Our first main paper (minimum 1200 words, submitted via email) asks you to analyze multiple texts and put them into conversation with each other. You can work with any combination of Rogers, Barrett, Myers, Lynch, Ratnayake, Schalk, Febos, and Loofbourow, and you are also welcome to use other texts from outside of class. Include at least two texts overall and at least one of our class texts.
Much of the paper will continue the work you did on our short Rhetorical Analysis papers, and you are welcome to draw on that writing for this paper. Your paper should continue to perform our rhetorical analysis moves as you analyze the texts and put them into conversation:
- Articulate the main purpose or argument of the texts, and capture important parts of the author’s thinking: reasoning evidence, examples, counterarguments, etc.;
- Quote keywords and passages from the texts, explaining their significance;
- Make comparisons and connections between the texts: note where the authors’ thinking intersects and diverges, where they agree and disagree, where their thinking overlaps or goes in different directions.
Beyond that, you should also aim to make an argument about the texts you discuss, focusing in particular on their uses and limitations. Your argument should address some combination of the following prompts:
- What do we learn by looking at these texts together? How do they shape our understanding of mindfulness (or some other term or concept you are using to compare them)?
- Which aspects of these texts’ thinking do you find most useful, persuasive, and insightful? What makes this understanding helpful? Which aspects of these texts’ thinking you find limited?
- How would you articulate your own thinking about the topic, and how does it align with the thinking from the texts you analyze?
These challenges give you an opportunity to incorporate your own thinking on the readings, particularly if you agree with something but want to expand on it or if you find that some idea or perspective is lacking from the conversation. You are welcome to incorporate examples to further illustrate how these perspectives on mindfulness are useful or limited.
As you develop your thinking, keep in mind Joseph Harris’s note about opposition in his book Rewriting: “In writing as an intellectual, then, you need to push beyond the sorts of bipolar oppositions (pro or con, good or evil, guilty or innocent) that frame most of the arguments found on editorial pages and TV talk shows. Intellectual writers usually work not with simple antitheses (either x or not-x) but with positive opposing terms—that is, with words and values that don’t contradict each other yet still exist in some real and ongoing tension” (25). In this sense, you are trying to enrich and expand on our thinking, building on the conversation started by our class readings.
Your paper should follow MLA guidelines for formatting (spacing, font, first-page heading, title, header with last name and page number) and citations, both in-text and on a works cited page.
Matt King 