Season Essays:
Throughout the semester, you will write an Essay for each season of Breaking Bad. Your Essay
for each season must refer to all of the episodes you watched during each season of the series. For
example, your Season One Essay must refer to all seven episodes from Season One, and your
Season Five Essay must refer to all sixteen episodes from Season Five.
For each Season Essay, you must analyze the story Vince Gilligan and his creative team told
about Walter White and the pursuit of the dream he established for himself in the series pilot
episode. Pay attention to the ways that Walters pursuit of that dream hits unforseen obstacles and
Spring 2020 Syllabus AST 217OL 9
transforms him as well as the other characters on the show. Assess whether Walters dream is
transforming into nightmare for him and his family and whether Walters pursuit of that dream
bring happiness or misery to other characters on the show. Additionally, look for the ways that
Walters pursuit of his dream awakens something in him that he had buried. What story/message
does Vince Gilligan and his creative team tell through those developments? Do Vince Gilligan and
the creative team seem to be telling a broader story about the pursuit of the American dream?
As you write each of your Season Essays, refer to specific scenes from the episodes you
watched in that particular season. You may use ONLY the episodes to write your Essay. The use of
any additional sources will result in a grade of 0 Points for your Essay and may result in an
Academic Honesty Violation.
Your Season Essays must be typed, double-spaced, written in a twelve-point font, and use
Chicago Manual of Style citations. Your Essays also must include between 500 and 800 words and
contain a minimum of three paragraphs. I will grade your Season Essays using the American
Studies Writing Rubric, and you can earn up to 140 Points toward your Semester Grade by writing
each of your Season Essays. You can earn up to 700 Points toward your Semester Grade by writing
all of your Season Essays. You will submit your Season Essays on our Cabrini Learn page by the due
dates listed on the Class Schedule and our Cabrini Learn page.
Category: Chicago / Turabian
A 25 to 30 page research paper (not including notes, graph-
ics, appendices, etc.)
Can include alternative formats, such as a museum-quality
exhibit or documentary film.
Possible topics include analyzing a historiographical debate
or placing a smaller, local event in a larger historical context.
Relies more on secondary and less on primary sources.
Critiques from my instructor
I have attached a copy of your thesis with suggested edits. There are a few questions you need to think about as you make revisions:
1. What is your thesis? I don’t see a well-defined argument being laid out in your introduction. You need to explain what you intend to contribute to the history of this field that is different from what scholars who have written on this topic have said about it. Your paper seems to go back and forth between discussing the positive and negative aspects of the War on Drugs without taking a position yourself or adding anything new to this field.
2. How are you using primary sources to support the argument you make? I don’t really see you using any primary sources. It appears that you are repeating information that you found in secondary sources. A thesis needs to be based on primary source research.
3. Are all of your points clearly and concisely made? Beyond the editing I suggest, there are larger structural issues that need to be addressed. What you’ve written is very repetitive. You include the same information in multiple places throughout the thesis and make the same statements numerous times, sometimes even in the same paragraph. You need to be concise.
Now at this point switching from thesis to project in which, I can use secondary sources but I need it not to be repetitive, basically follow the critiques of my instructor to the point.
I’m sending both drafts the one titled “Incarceration” is the old one and “War on Drugs” is recent.
I will need graphs etc. footnotes as well
Write a concise analytical summary for readings. 480 to 600 words in length (2 to 2.5 pages) excluding footnotes (no bibliography required), Times New Roman, size 12 font, double spaced, 1-inch margin all around, 8.5 x 11 paper. Footnotes follow the Chicago Manual of Style. Write three or four paragraphs (full sentences, not bullet points) describing: what the reading is about (e.g. Titians Venus of Urbino or the symbolic significance of Venetian doors) and what particular problem or issue the topic presents; how the author approaches the topic in terms of methods and types of evidence (e.g. other images, documents, historical contexts, etc.provide some specifics); how the author uses this approach to make a particular argument; what you think of the arguments broader implications for the way we think about Baroque art and architecture. For this component, you can relate the readings argument to that weeks contextual reading; and finally, what surprised you about the reading and/or what confused you about the reading. Note: You do not necessarily need to respond to these points in this order or at equal lengths, but they should all be included somehow, and the order should make sense for the analysis. You can use a maximum of one quotation, but you should explain its significance as a quotation, and you must provide a page number in the footnote (Chicago Style). No bibliography required.
Analytic Summary Assignment Option 2 Reading: Barker, Sheila. The First Biography of Artemisia Gentileschi: Self-Fashioning and Proto-Feminist Art History in Cristofano Bronzinis Notes on Women Artists. Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 60.3 (2018): 40435.
