| Overview |
| Options for Assignments 1&2 |
| Options for Assignments 3&4 |
| Options for Assignment 5 |
General Description of Assignments
During the term you will work on five writing assignments based on
one or more of the readings that are in The Good Citizen or in course
pack or that are linked to the Course Web Site. The order of the
assignments is progressive in the skills you are asked to used: that
is, successive assignments will ask you to build from the reading, writing,
and analytical skills that you practiced in the previous assignments.
Assignments 1 and 2 will ask you to write response essays that address
an issue (or issues) raised in one of the essays that you read. For
Assignments 3 and 4, you will write essays that study the relationship
between two essays you read and/or you will write an essays that require
you to synthesize and then build upon information or ideas in the essays
you read. Assignment 5 asks you to apply or to test a hypothesis,
theory, proposal, etc., expressed in an essay you will read on another
essay, essays, or texts.
You'll have plenty of options for each of these assignments. In fact, one of your major tasks throughout the term will be to explore these options along with the readings on which they are based.
Audience for Essays
For each of the assignments, you will consider both me AND your classmates
as the audience for your essays. Since there are so many options--both
in terms of what you will write and what you'll read--you will not
be able to assume that your readers will necessarily know the assignment
option you are pursuing or that they will have read the essays you are
responding, analyzing, or responding to in your writing. Therefore,
you will need to make decisions about how much information to give
your readers about the readings you're working with so they understand
the points you are using from or making about those readings.
This challenge often confronts readers in academia and beyond, but it also
poses an opportunity: as a writer, you will be able to actually inform
your readers, expanding their knowledge, and as a reader, you should learn
from your classmates work. Expanding knowledge is at the heart of
academic writing and it's at the heart of this course.
Below are the writing options I've generated for the assignments. I expect that, generally, you'll develop your essays based on one of the options, but I'll be glad to discuss alternatives with you.
I expect that these essays will be 4-8 pages long (Double spaced, standard
fonts, 1-11/2" margins). Each essay should have a Works Cited page
or a bibliography.
Option A
Assuming that Robert Putnam is right in "Bowling
Alone," make the link between some recent event(s), trend(s), etc.
and the decline of "civic engagement" and "social capital" in the United
States. In other words, use your knowledge of recent events, etc.,
to support Putnam's thesis.
How many of those who praise its thesis fit either half of his theory, I wonder: Is Bill Bradley a Shriner? Does The Washington Post's David Broder bake cookies for the P.T.A.? If not, is the boob tube to blame? . . . Putnam seems to place both the burden of civic engagement and responsibility for its collapse on the non-elite classes. Tenured professors may be too busy to sing in a choir (Putnam's former avocation): The rest of us are just couch potatoes.To what extent do you think that initiatives for volunteerism, community service, service-learning, etc. could also be as a further manifestation of this elitism: as the powerful and the wealthy become further removed from the mass of people, they want students and others "to do their bowling for them," they want volunteers to solve the problems to which they're unwilling to devote their money or time?
In your essay draw upon your or your acquaintances' previous service
or volunteer experiences, volunteer and service programs you've heard or
read about, and/or your experience thus far in the MCSP.
Option D
Leon Kass, in "Am I my Foolish Brother's Keeper?" (course pack) asks,
"Who exactly is my brother. . .?" and "What does it mean to be someone's
keeper"?
Based on your own experience, knowledge, values, etc., how would you answer these questions?
This question is taken from Nancy Morrow and Marlene Clarke, ed., Currents
of Inquiry: Readings for Academic Writing, Mountain View, CA:
Mayfield Publishing Company, 1998.
Option E
In Communitarianism and its Critics, Daniel Bell (course pack)
attempts to explain the ideological foundations of "communitarianism,"
a political-intellectual movement that has become influential in the 1990s.
Communitarians, believing that contemporary Western societies have overemphasized
the autonomy of individuals, stress that human beings are social beings
who always function within communities. While not denying the importance
of individual rights, communitarians also emphasize individuals' obligations
to their communities. One difficulty communitarians wrestle with
is how to make their philosophy inclusive: they want to see flourishing
communities based on shared histories, values, and interests, but on the
other hand, the don't want these communities or the individuals within
these communities to become isolated from other communities.
I want to be very clear on an important point: although communitarians would and do support community service and service-learning initiatives, not all, in fact, probably few of the people involved in community service/service-learning initiatives see themselves as communitarians. Many people, in fact, are suspicious of communitarians: on the political right, some see communitarians as calling for a meddling government that will interfere with the free market or individual rights (for example, the right to bear arms, the right to own property) in an attempt to grow artificial communities. On the political left, some fear that communitarians want to place excessive limitations on individual rights (limiting divorce, free expression, etc.), that communitarians ignore the repressive aspects of communities (traditional communities were and are often intolerant, hierarchical, and exclusive), and that communitarians pose naive and unworkable solutions for society's problems.
In the dialogue between Philip and Anne in Communitarianism and Its Critics, Bell has Anne declare: ". . .communitarian ontology--that we are first and foremost social beings, embodied agents in-the-world engaged in realizing a certain form of life--represents a gain in understanding over those ontologies/epistemologies which give priority to a disengaged subject standing over against an external world. . ." (93). In other words, communitarianism is better than individualistic philosophies because it recognizes that human beings are determined by the company they keep: our identities are shaped by our communities.
These "constitutive communities" are, according to Bell:
. . .so fundamental to our identity that they cannot be set aside, and that an attempt to so so will result in serious and perhaps irreparable psychological damage. Can I choose to shed the attachment I feel for the family which brought me up, or will such an attempt lead to perverse and unintended consequences? Is it possible for an Inuit person from Canada's far North suddenly to decide to stop being an Inuit, or is the only sensible response to recognize and accept this constitutive feature of her identity? For most of us, our identities are necessarily bound up with at least some of what I call "constitutive communities,". . . . (10)This idea is not compatible with "traditional liberalism" ("Traditional liberalism" is not the same thing the "liberalism" that contemporary Republicans trash. Traditional liberalism is ideology that was founded by such thinkers as John Locke, and as diverse a group as Jesse Jackson, Elizabeth Dole, Bill Clinton, Jesse Ventura, and Ronald Reagan could be considered as traditional liberals.) that has been dominant in mainstream American thought. The idea that individuals can break free from the chains of their community and past and re-invent themselves seems a matter of faith in America. That's what several of our national icons did: Benjamin Franklin, a poor apprentice from Boston, fled to Philadelphia and reinvented himself as a printer, then a civic do-gooder, and then a statesman. Frederick Douglass freed himself from slavery, changed his name, and became an abolitionist and civil rights leader. Along the way, Douglass wrote and re-wrote is biography several times. Abraham Lincoln--the most iconic figure in American life--was the poor boy who taught himself to become perhaps the greatest prose stylist in American English and became President. How many times have Madonna, Michael Jackson, Demi Moore, etc., reinvented their images?
On the other hand, Bell is hardly the first person to call into question the idea that individuals are free to re-invent themselves. A quick survey of American literature--Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of Seven Gables, Kate Chopin's The Awakening, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Ralph Ellison's The Invisible Man, or Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony, for example--reveals many tales about characters who can only be understood within the web of community or who, in Bell's terms, suffered "damaged human personhood" (100-101) in trying flee what Bell what term constitutive communities.
Place yourself within this debate. Do you think individuals are
chiefly or largely the products of constitutive communities, or are we
free agents able in control of our own identities and fate? Is it
inevitable that people will suffer "damaged human personhood" if they try
to break from their constitutive communities? Are there some constitutive
communities that people should try to break from? Use your own experience
and/or that of your family, friends, and acquaintances. Also pull
in any examples you can think of from your reading of literature, history,
etc., or from TV, movies, and popular culture.
Option F
Daniel Bell in "Act III: A Communitarian Moral Vision and Some
Political Consequences" (course pack) has Anne tell Philip about "constitutive
communities," those communities that help determine a person's identity
(94-113, et. al.). Anne argues that "constitutive communities prove
a largely background way of meaningful thinking, acting, and judging, a
way of being the world which is much deeper and more many-sided than any
possible articulation of it."
