lawsuits and ruined careers. In the academic world, failure to do so is considered plagiarism. Every time you use the words or ideas of another, you must provide a citation.

You’ll no doubt notice that some of the authors you read in this collection do not use citation. Why do you have to if they don’t? The answer has a lot to do with audience. Whenever we write, we are addressing a particular audience — that’s why it’s useful to think about this process as joining a conversation. The audience you select determines a lot about how you will write — your tone, for example. It also determines the need for citation. Academic writing always requires citation because it addresses an academic audience. Addressing an academic audience doesn’t mean using complicated sentences or fancy words. A lot of academic writing has a conversational tone, but it also always uses citation.

Ultimately, there are only a few things you need to know about citation. First, know that it exists. By that I mean that you must know that there are systems in place for you to acknowledge other sources. Second, you must know what you are citing. For example, when you cite something from this book, you are actually citing a selection from an edited anthology. Knowing that this is an anthology (as opposed to a

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monograph, a book with a single author) is crucial to figuring out how to cite it properly. Finally, you need to know how to find the right format. A good grammar or reference handbook is an excellent source, but you can also consult reputable websites; there are also web and computer programs that can help you with citation.

About Disciplines Once you enter your major, you’ll learn a specific system for providing that citation — every discipline has its own system. In this class, the system you will likely use is MLA citation, developed through the Modern Language Association, the governing body for the discipline of English. You will probably spend time in class learning the intricacies of this system, but for now remember the basics: Every time you use a quotation or paraphrase, include the author’s name and the page number in parentheses at the end of the sentence, just before the period. That’s true for visual images as well. Publication information for all your sources should be listed at the end of your paper. Visual images require a special format. You will want to consult a grammar handbook, a citation guide, or a reliable web source for specific information on how to cite these sources.

If you’re interested in learning more about the citation system for your discipline, you can perform a web search to find out what system it uses and what specific rules that system has for formatting each reference. As with all citation, it is essential that you provide these references whenever you use someone else’s words or ideas.

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About Research Academic Research Research is also an important skill of critical thinking. But research is a much trickier term than it used to be. It used to be that research involved looking up specific subjects on little cards or ponderous indexes of journals in the library and then hunting down books in the library stacks or finding articles on microfilm. It required a good deal of training to do well. These days, most libraries don’t even have what was called a “card catalog” any more. For most of us today, though, the basic methods of research are nearly instinctive. If you were given a blank search box, you would know what to do — just type in some search terms and start looking at the results until you find what you need. And in fact we often do this kind of research every day: researching what school to attend, or information on your favorite band, or where to get the best tattoo.

But academic research is very different from this kind of research. When you research on the web, you gather and summarize existing information. When academics do research, their goal is to produce new information. Indeed, this is what academics do for a living. Yes, teaching is an important part of our jobs, but conducting research is just as important. We are paid, in a sense, to make new knowledge. And we’re not the only ones. Many careers today involve both research and its application. For example, if a medical researcher were simply to gather all the existing information on a disease, that would only be so useful. It is the move from that research to new avenues of treatment

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for a disease that is valuable. Making new knowledge matters.

You may be asked to produce research in this class. Even if you are not given a research assignment, working with the texts of this book is a kind of research since academic writing, like research, asks you to make new knowledge.

Having Sources, Finding Sources There’s an important difference between having sources, such as the ones presented for you here, and finding sources, such as doing research at the library. You might imagine it as the difference between swimming in a pool and swimming in the ocean. When you work with the texts of this book, you’re practicing research in a fairly controlled environment, like swimming in a pool. You don’t have to worry, for example, about the quality of the texts in this book because we’ve done that work for you. If you are asked to do your own research in this class, though, it’s a bit like swimming in the ocean: The material you have to deal with can be just as vast, and there are extra dangers in the wild. One way to avoid those dangers is to make sure you are using reliable, academic sources — a particular challenge if you are using the web for your research. Before you use any website in an academic setting, you will want to make sure you evaluate it. You begin that process by asking yourself how you want to use the site. Any site on the web can be used as an example of your ideas or the ideas of any essay. But whenever you take ideas or evidence from websites, you need to be careful about which sites you use. Ask yourself questions such as:

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Who wrote the material? Is the site authored by an individual, an organization, a governmental agency? If you can’t identify the author, you may want to question its reliability.

How qualified is the source? What makes this author an expert on this material? What are this author’s qualifications? If the site doesn’t contain information about the qualifications of the author, then you may want to reconsider using it.

When was the site last updated? Often this information will be provided on each page of the site, usually at the bottom of the page. If the site doesn’t include any update information, then you will want to ask yourself how current the material is.

How stable is the address or URL? Websites come and go. Generally speaking, websites from established groups or organizations are more stable than websites with their own domain name, which in turn are more stable than websites hosted with a free service.

How do you want to use the site in your writing? Any website can be used as an example, but only those websites that establish their authority should be used for ideas or evidence.

Ideally, academic research goes beyond what you can find on the web. If you are asked to complete a research project for this class, your instructor will probably provide you with an orientation to the library and its resources. How you search will probably be familiar to you, but what you search will be academic books and journals.

A Formula for Academic 105

Research Central to academic research is the ability to work with ideas. In your prior educational experience, you may have completed research papers that were more like researching a topic on the web. The assignments for these papers would have asked you to gather information on a topic and then present that information in a written summary. For example, you may have been asked earlier in your schooling career to write a research paper on an important historical figure or event. You would research that topic and write a paper with what you found. But there’s not much critical thinking involved in that sort of research paper. In college, you will most likely be asked to work with ideas in your research in order to generate new knowledge.

Ideas are useful because they help us to explain, predict, or change reality; that’s why we refine, revise, and use theories. For example, the theory of gravity predicts what will happen to you if you step off a cliff. With that prediction, you can wisely choose not to take that step. Similarly, various economic theories predict how changes will affect standards of living. We can use these theories to make changes to elements like the interest rate in an attempt to change reality. When you research, you will want to focus on ideas. This formula might be useful:

Is(S)=Kn

Let’s break that down: