Post Assignments

Annotation Post (Whole Class)

Choose one to two paragraphs from the MLK speech discussed in class. Annotate this excerpt; and email an image of your annotated paragraph(s) to the instructor.

Using highlighters, markers, pen, paper, arrows, stickers, post-its, and/or other visual tools, your annotations should identify and briefly comment on the distinctive content and formal techniques at play in the passage you’ve selected. Elements your annotation may highlight include but are not limited to:

• perspective, sequence, and particular placements
• repetitions, contrasts
• diction, tone, figures of speech
• distinctive images
• key words, characters, events
• words and references you need to look up and define

Summary, Observe & Define, Opinion (SODO) Scaffolded by Post Group; see syllabus for schedule details.

Summarize: Identify the title, author, genre, publication date, and intended audience. Describe the content (main characters, setting, premise, plot points, central tension, key topics addressed, arguments made, and/or other distinctive elements

Observe & Define: How is this text organized? What’s the shape and/or sequence of the text? Which perspective(s) does this text foreground? Which perspective(s) does it obscure? What formal devices does this text employ (e.g. allusion, imagery, irony, alliteration, analogies, etc.)? And how? Define any key terms, concepts, characters, places, references, etc. that appear in the text.

Opinion – What impressions did this text generate for you and why? What did you find most compelling and why? Do aspects of this text seem to be in conversations with aspect of another text you’ve engaged? How so?

Length: 250 – 300 words.

Identify Contextualize, Claim Explicate (ICCE)Scaffolded by Post Group; see syllabus for schedule details.)

Identify a specific formal element in the text which you believe is important to how the text presents some part of its content and/or the impression that content generates. (Hint: This formal element might be something you’ve tracked in your annotation, or it might be something you would have “Observed & Defined” if you were doing a SODO post. If the formal element you choose occurs many times throughout the text, you should choose one salient example of this formal element at work in the text. As a general rule, you should limit your scope of examination to no more than two paragraphs, two pages, two stanzas, or two minutes (which ever unit is smallest and most genre appropriate).

Contextualize – Provide enough context for your readers to understand where /how the example you’ve chosen shows up in the text as a whole. The relevant context you provide may include but is not limited to descriptions of the following: important character relations; setting; central tension; the chapters, scenes, passages, etc. that immediately precede and/or follow the portion of the text you’re examining.

Claim – Make a claim about what the textual element you’ve identified is doing and why what it does matters. (Hint: If you were doing a SODO post, this claim might be something you develop from your “Opinion.”)

Explicate – Now that you’ve identified the formal element you’re making a claim about; provided context; and articulated a claim, the only thing left for you to do is explain how you arrived at that claim. The claim is a statement of your interpretation, but you haven’t really done the work of interpreting until you explain what/how you’re reading/interpreting that leads you to posit this interpretive claim. That explanation is sometimes called explication. Explication entails walking your reader through exactly how you’re connecting the different formal elements you’ve observed and how you understand the way those elements and their connections shape the meaning, impact, or affective stakes of the text. (Hint: If you were doing a SODO post, you might develop your explication from flushing out the connections between what you “Observe and Define” in the text and your “Opinion” about the text.)

Length: 300-400 words

Thesis Paragraph Post (Whole class included with project check-ins)

• Read the “Do I Have a Good Thesis?” Handout (under “Resources”). Following the four components of a strong thesis statement described in the handout, write a 3-5 sentence thesis statement that addresses how the form and content of some part of your text encourages readers to imagine, experience, and/or think about blackness (and/or race).

• Each week you are responsible for reading your classmates’ posts BEFORE the beginning of class. As part of your participation grade, you should publish at least one comment over the course of the semester. Your comments should be dialogical and analytic rather than evaluative. (Examples of evaluative comments: “I like your post; it’s interesting”; OR “Your idea is a really smart way to look at that scene”). Your comments should engage the central object of the post; respond in some way to i’s reflection question; and develop the conversation the post puts forward. So that the comments are dispersed throughout the semester, to satisfy this comment requirement, your comment must be one of the first 3 comments on the post. You’re welcome to comment if there are 3 or more comments, but that comment will not satisfy this comment requirement (though I will take it into consideration as part of your participation grade).

Additional Tips and Guidelines (Added 2/7/22)

I’ve added the below tips and guidelines in response to questions that some students have had about the post exercises. I originally emailed these 11 guidelines to the class. For ease of access, I’m posting the contents of that email here on the class site. Since these are clarifications, much of the information below has already been covered in the above sections.

ON WHICH AND WHEN
1 – Unless you have negotiated an extension with me, you should have already submitted your annotation post exercise.
2 – The next post you should do is the SODO post.  You will publish this post to the class site. You should do so at least 36 hours before the start of the first class session associated with your letter group (i.e. A, B, C, D . . .)  
3- After the SODO post, you should do your ICCE post.  You will publish this post on the class site .  You should do so at least 36 hours before the start of the second class session associated with your letter group (i.e. A, B, C, D . . .)  
4 –  The last post you will do is the thesis statement exercise. You will receive instructions about when and how to submit this exercise later in the semester as it is also part of your final project.  

ON LENGTH

5 – You can find the min-max word count for each of the post exercises on the “Post Assignments” page.  At the end of the description for each exercise, you will find that information listed as “Length.”  
6 – IMPORTANT:  You should be able to do the post within the posted range as long as you are not trying to write about the entire story.  For each of the post exercises in this class, you are ultimately focusing on a small, specific portion of the text.  (You likely need to reference other parts of the text in order to sufficiently contextualize the part you’re examining, but you should not attempt to take on the entirety of these texts in your posts.)
​7 – If you are under the word count, you likely have not sufficiently completed the assignment.   
8 –  If you are a little over the word limit (i.e. not more than 75 words over), and the content is clear and substantive, don’t worry about it. 
9 –  If you are over the word count by more than 50 percent of the maximum  (i.e. 150 for SODO and 200 for ICCE), you should make sure that you are adequately narrowing the scope of what you’re examining in your post exercise. The post is not a paper, and even in a paper, you usually shouldn’t try to take on the entire text (see 6).  
10 –  If you are more than 75 words over but less than 50% of the maximum,  make sure your focus is sufficiently narrowed and that your language is tight.   If  the scope of your post is appropriately focused and your language is relatively tight, don’t worry.
11 – NOTE:   Quoted text does not count towards the word count.