Anne also emphasizes that in contemporary society it is not realistic for us to think of ourselves as members of a single community:
. . .we find that we do in fact have communal attachments, but that our loyalties stretch to more than one community--home-town, nation, family, and so on. . . .So when you ask about the communitarian ideal, or the moral stand that own should adopt with respect to a communal life most appropriate to for those of us living the modern world, we must begin with a recognition of the fact that most of us identify with many communities. (91)Describe your constitutive communities. Consider how they shape your identity and also consider the relationships (conflicts, parallels, contradictions, etc.) between these different communities.
Keep in mind that Bell claims there are three types of constitutive
communities in his "Introduction," and he gives some examples of these
types in the chapters of his book. The first type of constitutive
community that he describes is made up of "communities of place,
or communities based on geographic location." He next describes "communities
of memory, or groups of strangers who share a morally significant history."
In his book, Bell uses as examples the Jewish Community, French Canadians,
and Catholics as examples of communities of memory. The third type
of constitutive community, according to Bell, is formed by "psychological
communities, or communities of face-to-face personal interaction governed
by sentiments of trust, co-operation, and altruism. Families, churches,
synagogues, and work units are the examples that Bell cites of psychological
communities (14, 95-109, 170-174). You might want to use Bell's types
of constitutive communities to help organize your essay.
Option G
In "Social Justice: A Communitarian Perspective" (course pack),
Philip Selznick writes:
Although moral equality does not require social equality--communitarians are hardly egalitarian--we recognize that significant differences in wealth, income, and education tend to create and reinforce beliefs that affluent people are inherently more worthy than their disprivileged brethren. Social justice requires eternal vigilance against this caste principle, and against the invidious discrimination it breeds. (63)React to Selznick's statement. You might want to start by challenging the first clause of the first sentence: does a just society require some sort of rough social equality; i.e., do you disagree with Selznick and believe that we need to eliminate distinctions in wealth, power, education, etc. If so, you explain why, and you'll probably need to get at how you're going to accomplish social equality.
If you do essentially agree with Selznick that some social inequality
is inevitable in any community, explain why it threatens a community when
dramatic differences in wealth, income and education emerge. What
can be done to prevent the development of castes in communities and to
prevent discrimination based on these differences.?
Option H
Although Herman Melville's "Bartleby
the Scrivener" was written in 1853, it is a very "modern" story.
Bartleby works in a law office on Wall Street, and while Xerox has, thankfully,
eliminated the need for scriveners, there remain plenty of detailed oriented
jobs in today's economy that are just as mind numbing as copying legal
documents: think about all those folks who spent the last couple
of years staring at lines of code trying to fix the Y2K problem.
Furthermore, walk down the streets of Ann Arbor or any American city, and
you'll see many potential Bartlebys, people without homes who seem to belong
nowhere and who have nobody.
Write an essay in which you consider "Bartleby" as the tale about the
break down of community in a modern society. Obviously, you will
want to focus and Bartleby and on his unnamed employer, but you also might
find material to work with when you consider the other characters in the
story.
Option I
Using the continuum that Keith Morton develops in "The Irony of Service:
Charity, Project and Social Change" (course pack), analyze your intentions
and attitude toward service. Do you see yourself fitting in the "charity,"
"project," or "social change" paradigms.
Option J
Compare and contrast your experiences and those of your friends and
acquaintances to those of the students that William Knox writes about in
his dissertation, "First Semester Composition in the Life-Worlds of University
Students." Focus on how you and your friends along with Knox's students
balance(d) the personal, social, and academic as they found (or are finding)
their places in new communities.
Option K
Cornel West, in "The Moral Obligations in a Democratic Society" (The
Good Citizen), declares that "democracy always raises the fundamental
question: What is the role of the most disadvantaged in relation
to the public interest? It is similar in some ways to the biblical
question: What are you to do with the least of these? If we
do not want to live in a democracy, we are not obliged to raise that question.
In fact, the aristocracy does not raise that question at all" (9).
Why is the question about the role of the disadvantaged in a community
(or society) fundamental to a community? Use evidence from West as
well as your own knowledge and experience in your essay.