Link of the reading: https://www.academia.edu/38491524/The_First_Biography_of_Artemisia_Gentileschi_Self-Fashioning_and_Proto-Feminist_Art_History_in_Cristofano_Bronzini_s_Notes_on_Women_Artists
Using the readings from Unfinished Nation as well as the Foner and Carter readings, address the following prompt in at least 750 words (I have attached Foner and Carter readings):
1. List, explain, and analyze the divisions in American life over what the concepts free and American meant during the period in question. The Civil War was fought over the issue of slavery and the Norths victory appeared to mean that slavery was over and that the US was finally ready to fully embrace the Declaration of Independences claim that all men are created equal. Yet, that didnt happen. Why not?
2. What were the divisions, North and South, as well as within each region, that kept the US from living up to that creed?
Your journal entry must:
i. Go beyond elemental statements about one race not liking the other.
ii. Explain the origins, motivations, and backgrounds for the developments. In other words, you must specifically address why each party discussed thought or acted in that way.
iii. Be based upon and reference the two supplemental readings. Note that tangential mentions of the reading do not equate to reference and include.
iv. Include information from all of the assigned readings.
P. Ward, White Canada Forever.
D. Avery, Reluctant Host
V. Knowles, Strangers at Our Gates
B. Roberts, From Whence They Came
These are sources to be used. These sources are minimum that should be used maybe add one source from a scholarly article.
Please note: all sources used in the essay must be cited in footnotes or endnotes and listed in a bibliography.
A thesis should be provided in the introduction and should be supported by 3-4 arguments
post in the first person addressing your struggle with the reading
materials. Write about what you dont understand, or what you half-understand, or how the
material connects to the previous week, or what about the material fascinates you and why.
You can problematize or extend or complexify the material. Do write in proper English;
however, do not write mini papers or reports or thesis statements or anything that resembles
formal writing.
please make sure you dont use big words, make sure you write as if your a student.
You must rely on key authors, provide quotes, notions
Formal requirements:
4-5 pages,
12 spt, times new Roman,
paragraph 1,15-1,5, standard margins,
no title page (just surname in the first line,
no plagiarism (use quotes with references, references if you paraphrase etc, references must be mentioned exactly where you cite -not in the end of a big paragraph etc)
Recommended structure:
Brief intro (few phrases)
Your key idea (presumably-answer for major question
Argumentation
Conclusion (is you idea correct or not)
References.
What to do:
1. Seek, find, and visit websites and YouTube channels associated with coding and creativity; e.g., https://scratch.mit.edu/ http://www.blackgirlscode.com/ https://girlswhocode.com https://hourofcode.com/ https://processing.org/ https://www.youtube.com/user/CodeOrg (Links to an external site.)
2. Watch a bunch of the videos that promote or advertise the cause. Consider who appears in the videos and what that reveals about the intended audience for the videos. Take some screenshots and some written notes as you watch. Record the URLs of the videos you watch.
3. Watch and do one of the Hour of Code tutorials (https://hourofcode.com/us/learn), or one of the talk throughs on computer programming at Khan Academy (https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer-programming). Lets call these tutorials interactive videos. Document your progress for this step as you did for the last: take notes, screenshots, and remember the URLs for everything you look at or play with.
4. As you select a tutorial to do, you will notice that they are targeted at different audiences — sometimes explicitly, like in terms of recommended age group; sometimes implicitly through their reference to images or sounds from popular culture that appeal to certain audiences.
5. Research who made these videos, who appears in these videos, and who financed these videos (both the promotional videos and the interactive videos). Start this process by Wikipedia surfing the profiles of these people; e.g., with respect to Mitchel Resnick (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchel_Resnick) you will find out where and with whom he works, where he got his degree, what he used to do before he was a professor. Follow links to co-workers, personal relations (e.g., brothers, sisters, wives, husbands, etc.), places of employment, etc. To find more than the basics e.g., to find out that Resnick serves on the board of the Computer Clubhouse Network (http://theclubhousenetwork.org/board) and the Scratch Foundation (https://www.scratchfoundation.org/who-we-are/) you will need to broaden your search beyond Wikipedia. Keep track of the connections you find by drawing a social network diagram.
