Literature, Health Science, and the Environment

by Professor Julia Evergreen Keefer

Course Description
Literature, Health Science, and the Environment by Professor Julia Keefer

Writing Workshop II, Y207503 4 credits
 
Online, asynchronous
New York University 
Spring 2011

This second-level course stresses analytical thinking and the use of evidence in the context of research and other scholarly writing. Students expand their understanding of the purposes and processes of research by developing a formal investigatory paper. In this way, students develop familiarity with the conventions of academic discourse. Frequent written assignments, as well as the workshop structure help students build fluency, a strong presence, and the intellectual perseverance and perspicuity to finish an excellent research paper.
This is a multidisciplinary writing and research class. The core program consists of research skills and strategies, literary analysis, critical thinking, argumentation, and claims development, but this year's theme explores a cross-disciplinary approach to literature and medicine, combining the subjectivity of a characters in the throes of death, birth, love, disease, suffering, and the Western and Eastern healing arts that try to assuage these tumultuous journeys with science and nature.  How does the environment influence this investigation? How can you weave your research on literature and health science around an ecodisciplinary approach? Using the Venn diagrams of Boolean logic, see how the parameters of your study narrow as you combine disciplines.  How can this study help you solve an intellectual, artistic, personal and/or professional problem in your own lives? Small weekly papers grow into a full-length academic research paper. The midterm is the first draft of the final paper. 

Course Objectives

• To complete a 20-40 page college research paper with a 3 page bibliography
• To explore a personal methodology for creativity and research from brainstorming
• To gather, organize and evaluate primary and secondary sources online, in the library, the community and through empirical research such as interviews and investigation
• To engage in close and survey reading and to paraphrase, summarize, analyze, and integrate sources into personal research
• To develop and refine a thesis
• To structure the categories of an outline
• To develop and refine critical and argumentative faculties
• To establish credibility through research, audience analysis, (beliefs, values, attitudes and behaviors), critical thinking, decision making and persuasive tactics
• To learn the constructs of classical (Aristotle) and contemporary (Toulmin, Roger, Monroe, Boolean, Cyber) argumentation
• To constructively question and defend a claim or syllogism, identifying logical fallacies
• To analyze the course theme of Literature, Health Science, and the Environment in terms of your problem, employing the rhetoric of controversy, conflict and conversion
• To improve writing skills through improvisational, poetic, and personal writing through formal and task-based exercises
• To create a distinctive, original expository style, using MLA or APA parenthetical documentation
• To increase knowledge and understanding of content theme
• To introduce you to great literature
• To develop, refine, and edit a collaborative cyber-document such as a Wiki for medical and scientific discoveries, and your Blogs for literary intuition
• To publish excellent papers in the Online Journals of EvergreenEnergy, Journal on Terrorism, or Journal of Online Education

Required Readings
Proust was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer
Examine at least two chapters in detail for scientific discoveries and literary intuition, to serve as a basis for your research paper.

The Hidden Face of Eve, Memoirs of a Female Doctor, Daughter of Isis, Women at Point Zero or any book by Nawal el Saadawi who was our Visiting Professor for a conference in the spring of 2011. See interview on You-Tube. Dr el Saadawi is an author and a physician, combining literature and medicine with ecology, politics, and human rights.  

You should use the texts as springboards for your own originality and argumentation. Think of a problem you want to solve in your own life, related to the analyses of the art/science fusion. 

MLA/APA pocket manual latest edition, 2009

Critical Thinking and Communication: The Use of Reason in Argument by Inch/Warnick, Allyn and Bacon, 2009.

(This is a good argumentation book, although there are some errors, particularly in the definitions of inductive/deductive reasoning. Since it is more for oral communication, it advocates the short, crisp sentence structure and succinct paragraphs of public speeches, but for your work, you should develop complex, compound sentences, with varied, rich, professional vocabulary, that express detailed description, provocative debates, creative interpretations and discoveries that help solve your problem.)
Recommended Readings
Choose among these recommended readings to help you make your original synthesis of Literature and Medicine to solve your problem.

Optional Reading: (Go to NYU bookstore for best deals.) These books can be used for weekly literary quotes, (quotes are required every week in the Drop Box assignments).

• The Diary of Virginia Woolf  
• Swann's Way by Marcel Proust 
• The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein
• Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
• Middlemarch by George Eliot
• How to Survive as an Adjunct Professor by Wrestling by Julia Keefer
• Saturday and Solar by Ian McEwan
• Exit the King by Ionesco
• The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Tolstoy
• Weekends at Bellevue by Dr. Julie Holland
• Bellevue Literary Review (any pertinent issue)
• 100 Names for Love by Diane Ackerman
• King Lear by William Shakespeare (Study for Alzheimer's and Multi-infarct Dementia)
•  Cancer Ward by Solzhenitsyn
• The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
• Death in Venice (Plague) and The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann (Tuberculosis)
• Angels in America by Tony Kushner (AIDS)
• The Plague by Albert Camus
• Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag
• Pale Faces by Charles L. Bardes
• Literature and Medicine is the official journal of The Institute for the Medical Humanities
• 10 Year Anniversary Book, Editors' Choices from The Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database, (see order form) and its corresponding on-line version (see left panel): editor-annotators discuss the literature, art, and films they consider most valuable for medical humanities teaching and related scholarship (published October 2003).
  
  Note the link from A Roster of Twentieth Century Physicians Writing in English to information about the Daniel Bryant collection of books by physician writers at NYU School of Medicine
• All editions of the National Strength and Conditioning Journal (excellent reserch by PhD CSCS international scholars and athletes)
• Health and Disease in Human History edited by Robert I. Rotberg
• Iconoclast by Gregory Berns
• Medicine and Western Civilization by Rothman, Marcus, and Kiceluk
• Einstein's Dreams and The Discoveries by Alan Lightman
• For the Ecoliterary Portion:
  1) Comparison/contrast pairs: American naturalistic style. Industrial development versus nature and indigenous Native American culture. Oil versus Gardens in the Dune
  2) Akhenaten and The Plague. Northern Africa. Social collapse.
  3) The Sand Child and God Dies by the Nile and The Desert: Egyptian and Moroccan feminism and desert culture.
  4) Snow, Hiroshima, mon Amour, and How to Survive as an Adjunct Professor by Wrestling: Turkish versus American approaches to terrorism, relationship of nature to political violence
  5) The Waves and Black Water: Early and late twentieth century. modernist versus post-modernist styles. Clean versus polluted water. Distortion of time.
  6) Soul Mountain, Heart of Darkness, and Things Fall Apart: Climb every mountain, ford every stream. Chinese cultural revolution. White European early twentieth century imperialism versus African nationalism. Back to man conquers nature--or not.
• 

Course Prerequisites
Writing Workshop I is the prerequisite.
Grading
A: Excellent

A-: Excellent effort, attendance, participation, original thinker, independent planner, excellent research skills, fully able to develop and refine thesis, work inductively and deductively, to identify and support claims, anticipate objections to arguments, to read closely and critically, using evidence to develop your thesis, to use abstract and concrete language effectively with mastery of English language, with a strong, coherent voice and range of discourse.

B+, B, B-: Good control of the above criteria

C+, C, C-: Inconsistent control of the above criteria

D: Only fulfills minimum requirements

F: Unsatisfactory

Midterm and Final Papers have letter grades but are evaluated in the following way numerically by professor as well as by peers to better understand grading rubric:

• 25% style--grammar, style, correct APA/MLA format, strong voice, use of abstract and concrete language, distinctive style
• 25% originality, independence, new insights into old problems, or new discoveries
• 25% depth and diversity of research sources and creative, critical use of such research
• 25% clarity, organization and argumentation (claims and counterclaims of fact, value, and policy.)

Course Requirements:

Weekly writing assignments should be at least 3 pages single-spaced (pass/fail), but you are encouraged to write more, as you prepare your long research papers. Since the weekly writing is pass/fail--you are free to make mistakes, brainstorm, and take chances, because we sometimes learn the most from failure and frustration; but if you submit nothing, you fail for real. Weekly writing should be written in formal academic style with parenthetical documentation, carefully proofread, although you can break into personal, descriptive, expository, argumentative, analytical writing as long as you relate everything to your research topic, and include the readings you are choosing for your 3-page bibliography. Write down a quote from one of the literary books each week, and explain how it relates to your thesis. If you are late to the Drop Box, you fail for that week. I will upload a criticism of your writing into my Progress Report before the next assignment is due, commenting on aspects of the academic essay such as thesis, motive, keyterms, evidence, analysis, structure, stitching, sources, reflecting, orienting, stance and style. Most of all, I will be looking for your presence which will help make your work original, along with a unique angle and deep commitment to your topic.

• Midterm paper--8-10 pages, 1 full page of bibliography
• Peer Review of Midterms to be submitted to Drop Box
• Peer Review of Rough Drafts to be submitted to Drop Box
• Final at least 15-20 pages, 3 pages of bibliography

Qualifications of Professor to Teach Course

LECTURES

I. Lesson One: Brainstorming Your Topic

This course has both terminal and instrumental values: while the goal is to write an original, provocative, enlightening, well-written academic research paper, it is also an opportunity to learn more about the WAY you think, the process of research, and the best way to organize a long paper, particularly when you need to write a senior thesis, a novel or screenplay, a graduate dissertation, or even a long, complex business proposal. Before you get chained down by the specificity of your claims, you must let your brain explode with ideas! I should also make clear that a professor is different from a boss. You are paid to agree with your bosses. My job is to stimulate you, challenge you, at times confuse you, and still give you As if you disagree with me. In this course, we will agree to disagree with each other!

Keywords: Brainstorming, disease, health, and exile, multi-, inter-, trans- or cross-disciplinary research, cognitive domains,descriptive, expository, argumentative, critical, lyrical/personal, narrative writing

Goals of the First Lesson:

A. Lectures on the following:

1) Introduce you to the course theme of Literature, Health Science, and the Environment, the literary books, and the concept of multi-, inter-, trans- or cross-disciplinary research;

2) Describe the research paper towards which you will be working all semester;

3) Brainstorm ideas and problems on the theme for your topic through discussion, improvisation, and creative mapping;

4) Deepen your understanding of your cognitive domains, weaknesses, and strengths in order to plan a productive interior syllabus for your research;

5)Review different kinds of writing to help you further develop your ideas.

B. Activities are designed to introduce you to the features of the Epsilen environment that will help you with your research project, and create an online environment through activities.

