9.2 Class Goals:
- Deepen understanding of the purpose of a thesis
- Strengthen skills at locating and thinking about main claims in a text
- Understand how to use paraphrase to unlock meaning in a dense text
- Work to draft a preliminary thesis for your Essay 2
9.2 Class Activities:
Please complete the following activities by the end of the day on March 25 (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)
- Read a Handout on Writing Strong Theses (Estimated Time: 30m)
- Read & Comment on Andreas Malm’s “The Anthropocene Myth” (Estimated Time: 60m)
- Draft Your Essay 2 Thesis Statement (Estimated Time: 30m)
- Optional: Watch a Video Relevant to Malm’s essay (Time: 20m)
9.2.0 Introduction (Total Time: 2m)
9.2.1 Read a Handout & Watch a Short Vid on Strong Theses
Read this handout on what makes a strong thesis. This should be mostly review. Pay attention to the two kinds of theses. For Essay 2, you want to develop an analytical thesis.
Important reminder: you do not “pick” your thesis and then find the evidence to back it up (this is the dreaded 5-paragraph format method!). Instead, you want to analyze your object/text and gather details through description and analysis, and only afterward, develop a thesis based on what you’ve found. The first way (the dreaded 5-par format way) is simple and ineffective deduction. The second way is analytical (i.e. induction). Remember: first, analyze like a detective; second, argue like a lawyer.
For added emphasis, here’s a 5-minute video from the Purdue OWL that offers a different perspective.
9.2.2 Read & Comment on Andreas Malm’s “The Anthropocene Myth” (Estimated Time: 60m)
Click here for essay and full instructions. When you’re finished, return to this page to complete the final assignments.
9.2.3 Draft Your Essay 2 Thesis Statement
Take the time to choose your Essay 2 topic, make observations about it, analyze, and form a preliminary argument about one aspect of it. (This will take some time.) Given what you’ve learned about strong thesis statements, reply to this post (at the bottom) with a one-sentence preliminary draft of your thesis. As you reply, I’ll comment on them and give you feedback.
9.2.4 OPTIONAL: Watch This Video Relevant to Malm’s Essay
If you’re feeling ambitious, listen to this interview with writer Arundhati Roy about the connection between capitalism and climate change.
After you watch, head over to the discussion forum to post your thoughts.
This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.
Essay 2 Thesis:
In her article Cara Daggett claims: “an attachment to the righteousness of fossil fuel lifestyle, and to all the hierarchies that depend on fossil fuel, produces a desire to not just deny, but to refuse climate change” (41).
We are going to use this words to lens analyze the video twitted by Media Research Center addressing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. We are also going to look at it with a connection to the concept of mysogyny and aggression created by “fossil authoritharianism” from climate change deniers. (I didn’t decide yet if I’d like to include Greta Thunberg in here as well).
I’m so interested to read this! This is off to a good start. One suggestion about wording: rather than state that you’re going to use the lens (which is not an argument—I can’t say, “No, you’re not!”), shift the wording to represent a claim. Since it’s the first iteration of your thesis (the introductory version) it’s okay if it’s a bit general. But you want to state what connection the lens will reveal. Later, you’ll want the thesis to reflect a very specific claim. (And you might not know this until you’re deep into writing your draft.)
Good!
Using Cara Daggett’s lense from her piece “Petro-Masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire,” we are able to uncover the implied meaning of the advertisement, which is to align Ram trucks with how Donald Trump plans to “Make America Great Again.”
Great: clear and focused. I’m intrigued to read this!
“Petro-Masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire” by Cara Daggett helps provide a deeper understanding of Felipe Fittipaldi’s photograph, “The Decaying Landscape of Atafona, Brazil”, explaining the real burden of climate change.
“Petro-Masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire” by Cara Daggett will help us understand a 1970’s advertisement for Camel the cigarette company and how although they were advertising for the cigarettes how it can also be linked to petro-masculinity.
This is a fine introductory thesis. The more complex version of your main claim, which might come later in the essay, should state specifically WHAT about the Camel ad it reveals. You might also include what the common or obvious assumption about what the ad is communicating is, and then state what it’s REALLY communicating (or what you claim it’s communicating).
I am having a bit of difficult time in picking my outside piece for this essay. I also am a bit confused because the essays that were used for example had a general source of reference and ours the Cronon or Dagget piece are very specific in what they are arguing. Making it more difficult because we are suppose to find something that will support their arguments or are we just using some of the elements they used in their essay? And lastly, does our choice of media has to be directly tied into Nature / the effects of it?
Ps Sorry. I know it is late to be asking these questions.
This is good for an introductory paragraph. My comments echo those on Jazmine’s thesis below.:
The more complex version of your main claim, which might come later in the essay, should state specifically WHAT about the photograph it reveals. You might also include what the common or obvious assumption about what the ad is communicating is, and then state what it’s REALLY communicating (or what you claim it’s communicating).
Why not “Petro-femininity” which is or what is not dominant to say these days, masculine or feminine, and the battle continues through the ages.
In the article “Petro-masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire” by Cara Daggett, Virginia Tech,
The term “Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire” reminds me of the term we used earlier in the course “Carbon Barons” from Rebecca Solnit’s “Climate Change is Violence” in the third paragraph “So do the carbon barons” (13). I relate these two terms to be alike because instead of saying climate change can be handled by the general population it spotlight the focus on the policy makers or companies profiting from the fossil fuel industry to consider the actions that is hurting the climate.
“Le pouvoir du patriarcat blanc” and “Dominio patriarcal blanco” French and Spanish for white patriarchal rule, seems to imply that our response to the climate versus fossil fuel industry is being controlled by ancient factors, and even to suggest that to challenge climate change may be gender and hippie like.
I do agree with the line “Vast networks of privilege that are sustained by fossil economies are likewise threatened” (26) by Cara Daggett. When Cara Daggett mentioned this statement and speaks of the trillions of dollars that may remain in the ground. In my opinion she is being frank in saying “If the extraction of oil stops” it’ll affect major businesses. This may be true, because although fossil fuel may be used to make all sort of different products including plastics, it’s an import export and even taxed item that results in profit, and so its difficult to just let go of the extraction of the fossil fuel.
Kishan, you’ve gathered a lot of great thoughts here. It’s almost like a pre-draft—which is good! I took the liberty of annotating some thoughts around your writing, so click on the highlights to see those specific queries.
Overall, I’m not sure what your *main claim* is, though. What’s your central focus—and what cultural object are you going to use the Daggett to analyze?
Yes I believed I openly comment instead of doing the “Thesis” or “main claim” and i did not identify the “cultural object” like the before mentioned examples, I was wondering why the examples before were short, I used those terms loosely to describe the “patriarchal rule” maybe because the interpretation I had was, that the author was implying we were to stuck on our fossil fuel ways of the last few centuries.
I may most likely try to do another example than the one submitted here.
The reason for the shortness is just because the thesis statement should be one sentence. It can’t hold the complexity of your entire essay, of course, but it should condense your main idea into one, clear claim.
Cara Daggett’s article, “Petro-masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire,” can help better understands the Starving Female Polar Bear photograph by Kerstin Langenberger which shows the dangers of climate change to animals that rely on colder temperature to survive.
Great—and by the end, we should understand more clearly exactly HOW the ideas in Daggett’s article help us to see something different.
William Cronon’s essay “The Trouble with Wilderness: Or, getting back to the Wrong Nature” will serve as a lens to analyze the myth of what wilderness means to the public as depicted in the 2013 National Commercial campaign for Dr. Pepper soda titled Mountain Man.
Sounds like you’re off to a great start—looking forward to reading this.