Email: [email protected]
Office: PE4; extension 5673
Website: Critical Thinker
http://herculodge.typepad.com/critical_thinker/
Students with Disabilities:
If you have a documented disability and wish to discuss academic accommodations, please contact me as soon as possible.
Essay 1 for 190 points
In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan: Critiquing the Pathologies of Nutritionism
In a 1,000 word essay, develop a thesis that critiques nutritionism, exposing its fallacies and mythologies and revealing the way nutritionism deludes and cripples the average consumer. Use no fewer than 2 sources.
Essay 2 for 190 points
The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner: Exploring Mythologies of Happiness
In a 4-page research paper, 1,000 words, critique the idea of happiness, its mythologies and fallacies. Use personal examples to illustrate your points. Use no fewer than 2 sources
Essay 3 for 190 points
Five Options for Essay
Option 1
Develop a thesis that answers the following question: How do characters in Lasdun's "love stories" reach the demonic state? Consider, the Faustian Bargain, settling, the dream of eternal adolescence, and the chimera for a comparison essay that includes at least 3 stories, "The Half Sister," "The Natural Order," and "Peter Khan's Third Wife." Be sure your essay is 1,200 words and includes a Works Cited page with a minimum of 2 sources.
Option 2
Analyze the dream of eternal adolescence and its corruption of the soul by comparing this dream to "The Natural Order" or "The Half Sister" and Joseph Epstein's essay "Perpetual Adolescence." Be sure your essay is 1,200 words and includes a Works Cited page with a minimum of 2 sources.
Option 3
Analyze the corruption of fatherly love in "Cleanness" or "Caterpillars" (or both) with Erich Fromm's notion of the Authoritarian Personality. Be sure your essay is 1,200 words and includes a Works Cited page with a minimum of 2 sources.
Option 4
Compare the theme of the chimera (idealized love) and its resulting futility as it occurs in the "Peter Kahn's Third Wife" and F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Winter Dreams." Be sure your essay is 1,200 words and includes a Works Cited page with a minimum of 2 sources. Here's another link to "Winter Dreams."
Option Five
Compare the Faustian Bargain in "The Half Sister" to the H.G. Wells short story, "The Country of the Blind."Essay 4 for 250 points
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl: Argumentation, Refutation
In a 1,000-word essay (4 pages), address the following in an argumentative essay:
Many argue that Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning is worthy manifesto that champions meaning as the antidote to the universal affliction, the existential vacuum. On the other hand, some critics dismiss Frankl’s message, arguing that meaning, as Frankl presents it, is the product of strict moral and religious dogma disguising itself as universal meaning; that Frankl’s criteria for meaning, Herculean in scope, is nearly impossible to adhere to; that unrealistic expectations for “Absolute Meaning” will lead to disappointment; that the obsessive search for meaning can be a neurosis that impedes us from living fully; and that, contrary to VK’s Gospel of Meaning, there are virtues, pleasures, and satisfactions from living a life in the existential vacuum and moral relativism that escape a rigid dogmatist such VK.
In an argumentative essay, evaluate the defenders and critics of VK and develop a thesis that takes one of the two positions.
Include no fewer than 3 research sources for your Works Cited page.
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English 1C Consistency Project—SLO Assignment 1. Students will express critical viewpoints and develop original thesis-driven arguments in response to social, political, and philosophical issues and/or to works of literature and literary theory. This argumentative essay will be well organized, demonstrate an ability to support a claim using analysis and elements of argumentation, and integrate primary and secondary sources. 2. The paper should use at least three sources and not over-rely on one secondary source for most of the information. Rather, it should use multiple sources and synthesize the information found in them. 3. This paper will be approximately 4-5 pages in length, not including the Works Cited page, which is also required. The Works Cited page does NOT count toward length requirement. 4. Within your argument, address issues of bias, credibility, and relevance in primary and secondary sources. 5. Demonstrate understanding of analytical methods and structural concepts such as inductive and deductive reasoning, cause and effect, logos, ethos, and pathos, and the recognition of formal and informal fallacies in language and thought. 6. You must use MLA format for the document, in-text citations, and Works Cited page. 7. You must integrate quotations and paraphrases using signal phrases and analysis or commentary. 8. You must sustain your argument, use transitions effectively, and use correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
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Grading
Four 1,000-word Research Papers (about 4 typed pages):
First 3 are 190 points each
Last essay is 250 points
6 333-word quizzes are 180 points
Grand Total: 1,000
Writing Word Total: 6,000
Grand Point Total: 1,000 points. 900 is A. 800 is B. 700 is C. 600 is D.
