Synopses & Reviews
WRITING ANALYTICALLY WITH READINGS is two books in one, a guide to writing with a reader, that teaches you how to have ideas and develop them in an academic setting and beyond. The writing guide offers a book-length treatment of analysis, a form of thinking and writing required in virtually all college courses. The writing guide is accompanied by a thematically-arranged collection of readings and images-material for students like you to write about and to use as models and lenses in doing your own writing about the world.
Review
"I like the thoughtfulness that went into each [assignment sequence], the careful connections with the Writing Analytically approach, . . I also like the "applications" that are based on the principle that part of good writing is observing the world around us, not just sitting in front of a computer screen."
Review
"I can't wait for the first edition. This textbook is attentive to the needs of interdisciplinary, analytic, and civic-minded education. I'll certainly recommend it to colleagues."
About the Author
David Rosenwasser teaches at Muhlenberg College, a small liberal arts college in Pennsylvania, where he has been since the late 1980s. Along with Jill Stephen, he created and implemented the Writing Across the Curriculum program there through a series of faculty seminars. During these seminars, Rosenwasser and Stephen discovered that content faculty from across the disciplines, although they maintained disciplinary-specific writing protocols, essentially wanted the same thing from student writing: analysis. From this premise, their textbook, WRITING ANALYTICALLY, was born. Rosenwasser received his B.A. from Grinnell College and his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in the theory and history of narrative. His current interests include contemporary Irish literature and comic theory. His most recent literary papers include a study of the contemporary Irish writer Edna O?Brien in relation to the work of Joyce and Yeats, and an analysis of the politics of Bruce Springsteen?s albums during the Bush presidency, written collaboratively with a political science professor.Jill Stephen teaches at Muhlenberg College, a small liberal arts college in Pennsylvania, where she?s been since the late 1980s. Along with David Rosenwasser, she created and implemented the Writing Across the Curriculum program there through a series of faculty seminars. In these seminars, they discovered that content faculty from across the disciplines, although they maintained disciplinary-specific writing protocols, essentially wanted the same thing from student writing: analysis. From this premise, their textbook, WRITING ANALYTICALLY, was born. Stephen worked in the expository writing program at New York University under Lil Brannon and Cy Knoblauch. She received her B.A. from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and received her Ph.D. from NYU on rhetorical theory as evidenced in Renaissance poetry and prose. Aside from her writing with Rosenwasser on composition and writing program administration, she writes on poetry, especially Renaissance lyrics. Her current interests include the poetry of Frank O?Hara, Emily Dickinson, and contemporary Irish women writers.
Table of Contents
Preface. Part One: WRITING ANALYTICALLY. 1. Seeing Better: The Analytical Habit of Mind. Seeing the Details. Opening Things Up: Negative Capability, Paraphrase x 3, Freewriting, and Counterproductive Habits of Mind. The Basic Analytical Strategies: From Observations to Ideas. How to Mark Up a Draft. 2. What Is Analysis and How Does It Work? Five Analytical Moves. Some Common Charges Against Analysis. Rhetorical Analysis. 3. Putting Analysis to Work: Three Extended Examples. Extended Example 1: Moving from Description to Interpretation. Extended Example 2: Looking for Patterns and Making Interpretive Leaps. Extended Example 3: Analyzing an Argument by Reformulating Binaries and Uncovering Assumptions. 4. Reading: How to Do It and What to Do with It . How to Read: Words Matter. What to Do with the Reading: Avoiding the Matching Exercise. 5. Linking Evidence and Claims: 10 on 1 versus 1 on 10. Linking Evidence and Claims. Developing a Thesis is More Than Repeating an Idea ("1 on 10"). Building a Paper by Analyzing Evidence in Depth: "10 on 1." 