9.1 Class Goals:

1. Deepen our understanding of how evidence works and how to use reasoning to “make the evidence speak”
2. Learn and practice some strategies for describing evidence that will help you in your essays.
3. Read and evaluate a lens analysis, focusing particularly on how the essay describes and analyzes from the visual evidence and connects it to specific claims

9.1 Class Activities:

Please complete the following activities by the end of the day on March 23 (by 11:59pm). I recommend completing them in the order that they’re listed. Note that some activities encourage you to comment on your peers’ thoughts and writing, so you may have to return to an activity after you’ve contributed in order to read what your classmates have written.

• Introduction (Total Time: 2m)
  Watch a short intro video (2m)

1. What is Evidence? (Total Time: 18m)
   • Watch a lecture to review and deepen understanding of evidence and reasoning (18m)
2. Describing Evidence (Estimated Time: 45m)
   • Write a detailed description of a photograph (10m)
   • Watch a short video on the strategies for describing (16m)
   • Revise descriptive paragraph (10m)
   • Post descriptive paragraph to the course blog (5m)
3. Evaluating a Model for Essay 2 (Estimated Time: 45m)
   • Read a model for Essay 2 (15m)
   • Make at least 3 comments on the essay on Google Docs (10m)
   • Reply to at least 2 comments from your peers (5m)
4. OPTIONAL: Contribute to Discussion around COVID-19 

• GRADING: You will be graded completed/incompleted based on your thorough engagement and participation only. Specifically, I’m looking for your blog post and comments on the Google Docs, as well as engagement with your peers’ comments by replying to them. 

9.1.0 Introduction (Total Time: 2m)

Instructions: Watch this short intro video (2m)

9.1.1 Lecture: What is Evidence? (18m)

Goal: Deepen our understanding of how evidence works and how to use reasoning to “make the evidence speak”

Instructions: Watch and listen to this lecture. I recommend watching with a notebook (in case you want to jot anything down) as well as Ch. 4 of the Rosenwasser and Stephen, “Reasoning from Evidence to Claims.”

 

9.1.2 Describing Evidence (Estimated Time: 45m)

Goals:

• Learn and practice some strategies for describing evidence that will help you in your essays.
• Practice asking “So What?” to the descriptive evidence, and push the descriptions toward tentative claims about what they might mean.

Description of Activity: Below, I’ve posted a contemporary photograph. For this activity, you’ll describe the photograph, gathering the details into your own language, with as much objective and sensory detail as you can. Then—and only then!—you’ll state what you take those details to mean. Ultimately, you want to make a tentative argument for what the image is communicating beyond the obvious. (Note: NOT what the photographer intended the image to mean or even what the image “symbolizes,” but what the image communicates. Subtle difference!) This will build your skills for describing the evidence that you’ll need for Essay 2.

Instructions for Activity: 

1. Describe the photograph above for 10 minutes. (Click here if you’re having trouble seeing it.) Set a timer for 10 minutes (really!) and describe the photograph in as much detail as you can, focusing on what seems most significant to you. Don’t worry about why it’s significant yet or what you take the details to mean. Try to suspend judgement. Instead, simply describe using vivid, sensory detail. Be specific. Be creative. (You’re going to eventually publish this as a blog post, so it might be best to type it out. If you’d rather do it by hand, that’s fine, but you’ll need to type it out later.)
2. Once you’ve described the image for 10 minutes, and you feel like you’ve done a thorough job of describing, watch & listen to this short lecture on description:

3. Save the original paragraph of description, but write a new paragraph in which you revise the description in light of the ideas in the above lecture. You might cut the parts that you feel are not as important. You might revise words to be more appropriate in connotation to the image. Or you might add more specificity. Or you might add more sensory description. It’s up to you. And this time, push the description to claims by asking “So what?” Why are these details important? Ultimately, use your description of the details to write about what the image communicates (beyond the obvious) and why? At this point, you should know that the photograph is called “Shopping Cart, Tanger Factory Outlet Center, I-10, Gonzales, Louisiana, 2010,” by the photographer Richard Misrach, from a book called Petrochemical America, which collects his photos that he took around the petrochemical factories in the Louisiana Delta. Does this influence your thinking at all?
4. Label clearly the two paragraphs “Draft” and “Revision.”
5. Reflect on this activity in a 3rd paragraph. What was that like for you? What it challenging? Why? How did you choose to revise your description? Why? 
6. Publish your activity as Post 2.2. Be sure to check “Post 2.2” in the Categories box. 