C. Give examples of ways to do the weekly free writing assignment.

D. Pinpoint resources in the textbooks, the literature, the online journals, and Internet sites.

A. LECTURES

Here are some SPECIFIC research ideas and activities that embrace the Literature, Health Science, and Environment theme.
Claims of FACT: These are your problems. Pick a specific disease or disability such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, Meningitis, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, Lyme disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Diabetes, Obesity, Porphyria disease, spinal cord injury, cancer of the throat, breast, skin, lungs or whatever, depression--but be specific and categorize as there are many kinds, ADHD, Dyslexia, Bipolar disorder, Schizophrenia, Sociopathic personality, etc. When you pick this disease or disability, make sure you have access directly or indirectly to a specific group of at least 5-10 people you can interview with this problem. Describe this group, where they live, how they live, what they do, etc. Brainstorm in the Claim of Fact Forum.  

Claims of VALUE: Based on the optional literary reading list and any literary quotes you can get from any source--poetry, drama, prose--write down 10 abstract words such as health, happiness, greed, injustice, laziness, fear, etc related to this group of people that you are studying. How do the literary quotes help you investigate the values these people have? This will help determine the compliance or discipline they may have in terms of finding a solution to their problem. Connect the literary quotes to the values of the people and then the cultural values of their environment.  While your claim of fact may be situated in New York city, open up on claims of value to embrace at least one other culture or time period where people have the SAME problem they have in your control group. This will enable you to develop compare/contrast. Brainstorm in the Claims of Value Forum.

Claims of POLICY: For now, just work on hypothetical claims, playing with every crazy idea to solve your problem. Originality will be the most important factor in the grading. Connect all claims of policy to an environmental problem. Possible areas of research are hydrofracking, drinking water, air quality, exposure to UV rays, earthquakes, tsunamis, tree planting and parks in urban environments, activities like hiking and mountain biking, big oil and gas companies, Green real estate etc.  When you develop a solution to your problem, you must include the area where these people live. Brainstorm environmental problems related to your control group in Claims of Policy Forum.

1) Irritating Socratic-style Questions on Course Theme:
How does it feel to be healthy, or sick? How hard do you have to work at being healthy, by exercising, eating healthy food, sleeping soundly, breathing fresh air and drinking clean water, avoiding alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, excessive coffee, junk food, visiting the doctor and dentist, following through with treatments, reducing stress with meditations, quiet times, fun activities, and developing meaningful goals for work and home life? Is it more fun to be sick? Sick children are pampered, sick students try to get more individual attention from the professor to make up for missed classes, patients get 24-hour attention in hospitals, the elderly are nursed more meticulously than babies in nursing homes. But when does disease exile us from society? How does it feel to be quarantined, or too ugly or unsightly to see? Can exile bring about disease, or greater knowledge and health? Consult books like The Plague by Albert Camus, The Magic Mountain or Death in Venice by Thomas Mann, and Love in the Time of Cholera by GG Marquez to see how Nobel Prize winners wrestled with these problems. Discussing the books, we'll trace relationships between physical sickness, psychological sickness, and spiritual sickness. What happens when a culture loses belief in God or trivializes God into a manageable deity? We'll examine the human tendency to glorify humans (believing that humans are the ones who create meaning).

We'll talk about beliefs, values, and attitudes that cause sickness. These include such obvious
visible things such as greed and selfishness, rampant consumerism, and mindless materialism.
Some environmentalists lump these bad habits together into the mindset ("dominant Western
paradigm") that sees the world divided up into me and them, inner and outer, objective and
subjective.We'll question this simplification, as well as others that say such a view is caused by religious "domination" terminology. Maybe the real cause is deeper-- spiritual alienation?
We'll get to know the anthropocentric mindset that places humans at the top of the heap,
justified in doing what they want because nature is "there for the taking." We'll also ask whether
nature is morally neutral, and what this means. Are humans morally neutral, for instance, in their
scientific dealings with the physical world?

How much do emotions, attitude, and expectations influence physical disease, especially in books like Ceremony or Love in the Time of Cholera? What part does luck play in illness, injury, or disability? How do different cultures define disease or health? How are disease and health related to the environment? Can you be healthier in the country where the air is fresher? What part do intellectual stimulation, growth, and creativity play in your physical health? Why do some beings achieve the greatest peace and happiness as they let go of their bodies in death? Read Exit the King to help you meditate on death. When do the quantitative tests of medicine interfere with the quality of life, enjoyment of the fragile moment, and the resources needed to live with pleasure? Why do we clutter death with so many unsuccessful procedures? Is it hard to stand by and do nothing, watching a loved one die? How do we make these end-of-life decisions with knowledge and compassion? What is the real terror of dying at home? What institutions really cure disease? How many simply prolong it, and why? How does technology interact in the ebb and flow of the body's growth and decay? How do the literary books give you a better perspective on this topic?

Humans oscillate between various levels of mental and physical health and disease. Dramatic motivation is often precipitated by an infirmity, a pathological addiction, or even a burst of excess health. Understanding health and disease can help us understand deep character beyond the items on a resume, which is crucial if you are planning a career in Human Resources, or dramatic writing! We all know how it feels to be part of a community. Some of us have been set apart as weird, oddball, geeky, stupid, crazy, fat, ugly, too energetic, or even too healthy. As a college student, I often didn't fit in because I wouldn't take drugs or consume excessive alcohol. Why do communities like fraternities encourage pathological behavior? In 2009, growth industries are health care facilities, health clubs, wholesale outlets, cheap, healthy dining, drugstores; while declining industries center around apparel, particularly expensive apparel, jewelry, home furnishings, upscale restaurants, and much of the advertising and public relations surrounding media. How can you evaluate the changing times in terms of your career goals and the course theme? How are your day job, your career objectives, and/or your major affected by health, disease, and exile?

Choose a research topic related to the theme of disease, health, and exile, as well as your major, your career objectives, your day job, and/or your interests. Make sure this topic lends itself to controversy and argumentation, that you can gather a 3-page academic bibliography, as well as do primary source interviews and/or field research, and that you can develop an original angle on this topic, based on your unique knowledge and experience. Once you choose your topic, your commitment must be complete so that you can work on it every day. If your goal is to publish the paper in one of the online journals, that will help.

Literature majors can tie the literary books together to investigate the thematic problem in a comprehensive, critical manner, advancing a clear claim of value that can grow into a claim of policy as it is applied to certain institutions, cultures and time periods; creative writing majors can use the research for a long project such as a novel, screenplay, or anthology of poetry or short fiction; business majors can use the research to understand how health, disease, and/or exile affect specific businesses in specific countries; health science majors can plummet these conditions in a more psychophysical, multidisciplinary manner; media majors can investigate how specific health issues are covered in specific media. Did I say specific? Yes, the claims of fact and policy must be as specific as a text to be analyzed, a defendant on trial, or a patient to be treated, although the claims of value can embrace centuries of thought if the definitions are clear.

NYU encourages the blending and fusion of different disciplines, another way to make your paper more original, and reach a wider audience. When publishing for specific disciplines, you may have to follow an extremely exact format, for example, in a nursing or sociology journal, or literary criticism publication. However, for this course, you are encouraged to include as many disciplines as possible, as long as your thesis is well-defined, refined, and developed throughout your paper, and your writing voice is strong and unique. The term 'multi-disciplinary' means to include several disciplines at once; "interdisciplinary" means to weave these disciplines together in a kind of marriage that puts a more integrated perspective on your problem; "transdisciplinary" approaches transcend disciplines or move across them to look at the problem from a wider perspective; and "cross-disciplinary," like Boolean logic, examines the place where disciplines intersect in order to solve a particular problem.

For example, my specialties are the literary arts and the medical arts, weaving language and the body together in an interdisciplinary fashion to create a new whole, when I write novels, screenplays and poems, finding analogies in the process and training of multi-disciplinary approaches to language study and personal training, studying the transdisciplinary aspects of disease and dying in pathology and Nobel Prize-winning literature to reach a deeper understanding of death, and tying personal narrative and medical case histories together in a cross-disciplinary manner to make diagnoses and treatment plans for patients. The blogs are the places where personal objectives, biases, peeves, and obsessions fuse with the methodology of your research journey.

B. Your final paper should be at least 15-20 pages (or longer) with a 3 page bibliography of books, academic articles, interviews, field research, and Internet sites. It will be evaluated, by peer-review, cross-editing, and my grades, with the following rubric:

WW2 Evaluation Rubric for Writing Style, Originality, Argumentation/Logic, and Depth and Diversity of Research Unsatisfactory Below 15
Adequate, but Needs Work 15-20
Very Good 20-23
Exemplary 23-25

If your creativity is stultified by rubrics, aim higher by publishing in the online journals and garnering a global audience! Surf the Journal of Online Education, The Journal on Terrorism and Un-clashing Civilizations, and EvergreenEnergy, Health, Humanities, Fitness, and the Environment.

3) Improvisation and Creative Mapping to find a topic

Let your imaginations go wild, air your pet peeves, express your dreams, and explore your areas of interest before you narrow down your topic, which will allow you a deeper, more fruitful commitment to your project, once the details are set.

Start with the Socratic questions, do automatic writing on your topic and then break into discussion groups, but continue to map, draw, and take notes so that you have food for thought. Try to be silly, stupid, provocative, crazy, wild, in order to let your ideas flow, but make sure you are recording everything. To present your topic, you can draw a picture, write a poem, make a song or pick songs you like, do a dance, or tell a joke. Think of how cancer patients do drawings to represent their illness. As you explore the area, focus on finding problems and look for controversies. Research is about discovering new ways of doing and thinking, not repeating what was done in the past.

Here are some games that could be modified in chat, a live meeting, or the Live Classroom.

• Musical Computers

  
  Musical Computers is like the game musical chairs. Each student sits at the computer and types on an empty page. At the sound of the tone, they rotate to the next computer where they write on the same document. Depending on the exercise they can keep rotating or go back to their original computer.
  • Personal into Expository Writing: The first players write down a personal event from their lives that moved them deeply and caused them to think differently about life. Students should feel free to change names and places to protect their privacy as long as the feelings are genuine.
    The second players read the personal narrative critically to find a thesis, potential arguments around a larger topic, abstract concepts that could be defined, examples of inductive and deductive reasoning, potential research sources, pøssible cross-cultural and historical comparisons.
    The first players go back to their original page, read what the second players wrote and refine a thesis and outline for an expository paper related to their personal essay.
    For example, a woman describes how her feelings about her so-called "overweight body" caused her to visit friends at Rikers Detention Center and then start to date inmates because they made her feel better about herself. This could lead to a study on discrimination against overweight people, psychological profiles of the wives and girlfriends of inmates, distortions of the oedipal transfer onto the unavailable prisoner etc.
    
