Humanities Homework Help

http://www.sharonlbegley.com/culture-the-dumbest-g… read this article then follow these instructions:

Each time you encounter a text on your own or for a class (we’ll use the word “text” to cover essays, films, books, articles, etc.), you should actively engage the content. That is, don’t passively experience a text. We will begin unraveling our assigned texts in these boards so that you can focus your approach to writing using the ideas they contain. That’s a pretty big deal, something I want you to understand:

• you aren’t researching and writing your project about the texts I require you to read or that you find on your own during research; rather, you’re researching and writing using the ideas introduced by the texts.

Use the texts, then, as diving boards for your own thinking:

Here’s a series of questions I’ve been trained to ask about texts as a reader, and now I’m passing it along to you. I ask these questions all the time so that I can get a look at the bigger picture a text may be approaching, and I recommend that you do the same. It may be cumbersome at first, but if you stick with it, you’ll learn to do it on the fly. Be honest–you don’t have to convince me how much you like a particular text if you dislike it. The same goes for not understanding–it’s okay to not understand. It’s not okay, though, to say you don’t understand and then do nothing about it. If you think about it, one of the best things you can do as a reader is ask questions until you find yourself saying “I don’t know.” Once you find yourself at that point, you’ve found the edges of your knowledge and have thus discovered a beginning.

These questions can be the basis of our discussion boards all semester long, at least as starting points:

• Initial reactions / Did you like it? Why / not? Be honest–some of the texts bore the life out of me, but it doesn’t mean that they don’t have worth.

• Reactions upon further thinking?

• What is the central claim that the writer is making (look for a thesis)? Is it explicitly stated? Where?

• How does the writer support the claim?

• How does this text connect to other texts we’ve encountered?

• Who wrote it, when, and why does that matter?
• Can I trust this source?
• How does this text connect to reality / life?

• Why am I being prompted to read / respond to this particular text?

For the moment, that’s enough. You don’t have to answer every single question every single time here in the boards, but use them to pique your interests. The last two bullets go a long, long way–we have to connect our texts to real life and ask ourselves why we’re doing what we are doing. We aren’t functioning in a vacuum!