9.1.3 Evaluating a Model for Essay 2 (Estimated Time: 45m)

Goals:

• Read and evaluate a model of a lens analysis essay.
• Analyze the writing by annotating the text.
• Discuss the essay by raising questions in the annotations, answering the questions of others, and replying to comments by your peers.

Instructions for Accessing the Document

1. Go to “Bloodshed in Our Homeland“ on Google Docs. This is a student model of a lens analysis essay. The class theme was different (“Monsters”) and the lens texts were different (Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s “Monster Culture,” which may sound familiar to you—I’ve used it as an example for several handouts.) Although the theme and texts were different, the assignment was very similar. So consider how it might serve as a model of what to do (and maybe what not to do) for your Essay 2.
2. If you have a Google Account, make sure you sign in. (If you’re already logged in, you’ll see your profile icon and/or name in the upper righthand corner. Click it to make sure you’re logged in. If you’re not logged in, you’ll see a blue button in the upper righthand corner that says: SIGN IN. If you have an account already, please sign in. Signing in allows me to see who is posting comments. Proceed to Step 5.
3. If you don’t already have a Google Account, please sign up for one using the QC Google App. Full instructions are here. After you’ve successfully signed up, access the doc and make sure you’re signed in. If you have any trouble, please contact the IT help desk at 718-997-4444 OR [email protected]. And please let me know.
4. If you’re having trouble signing in/up, you can still access the doc, but you’ll be “anonymous.” This means that you’ll need to mark every comment you make with your name, so I know that you’re participating. At the top of the document, you should see an annotation from “Anonymous” (written by me) that shows you how to do this. Again: you should only take this option if you don’t have a Google account and can’t sign up.
   

Activity Instructions

1. Read the essay all the way through first. I recommend turning off the comments / annotations for now. You can do this by going to the top right, where you’ll see this:
   
   If you click on it, a drop-down menu will open that looks like this:
   
   If you choose “Viewing,” the comments will be hidden temporarily. When you’re ready to annotate / comment, go back to the drop-down menu and choose “Suggesting.”
2. Annotate the essay with at least 3 comments. Once you’ve read the doc, make sure you’re in “Suggesting” mode, and comment on any aspect of the essay that you’d like. You can comment by highlighting certain parts of the text with your cursor. When you do this, you’ll see a square box with a “+” symbol pop up to the right. It looks like this:
   
   Click on it, and you’ll be able to comment on that particular part of the essay. It should look like this:
   
   You can also make a comment anywhere by right-clicking on any part of the Google Doc page.
   When you’re done typing the comment, hit the blue “Comment” button and it will post for everyone to see it.
   Feel free to comment as much as you’d like! (But at least 3 times.)
3. Reply to at least 3 comments by me or your classmates. Engage in discussion by replying to the comments of your classmates. To do this, find a comment you want to respond to and click it. When you do, you’ll see an option to “Reply…”:
   
   Type your reply in the box and submit it. Afterward, someone else can reply to your reply:
   
   Do this at least 3 time, but feel free to do it as much as you’d like!
4. Have fun with it. This is your time to think about what works and what doesn’t in a lens analysis. 

Advice: Focus particularly on how the essay describes the visual evidence and analyzes it in order to connect the evidence to specific claims. You might simply point out what certain sentences are doing, and how they’re doing it. You might suggest what’s working really well in the essay. You might also suggest things that could have strengthened the essay.

 

9.1.4 OPTIONAL: Contribute to Discussion Around COVID-19

OPTIONAL DISCUSSION: If you want to, feel free to post in the Discussion Forum to air out any thoughts, anxieties, resources, questions, or struggles with the current crisis. Much of what we’re doing in this class is critical thinking and information literacy, examining claims and testing evidence—as ridiculous as it might sound at first, the current COVID-19 crisis is a terrific situation in which to explore, refine, and strengthen these skills. Also feel free to share feelings or stories.