  • Layers of Description: The first players write a physical description of a person, the second players an emotional, and the third players an intellectual including objectives and resume. The descriptions are printed and one actor plays each character in an improvisation. Our last layers of description took place in a cemetery with a number of vitriolic historical characters and dysfunctional modern ones. A few died and a happy time was had by all!
  • Letters to the Editor: The first players write an argumentative letter outlining a strong position on a topic such as abortion, capital punishment, guaranteed health care coverage, female circumcision etc. and the second players take the opposite point of view. The third players, as editors, synthesize a compromise.
  • Correspondance with a Martian: The first players describe their thesis and argument to a highly intelligent Martian who knows nothing about our culture. Everything we take for granted must be explained such as sex, television, politics etc. This is an excellent way for students to sharpen their conceptual abilities with a concrete, humorous assignment. Then the second players read the texts and write back as Martians. The first players then revise their thesis and definitions.
  • Utopias and Dystopias: The first players briefly describe the utopia that would occur if their proposal were completely implemented. For example, a student visualized the legalization of all drugs by the year 2010. Starbucks turned into a smorgasbord of marijuana, cocaine, heroin etc. Then the second player described the deleterious effects of this decadent Starbucks that led to the ruin of everyone's mindbody. More subtle utopias and dystopias can be brought to cyber life. This is an excellent way for students to judge the implications of their proposals.

• Oral Communication:

  
  During this phase of their work, students bring audio recorders to class to record presentations, speeches, debates and improvisation, or we go to the Live Classroom. Some people are much better at talking than writing; and everyone benefits from the open exchange of ideas. Oral communication also helps to eliminate writers' block because there is always something to transcribe.
  • Role Playing: Students give an oral presentation of their research to an audience composed of deliberately friendly and hostile members. Students learn to convince people who love them as well as people who hate them.
  • Debates: Traditional debates on a topic are held with a 90 second intro, 60 second argument against it and a 30 second rebuttal, just like the presidential debates! Everything is taped.
  • Finding the Fallacies: Students give an oral presentation incorporating personal narrative with argumentative exposition and the other students write down their informal fallacies of relevance, ambiguity and assumption. They pick the most egregious fallacy, exaggerate it and debate it back to the original speaker.
  • Interviews: Students interview each other as well as their research subjects and play back the tapes to analyse techniques.
  • Non-verbal communication: Each student imagines an interpersonal conflict based on their thesis and describes the characters and situation only to the two or three actors. The actors mime the situation, using gesture, facial expression, sobs, laughs, grunts, gibberish but no recognizable words. The class tries to guess the situation based on the non-verbal communication.
    

• Library Aerobics

• Students run up and down the stairs of the library as they learn the old-fashioned, never-to-be forgotten art of browsing. This is a good break from the corporeal rigor mortis of cyberspace.

• Movies, Madness and Music

• Students show films or photos, draw pictures, write poetry or play music related in any way they choose to their research. In the 21st century we need the right and left brains working together!
  
  4) Cognitive Domains.

Since WWII is a writing class, the Brain Gymnasium is a way for you to develop your linguistic abilities using the other domains. For example, if you are more visual/spatial, use tables, graphs, collages, drawings, put original graphics into your webfolio, work on descriptive studies, and feel free to draw as much as you write. If you are more logical, always work with outlines, analyze your arguments, build your linguistic house and give yourself plenty of time. If you are more kinesthetic, work out hard before you sit down to write, and take exercise breaks, to get rid of excess energy, or you may become one of the millions of writers addicted to drugs, alcohol, and other evils. But don't exhaust yourself or you will fall asleep. Try working with two large computers at once to absorb more kinesthetic energy. When you jog, bike, and hike try to be alone as much as possible so you can think about your writing. Plan time to let it all come out at once like a cerebral snowstorm. If you are rhythmic, bring an audio recorder wherever you go, do oral presentations as much as possible and choose time-centered projects and genres. If your strengths are in the personal domain, do research with interviews, work on case studies and try collaborative writing. If you write best alone, try to find the silence, space and solitude or a very strong focus to block out noise and distractions.

None of the above hypotheses are truly scientific. They are only there to make you think, existing as rules to be broken or observations to be questioned.

What are your cognitive strengths and weaknesses? How are personal training or group fitness classes related to cognitive workouts?

Read fellow WW2 student's paper on this: https://pages.nyu.edu/keefer/waoe/rhanle.htm
The following PowerPoint Presentations summarize some of thes introductory concepts:

https://pages.nyu.edu/keefer/nature/WW2Brainstorming.pdf
https://pages.nyu.edu/keefer/nature/WW2kindsofwriting.pdf
https://pages.nyu.edu/keefer/nature/WW2topic.pdf
https://pages.nyu.edu/keefer/nature/WW2claims.pdf

Interior syllabus: For every academic class you take, you should have your own syllabus. Look over the syllabus planned by the professor, peruse all the required reading, think about the assignments, and then, as you budget your time for the semester, make up your own syllabus around your research project, allowing time for library visits, field work, interviews, daily writing, and at least one long writing period a week.

5) Kinds of Writing
In Writing Workshop I, you may have explored different kinds of writing. You may be great at writing stories or memoirs, but freeze when it comes to working on a full-length academic paper. In fact, all kinds of writing can help you develop your topic. A case history in medicine is a narrative; poems are lyrical, but so are the emotional cries of someone in pain, and the experience of pain is crucial to our theme; whenever you read something you should always analyze and criticize it in terms of your thoughts; you've all engaged in some kind of arguments and now you must organize them formally to see the different points of view embedded in your topic; doctors, lawyers, and even tourist agents describe patients, defendants, or resorts, and so you must use descriptive writing to paint the pictures that bring your problem to life; and whenever you explain a procedure or skill to someone, you are engaged in expository writing. By using narrative, lyrical, analytical/critical, argumentative, descriptive, and expository writing to explore your topic, you can be sure you are covering all aspects as you develop and refine your unique voice.

B. Activities:
Before the WWW, students, like myself, spent hours in the library browsing, then taking out books, poring over microfilm to look at articles, and then doing interviews and field research in the community. Now, with a click of the mouse, you can access thousands of entries on your subject, but which are the right ones? The authoritative sites linked to world encyclopedias, recognized medical, social science, or literary organizations, will give you the most socially accepted facts, but won't help you with originality. Wikipedia comes up first in most searches, but remember it is the consensus of popular opinion, written by hundreds of laypeople, rather than the team of specialists. Nevertheless, many of its entries are informative, correct, and concise. Wikipedia is the basis for the collaborative Wiki you will be designing in class, based on your weekly research journeys. Tell us exactly what you have done, the problems you had doing it, and how it helped or didn't help with your research. Read your classmates' entries, and edit them, not only for grammar or spelling, but, add your comments to a source that you know as well, or suggest other sources to solve their problems. Think of it as a class Wikipedia on research strategies.

1) FORUMS: Write down your interests, ambitions, beliefs, objectives, about any topics related to your major, your job, and the class theme as you Introduce Yourself in the forum.

2)BLOGS:Start your personal blog, linking all the subjective parts of your life to your research topic.

3) LIVE CLASSROOM: Rubber Ducking
Pick a partner and write or talk non-stop about your topic, while your partner draws on the eboard or a piece of paper. Then have the partner try to rephrase your conversation while you draw on the eboard or a piece of paper.

4)Note-Taking
What personal stories are connected to your topic? (narrative)

How would you explain your topic to someone from another planet? (expository)

What kinds of arguments have you heard about this topic? (argumentation)

What emotions are connected to your topic?(lyrical)

Describe a typical person, text, or situation in detail that epitomizes the victim or site of your problem.(descriptive)

How would you analyze or break down the components of your problem in order to criticize the whys and wherefores?(critical/analytical)

5) WIKIS: Begin your research journey with at least one Internet search that leads to fruitful treasures, one library excursion where you find a good book on your topic, and one community event related in ANY way to your topic. Document all these activities in our colloborative Wiki every week, and edit those of your classmates.

C. Assignments
Kinds of Writing: Once you have a general topic, write a paragraph to a page on this topic in each of the following genre--narrative, expository, argumentation, descriptive, lyrical, dramatic. It can be as long as six pages, because it can ramble, as it is a brainstorming document.

D. Resources
Google your topic, and search databases, and encyclopedias in the library and online to get an overview of your topic. Chapters in the Critical Thinking and Communication and Research Strategies book. Articles in the online journals.

II. Lesson Two: Introduction to Logic to find Hypotheses

A brief overview of the history of logic, focusing on Aristotle, Toulmin, and cyber-rhetoric can help you understand claims of fact, value, and policy, and develop a working hypothesis for your paper.

Keywords: Hypothesis, thesis, claims of fact, value, and policy, inductive and deductive reasoning, Aristotle's rhetoric, Toulmin's chain of reasoning, categorical, disjunctive, and conditional syllogisms, Keefer's cyber-logic boot camp

Goals of this Second Lesson:

A. Lectures on the following:

1) Understand the origin of claims

2) Aristotle

3) Inductive/Deductive Reasoning

4) Stephen Toulmin

5) Cyber-rhetoric

6) Thesis as Steering Wheel for your research

B. Use the Epsilen environment for more pointed exchanges to develop argumentation.

C. Pinpoint resources in the textbooks, the literature, the online journals, and Internet sites.

D. Give examples of ways to do the weekly free writing assignment centered around your hypothesis.

Hypotheses and Theses

A.Lectures

1) To understand the origin of claims: 25% of your grade is argumentation!

First of all, we must be able to distinguish arguments/propositions/claims from other sentences such as questions (Are suicide bombers ever afraid to die?), proposals (Let's kill them.), suggestions (We recommend that you workout every day.), commands (Don't shop at Shoprite.), and exclamations (The Middle East is a bloodbath!) An argument is a group of statements, one or more of which (the premises) are claimed to provide support for, or reasons to believe, one of the others (the conclusion.) So warnings, statements of belief or opinion, loosely associated statements, reports, expository passages, illustrations, conditional statements and explanations are not arguments by themselves although they may lead to arguments. For example, a conditional statement can form the major premise of a conditional or hypothetical syllogism, but it is not an argument on its own. "If cigarette companies publish warning labels, then smokers assume the risk of smoking. Cigarette companies do publish warning labels. Therefore, smokers assume the risk of smoking."

To find out if we really have an argument we should 1) rule out typical kinds of non-arguments, 2) examine indicators such as therefore, it follows that, because, since etc. and 3) most importantly, the presence of an inferential relationship between the statements. The purpose of logic is to allow us to develop methods and techniques to distinguish good arguments from bad. Here is an example: All crimes are violations of the law. Rape is a crime. Therefore rape is a violation of the law. Symbolically, it is stated as A equals B. C equals A. Therefore C equals B. But the following is bad: Some crimes are misdemeanors. Rape is a crime. Therefore rape is a misdemeanor. This is a valid form: All A are B. All B are C. Therefore, all A are C. This is invalid: All A are B. All C are B. Therefore all A are C. For example: All cats are animals. All dogs are animals. Therefore, all cats are dogs. Remember this again when we go into testing soundness of deductive arguments.