Option L
In "The Moral Obligations in a Democratic Society" (The Good Citizen),
Cornel West derides "market culture" because of the impact that it has
on communities. Do you agree with West that a culture "that evolves
around buying and selling, promoting and advertising" threatens the kind
of spirituality needed for communities to exist (10-11)? Why?
Option M
In "Virtually Democratic: Twenty Essentials for the Citizen in
the Network Society" (The Good Citizen), David Batstone argues:
"As the millennium turns, 'net' replaces 'community' as meaningful way
to name existence as citizens" (33). In fact the first of Batstone's
"Twenty Essentials" states: "Community will not save you" (32).
Do you agree with Batstone that call for the re-birth of community is merely
nostalgic? Do you think the relationships provided by networks can
be as personally as fulfilling and can be as useful in promoting social
justice as the relationships that exist within traditional communities?
Do you share Batstone's optimism about the efficacy of networks to promote
democracy?
Option N
Barbara Christian, in "The Crime of Innocence" (The Good Citizen),
notes that republicanism (notice it is small the small "r"
variety; we're not talking about the Republican Party of George
W., Newt, or Rudy G. here) dominated political discourse at the time of
creation of the US and into the 19th century. In traditional
republican thought, a republic's citizens are dedicated to the pursuit
of the common good; however, republicanism's concept of citizenship and
the common good were quite circumscribed. As Christian notes, "republican
theory was never put into practice for minorities, women, and homosexuals--those
who were deemed different from the traditional view of what should be called
the common man, and therefore the common good" (56).
Although these republican ideals expressed by the founders and their
descendants were corrupted by racism, sexism, and homophobia, do they remain
useful for someone trying to be a good citizen in a diverse society?
Option O
Ronald Takaki begins "Race at the End of History" (The Good Citizen)
with an anecdote about a cab driver who had difficulty acknowledging that
Takaki was American, and near the end of the essay, Takaki declares that
"certainly a good citizen should be able to embrace the larger narrative
of what America is, the collective memory of who we are as a nation.
But a good citizen must also be able to look 'in a different mirror' and
see the diversity that Americans reflect, to accept that we come with different
faces and different names, like Garcia and Takaki" (81,92).
Did Takaki's anecdote resonate with you? Do you have difficulty, sometimes, thinking of yourself as an American, or have there been times in your life when you felt you weren't acknowledge as being truly American? Why? On the other hand, have there been occasions when you failed to recognize the Americaness of someone because of her/his ethnic or racial background? Why?
What do you think can be done so that the concept of what means to be
an American can become more inclusive?
Options for
Assignments 3 & 4
Option A
Drawing from your own experience and from at least three of the articles
linked to the course Web site, re-printed in the course pack, or
printed in The Good Citizen, detail the most pressing problems facing
communities today.
Can the social, economic and cultural changes of the past 25-30 years
that Pollitt alludes to be seen as undermining some of the other points
Putnam raises? In other words, just as Pollitt argues that "the bowling
story could be told as one of happy progress," could some of Putnam's other
sad "stories" be re-construed as signs of social and cultural progress.
Option D
To what extent can Herman Melville's Bartleby
be seen as an example of Daniel Bell's "damaged human personhood" as Bell
has Anne De la Patria describe it in Communitarianism and its Critics
(course pack)?
Option E
Engage in a debate with David Batstone--"Virtually Democratic:
Twenty Essentials for the Citizen in a Network Society" (The Good Citizen)--and
Andrew L. Shapiro--"The
Net that Binds: Using Cyberspace to create Real Communities."
Do you think it is best to think of the Net as an alternative to community
or as a way to strengthen community?
Option F
Why does Robert Bellah fear the transition from community to network
in "The Ethics of Polarization in the United States and the World" (The
Good Citizen) while David Batstone see this transition as a positive
development in "Virtually Democratic: Twenty Essentials for
the Citizen in the Network Society" (The Good Citizen)? Reveal
your own position as you contrast the viewpoints of the two authors.
Option G
Use Robert Bellah's "The Ethics of Polarization in the United States
and the World" (The Good Citizen), David Batstone's "Virtually Democratic:
Twenty Essentials for the Citizen in the Network Society" (The Good
Citizen), and Andrew L. Shapiro's "The
Net that Binds: Using Cyberspace to Create Local Communities"
along with your own knowledge and experiences to evaluate the dangers and
opportunities the internet and World Wide Web pose for citizenship, democracy,
communities, etc.
