Unit 2, Essay 2

Writing Our Conflicts

An Interpretive Textual & Cultural Analysis (4-5 pages) History may be a solution if we remember, witness, and mourn our traumatic past. The recognition of the problem of memorythat our seemingly most personal, individual memories are not only connected to the collective past but are also shaped by itis the necessary first step toward our being able to say that, indeed, we heal from memory. The tremendous hope of these writers visions, then, comes from their courage in remembering the enormous horror of their pasts. To create from horror, to regain the power of hope; these are the promises that arise when we heal from memory. Cassie Premo Steele We Heal From Memory: Sexton, Lorde, Anzalda, and the Poetry of Witness

Important Dates
10.17 In class, sign up for Essay #1 text 10.20-10.24 Conference Week: Bring a 2 page discovery draft and your Invention Worksheet 10.27 4 page rough draft due for Peer Response (Bring 1 paper copy to class.) 10.29 Writing Workshop #2 (If you signed up for this workshop, bring 13 copies of your rough draft to class.) 10.31 Happy Halloween! Final draft of Essay #2 is due in class

Selected Texts for Essay #2

For Essay #2, I ask that you select one text for analysis from the following list. Try to select a text that resonates with you: Persepolis (film version) by Marjane Satrapi (streaming on D2L) The Homeland, Aztln/El Otro Mexico by Gloria Anzalda, pp. 466-476 in WAR Four Women by Nina Simone and For Women by Talib Kweli (streaming on D2L) Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People by George W. Bush, pp. 727733 in WAR and online at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html The Algebra of Infinite Justice by Arundhati Roy, pp. 749-756 in WAR A Litany for Survival by Audre Lorde, pp. 642-643 in WAR We will discuss each of these texts in class, but I encourage you to browse through all of them soon. In class on October 17, I will invite you to select one text on which to focus your attention as you compose Essay #2.

Purpose and Audience

Essay #2 builds on the analytical framework we used during Unit 1. Therefore, the purpose of Essay #2 is very similar to the purpose of Essay #1: select one text, conduct several close readings of it, and compose an engaging, academic essay that examines how the text workshow its words, structure, style, tone, ideas, metaphors, or other textual strategies work together to elicit meaningful responses from readers. Furthermore, we will continue to explore the extent to which our diverse personal experiences shape the way we read and analyze texts. In this respect, your job is the same: help your readers thoughtfully consider the perspective through which you are analyzing a specific text by
L. Martin \ English 101 172, 193 \ Fall 2008 \ University of Arizona 1|P a g e

including a brief but meaningful personal anecdote or story that begins to shed some light on youyour personality and your ways of seeing the world and the text. In Essay #2, however, we will include culture as an analytical lens. Your copy of A Students Guide to First-Year Writing articulates the purpose of Essay #2 very well: While writing this essay, you will be looking for ways in which texts and culture are intricately connected, the ways that culture affects audiences readings of a text, and/or the value that is placed on cultural texts. You need to also consider whether the text youre analyzing challenges or accommodates dominant beliefswho is being empowered/disempowered and how? (192, emphasis added) As you compose your essay, please keep your readers in mind. For this assignment, your readersyour audienceincludes your classmates, yourself, and me (L. Martin).

Planning and Drafting

The composing process for Essay #2 will mirror our efforts during Unit 1: invention, a series of rough drafts, peer response sessions, and writing workshops. Below, I provide a very general map that charts more specific goals for Unit 2 and Essay #2:
Writing Process Invention Goals and Actions Conduct multiple readings of your text. Read deeply, searching for moments of cognitive dissonance that can lead to essay topics. Identify textual strategies at work in your text. Begin explaining how the author is using these strategies to achieve a purpose with respect to an audience. Describe the ways in which certain aspects of a culture are influencing writers and readers. Focus your cultural analysis on at least one of the terms identified on pp. 189-191 in A Students Guide: ideology, cultural biases, assumptions, rhetoric, semiotics, power & institutional structures, inequalities, or sameness. Resources from A Students Guide pp. 65-70, Invention Strategies and Invention and the Imagination pp. 154-156, Analysis and pp. 160-164, Textual Analysis pp. 188-196, Culture: Another Kind of Text and Culture as Text

Textual Analysis

Cultural Analysis

At this point, I think an example might be helpful. Lets take a look at Aldo Leopolds Escudilla. In class, we identified several textual strategies that Leopold uses to move his audience. For example, he uses symbolism and metaphor to draw parallels between the bear and environmental tragedy. For Essay #2, however, we would need to go a step further by considering the cultural context of Escudilla. For example, I might try to unearth some of the assumptions that are operating in Escudilla: Does Leopold assume that all progress is necessarily bad? How do we know? Or, I might analyze inequalities in Escudilla: To what extent are the many relationships depicted in Escudilla founded on inequality? For example, the relationships between animal and human, between men and women, between indigenous people and pioneers? Our goal, then, is to: (1) identify and analyze textual strategies, (2) identify and analyze cultural influences, and (3) articulate how text and culture are working together to influence readers.

L. Martin \ English 101 172, 193 \ Fall 2008 \ University of Arizona

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