6. Making a Thesis Evolve. What's Wrong with a Static Thesis? Evolving a Thesis. Using the Evolving Thesis to Organize the Final Draft. Evolving a Thesis in an Exploratory Draft: Las Meninas. The Evolving Thesis in a Final Draft. 7. Recognizing and Fixing Weak Thesis Statements. Five Kinds of Weak Theses and how to Fix Them. How to Rephrase Thesis Statements: Specify and Subordinate. Working with Categorical Thinking. Common Logical Errors in Constructing a Thesis. 8. Introductions and Conclusions. The Function of Introductions. How Much to Introduce Up Front. Opening Gambits: Five Good Ways to Begin. The Function of Conclusions. Solving Typical Problems in Conclusions. Scientific Format: Introductions and Conclusions. 9. Organization: Forms and Formats. The Two Functions of Formats: Product and Process. The Psychology of Form. 10. Style: Choosing Words. Not Just Icing on the Cake. Tone. The Person Question. Shades of Meaning: Choosing the Best Word. 11. Style: Shaping Sentences (and Cutting the Fat). How to Recognize the Four Basic Sentence Shapes. Coordination, Subordination, and Emphasis. Periodic and Cumulative Sentences: Adding Shapes to the Main Clause. Cutting the Fat. 12. Writing the Researched Paper. What to do with Secondary Sources. Six Strategies for Analyzing Sources. Making the Research Paper More Analytical: A Sample Essay. Strategies for Writing and Revising Research Papers. 13. Finding and Citing Sources. Getting Started. Electronic Research: Finding Quality on the Web. Plagiarism and the Logic of Citation. How to Prepare and Abstract. 14. Nine Basic Writing Errors and How to Fix Them. Why Correctness Matters. The Concept of Basic Writing Errors (BWEs). Glossary of Grammatical Terms. Appendix: Answer Key (with Discussion). Part Two: READINGS. 15. Manners, Communication and Technology. "Our Cell Phones, Our Selves," by Christine Rosen. "Disconnected Urbanism," by Paul Goldberger. "The Naked Crowd," by Jeffrey Rosen. "Blogging in the Global Lunchroom," by Geoffrey Nunberg. The Rituals of Dinner: The Origins, Evolutions, Eccentricities, and Meaning of Table Manners: "Ritual," "Fingers," and "Knives and Forks," by Margaret Visser. "Imperial Bedroom," by Jonathan Franzen. "PowerPoint Is Evil," by Edward Tufte. 16. Places and Spaces: Cities and Suburbs. "The Public Realm and the Common Good," by James Howard Kunstler. "Demolition Zones: Contemporary Photography by Edward Burtynsky and Camilo Jose Vergara," by Jack Gambino. "Times Regained: How the Old Times Square Was Made New," by Adam Gopnik. "The Uses of Sidewalk: Safety," by Jane Jacobs. "Fortress Los Angeles," by Mike Davis. 17. Seeing. "Looking at Photographs: Stagers and Recorders--An Interview with Joseph Elliott," by Joseph Elliott, David Rosenwasser, and Jill Stephen. "In Plato's Cave," by Susan Sontag. "Learning to See," by Barry Lopez. "Images of Women in European Art" from Ways of Seeing, by John Berger. 18. Race, Ethnicity and the "Melting Pot." "Assimilation, American Style," by Peter Salins. "The Fear of Losing a Culture," by Richard Rodriquez. "In the Kitchen," by Henry Louis Gates. "My Neighborhood," by Ishmael Reed. "On Being White, Female, and Born in Bensonhurst," by Marianna Torgovnick. "Put On a Happy Face: Masking the Differences Between Blacks and Whites," by Benjamin DeMott. "White Privilege and Male Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack," by Peggy McIntosh. "Sticks and Stones: The Irish Identity," by Robert McLiam Wilson. 19. The Language of Politics and the Politics of Language. "On Political Labels," by Christopher Borick. Four Editorials: "Justices Amended Constitution on Their Own . . ." by James J. Kirkpatrick. " . . . By Letting Redevelopers Take Little Guy's Property," by Richard A. Epstein. "More than Abortion Is at Stake in Supreme Court Picks," by John F. Grim. "Losing Our Country," by Paul Krugman. "Politics and the English Language," by George Orwell. "Why Should We Trust This Man?" by Dante Chinni. "Interview with Frank Luntz." "The Framing Wars," by Matt Bai. "September 11--a National Tragedy?" by James Peck. 20. The Review as Cultural Analysis. "The Unreal Thing: What's Wrong with the Matrix?" by Adam Gopnik. "American Electric: Did Franklin Fly that Kite?" by Adam Gopnik. "King of the Hill Democrats?" by Matt Bai. "Oy Gay!" by Kera Bolonik. "Listening to Khakis: What America's Most Popular Pants Tell Us About the Way Guys Think," by Malcolm Gladwell. "Who Killed King Kong?" by X.J. Kennedy. Credits. Index.