Option H
To claim that one is an American is to claim that one is a member of
"community of memory," to use the term that Daniel Bell uses in Communitarianism
and its Critics (10) (course pack). What are the challenges and
ironies facing Americans who are not of European descent or who are recent
immigrants when they think of themselves as Americans? Use evidence
from your own experience and observations and draw upon at least three
of the following: Barbara Christian's "The Crime of Innocence," Ronald
Takaki's "Race at the End of History," Linda Martín Alcoff's
"Latina/o Identity Politics," or Eduardo Mendieta's "Becoming Citizens,
Becoming Hispanics" (all in The Good Citizen).
Options for
Assignment 5
Option A
Assuming that Robert Putnam is right in "Bowling
Alone," make the link between some recent event(s), trend(s), etc.
and the decline of "civic engagement" and "social capital" in the United
States. Unlike Option A for Assignments 1 & 2, for this option you
will need to do some outside research, using at least five sources (no
more than three can be on line sources) to develop your essay.
Option B
Is Robert Putnam's thesis in "Bowling
Alone"--or part of his thesis--wrong? Do you see any evidence
suggesting a rise of civic engagement in the U.S. Unlike Option C for Assignments
1 & 2, for this option you will need to do some outside research, using
at least five sources (no more than three can be on line sources) to develop
your essay.
Option C
To what extent can Herman Melville's "Bartleby
the Scrivener" be read as a kind of parable for the points that Keith
Morton makes in his article "The Irony of Service: Charity, Project and
Social Change in Service-Learning" (Course Pack)?
As you consider this question, you might want to think about the lawyer's
actions toward Turkey and, especially, toward Bartleby: the lawyer
would clearly fit in the "Charity" section of Morton's continuum, right?
Do you think that the lawyer progresses from, in Morton's terms, a "thin"
version of charity that is "paternalistic and self-serving" to a "thick"
version, "insisting on the the humanity of another person in the face of
sometimes overwhelming pressure to deny that
humanity"? In other words, do you think the lawyer has changed by
the end of the story? You also might consider whether Melville's
story implies that true service--acting in a truly moral way--is ultimately
tragic: is Bartleby and, therefore, all humanity, ultimately beyond
help?
Option D
Leon Kass considers the limits of our responsibility to one another
in "Am I My Foolish Brother's Keeper" (course pack). How do you think
Kass would evaluate how Bartleby's
employer treated Bartleby? Do you believe Kass would think that the
lawyer met his obligation to Bartleby? Do you think Melville believes
the lawyer met his obligation to the scrivener?
In your essay, you may want to take on Kass, arguing that the case of
Bartleby shows that Kass as developed untenable (unethical? immoral?) limitations
on the responsibilities we have for foolish brothers or sisters.
Option E
To what extent do you think the MCSP, Markley Hall, and/or the University
of Michigan are constitutive communities as such communities are defined
by Daniel Bell? If you are planning on pledging to a fraternity or
sorority, do you think it is a constitutive community? If you conclude
that the communities listed above are not constitutive communities, then
what kind of the three types of constitutive communities that Daniel Bell
describes in Communitarianism and its Critics (course pack) are
they. Use your experience and the experience of others in your essay,
but you also may want to do some research. Checking out various U
of M publications and the Daily should help you generate evidence.
Option F
Do a mini follow up version of William Knox's dissertation--"First
Semester Composition in the Life Worlds of University Students"-- for
Markley Hall, Fall 1999. Using the chapters from William Knox's dissertation
as a model, investigate how "Roommates and Hallmates" as well as how "Others
Mostly on Campus" work as a living and learning community.
To conduct your observation, you'll need to do interviews of other MCSP
and Markley Hall residents, and you can use your own experience.
I would expect that you'll need to interview at least six students to have
an enough information to write the essay. Keep track of the date
of your interviews because you'll need them for the essay's Works Cited
page.
Option G
Using evidence from at least six of the essays linked to Web site,
in the course pack or in The Good Citizen along with your own knowledge
and experience, answer the following question: What is an American?