Category: Book review

With reference to Bertolt Brecht’s Life of Galileo, discuss the following statement: Modernist texts are elitist and appeal to a limited readership.
With reference to Bertolt Brecht’s Life of Galileo, discuss the following statement:
Modernist texts are elitist and appeal to a limited readership.

The Rhetorical Stance
Read Booth, “The Rhetorical Stance” and Connors, “Personal Writing Assignments” Booth identifies three “stances” that he has seen in student work. One of these, the “pedant’s stance” (think of the adjective pedantic), might be applied by some to describe much of student academic writing,which has also been described as “arhetorical.” Connors, in his history of “personal writing” assignments, touches upon similar issues in describing various ways teachers have attempted to make school writing relevant and meaningful to students. Connors also describes a “backlash” against personal writing as a remedy.
Drawing upon Booth and Connors (also thinking of Toye Chapter 2), offer an explanation of the causes of the “pedant’s stance” and then suggest some possible remedies (not specific assignments but guiding principles for creating assignments). Your audience are other teachers at an in-service workshop and you are on a panel entitled, “Helping Students Make Meaning that Matters.”
Your presentation should be at least two-doubled spaced pages (about five minutes spoken) and should include an overview of Booth, ideas/commentary from Connors, and a few “bullet point” take-away ideas for the the other teachers.

Choose the appropriate topic
Based on the readings from this casebook, use one of the following writing prompts for your essay. Make sure you prepare your essay in MLA format including: a heading, a title, in-text citations, and a Works Cited page with a minimum of three sources. Refer to Bedford Researcher Chapter 21 for MLA Style and p357-361 for a sample paper.
1.Choose two essays from this casebook that challenge similar cultural assumptions about gender. Identify an assumption that interest you and put each writer’s argument to the test by examining the way he or she uses evidence to challenge that assumption. First, make a list of the evidence used by each writer. Then, track down some of the original sources – scientific articles, newspaper reports, or statistics – used by the original writer. When you read them in their entirety, do these sources seem to support the author’s position? After you’ve done this, find at least two more sources that address your chosen assumption. Once you’ve collected your evidence, write an essay that makes an argument about the origins, meaning, or validity of the assumption challenged in the essays you’ve chosen to work with.
2.Choose a scientific idea that was once widely believed, and is now widely understood to be wrong. Conduct some research to learn as much as you can about this idea. Then, write an essay explaining how it was once understood and why it fell out of favor. Some examples would be the idea that the earth is flat, that the sun circles the earth, that hysteria is caused by the uterus moving freely around inside the body, or that personality traits can be determined by skull shape. How did the idea form? What processes did the people who shared this belief use to reach their conclusion? In what ways did those processes correspond to Fausto-Sterling’s description of the ways cultural beliefs shape scientific beliefs?
Here is the essay from the casebook that you need to choose two:
1. Fausto-Sterling Society Constructs Biology; Biology Constructs Gender
2. Graff The M/F Boxes
3. Prosser The Body Narrative of Transsexuality
4. Orenstein What Makes a Woman a Woman?
5. Gould Women’s Brains
6. Chabon Faking It
The tittle of the book that contain the essays: Fields of Readings: Motives for Writing, 10th edition, Nancy Comley
You may refer: Bedford Researcher 4th edition, Palmquist, to look for MLA style