You must be able to distinguish premises or claimed evidence (Toulmin's data or grounds) from conclusion or what is claimed to follow from the evidence. An inference is the reasoning expressed in an argument. Some arguments have more than one conclusion or more than two premises and can be described syllogistically, horizontally, vertically, in clusters, symbolically as alphabetical letters or Venn diagrams.

2) Aristotle

Aristotle is one of my heroes, and, in a small way, I like to carry his triple-threat legacy (Rhetoric, Physic, Poetics) into the 21st century by being a cyber-rhetorician, a kinesiologist, and a screenwriter, although I could never control present knowledge the way he controlled knowledge in Ancient Athens. Traditional Rhetoric began in a confined place and time--Classical Athens-- with a specific audience of free men, thereby excluding women and slaves.Traditional logic first began with Aristotle (born 384 B.C.) who taught and wrote his treatises to explain his system of thinking and to refute the sophistry of emotional rhetoricians like Isocrates. A student of Plato and the son of a physician, Aristotle had a lifelong interest in empirically-based knowledge. He was a great categorizer and divided knowledge into four categories:1) theoretical, physics, math and theology, 2) practical, politics and ethics, 3) productive, arts, crafts and medicine, and 4) organa, or tools of methodology, logic and dialectic. He used his methodology to write the Poetics, the Physic, the Logic, the Metaphysic so that the content was multi-disciplinary, but his method of inquiry was similar. He divided rhetoric into three species: deliberative (future), judicial (past), and epideictic (not time-bound, but inciting the audience to praise or blame.) Rhetoric was an indispensable part of public life in Athens and remained a potentiality, a way of constantly evaluating knowledge through dialectic, not dogmatic means. Rhetoric deals with probabilities, and uses evidence and logic to convince.

The Syllogism (Deductive): All men are mortal. (the general principle)
Socrates is a man. (the case)
Therefore, Socrates is mortal. (the conclusion)
Premises must follow by NECESSITY, while in Inductive Syllogisms, they follow by PROBABILITY:
These candies come from that bag.
All the candies in that bag are chocolate.
Therefore, these candies are chocolate.

There are often fallacies in inductive syllogisms because that second clause cannot always be proven. One jumps from a case study to a general principle too quickly, as in many clinical medical trials with pharmaceutical sponsorship. As the world becomes more complex and invisible, deductive syllogisms are harder to prove.

Today we use rhetoric to sell our products and ourselves; Aristotle tried to use rhetoric to express logic which sincerely searched for the truth. Since truth in the twentieth century has been relative, to say the least, most leaders are really persuading people to worship the god of consumerism. Logical fallacies are exploited ruthlessly, as in courts of law. (Cases of O.J.Simpson, the Menendez brothers etc.)

3) Inductive/Deductive Reasoning

Once we have clearly recognized the argument, it is then important to categorize it into induction or deduction. While some people often generalize and say deduction moves from general to specific, and induction from specific to general, this is not always true.

A deductive argument is one in which the premises are claimed to support the conclusion in such a way that if they are assumed true, it is impossible for the conclusion to be false, so that the conclusion follows by necessity. An inductive argument is an argument in which the premises are claimed to support the conclusion in such a way that if they are assumed true, it is improbable that the conclusion is false. Five examples of arguments that are typically deductive are arguments based on math, arguments from definition, and categorical, hypothetical or conditional, and disjunctive syllogisms. Pure math is deductive but statistics are inductive. Toulmin's method is largely inductive because his system is a rebellion against the rigors of formal logic and his 6 part chain includes a qualifier.

A categorical syllogism is a syllogism in which each statement begins with one of the words "all, no, or some. "All cats are animals. Some cats are black and white. Therefore some animals are black and white." Or use the famous Socrates syllogism "All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore Socrates is mortal." Socrates falls into the "some" category. A categorical syllogism relates two classes or categories, denoted respectively by the subject term and predicate term, and the proposition asserts that either all or part of the class denoted by the subject term is included in or excluded from the class denoted by the predicate term. We have four forms: All S are P. No S are P. Some S are P. Some S are not P. A hypothetical or conditional syllogism is a syllogism having a conditional statement for one or both premises. A disjunctive syllogism is a syllogism having a disjunctive statement for one of its premises: "Either you are with the terrorists or you are with the US and its allies. You are not with the US and its allies. Therefore you must be with the terrorists." Then try to construct a conditional syllogism to determine how such rogue states might be punished. In everyday conversation it is hard to always detect the purity of syllogistic argument. An enthymeme is an argument missing a premise or conclusion, but usually the missing element is implied. "The corporate income tax should be abolished; it encourages waste and high prices." The missing element is whatever encourages waste and high prices.

In general, inductive arguments are such that the content of the conclusion is in some way intended to "go beyond" the content of the premises. Inductive arguments include predictions about the future, arguments from analogy, inductive generalizations, (because some beans from the bag are chocolate, it is likely they are all chocolate,) arguments from authority (he could be stupid or misinformed in spite of his rep!), argument based on signs (or coexistential), and causal inference which isn't exactly the same as a conditional statement or hypothetical or conditional syllogism. In science, the discovery of a law of nature is generally considered to be inductive, while its application is deductive, proceeding from a true, valid premise.

Once we categorize arguments, we must then analyze them. We need to look at two things: the claim that evidence exists, and what kind of evidence that is, and the claim that the alleged evidence actually supports that claim. Deductive arguments are analyzed as valid or invalid, sound, or unsound. To test the validity of an argument, we must examine whether the premises support the conclusion in such away that if they are assumed true, it is impossible for the conclusion to be false. Here is an example of an invalid argument having true premises and a true conclusion: "All banks are financial organizations. Wells Fargo is a financial organization. Therefore, Wells Fargo is a bank." Any deductive argument having true premises and a false conclusion is obviously invalid. But you can have a valid argument that is unsound such as: "All wines are soft drinks. Ginger ale is a wine. Therefore ginger ale is a soft drink."

A sound argument is a deductive argument that is valid and has all true premises.

Inductive arguments are evaluated as weak/strong or cogent/uncogent. Thus, a strong inductive argument is: "This barrel contains one hundred apples. 80 apples selected at random were found to be ripe. Therefore, probably all one hundred apples are ripe." A weaker version is as follows: "This barrel contains one hundred apples. Three apples selected at random were found to be ripe. Therefore, probably all one hundred apples are ripe." Hence, strength and weakness, unlike validity and soundness, relate to degrees. A cogent argument is an inductive argument that is strong and has all true premises, the inductive analogue of a sound deductive argument. Classically it is without qualification, but Toulmin added a qualifier to his reasoning chain. However for classical cogency, the premises must not only be true but also not overlook some important factor that outweighs the given evidence and requires a different conclusion.

When you are debating in a rush, keep asking these two questions: Do the premises (data, grounds) support the conclusion (claim)? Are all the premises true? As you write research papers or debate you will develop extended arguments such as: "American Doctors who attend elderly people in nursing homes in NY State in 2009 often prescribe tranquilizers to keep these people immobile. This practice is often unwarranted, and it often impairs the health of the patients. These tranquilizers often have damaging side effects in that they accentuate the symptoms of senility, and they increase the likelihood of a dangerous fall because they produce unsteadiness in walking. Furthermore, since these medications produce immobility, they increase the risk of bedsores. Doctors at the Center for Aging and Health say that physicians who care for the elderly are simply prescribing too much medication."

We often get snowed under in our evidence, drowning instead of resurfacing to test the premises or data we need to use to back up our claim or proposition.

4) Brief synopsis of Stephen Toulmin

In 1958 the British philosopher Stephen Toulmin realized that this form of argumentation is not what one encounters when listening to a public speech, arguing with a roommate about what music to listen to, or talking politics at a bar. Consequently, Toulmin developed his theory in order to explain how argumentation occurs in the natural process of everyday argument. Consequently, Toulmin wanted to explain how real people (not philosophers) argue. Although Toulmin's position on formal logic -- that formal rules of logic do not fit well with common practices of argument -- may seem obvious, one must remember the time period in which Toulmin developed his theory. Students of public speaking, rhetoric, and logic were only taught formal logic. Using a contemporary example to illustrate: Students were taught how to program a computer before they were taught how to click a mouse. When one recognizes the traditions of the time period, Toulmin's theory of argument seems even more revolutionary.

Toulmin developed his system of argumentation, in part to respond to twentieth century relativity, field specialization, and the need to attach data to every claim, especially in the areas of law and medicine. To understand the Toulmin model, think of the quck chain of reasoning you would need to make in an Emergency Room or a criminal trial, where you would move empirically from data to warrant to backing to qualifier to reservation to grounds to claim. An appropriate claim requires (a) initial grounds for the argument (b) a warrant that allows the speaker to move from grounds to claim (c) a qualifier that states the "strength" of the claim (d) reservations or rebuttals that state the exceptions to the claim. You can also reverse the order as follows:

The first element is the claim. The claim of the argument is the conclusion that someone is trying to justify in the argument.
The second element is the grounds. The grounds of an argument are the facts on which the argument is based.
The third element of the argument is the warrant. The warrant of the argument assesses whether or not the claim is legitimate based on the grounds.
The fourth element is the backing. The backing of the argument gives additional support for a warrant by answering different questions.
The modal qualifier is the fifth element of the argument. The modal qualifier indicates the strength of the leap from the data to the warrant.
The sixth and final element of the argument is the rebuttal. The rebuttal occurs when the leap from grounds to claim does not appear to be legitimate.

By creating this model for argument, Toulmin contradicted what philosophers have believed for centuries. For centuries, philosophers have believed that arguments can either be explained by relative means or by absolute means. Using either of these methods according to Toulmin is irrational to the modern argument. First of all, Toulmin claims that by using a relative method, no standards for the claims are made because the analysis of the argument is only relative to that particular argument. On the other hand, absolutism or foundationalism is irrelevant in the modern era according to Toulmin also. He claims absolutism is irrelevant for several reasons. First of all, this absolute logic is based in mathematics and geometry. Therefore the concepts which are contained in them are field dependent. Because of this fact, Toulmin argues that there is no room for these viewpoints in other areas of logic.

Another problem that Toulmin has with absolutism has to do with the fact that answers are either correct or incorrect. Toulmin believes that there is a definite gray area in some arguments that doesn't allow for this absolutism. This gray area has also been developed quantitatively in fuzzy logic. The overall problem that Toulmin has with absolutism is that its rules are so strict that it just doesn't apply to modern reasoning.

Another important belief of Toulmin is his evolutionary theory of rationality. Toulmin believes that ideas are constantly being created. He believes that these ideas are also constantly being argued over and the person who wins the argument persuades others of his beliefs. In this way, new ideas are constantly being evolved. It is Toulmin's interpretive nature of his concepts coupled with his strong emphasis on persuasion that lend itself so well to rhetoric.

