Week 2

Author

Introduction

It is time to find your way into the major assignment. We will brainstorm and collect our thoughts so that we can craft a project that goes beyond writing a book report about the place and write something of substance where we take a stand on an issue.

This week's reading is Catherine Savini's "Looking for Trouble." This essay is all about looking for problems as a way to brainstorm ideas for academic papers. This way of brainstorming allows us as writers to get into much meatier subjects and present our readers with questions. Instead of offering our readers a summary of what other writers have written, brainstorming like this primes us to think critically and find questions that we can respond to thoughtfully. This is how we join the conversation.

After you've done the reading, it is time for you to find your own trouble. Using Savini's advice and her four steps to looking for trouble, we will use generative questions to begin to look for ways to join the conversation about a chosen place. Once you've completed the generative questions, you will choose 5 aspects that have come up in your brainstorming and begin to flesh out the "trouble" that might become our research project.

Due Tuesday, September 5.*

*Note: Usually our assignments are due on Monday of each week. Monday, September 4th is a university holiday, so work for this week will be due on Tuesday.

Read

"Looking for Trouble: Finding Your Way into a Writing Assignment" by Catherine Savini

Write

Submit your work in the Google Drive folder below. Don't forget that you need to be logged in your UA email account in order to access our class drive. This assignment is worth 10 points.

Step 1: Choose a place that you connect with. (2 points)

Choose a place you want to write about this semester. This could be your hometown, a forest or park, a sports stadium, a building, a state, somewhere you've always wanted to live, etc. You want to choose a place that you feel personally connected to and that matters to you.

Step 2: Answer the following questions about your place. (4 points)

What makes this place unique?
If you could change anything about this place, what would you change?
If you could preserve anything about this place, what would you preserve?
What do you know about the history of this place? What do you not know about the history?
What do you know about the physical landscape of this place? What do you not know about it?
What do you know about the people of this place? What do you not know about them?
What is one thing you would want everyone to understand about this place?
What do you need to know in order to survive in this place?
What's the most useful object you need in this place?
What threats does this place face?
What assets does this place have?
What other places are connected to this place? How and why are they connected?

Step 3: Find trouble. (4 points)

Choose 5 of your answers above that you find most intriguing or that seem to contain trouble for you. Use Savini's four steps toward finding trouble to write a paragraph about each of the answers you chose. Be sure to include all four: 1. Noticing; 2. Articulating a problem and its details; 3. Posing fruitful questions; 4. Identifying what is at stake.

Upload your writing into the Google Drive folder below.*

*Don't forget to put your name and the week in the file name. For example: "Jaclyn Bergamino Week 2."

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