You Can Revise Your Worst Essay for Higher Grade of a Maximum 20 Points
Late Essays Are Deducted a Full Letter Grade
Things That Disqualify a Student from Receiving an A Grade
Misspelling author name, book title, my name.
Plagiarism: trying to deceive professor by representing other people’s work as your own. (automatic F on the essay, zero points). No headers. No Works Cited page
Classroom Decorum
No smart phones can be used in class. If you’re on your smart phone and I catch you, you get a warning the first time. Second time, you must leave the class and lose 25 points. Third time, you must leave the class and lose 50 points. Same with subsequent violations.
The above also applies to talking and doing homework from other classes.
Writing and Reading Schedule
August 27 Introduction, Grading, Cell Phone Policy, etc.
August 29 Pollan 1-50
September 3 Pollan 51-100
September 5 Pollan 101-150
September 10 Pollan 151-end
September 12 Quiz 1 due in my office PE4
September 17 Essay 1 due in my office PE4 (A-M); start Geography of Bliss by Weiner
September 19 Essay 1 due in my office PE4 (N-Z)
September 24 Weiner 1-60 (We’re reading Chapters 1-7, not entire book)
September 26 Quiz 2 due in my office PE4
October 1 Weiner 61-180
October 3 Weiner 181-245
October 8 Weiner (finish)
October 10 Quiz 3 due in my office
October 15 Essay 2 N-Z due in my office PE4
October 17 Essay 2 A-M due in my office PE4; start It’s Beginning to Hurt by Lasdun
October
22 Lasdun “The Half Sister”
October
24 Lasdun “Natural Order”
October
29 Lasdun “Peter Kahn’s Third Wife”
October 31 Quiz 4 due in my office PE4
November 5 Lasdun “Cleanness,” “Caterpillars”
November 7 Quiz 5 due in my office PE4
November 12 Essay 3 A-M due in my office PE4
November 14 Essay 3 N-Z in my office PE4; start Man’s Search for Meaning
November 19 Frankl 1-40
November 21 Frankl 41-100
November 26 Frankl 101-150
November 28 Holiday
December 3 Frankl 151-end
December 5 Quiz 6 due in my office PE4
December 10 Essay 4 N-Z due in my office PE4
December 12 Essay 4 A-M due in my office PE4
Student Learning Objective (SLO)
1. Students will compose an argumentative essay that shows an ability to support a claim using analysis, elements of argumentation, and integration of primary and secondary sources. This essay will be well organized, follow proper MLA format, and be technically correct in paragraph composition, sentence structure, grammar, spelling, and usage.
Course Objectives
The student will be able to: 1. Read expository prose critically to distinguish between perception and inference, surface and implied meanings, fact and opinion. 2. Analyze the way arguments are presented in readings and the media. 3. Demonstrate the ability to organize and develop written arguments and compositions. 4. Refine writing skills developed in English 1A: focusing a topic, formulating a thesis, providing support, and developing unity and coherence. 5. Evaluate the accuracy and cogency of arguments by identifying logical fallacies and drawing inferences from readings and media presentations. 6. Formulate and develop arguments and critical theories about issues, argumentative prose, and literary interpretations.
Major Topics
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Structures of argument: Thinking, reading, discussing. Evaluate data, credibility, and relevance. |
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Understanding and evaluating claims: Reasons, purposes, support, ambiguity, vagueness, complexity. Assessing credibility: Causal arguments, moral reasoning. |
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Evaluating arguments and explanations: Relevance, clarity, testability, and consistency. Identifying assumptions, developing counter arguments and justifications. |
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Writing argumentative, evaluative, and analytic essays: Prewriting, writing, and rewriting. Topic selection: Narrowing, evaluating validity and relevance. Developing parts of the argumentative essay: Strategies for organizing an argument or evaluation, including evidence, inductive and deductive reasoning. Avoiding logical fallacies. |
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Literary analysis: Evaluating point of view, inferences, and assumptions. Understanding diction, identification, aesthetic distance, and focus. Exploring rhetorical devices: Satire, irony, paradox, over-statement and understatement, evaluating authority. |
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Comparative analysis: Analyzing symbols, analogy, ambiguity, and imagery. |
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Deductive reasoning in expressive or expository literature: Recognizing assumptions in literary criticism and theory. |
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Political and advertising rhetoric: Slanders, euphemisms, innuendo, loaded questions, downplaying, avoidance, stereotyping, hyperbole, persuasive definitions. Information tailoring and the news media: Loaded language in reporting and advertising. |
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(Major writing assignments will consist of approximately 6 essays totaling 6000 words.) |
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