The Toulmin model--data, warrant, backing, qualifier, reservation and claim--is more flexible and field dependent than formal logic, but there are some similarities. The data function like evidence and premises on which the argument is based. The claim is the conclusion. The warrant states the reasoning used to move from the data to the claim, and it functions like an inference. The backing consists of facts or information used to support the inference made in the warrant. The qualifier modifies the claim and indicates the rational strength the arguer attributes to it. The reservation states circumstances or conditions in which the claim would not be true. The Toulmin model often presents difficulties such as misidentifying unstated warrants, confusing the data and the warrant, confusing data and backing, and applying incorrect standards to diagrams of complex and subtle arguments. While this chain is still useful in many respects, the vast, unpredictable data of cyberspace, and its nonlinear spatial configuration and diverse global audience make the Toulmin method somewhat limited in the twenty-first century.

5) Cyber-rhetoric

In an age when we are submerged with information twenty-four hours a day, the study of logic is essential-- not only traditional informal logic, but also simplified formal logic, so that we can evaluate the information we receive and create. The specific nature of web design with complementary graphics, bullets, different colors and fonts emphasizes lists and facts as opposed to linear connected thinking through traditional linguistic syntax has its own persuasive power, but like informal fallacies, it can also mislead and deceive. The hypertext links open up a multidisciplinary world which needs to be defined, limited and organized for purposes of research and understanding. Inter-, cross- and trans-disciplinary approaches can be clarified through Boolean logic and Venn diagrams, because visual/spatial models can represent intersecting areas of enormous amounts of knowledge. Cyber rhetoric exists in perpetual time and malleable space with an unpredictable global audience. The only sure thing is that everyone is trying to sell something-- either a product or themselves or their way of doing things. However rhetoric is still judged in terms of Aristotle's qualities of correctness, clarity, ornamentation and propriety in order to prove, to delight, and to move.

How has cyberspace turned our thoughts upside down?
What happens to traditional rhetoric on Web sites-- what are the new elements of persuasion?
What has hypertext done to our narrative structure?
How is global communication condensed into The Box?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of online education?
What happens to the organic professor tangled in the inorganic internet?
What does online communication due to our minds, our bodies and our communities?

Links: Technical Writing and the Internet
The Journal of Online Education
The Brain Gym
Argumentation
Home Page

PROFESSOR KEEFER (COPYWRIGHT 1996)

A COMPARISON OF TRADITIONAL VERSUS CYBER RHETORIC:


• PREDOMINANTLY LEFT BRAIN THINKING VERSUS RIGHT AND LEFT BRAIN COORDINATION.

• SPECIALIZING IN AND EXHAUSTING ONE DISCIPLINE AT A TIME VERSUS FINDING THE PATHS WHERE A KALEIDOSCOPE OF DISCIPLINES INTERSECT.

• CRITICAL THINKING VERSUS WINDOWS THINKING:

• ANALYSIS VERSUS MULTIPLE SYNTHESES (different paths);

• EVALUATION (assessing assumptions and discovering logical fallacies) VERSUS OPENING ANOTHER WINDOW.

• ARISTOTELIAN LOGIC (syllogistic reasoning) VERSUS BOOLEAN LOGIC (intersecting circles of and, or and not):

• DEFENDING ONE POINT OF VIEW WITH A STRONG THESIS VERSUS JANUSIAN PROCESSES OF LOOKING IN OPPOSITE DIRECTIONS AT THE SAME TIME.

• OBSERVING THE UNITIES OF TIME/SPACE/ACTION VERSUS SUPERIMPOSITION OF TIME/SPACE/ACTION (i.e. allowing two or more discrete objects to occupy the same space or time or action).

• SPECIFIC, DEFINED AUDIENCE VERSUS UNPREDICTABLE GLOBAL AUDIENCE.

• SELF-CONTAINED ORGANIZATION OF THESIS, DEFINITIONS, DEVELOPMENT THROUGH THIS, THEREFORE THAT, INDUCTIVE AND/OR DEDUCTIVE REASONING AND A CONCLUSION VERSUS INTERACTIVE ORGANIZATION AROUND IMAGES AND THOUGHT-PROVOKING QUESTIONS.

• TRADITIONAL PARAGRAPHS AND PAGE NUMBERS VERSUS NO PAGE NUMBERS BUT VISUAL BREAKS SUCH AS BULLETS AND DIFFERENT FONTS AND IMAGES.

• LINEAR READING VERSUS CLICKING ALL OVER THE PLACE!

Keefer's Cyber-Logic Boot Camp

Next time you surf the web, work on the following:

1)Inductive/deductive accordion--be flexible about moving in and out of particulars and generalities, assessing probability and necessity, filling in the blanks of cyber-argumentation.
2) Pirouettes:Keeping your spot in a nonlinear world, developing speed and focus
3)Weaving: propositional logic through all evidence, refining and developing thesis
4)Searching for the Big 3 fallacies of ambiguity, presumption and relevance
5)Using Boolean logic and Venn diagrams to limit, expand and organize specific areas of research, especially online
6)Analyzing the Persuasive Power of Images, including the homospatial imagery of collages and how they affect the text
7)Using hypertext to make the surfer follow Your waves
8)Working collaboratively to develop, refine, and edit a consensual work such as Wikis
9)Moving from the fractured, space-efficient communication of text-messaging and Blackberry emails to the syntactical complexity of great literature without making grammatical or proofreading errors, or more importantly, misunderstanding in communication

Over the years rhetoric has become more complex. Authorities such as the Church, Hitler, Mao Tse Tung et al have had supreme persuasive abilities because of their institutional and/or personal power. "Do what I say because I say it." Rhetoric is also more directly connected to the manipulation of language. Ideally you want to be familiar with Aristotle's more formal reasoning, Toulmin's chain of reasoning from data to claim, and contemporary theories and applications of cyber-argumentation.

Please read the following article at https://pages.nyu.edu/keefer/waoe/williams.html on cyber-argumentation, and https://pages.nyu.edu/keefer/waoe/gingher.html on cyber-narrative.

6)Thesis as Steering Wheel for your Research
To avoid datasmog, you must have a steering wheel to drive your car through the data. This is the purpose of the thesis. When students are askedwhat their thesis is, they usually cite a descriptive clause as an answer: "My thesis is how we are addicted to the internet" or "My thesis is abouthow Rastas are different" or "My thesis is about Dorian Gray" or "My thesis is about how prisoners are denied a true home." These are topics, not theses. A thesis should be a complete sentence that contains a question, a statement and a dilemma that is big enough to grow throughout your paper and specific enough to limit your study to avoid excessive generalization. Some of you do have a thesis but it does not develop throughout the paper. A good thesis must weave itself around your evidence, making everything relevant. To do this, you must keep refining your thesis.

Think of a thesis as a long complete sentence: the noun, object and verb describe an action that contains the question and statement designed to solve the problem; the "or" encompasses the dilemma-- the juxtaposition of thesis and antithesis; and the subordinate clauses qualify the study to mitigate the logical fallacies incurred from too much generalization. For example: Should NYU Writing Workshop II Adjunct Professors in 2009 set high standards, seek to develop intellectual potential and demand rigorous, original work thereby risking bad evaluations, poor attendance, negative transferences to the professor, frustration, complaints to administration, and acting out or should they dumb down and pander to their adult degree students, reduce the complexity and ambiguity of the work and sell their courses like ice cream in order to be as popular as all the other products of a mass culture? Make sure your thesis is not a question that can be irrevocably answered "yes."

In 2009, very few questions can be answered that way. Even the statement "all men are mortal" can be contested with cloning. Do not pick a thesis and topic that is entirely materialistic. That is the danger and challenge of the home sweet home sweet. Home must be a metaphor, a symbol for more abstract intellectual issues. You are doing academic writing, not business writing or journalism, even though you may be doing timely interviews and field trips. Your thesis should contain words that are ideas that need defining, that must be interpreted.

Part of your introduction involves defining. In the example, "intellectual potential," "negative transferences," "rigorous, original work" and other phrases must be defined according to what the researcher means. The English language has a huge somewhat vague vocabulary and has been spoken by so many people for so many years in so many places that defining is essential. You must also look at the implications of the sentence as an action of a subject performed on an object by a verb. Professors are doing something to students and students are doing something to professors.

This complete sentence implies a teaching problem. Students come to a course that demands painful intellectual growth. Adult degree students may not have the time, the background, the aptitude nor the inclination to work as hard as they should. That is the problem. The researcher offers two hypothetical solutions, preferably a thesis and an antithesis in order to clarify the argument, although there are usually more than two solutions.

At the end of the research a compromise, an entirely different solution, or a question could be the new answer. However, working with a hypothesis allows you to explore your problem with a sharp focus, build your arguments and organize your evidence. The adjectives and subordinate clauses of the sentence qualify the study. You must use adjectives to be specific: for example, we are talking about NYU WWII adjunct professors in 2009, not any writing professor anywhere at any time. Most of you forget dates, places and demographics. This does not mean you could not have a historical or conceptual discussion in your paper that encompasses different times and places in order to emphasize the importance of the problem; it just means that your specific research is confined to a specific place, time and group of people.

It would therefore be possible to have a discussion about the theory and history of education, citing Aristotle, Locke, Rousseau, Dewey, contemporary cognitive scientists in order to give your problem depth and perspective. However, when you open up like that you must choose only the aspects of history and theory that relate to your thesis, that is what develops the most successful writing class. The purpose of limiting a study is not just to avoid fallacies but also to develop originality. In this age of recombinant and plagiarized Internet culture, originality is increasingly important. We are not interested in how well you paraphrase and regurgitate the work of others--we want to read about your original contribution to the field through experimental research in the medical or social sciences, which could be qualitative or quantitative, empirical or more theoretical, use of research for creative writing, or fresh interpretations of written material through close textual analysis. Therefore limit your study so that you can control the data, all the while being open to new knowledge and possibilities. In the example given, the researcher will obviously observe writing classes, interview students and professors, and record changes over a period of time, let's say 1995 to 2009.

You may also want to compare and contrast two or more studies, people, places, works of literature etc. in order to clarify and distinguish characteristics. In scientific drug studies researchers give one group the drug, another group the placebo and then they compare results. Many literary critics compare and contrast different works of literature. You may compare and contrast two or more nursing homes, prisons, hospitals.

In fact it is best if you do so. Likewise in the example, it would be more effective to compare writing classes in 2009 with writing classes in 1980 or writing classes in another country, or follow the same professor until 2014, which is what we will do in the example, all the while being solicitous of time, place and demographic limitations. Do not make the mistake of thinking that the comparison/contrast is the thesis however. For example, many literature majors say "My thesis is about how Keats differs from Shelley." This may be a good start but it is purely descriptive; it leads to a grocery list of categories, not the development of an argument with thesis and antithesis. If you don't control the comparison and contrast with a thesis, you will lose your focus as you collect more and more information. Remember that a thesis is a ribbon that must be wrapped around all your presents.

