We will have quizzes throughout the semester. These quizzes will be timed, and they will be based on the reading assignments. You will be allowed to use reading notes for those quizzes, and these notes can come in any form you'd like.

Reading notes can also be used as work samples for the Learning Record, as long as you provide me with copies and/or electronic versions.

Due Dates

2/1, 2/10, 2/17, 3/8: S-A papers due prior to the beginning of class, submitted to your Dropbox folders.

As we collect possible texts for our anthology throughout the semester, you will be composing 1-page summary-analysis (S-A) papers. These papers will be extremely useful when you write the preface to the book. In fact, some of the work you do in these papers might be copy-pasted directly into your preface (though, your preface will certainly have to be much more than a copy/paste job).Your papers will be no more than one page, single-spaced and will have one-inch margins. Please include your name in the upper left-hand corner. One page gives you about 500 words to both summarize and analyze a text (this is not a lot of words). About 300-350 of those words will summarize your chosen text and about 150-200 of those words will be a rhetorical analysis of the text. Keep the following things in mind as you write your s-a papers:

Summary
Summarizing a text is not as easy as it sounds, especially when space is limited. The summary section of S-A papers should very concisely and carefully provide a summary of the argument. Please note that you are summarizing the argument and not every bit of information in the article. You should be looking for the main idea that guides the author's argument in the article/chapter. This will require you to set aside your own thoughts and opinions about the piece while you provide a summary of what the author is saying. Because you are limited to 300-350 words, you won't be able to mention every single point the author makes. Your job is to decide what's important and to provide a reader with a clear, readable, fair summary of the text. You won't have much space for quotations, so focus on summarizing the author's argument in your own words.

Analysis
If the summary section focuses on "what" is said in your chosen text, the analysis section focuses on "how" things are said. This is not a section in which you give your opinion about the content of the text you've chosen. Instead, your job is to analyze how the argument of the text works. In class, we have discussed how the tools of rhetoric help you make sense of an argument. In this section, you should use these tools to dissect and analyze the argument.

Grade Criteria
While I will not be grading your papers, I will be providing feedback. Here is what I will be looking for:

* Is your paper formatted correctly (one page, single-spaced, 500 words max, name in upper-left-hand corner)?

* Does your summary fairly represent the argument made by the author?

* Have you used your own words to summarize the argument?

* Have you devoted the appropriate amount of space to the two sections of the paper? Remember that the word counts I provide are just guides (not strict word limits), but also remember that both summary and analysis have to be adequately addressed in the paper.

* Does your analysis apply the tools and concepts we've talked about in class?

* Is your paper written effectively and coherently with very few grammatical errors?

* Was the paper turned in on time? (Reminder: I do not accept late work.)

For SA paper #4, you will be conducting your own research. For this paper, I will be asking:

* Have you chosen an appropriate text? Could this text be re-printed as part of an anthology? Is it long enough to be a book chapter? Does it belong in the book that we are designing?

Due Dates

3/29: Draft due (for peer review workshop)
3/31: First Submission due
4/12: Draft due (for peer review workshop)
4/14: Second Submission due(including cover letter explaining revisions)

Throughout the semester we have been researching a how scholars in various disciplines discuss Detroit, examining works that might serve as chapters in our anthology, and considering the purpose and audience of our anthology. Now is your chance to pull it all together by composing the preface to our book. Your preface should be 2000-2500 words long. The preface will serve to introduce readers to the text, map out the various arguments your text includes, explain how these arguments clash or overlap, and explain the purpose of the book.

In addition to submitting the preface, you will create a table of contents for the book. [see attached template below]

Your second submission will include a cover letter. The letter will explain how you've incorporated the feedback provided by your peers and by me. [see attached template below]

As you write the preface, think about the issues we have considered all semester long. NOTE: This is not a checklist. You do NOT have to address every one of these questions in your preface. This is a list of questions that you should use during your process of invention:

* Who is the audience for our anthology? Is it geared toward a particular discipline, or is it an interdisciplinary project? Why?

* What is the purpose of the book? This is where you might include some personal experiences. What is your own connection to this topic? What do you hope others gain from reading our anthology?

* How would you justify the inclusion of the contributions to our book? We could have chosen any number of scholarly articles or book chapters, but we chose these. Why? Defend our choices, and be specific.

* Who are the authors and what qualifies them to speak on this issue? This DOES NOT mean telling us about the scholarly degrees each of your contributors has. Since this is a scholarly anthology, most of your contributors will have PhD's. Instead, you should be much more specific. What qualifies this scholar to speak to this particular topic? What makes them an expert on it? You could mention their previous publications or any other information that explains why this author is qualified to speak on this topic.

