Quick Analysis Papers: This assignment asks you to complete one- to two-page typed response papers during the semester. These are focused on our assigned readings and designed to help enhance your critical reading and thinking skills.
- You will be expected to read the assigned reading (looking at the class schedule)
- You will be expected to analyze the reading based on the course concepts of context or appeals (ethos, logos, pathos).
- You are expected to include a works cited entry for the essay you are responding to.
These are due before class on the day that the reading will be discussed. (For example, if you are in the 9:10 class, your submission needs to be timestamped prior to that class day or time). Submit your first quick analysis paper to Quick Analysis Paper 1 and so on from there, until you complete five.
Note: The dropbox closing dates are set to the last day of assigned readings. That does not mean that all of the QAPs can be turned in at the end of the semester. They are set that way to allow you the freedom to complete the QAPs you choose to complete. But they are due before the reading is discussed in class.
Go into some depth; don't just skim the surface. Late papers will not receive any credit.
Sample:
Your name
Taggett
ENGL 1301
(Sample) Quick Analysis Paper 1
Gerstenzang, Peter. “My Education, Repossessed.” Back to the Lake. 3rd ed., edited by Thomas Cooley, W.W. Norton, 2013, pp.682-3.
“My Education, Repossessed,” by Peter Gerstenzang, was published in the New York Times in November 2013. This places it right in the middle of the Great Recession. The context of this piece matters greatly because people were having difficulty finding a job, and if they couldn’t find a job or had to take a low-paying job, of course they were in no position to pay back their student loans. That is the idea that Gerstanzang is humorously addressing in his essay.
In “My Education, Repossessed,” Gerstanzang is making fun of the idea that an education – knowledge – is like a material possession that is purchased with a loan. If that loan is not paid back, then the material item, a car, boat or even a house, is repossessed by the bank making the loan. Gerstanzang’s essay traces a fictional account of a dream of knowledge leaving his head: “In my dream, a loan officer appeared and showed me a photo of Margaret Mead. I drew a blank” (682). He goes on to lose knowledge of philosophers like Kierkegaard and Chomsky, but keeps “useless” knowledge like sections of the Communist Manifesto (Gerstanzang 683).
In Gerstanzang’s “dream,” he awoke, and was fine, though he vowed to wear a hat to keep that knowledge in his head (683). Of course, the contextual humor of this essay derives from the fact that knowledge and learning cannot be “repossessed.” Once we learn something, assuming that it is valuable to us and we use it, we don’t lose it and it can’t be taken from us. Perhaps an additional aspect of contextual importance here is that student loans should not be enforced like loans for material goods are. Perhaps Gerstanzang is say that post-grads should have time to pay back a student loan for the very reason in that it isn’t as if the knowledge goes to waste. Either way, context is very important to the reading and understanding of “My Education, Repossessed.”