Once you get your thesis, you can then tailor it to wrap around claims of fact, value, and policy.

Hypothetical Claim of Fact as a Problem
Obviously, you don't want to jump to conclusions about your topic before the evidence is in, but developing hypotheses is a useful technique, as long as you have the wisdom and humility to change them as more knowledge is acquired. Develop an Issues map of the context, situations, participants, and issues around a given problem, looking at all the points of view. Imagine the problem getting better or worse; look at similar problems in history or other cultures, but make the problem very specific.

B. Activities:

1) Forums. Write down a good hypothesis in the forum, and look at other students' hypotheses.

2) Blogs. Write down all the frustrating problems you are having developing a problem. Use narrative logic to connect the specifics of your case study with your daily schedule.

3) Live Classroom
Play "I'm the boss. But, why?" with study buddy, developing a plethora of hypotheses.

4) Note-taking:Summarize the work of Aristotle, Toulmin, and cyber-logicians in your own words, using your various hypotheses as examples.

5) Add to the Wiki document this week's research.

C. Assignments: Write an essay focused around one hypothesis related to your project.

D. Resources: CT text:Chapter Two, Three, and Four; R text: From JOE:

Optional:

ARISTOTLE'S RHETORIC versus DATA SMOG by David Shenk
THE WIRED PROFESSOR by Joseph Hargitai and Anne Keating versus THE END OF EDUCATION by Neil Postman
THE GUTENBERG ELEGIES: THE FATE OF READING IN AN ELECTRONIC AGE by Sven Birkerts versus CHILDREN OF CHAOS by Douglas Rushkoff
HAMLET ON THE HOLODECK by Janet Murray (Literature/Creative Writing)
GLOBAL COMMUNICATION IN TRANSITION by Hamid Mowlana (International Studies)
NEUROMANCER by William Gibson (A sci-fi novel)
FROM ORALITY TO LITERACY: THE TECHNOLOGIZING OF THE WORD by Walter Ong
UNDERSTANDING MEDIA by Marshall McLuhan
CLICKING IN by Lynn Hershman-Leeson

III.Lesson Three RESEARCH STRATEGIES

Since 25% of your grade is based on the depth and diversity of research sources, it is crucial that you understand how to develop an excellent bibliography, and to punctuate your writing with salient quotes from primary and secondary sources in correct parenthetical documentation.

Keywords: Research strategies, primary and secondary sources, bibliography, MLA/APA parenthetical documentation, depth and diversity of research

Goals of Lesson Three:

A. Lectures

1)Understand what it means to have diversity of research sources;

2)Understand what it means to have depth of research sources;

3)To think critically about web sources;

4)How to record, document, and set up bibliography.

B. Activities online, in the library, and in the community to explore research possibilities.

C. Assignments to prepare the one page bibliography.

D. Resources in the textbooks, online, the library and the community

1) Diversity of Research

Some people think of libraries as smelly, stuffy places filled with dead trees, akin to a morgue. Nowadays research occurs everywhere: online, in the community, socializing at bars, watching TV or films, reading newspapers, making field trips, and traveling to distant lands. One of my students did her best interview during a red eye trip from California when she nabbed Gloria Steinem and got her to discuss feminism for five hours! Libraries are also better organized now, and librarians are usually a lot less busy than they were when I was a graduate student.

Kinds of Research
Books
Articles
Audiovisual sources such as film, television, radio, or audio recordings
Interviews
Field Research
Maps, Atlases
Statistics
Encyclopedias
Almanacs
Internet Sites
E-books

a) How relevant is this resource to your topic?

b) When and where was it published? Is it timely, out-of-date, or just useful for comparison and contrast?

c)What are the author’s qualifications, such as educational background, experience, biography, age, places lived?

d) Who is the publisher? What do they normally publish?

e) Who is the intended audience, general public, professionals, scholars, global, American, any specific age groups, ethnicities or political persuasions?

f) How much of the information is fact, opinion, propaganda?

g) Is the author’s intent to inform, express him or herself, to get attention, persuade, stimulate (to pity, lust, tears), or to refute or criticize previous knowledge?

2) Depth of Research sources

If you are still considering this source, dig deeper:

a)What are the author’s claims of fact, value, and policy?
b)Does the author present one biased point of view, or multiple points of view?
c)How much solid evidence is used to back the author’s claims? What kind of quantitative or qualitative research have they done?
d)Is the work scholarly, with sources cited, technical vocabulary, standard formats, or is it professional or business with specialized language and specific points of view, or is it common interest for the general public, or sensational like tabloids? All these genre have their places, but your job is to evaluate the source for some kind of truth related to your topic.
e)How can the resource present counterclaims to strengthen your claims? In this case, you are encouraged to read and analyze writers who disagree with you.

3) Thinking Critically about World Wide Web Resources

The World Wide Web has a lot to offer, but not all sources are equally valuable or reliable. Here are some points to consider. For additional points regarding Web sites for subject disciplines, google Thinking Critically about Discipline-Based World Wide Web Resources.
Content & Evaluation
Who is the audience?
What is the purpose of the Web Page & what does it contain?
How complete and accurate are the information and the links provided?
What is the relative value of the Web site in comparison to the range of information resources available on this topic? (Note:
Be sure to check with a librarian.)
What other resources (print & non-print) are available in this area?
What are the date(s) of coverage of the site and site-specific documents?
How comprehensive is this site?
What are the link selection criteria if any?
Are the links relevant and appropriate for the site?
Is the site inward-focused, pointing outward, or both?
Is there an appropriate balance between inward-pointing links ("inlinks" i.e., within the same site)&
outward-pointing links ("outlinks" i.e., to other sites)?
Are the links comprehensive or do they just provide a sampler?
What do the links offer that is not easily available in other sources?
Are the links evaluated in any way?
Is there an appropriate range of Internet resources -- e.g., links to gophers?
Is multimedia appropriately incorporated?
How valuable is the information provided in the Web Page (intrinsic value)?
Source & Date
Who is the author or producer?
What is the authority or expertise of the individual or group that created this site?
How knowledgeable is the individual or group on the subject matter of the site?
Is the site sponsored or co-sponsored by an individual or group that has created other Web sites?
Is any sort of bias evident?
When was the Web item produced?
When was the Web item mounted?
When was the Web item last revised?
How up to date are the links?
How reliable are the links; are there blind links, or references to sites which have moved?
Is contact information for the author or producer included in the document?
Structure
Does the document follow good graphic design principles?
Do the graphics and art serve a function or are they decorative?
Do the icons clearly represent what is intended?
Does the text follow basic rules of grammar, spelling and literary composition?
Is there an element of creativity, and does it add to or detract from the document itself?
Can the text stand alone for use in line-mode (text only) Web browsers as well as multimedia browsers, or is there an option
for line-mode browsers?
Is attention paid to the needs of the disabled -- e.g., large print and graphics options; audio; alternative text for graphics?
Are links provided to Web "subject trees" or directories -- lists of subject-arranged Web sources?
How usable is the site? Can visitors get the information they need within a reasonable number of links (preferably 3 or fewer
clicks)?
Other
Is appropriate interactivity available?
When it is necessary to send confidential information out over the Internet, is encryption (i.e., a secure coding system)
available? How secure is it?
Are there links to search engines or is a search engine attached to (embedded in) the Web site?

4) After examining each source, refine your claims in response to what you have learned from your sources.
a)Quote your sources accurately with parenthetical documentation.
b)Make sure all sources are alphabetized in correct MLA/APA format in your bibliography.
c)Professor Keefer’s three international online journals publish scholarly, technical, creative, professional, general interest, and sensational material in all disciplines for a global audience, in an effort to make scholarship more accessible, and to analyze and understand the vast amount of sensational material that controls our various cultures.
d)Review your bibliography to make sure you have multiple points of view, sources from all genre, so that you can be evaluated for both depth and diversity of research.

No matter how painstaking and tedious your research gets, never lose the wonder and joy of acquiring new knowledge. Every time I open a new book or article, or prepare an interview, I am as excited as a little kid at an amusement park. These intellectual treasure hunts are one of the great pleasures of being human. Share your joy and wonder with your readers as you describe your research journey, letting them know about your successes, failures, and frustration.

B. Activities:

1) Forums: Debate the strengths and limitations of different research genre.

2) Blogs: Describe a particular person or place that embodies the problems you must resolve in your claim of fact.

3) Live Classroom or Chat: Online Search Games, Intellectual Scavenger Hunts, Library Aerobics

4) Note-taking: Begin recording bibliographic data on index cards.

5) Submit that bibliographic assignment to Wiki. Evaluate research for recency, objectivity, expertise, access, reliability, and relevance.

C.Assignments:Do at least one page of bibliographic sources related to your project. Analyze one of your most important sources in your weekly writing paper.

D.Resources: Read CT text Chapter Five, Research Strategies: Use entire book as a reference manual throughout course, as you see fit, but only for research sources: do not follow their language suggestions. Language should be complex, professional or poetic, never dumbed-down. http://www.mla.org/style/handbook_faq/whatsnew_7edhandbook

Internet versus Library Research

How the Internet Changes the Way We Think
Technical Writing and the Internet

IV. Limiting Time, Place, Person, Activity or Text in Your Claims of Fact

This lesson should help you pinpoint the major problems in your claims of fact and narrow down your topic to a time, place, and group of people that you can investigate through primary source research.

Keywords: Claims and counterclaims of fact, problem-solving, issue mapping, rebuttals, specific time, place, and group of people

Goals of Lesson Four

A. Lectures

1) Prioritizing Problems
Find the most important problems in the extended arguments that support or oppose the arguments in your fact propositions.

2) Narrow down your topic to limit specifics in claims of fact, so you can then fill in the details.

3) Counterclaims of Fact
Interpret, analyze, criticize, and refute the arguments that go against what you believe to be true.

4) Issue mapping and rebuttals
Map the issues surrounding your claims of fact and posit a strong rebuttal to summarize fact propositions before moving to claims of value.

B. Activities

C. Assignments

D. Resources

A. Lectures
Claims of Fact

Since your goal is to write an academic research paper with elements of controversy, conflict, and conversion, the claim of fact is a misnomer, because it is, in fact a problem. By the time you finish, you should have a position stance on this problem that could be debated with a counterclaim, but don't think of facts, like the sun is shining, Obama is the first Afro-American president of the United States, or the World Trade Center was destroyed on September 11, 2001, because these are indisputable facts. Instead, look at the data surrounding a condition or problem that you could eventually solve.