* What are the various overlaps and collisions that happen between the texts we have brought together in this anthology? We have learned many ways to analyze arguments, and your task is to make sense of the pieces you've chosen by using the tools of rhetorical analysis. In addition to this analysis, you'll need to synthesize these arguments.

* Have you explained the patterns or gaps in the debate you're discussing? Have you looked for arguments or ideas that can be grouped together? Have you identified arguments or ideas that have been overlooked by those taking part in the conversation you've constructed?

* How is the book organized? Why? Each chapter of your book will consist of an author's work (and nothing else), but you can group these chapters into sections. This will help your reader make sense of the various arguments you've compiled in your anthology. You will be creating a table of contents, and that TOC should make it clear how you've organized the text (the order of the chapters, whether it is broken up into sections, etc.)

* What other books are similar to our anthology? How is our anthology different? Remember that your book is part of an ongoing conversation. You should discuss other texts that cover similar ground, and you should consider how your book is similar to or different from these texts.

Grading Criteria
When providing feedback, I will be looking for the following:

* Have you made use of the terms and concepts from our textbook in order to write your prefece?
* Have you appealed to the audience of your text?
* Have you explained the purpose of the text?
* Have you explained how the arguments in our book clash and/or overlap?
* Is your preface written effectively and coherently with very few grammatical errors?
* Have you included a properly formatted table of contents
* Was the paper turned in on time? (Reminder: I do not accept late work.)

For the second submission:
* Does your second submission demonstrate significant revision? (Significant revision means that the paper looks different and has been reworked. This is much more than fixing sentence structure and grammar. It involves rethinking the arguments and content of the paper).
* Have you included a cover letter explaining how this submission represents a significant revision?
* Have you incorporated feedback from peer review and from my comments on the first submission?

Due Dates
4/21: Presentations

Description
Most of our work this semester has focused on how scholars discuss Detroit. Together, we studied a variety scholarly works, and our anthology is an attempt to make sense of that research. This project will take a slightly different approach by examining the public conversation about Detroit. For this assignment, our research space will be YouTube. Thousands of videos on YouTube address the topic of "Detroit." Further, comments posted to videos and "video responses" are evidence that people are not only making visual arguments (with videos) but are also discussing the content of those videos. In many ways, YouTube is a database reflecting the public conversations about millions of topics, and it will be our task to make sense of the YouTube conversation about Detroit.

In this final project, you will create a video mashup. Much like your anthology preface makes an argument about the state of a scholarly debate amongst scholars, your mashup will piece together YouTube clips in an attempt to make an argument about how YouTube videos discuss, critique, or examine Detroit.

As you conduct research for the mashup, you should consider the following:

Who posted your videos?
You will have to do your best to figure out who posted the video. This does not mean tracking down the name of the person who posted it. Instead, it means figuring out if that user has posted other videos and drawing conclusions from these findings. By researching a user's contributions to YouTube, you can get a sense for their motives and you can evaluate their ethos.

What is the context of each clip?
Some videos on YouTube are from news reports, TV shows, or movies. This changes the context of the clip, and it changes who the "author" is. So, your main task is to provide some context for who the "author" of this clip is. Was this footage shot by news cameras, or is it amateur footage? When was the footage shot, and when was it posted (this two dates can be very different)? Was it posted in response to another clip? Are there similar clips that this clip is in conversation with? Are there comments posted? Do these comments reflect the "conversation" surrounding this clip? What kinds of debates have arisen around this video? Is the clip in a category? Has it been tagged? (Note: Categories are groupings created by YouTube to sort videos. Tags are descriptive words determined by users.) How might this category/tag affect the context of the clip?

Who is the audience?
Can you you gauge who the video was intended for? How does it attempt to persuade that audience? What strategies are used to reach that audience? Does it succeed or fail?

Rhetorical analysis
What strategies are used in the clip? These could be visual strategies (camera angles, closeups), audio strategies (music, sound), or verbal strategies (arguments made by people in the video). Just as you've analyzed arguments from journals, you'll be analyzing the arguments made on YouTube. Revisit the tools we've learned in Having Your Say as you analyze these clips.

Your mashup can be no longer than two minutes.

Goals of the Assignment

While I will not be grading your mashup, I will be providing feedback. That feedback will be focused on whether or not you've addressed the following goals:

1) Your mashup should be transformative. It should find a way to make the source materials new and to make us think about it in a different way.

2) Your mashup should show evidence that you've researched the source clips and that you understand their context. The best video mashups incorporate footage for a reason; they do not just combine footage at random. Your mashup should show us that you understand the rhetorical purpose of the clips you've chosen.

3) Your work should make its case without the use of voice-over and without relying on text. Your mashup should make use of sound and image to show us connections amongst the various clips that you've found during your research.