Folks, this is the first formal writing you are doing for me this semester, so I need you to show me what you can do. For this assignment, you'll be synthesizing together your two critical texts for Tuesday (Grant-Davie with either D'Angelo or Porter) in order to better understand their claims, their assumptions, their implications, and their usefulness for writing in the mediated public sphere.
I'm asking you to write an "intertextual conversation," which essentially means constructing a figurative (not literal) conversation between two authors, where you show the influences of one on the other, or where you show how one author's work is either implicitly or explicitly referencing ideas presented by the other. There are several ways to do this. You might make the case for how both authors could be drawing on the same or similar traditions in articulating their concepts. Or, you might make the case for how one author takes up, builds on, disrupts, completes, complicates, or moves the other author's concept forward. Or, you might do something else.
Your intertextual conversation should be brief (~2 single-spaced pages, word-processed or typed). In spite of its brevity, I'm looking for depth and breadth in your writing—that is, I'll be looking for you to demonstrate a good grasp of each author's overarching argument while also noting its nuances and intricacies. You should not simply summarize both texts, but you should communicate to a reader who hasn't necessarily read both texts. This means you should be prepared to explain key terms or concepts that are important to the conversation you are constructing, and cite relevant examples from each text, as well as to interpret the most important parts of their theories and how those theories are organized.
Please include the <MLA citation> for your readings and use <in-text (parenthetical) citations> throughout your IC where needed.
This is due in print/hard copy at the beginning of class on 9/2/14. Please remember to bring both critical texts to class in some material form. See you on Tuesday,
-Prof. Graban