6. Consider the history of the creativity movement. The OED can be a place to start, just looking at the etymology of words like creative (http://www.oed.com.oca.ucsc.edu/view/Entry/44072#eid8014684), but a real history will take some more digging (e.g., https://www.ias.edu/ideas/van-eekelen-discipline-creativity); and, finding the apt intellectual predecessor of specific ideas about creativity will entail even more study; e.g., Resnicks Creative Learning Spiral seems to be a vulgarization of philosopher Hegels dialectic spiral of sublation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aufheben). Wikipedia can be of some help for this step too, but to make claims like I have just done connecting Resnick to Hegel requires a reading of the original sources, if you are going to be academically respectable.
7. Consider the cultural, business, and political context of creativity and code. For example, is the code and creativity cause motivated by a view of economics like the creative class (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_class) notion advanced by business school professor Richard Florida? Is it a plot by the billionaires who appear in those Hour of Code videos? What does coding and creativity have to do with bigger movements, like the Maker Movement? Is it all just a natural outgrowth of the coupling of hippies and the military that spawned Silicon Valley as detailed in Fred Turners history, From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (University of Chicago Press, 2006)? You might also want to consider coding and creativity as it appears in academia and the university (e.g., The biannual ACM Creativity and Cognition Conference: http://cc.acm.org) (Links to an external site.)
8. Outline a way to tie all this stuff together: Who appears in the videos? Who is behind the videos? Who are the videos designed to appeal to? What are the money and the power behind the videos or, more generally, behind the code and creativity movement?
9. Now you are ready to write. Pick a position: Are you for this coding and creativity thing, or against it, or are you going to point out both positives and negatives? Youve looked at a lot of videos and consulted a lot of biographies: For your argument, who agrees with you? Who disagrees and why? What would it take to convince someone otherwise? To figure out what would be convincing, you need to consider the audience for your paper. Start with the other students in class. How can you convince them? Include both big picture stuff, e.g., what creativity and coding is in the mass media, education in general, etc. And, include close readings of specific arguments and promotions you have seen or read in the videos or texts, like Resnicks text. What do those videos or texts do to you to convince you, or not? Include a screenshot or two if it helps you make your point. List, in your bibliography/references URLs, videos, books, etc. you discovered in your research for this project and that you incorporate into your paper. Usually, it is the case that the more references you include the better. In contrast, a paper that hinges on just one or two references is usually too fragile to withstand a close reading or critique.
10. Grading:
The paper will be graded according to the following criteria:
(a) Spelling and grammar count! We will take off points for poor proofreading;
(b) the quality and extent of your research;
(c) the clarity of your argument: Make your point right up front and then extend your argument in the body of the paper;
(d) the skill with which you weave your references into your argument; Just listing references is not convincing; you need to consider the point (or ancillary point) you are trying to make by citing a reference; e.g., some references are there to convince the reader that you know what you are writing about; others are there to represent adversaries: ideas or people against whom you are arguing; other are positive citations, references to ideas or people who back up or give further depth to the position you are arguing.
Assignment Instructions: Congratulations! Your political candidate won the election. Now it’s time to make some changes. Your job, as the national security advisor to your newly elected candidate, is to brief the policymaker on policy recommendations in one of the following areas: (Choose ONLY one area to complete all three of the Practical Policy Option Assignments.)
SUBJ: Threats from Islamic State
From the area threat listed above, research and collect information to include:
1. Historical data,
2. Exploration of relevant policy questions,
3. Political issues and a sticky situation,
4. An up-to-date summary of recent events on your topic to help your new policymaker in his/her first day in office.
Get creative. Choose a specific policy position – Senator, Congressman, President, etc. (You could also use an appointed position, like Secretary of State or Ambassador to the UN etc.)
Although most policy backgrounders do not include citations, this one will. You need to cite ALL of your information.
TECHNICAL GUIDANCE:
Type in Times New Roman, 12 point and double space.
Follow the Turabian Style as the sole citation and reference style used in written work submitted as part of coursework.
Use scholarly or other relevant sources.
DO NOT use of Wikipedia or encyclopedic type sources. It is highly advised to utilize: books, peer reviewed journals, articles, archived documents, etc.
The submission is be in your own words with minimal quotes and cited appropriately.
ARTICLE REFLECTION PAPER INSTRUCTIONS
For this article reflection, you will read the assigned article for that module/week. The Article to be read and Reflected upon is attached in PDF format titled ( Reading Scriptures for good news that crosses barriers of Race / Ethnicity, Class and Culture )
Each article reflection paper must be 500700 words and include:
1. A paragraph that provides an overall summary of the article.
2. The rest of the paper you will reflect on, analyze, and apply at least 3 specific content references (i.e. a direct quotes or references from the article).
3. Need a Table of Content, Title page Footnotes, and all the details contained in the Grading Rubric should be in the paper.