1) Prioritizing Problems
Find the most important problems in the extended arguments that support or oppose the arguments in your fact propositions. You have to establish that a problem exists. A problem could be as simple as a crime that has been committed, an injured patient on a gurney waiting to be treated, somoeone whose back hurts so much she can't go to work, abused women at a shelter suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome, a group of people who don't receive proper benefits, financial compensation, or recognition because of their status, age, race, or whatever, or even a mysterious text that must be deciphered and analyzed.

Remember the last time you watched a courtroom drama? The burden of proof rests on the prosecution because in America, a defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty. It works differently in other countries, and even Americans, have often presumed "terrorists" guilty until proven innocent, witness Guantanamo. In terms of your case construction, society protects the status quo, so you are obliged to overcome presumption with your reasoning and evidence. I am sure you have heard the term, prima facie case, in your courtroom dramas, and that is what you do when you provide good reasons for weighing an alternative to the status quo.

2) Narrow down your topic to limit specifics in claims of fact, so you can then fill in the details.

In order to prove that a problem exists in your claim of fact, you have to be specific--who, when, where, and why? Don't be afraid to narrow it right down, because you can open up your discussions in the claims of value.Remember how the two attorneys argue over circumstantial evidence in a murder trial, or how several doctors may argue about what the patient really has, before they prescribe treatment? Certain signs point to a particular diagnosis in the Physicians Desk Manual, but health professionals could disagree about what is really causing the pain. For example, someone with back pain could be suffering from a herniated disc, a spinal tumor, piriformis entrapment syndrome, fibromyalgia, or a facet impingement. More meticulous testing will help make this diagnosis, but sometimes people must discuss, argue, and interpret.

At times you must make people aware of the importance of a problem in order for them to pay attention to an expensive solution you may propose later on. On the other hand, doctors may not really know what is causing the pain, so they proceed to the claim of policy by prescribing a treatment, and if it works, then they move backwards to an assumption of the claim of fact. For example, a cat presents with a mouth tumor, which could be eosinophilic granuloma, an auto-immune disease, or squamous cell carcinoma, a lethal cancer. If it is a lethal cancer, the case is lost, so the doctor prescribes the treatment for the former--prednisone and antiobiotics--with the assumption that if it works, then the cat only had this auto-immune disorder.

Likewise, you may find that you have a solution before you really know the full implications of your problem. Or in literature, that you have interpretive claims of value before you understand all the problems embedded in the text you are analyzing. In these cases, simply document the process of your thinking.

3) Counterclaims of Fact
Interpret, analyze, criticize, and refute the arguments that go against what you believe to be true. You can use the five general refutation strategies presented in your textbook, such as exploratory refutation, examining arguments for incompatibilities or discrepancies, using tests of evidence to weaken or disclaim arguments, and making note of this to help you suggest your rebuttals.

4) Issue mapping and rebuttals
Map the issues surrounding your claims of fact and posit a strong rebuttal to summarize fact propositions before moving to claims of value. As stated in your textbook, "An issues map is a synthesis of the context, situation, participants, and issues associated with a proposition." (272)

Looking for Details
Be as observant as a physician taking a case history, or a detective recording a crime scene.

B.Activities:
1) Forums and Blogs: Write down your objective claim of fact in the forum, and all the what ifs and but ifs and oh nos associated with it in your blog.

2) Live Classroom or Chat: Role-playing with circumstantial evidence. Study buddy plays devil's advocate with counterclaims of fact.

3) Wikis: Record the new research you need to further focus your claim of fact.

C.Assignments: Write a narrative based on a case study or field trip to investigate a problem, or the first analysis of a given text.

D.Resources: Critical Thinking:Read Claims of Fact.

V.Claims of Value

It takes a good writer to define, develop, and defend pertinent claims of value in a paper. This is where you make a strong position stance, analyze abstract language, and identify the biases in your own judgments as well as those of different cultures related to your topic.

Keywords: Claims of value, assumptions, judgments, abductive logic, comparison/contrast, bias

The goals of Lesson Five are to:
A.Lectures

1)Writer's values

2)Standards and judgments

3)Societal and cross-cultural claims of value

4)Supporting value claims by evaluating assumptions and evidence around judgments.

5)Identifying bias with counterclaims

6)Abductive Logic and Comparison/Contrast

B.Activities

C. Assignments

D. Resources

Lectures

1) Value claims assert a writer's sense of values--right and wrong, good and bad, just and unjust, the beautiful and the ugly. Value claims make judgments, and like all claims readers need to evaluate the evidence and assumptions supporting such claims. Value claims try to prove that some idea, action, or condition is good or bad, right or wrong, worthwhile or worthless.

"Education offers the greatest chance for people to realize their full potential."
Others express our beliefs about beauty. "Madonna is more beautiful than Britney Spears." "The most important side-effect of exercise is a beautiful body." "Shakespeare's poetry is beautiful."
Value claims, as you can see, reveal much about a writer's personal beliefs. And so it is that many value claims are defended or attacked because different people have different sets of values, based on family and religious background, age, experience, education, personal proclivity, and the society to which they belong.

2)Value claims also rest upon some sense of a standard of justice, beauty, or goodness. They are also defended or attacked on the basis of differing standards between people. Some people, Nobel Prize judges, for example, feel that great literature must have "universal validity, visionary power, a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization, poetic adventure and import, extraordinary linguistic ingenuity, new departures, and humanistic integrity." Those are their standards by which they make value judgments about an author's work. By those standards, therefore, those people argue that writers like Danielle Steele or John Grisham will never be considered great writers. For others, the standard is different: if we consider how popular and how widely imitated a writer is, then Steele and Grisham are the greatest!

3)Since we cannot be certain of the values of our readers, it is necessary for us as writers to be sensitive to, and anticipate the reactions of, different people with different sets of values. In that way, we are better able to see the issue from our readers' points of view and offer our readers evidence to support a different set of values or to adopt a new set of values.

Much of the critical writing in literature, ethics, and even history, revolves around claims of value. Throughout the semester, copy down quotes from the literary books that might pertain to claims of value in your project. Feel free to write poetry, and look at it for unconscious values related to your topic.

4)Supporting a Value Claim
It may seem impossible to convince another that your values are superior to the others. It is natural to feel that your values are the "best" ones or the "right" ones, but we all know of times in our lives when we were effective at getting someone to do something (or not to do something) simply by persuasion alone. At those times we did succeed at changing another's values. At other times, it may have been us who had our attitudes changed about a subject.

Although it may seem impossible, it does happen, both on the small scale and on the large scale. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is testimony to the fact that large scale shifts in attitude do take place. As writers, if we are to have any chance of succeeding, we must give good reasons why we think one thing is better than another.

To achieve such a transformation, classical rhetoricians give the following advice:

Try to demonstrate that the values or principles you advocate should have priority on a scale that includes the reader's values. It is usually easier to have the reader reorganize priorities rather than adopt a completely new value system.

Demonstrate that the values you advocate have a desirable, beneficial outcome — an outcome that cannot be achieved without your set of values.

Use specific examples that illustrate the values you advocate. Values are abstract notions and it is often easier to win another's assent if you put those abstract ideals in concrete terms. This is why all your abstract terms must be defined. For example, if you are trying to advocate national health care in your claim of policy, you need to analyze the value and kind of health care people should get. Giving specific examples of how hard-working, educated people are deprived of health care because it isn't covered at their job, it is too expensive for them to buy, or they just lost their livelihood in the recession. To persuade people to cross the fence on this issue isn't easy unless they can develop sympathy for these disenfranchised people, something you must do with claims of value.

Finally, use ethical appeal in the form of testimony or quotes from highly knowledgeable or highly regarded people who share your values.

One of the goals of the EvergreenEnergy journal is to be aware of the ecological setting of any analysis or argumentation, realizing that geography, culture, and history color the claims of value in any discussion. Imagine an alien landing in your territory. What would it think of your problem, your values, and your solution, and the society in which the problem occurs? One society's problem is often another's solution.

5) Identifying Bias with Counterclaims
What is good, bad, better, or worse about your topic? We are often blind to our own biases, so analyze the counterclaims of value of the writer with whom you disagree the most. This may make you more aware of your own prejudices, but also enable you to better defend your claims.

6)Comparison/Contrast and Abductive Logic:
In Latin, abduct means to move away from, so in order to open up your topic through comparison/contrast, you must move away from the specifics of your claims of fact. This abductive logic, however, must still adhere to the same claims of value, simply extending time and place, in order to get a more universal perspective. Many students say that "my thesis is to compare AIDS in New York with AIDS in Senegal," but this is not a thesis, because it is descriptive, without a position stance. Therefore, you can certainly compare New York and Senegal, but before you do that, you must have a particular problem to solve around the AIDS crisis on which you have an opinion, and then open it up in the claim of value.

B.Activities:

1) Forums: Write down your claim of value in the Forum; present a counterclaim to at least two of your classmates' claims.

2)Blogs:but discuss all the bias and prejudice associated with it in your blog.

3)Live Classroom: Improvise dramatic scenes to exaggerate biases by role-playing friends and enemies.

4)Note-Taking:Write down a list of abstract words associated with your claims of value.

5)Wikis:What other research sources could support your claims of value? Record them in the Wiki.

C.Assignments: Write as expansive and theoretical a paper as you want this week, as long as it discusses the good and bad values associated with your topic.

D.Resources: CT:Chapter 10;

VI. Claims of Policy

While it may be premature to advance a definitive claim of policy at this stage of your research, it is important you understand the causal relationship between fact and policy, and that you let your imagination conceive of hypothetical solutions to your claim of fact, if only to better focus your research.

Keywords: Claims of policy, causal relationships, solutions, procedural thinking, Utopian claims of policy, obligation or necessity

The goals of Lesson Six are to

A.Lectures

1)Writer's sense of obligation of necessity

2)Solutions to problems in claims of fact

3)Supporting claims of policy

4)Utopian claims of policy

5)Procedural planning

B. Activities

C. Assignments

D. Resources

A.Lectures

1)Policy claims argue that a certain condition should exist. They express a writer's sense of obligation or necessity. Consequently, we can recognize policy claims fairly easily since a specific class of verbs, the modal verbs, convey the meanings of obligation or necessity. The modal verbs that convey a sense of obligation and necessity are "should, must, need, ought to, got to, and have to." Some examples of policy claims are

"The United States should adopt national health care by 2010."

"Drivers with even the slightest amount of alcohol in their blood should have their licenses revoked for 5 years."

"We need to tax alcohol and tobacco more heavily."

Supporting a policy claim can be very difficult. The writer must first convince the reader that current policy on some issue is not working,then convince the readers that the writer has a better policy, and finally move the readers to act on the writer's suggestion, being aware of competing counterclaims that might better solve the problem.

