This assignment asks you to produce a blog post using WordPress, the platform I use for my class website. Your post should be 800-1200 words and include at least two links to outside sources and at least one visual element (image, video, social media post, etc.). You do not need a citations section; for digital writing, linking to your sources serves as a form of citation. As explained below, you have a few different options for the content of your post.
Debating vs. Illuminating
Regardless of which approach you take to Paper 2, we are aiming to be “illuminators” in John Warner’s understanding of the term from our class reading. For Warner, illuminators help us better understand a topic rather than just trying to win an argument. They show us their own thinking and in turn help us develop our own thinking on a topic.
Argument
One option for the blog post would be to make an argument on any topic of your choosing. You could potentially draw on the same topic as Paper 1, but your work here would need to be new, not simply repeating things you already said in Paper 1. You are certainly welcome to take up a new topic, and your thinking could go in any number of directions – political, cultural, personal, etc. As you develop your argument, you should be mindful of our concepts from Toulmin and stasis theory and consider the following prompts:
- What is your main claim? Following stasis theory, remember that you can make different types of claims and perhaps multiple claims that build upon each other. You can make claims about the facts, causes and effects, definitions, evaluations, and policies.
- How can you support your claim(s) with reasoning, evidence, examples, counterarguments, and outside sources? How does your visual element add to your argument?
Following Warner, even though you are putting forward your own argument and perspective on this topic, you should still aim to do so in a way that illuminates the topic for us and contextualizes it, helping us better understand the topic and how we might think about it in different ways. So, you are welcome to advance your own argument, but you still need to frame your thinking in terms of a broader conversation around this issue.
Personal Experience
This approach would allow you to write more of a personal essay or short memoir, where you are illuminating something by exploring your personal experience. You would need to accomplish two main things here: narrate some aspect of your experience in detail, and reflect on the significance of this experience. You would still need to draw on outside sources and otherwise situate your experience in a larger context or conversation, and you would still need to help us understand how your experience illuminates something for us, but the main emphasis would be on narrating and reflecting on the experience itself.
Matt King 