English 1A Fall 2018 Books and Essay Assignments
Essay 1: Cooked and Arthur C. Brooks
Cooked and Arthur Brooks essay
Essay 2: Kleptocracy, New Jim Crow, and Confederate Flag
Option 1: Debra Dickerson’s “The Great White Way” and Ta Nehisi Coates’ “The Case for Reparations” to address claim that America built its wealth by inventing the myth of race in the service of an American kleptocracy.
Sources
White wealth is almost 10 to 1 over black wealth
Charts addressing wealth inequality
Option 2: Write an argumentative thesis that addresses the claim that America’s prison industrial complex exercises a form of systemic racism that is equivalent to “The New Jim Crow.” See “The Caging of America” and The New Jim Crow (full week)
Option 3. Write an argumentative thesis that address the claim that the Confederate flag and all that it represents is not about honor, or birthright, or any kind of glorified American tradition, but is a symbol of racist mythology and therefore the Confederate flag should be legally banished.
Confederate Flag Debate (full week) : “Remembering History As Fable”
Jamelle Bouie’s essay “White Americans Have to Make a Choice,” on Confederacy and “I Used to Lead Tours at a Plantation”
Dickerson’s “The Great White Way,” Coates’ essay on reparations and kleptocracy and Get Out
Addressing Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, Jamelle Bouie’s “White Americans Have to Make a Choice,” Aisha Harris’ “Spring Time for the Confederacy,”, Margaret Biser’s “I Used to Lead Tours at a Plantation,” John Oliver’s Confederacy commentary, Coates’ “Why Do So Few Blacks Study the Civil War?”, and the film Get Out, support, refute, or complicate the argument that racism is not a faint echo of the past but is an ongoing assault on black people evidenced by a continued enabling of Confederate sympathizers and “The New Jim Crow.”
Other Sources:
“What This Cruel War Was Over” Coates
“Why There Are No Nazi Statues in Germany”
“How Other Countries Have Dealt with Monuments”
“Should Confederate Flags be Banned in the US?”
Essay 3
Option One. Cal Newport and Passion Hypothesis (full week)
Option 2: Defend, refute, or complicate the human instinct for tribalism in the context of David Brooks’ “People Like Us.”
Option 3: Develop an argumentative thesis about the Immigration debate that addresses the labor problems rendered in Vice News video clip Sweet Home Alabama.
Option 4: “Prudence Or Cruelty,” and food stamps debate
Option 5. NFL and Steve Almond
Essay 4: Millennials, Surrogacy, Bariatric Surgery, Social Media, and Poverty
Option 1: Are adults combining modern technology and helicopter parenting to the detriment of the young generation? See Smartphones Ruin a Generation and Coddling of America (full week)
Option 2: Address the claim that the abuses and legal tangles of surrogate motherhood compel us to abolish it as a for-profit enterprise.
Option 3: Address the claim that bariatric surgery creates more dangers and not enough benefits to be a recommended procedure. See Bariatric surgery debate as seen in Vox. Show the other side: People who can’t diet and have diabetes.
Option 4: Address the claim in Sherry Turkle’s “The Flight from Conversation” that social media is an impediment to our intellectual, social, and emotional growth.
Option 5: Linda Tirado blog and the question: Addressing Linda Tirado's famous blog post, write a 5-paragraph essay that supports or refutes the argument that poverty is not a "lifestyle choice" but a self-perpetuating trap.
Essay 5: Education
Option 1: Alfie Kohn’s “From Degrading to De-grading”
Option 2: Address the claim that many people who are encouraged to go to college are being misguided in the context of “The World Might be Better Off Without College for Everyone.”
Option 3: Address the claim that the college rankings system is not helpful, accurate, or trustworthy. See “Why College Rankings Are a Joke” and “Shut Up About Harvard.”
Option 4: Address the claim that a working class background creates special conflicts for succeeding in higher education. See Bell Hooks essays, including “Keeping Close to Home” and “Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class.” See review of Lubrano’s book Limbo.
Option 5: Standardized Testing
Option 6: For-Profit colleges should be illegal.
Miscellaneous
Why It Pays to be a Jerk and “Emptiness”
One. Living in the Shadow Race and Class
Two. Against School
Three. Standardized Testing, John Oliver video
Four. From Degrading to Grading Alfie Kohn
Five. Nikole Hannah Jones
Or Tribalism, Cal Newport, Food Stamps
One and Two. Cal Newport Parts 1 and 2
Three. People Like Us
Four. Prudence Or Cruelty, “Messy Relationship Between Food Stamps and Health”
Five. I Used to be a Human Being, Nosedive, Flight from Conversation, NFL debate with Steve Almond;
“What Facebook Did to American Democracy”; “What Facebook and Google Can Learn from the First Major News Hoax”
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