Lens Essay

Full Essay 2.2: Lens Essay This second full essay (and the final essay of the semester) is a lens essay (4-5 pages). You will, in the course of the final weeks of the semester, seek out independently an academic-style book (written no earlier than 2019) that intersects the larger work or controversy you examined and wrote about in Graded Draft 2.1. This could be about the cultural or social contexts of the genre in which that larger work or controversy took place. You will read the entire book, and use its key terms, methods, and arguments to write a lens essay. In order to do this, you need to accurately—and in good faith—represent it, analyze it, show awareness of its disciplinary conventions, and discuss its ethos. You also need to apply it to the primary source you wrote about in Graded Draft 2.1. The goals of this assignment include situating your interpretations of a major work within a current intellectual conversation and deeply engaging with an example of a sustained argument. Important information ● This assignment is worth 30% of your final grade. ● It is due Monday, May 6 at 11:59PM (23:59) on Brightspace under ASSIGNMENTS. ● Standard late penalties apply (refer to the syllabus). ○ Special note: I will not accept late work after Wednesday May 8, 2024. Any work submitted on or after calendar day May 9, 2024 will fail this assignment. ● 4-5 double spaced pages not including the cover letter, correctly attributed citations, and a correctly formatted Works Cited page according to MLA standards. ● Must be accompanied by a one-page reflective cover letter (see below for instructions). ● This prompt is subject to change to correct minor errors or clarifications. Assignment Goals Intellectual Goals ● Analyze complex texts and other sources through consideration of multiple perspectives and contexts Synthesize sources by representing them fully and accurately and accounting for relationships among their conceptual, rhetorical, and disciplinary dimensions Research Goals ● Conduct research as a recursive process that involves the selection, evaluation, and synthesis of texts and other sources from distinct historical, cultural, and/or disciplinary contexts Writing Goals ● Demonstrate knowledge of writing as a powerful rhetorical activity that takes different forms in different situations ● Use increasingly complex kinds of structures to organize evidence and articulate and explore intellectual problems ● Demonstrate a flexible understanding of conventions of academic writing with special attention to audience, genre, and discipline ● Enact principles of academic integrity, including citation conventions, as a demonstration of writerly agency Some things to consider There is always going to be a conceptual gap between the target text (primary source) and the lens text (secondary source). This means that there is intellectual work to be done! Your job here is to show that these two things do go together in interesting and productive ways. There are number of steps that you need to take in order to complete this assignment: Step 0 (Turn 0): Find a textual problem in a primary source (a larger artwork or controversy) and analyze it. Write a tentative argument on how that tension, conundrum, contradiction creates meaning. This is the work you did in Graded Draft 2.1 Step 1: Read the lens text completely to develop a general idea of its content. Define key terms and how they’re being used, notice any evidence that seems crucial, concepts that pervade the text (marxism, feminism, etc.), and find the central arguments. Step 2: Then, looking at your primary source, ask yourself: What key terms are shared or relevant? Do they understand these terms the same way? What key terms are not shared? What kind of disciplinary thinking (method) is at play in the lens text that can be applied to the target text? (Use the Map of the Disciplines) Which of the lens text’s main arguments could be applied from the lean text to the target text? It may be easier to focus on one or two of the lens text’s central arguments. (Use the magic argument sentence or Gaipa to identify it!) Step 3: Remind yourself what is the primary tension, conundrum, or mystery in your primary source and/or controversy? In other words, what are you trying to pursue or requires further research/exploration? How does your lens text reveal something new, interesting, or important about the primary source? How might you represent your source differently from Graded Draft 2.1 given all that you have learned? Instructions for the Cover Letter In a one page cover letter to your reader, address the following: What is your scholarly problem? What are some of the challenges that you addressed in representing the ethos of your meta-game? Describe two writing-centered skills that you find yourself paying more attention to in your writing in this essay. Use the language from the Assignment goals above and find evidence from your essay writing itself. What parts of the feedback that you received from Graded Draft 2.2 did you address and how? Beyond specific feedback, is there an exercise from this semester that you gravitated toward that helped your thinking in this essay? How have you become better at extending, refining, or nuancing another argument after having performed this lens move? Having written this essay, describe your writerly ethos?