2) Solutions
If you have made the reader cringe from the implications of the problems embedded in your claims of fact, they will surely be expecting the solutions from the claims of policy. Make sure you have established causality, however, so that your solution will really solve the problem.

3) Supporting the Policy Claim
A writer's chances to persuade a reader that current policy has failed and that s/he has a better alternative improve dramatically if s/he defines all terms and proposal clearly and precisely (the reader is more likely to agree if the reader know exactly what s/he is agreeing with), (claim of value) establishes the need for a chance factually, (claims of fact)considers the opposing arguments and explains why his/her alternative is the best approach, (counterclaims) demonstrates to the reader that there are distinct advantages to accepting the writer's alternative, and supports the policy change not only with data (rational appeal) but also with evidence that appeals to the readers' need to feel that the change is the right thing to do (emotional appeal) and with evidence that makes the readers trust the writer (ethical appeal).In business debates on policy claims determine the success of the contract and product, which is one reason business thinking often jumps from fact to policy, without spending enough time analyzing claims of value. While a rigorous, detailed, methodical policy claim can insure success for a business, it must be buttressed by a thorough investigation of all the cultural, ethical, long-term implications of its adoption.

4) In this class, feel free to let your imagination go with utopian claims of policy, that may ignore the bottom line; however, make sure your claim is thoughtful, methodical, and comprehensive enough to solve your problem. Since this is a multidisplinary course, note that a claim of policy can be a theory you develop in philosophy, an interpretation you posit in literature, or a medical treatment, business plan, or education policy you advocate in more concrete disciplines. Re-examine your causality between fact and policy. After searching profoundly, you may come to the conclusion that your policy is wrong, incomplete, inadequate, or that making a compromise with a counterclaim is a better solution. Your conclusion may simply point the way to more questions and different kinds of research. For these reasons, it is important to expose the process of your thinking to your readers; however, this is no excuse NOT to try to move through logical thinking.

5) Procedural Thinking
Some people, like myself, enjoy the non-sequitur, free-wheeling brainstorming of creative thought, and this is an excellent way to begin a research paper. But by the time you are formulating your claims of policy for the final draft, you want to be as organized, procedural, and methodical, as experts presenting a billion-dollar plan to a CEO. To do this you must have all your evidence properly classified in your outline, your imagination must have finished the visualization of the entire plan, and then you must have the patience to write it down in all its detail.Those of you who are doing creative writing projects must submit your structural outline, showing how the research you have done will improve the foundation of the project. For example, in my last novel, I had to research terrorism, Islam, and particle physics. I did this empirically through travel and interviews, but I also read a plethora of books and articles, and even took a course on particle physics. For my current novel, I am researching geology, through academic study and hands-on field work, small-town politics, casinos, and rural universities. Great literature has depth of content as well as beauty of form, and that must come from some kind of thoughtful research as well as imaginative construction.

B. Activities:

1) Forums: Write down your claim of policy in the forum.

2) Blogs: Associate this claim with a personal dystopia or utopia.

3) Live Classroom: Review the Martian dystopias and utopias you created before the midterm, analyze them and then debate your claims of policy with study buddy. Record the debate for us to view on our own time.

4)Make a list of the points of your claims of policy in note-taking.

5) Finish annotating your bibliography, with all the resources that have helped you develop your claims and especially, counterclaims of policy.

C. Assignments: Prepare Midterm, at least 8-10 pages in correct APA/MLA style, with at least a full page of alphabetized sources.

D. Resources:CT Chapter 11;

VII. Midterm

Lesson Seven is a special class because you will cross-edit and peer-review each other's papers, based on the evaluation rubrics. See below for more details of how to evaluate the work. Even though we must adhere to these rubrics because administrators like them, all the claims may not be cemented at this stage. Look for a unique writing style and a strong voice where the writer lets us know what he or she is thinking, how they are exploring their research, investigating problems, even acknowledging failure and frustration, or asking questions. As long as they understand what claims are, and what they are looking for, it is okay to document the incompletion of something. But don't be so enthralled with your self-expression that you can't pursue rigorous logic and careful organization. It's a balance between your subjectivity and the demands of academic scholarship.

Keywords: Originality, depth and diversity of research, writing style, argumentation

25% of your grade is originality.
Ways to be More Original:

• Do your own interviews, not only of experts, but victims, patients, criminals, or any of the subjects you are studying.
• Do your own field research by visiting hospitals, consulates, nursing homes, hospices, schools, jails, “green” buildings, nature preserves, or wherever your problem exists. Describe your visit in detail like a good journalist, and use it as evidence to support your claims. Look for the positive and negative, examining the present situation with a knowledge of the past, and what the directors project for the future.
• Combine different disciplines. Cliché arguments and papers exist in every field, but if you re-examine them in terms of another discipline, you may get a different perspective, and hence, an original point of view.
• Use language in a novel, interesting way. Much originality in literature came from writers like Joyce, Proust, Woolf, Rushdie, ben Jelloun, who find a new way of expressing themselves, even though the themes or stories might be commonplace.
• Connect your research to the health, disease, and exile theme, the ecodisciplinary theme, the online education theme, or the civilization and terror theme.

In the Brain Gymnasium, we work on mindbody conditioning, assessing and understanding our cognitive domains, and changing our cerebral grooves for more potent creativity.
Creativity has three stages: 1) Childlike play and wonder where we become as free and careless as a child playing;
2) Working in our cognitive domain with the appropriate combination of logical and translogical thinking such as homospatial and Janusian processes, (which can lead to frustration, and angst as repressed unconscious drives are uncovered,) and designing our structure with right and left brain synchronicity;
3) Completing and presenting our work to an audience which can necessitate courage and fearlessness if the work is truly creative because it would go against the status quo. Creativity is closely related to destruction and therefore the mind must be constantly erased through meditation and cognitive colonics. Don't get into a rut!

Proofread! You can't edit enough. There are always mistakes to correct, and better ways of expressing yourselves.

Check MLA/APA Documentation

25% of your grade is language and style, your eloquent, unique writing style framed in correct parenthetical documentation. Proofread meticulously. Consult a thesaurus for synonyms. Work on sentence structure and paragraph progression.

MLA Documentation: Use parenthetical documentation (23) after the quotes: Descartes wrote "I think therefore I am." (23) Then in the bibliography, (make sure it is alphabetized) put in full publication or production details.
Books:
Tannen, Deborah. The Argument Culture: Moving from Debate to Dialogue. New York: Random, 1998.
Articles:
Kaplan, Robert D. "History Moving North." Atlantic Monthly Feb. 1997: 21+.
Cheuse, Alan. "Narrative Painting and Pictorial Fiction." Antioch Review 55 (1997): 277-91.
France, Peter. "His Own Biggest Hero." Rev of Victor Hugo, by Graham Robb. New York Times Book Review 15 Jan. 1998:7.
Online:
Spanoudis, Steve, Bob Blair, and Nelson Miller. Poets' Corner. 7 June 1999. 13 June 1999 <http:www.geocities.com/~spanoudi/poems>.
Blue Note Records . 9 June 1999. Blue Note Records. 9 June 1999 <http:www.bluenote.com>.
Coontz, Stephanie. "Family Myths, Family Realities." Salon 12 Dec. 1997. 3 Feb.2000 <http://www.salonmagazine.com/mwt/teature/1997/12/23coontz.html>.
Email:
Schubert, Josephine. "Re: Culture Shock." E-mail to the author. 14 Mar. 2000.
Film:
The English Patient. dir. Anthony Minghella. Perf. Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe, and Kristin Scott Thomas. Miramax, 1996.
TV: Primates. Wild Discovery. Discovery Channel. 23 Mar. 1998.

Use APA documentation for health and social sciences. Consult your style book for exceptions.

B. Activities: Cross-edit and peer-review each other's papers.

C. Assignments:Write down irritating questions, look for holes in your research, expand your bibliography, and write a paper about your weaknesses for next week.

D. Resources: Grading and Evaluation Rubric
Chapter Eight and Nine in CT book.

VIII. Outlining and Expanding Your Research

You may have felt frustrated at the midterm because so much of your work is incomplete. How can you expand your vision and develop an outline for a full-length academic paper, without getting hopelessly disorganized, stymied by structure, or caught in a meaningless rut of repetition without development?

Keywords: Traditional versus creative outlines, Roman and Arabic numerals, bibliography, organization versus logic, mental housekeeping

The goals of Lesson Eight are to

A. Lectures

1)Write down your 3-Page Bibliography

2)Understand a traditional outline

3)Create a creative outline

4)Distinguish between organization and logic

B. Activities

C. Assignments

D. Resources

1) Your 3-page bibliography

You can have a longer bibliography if you like, but remember you are graded on depth and diversity. Do you have books, articles, Web sites, media that work for and against your topic? Is your research timely, relevant, expert, informative?

2)Arabic and Roman Numeral Outline

ORGANIZATION AND OUTLINING

An outline just helps you organize your research, the way empty drawers would help you do housework. It should be more like a Matryoshka doll than a grocery list. However you make the outline logical by using complex, compound sentences as often as possible. The outline is an organization of the topic paragraphs, with the thesis refined and developed in I, II, III, IV, and V. For example:
I.  Introduction: State thesis as a complex, compound sentence
   A. 1)
        2)
          a) 
           i.
   B.
       1)
        2)
          a)
           i.

II. Claim of Fact--Restate thesis around major problem.
A. Description of specific time, place, demographics, etc of your study
       1)
        2)
          a) 
           i.
B. Counterclaim to your claim of fact

1)
        2)
          a) 
           i.

III. Claim of Value--Refine thesis in terms of values, what certain groups of people, religion, culture deem better or worse.
A. Description of your angle on the claim of value.
       1)
        2)
          a) 
           i.
B. One or more counterclaims to your claim of value.

A. 1)
        2)
          a) 
           i.

IV. Claim of policy-- Develop thesis in terms of potential solutions to your problem.
A. Present a methodical plan to solve your problem.
  1)
        2)
          a) 
           i.
B. Counterclaim(s) to your policy claim. For example, I may present a therapeutic model to solve back pain, and the counterclaims might be what other therapists do in their rehab centers.1)
        2)
          a) 
           i.

V. Conclusion
A. Summarizing and evaluating your evidence.
B. Identifying unsolved problems and giving suggestions for future research.

Note that this model is rather rigid, and therefore should not be a writing model. You should write as creatively as possible, but you need some kind of structure that organizes your data and develops your argumentation. As you gather more information, you will then be able to evaluate it in terms of the thesis you are developing.

You can also do an outline like the above, as well as your own creative outline, in any form you want.

Your Creative Outline

Difference between Organization and Logic
You can be an organized housekeeper, spatially arranging everything in different boxes, but logic requires syntactical and intellectual connections that are not just visual/spatial. I am a terrible housekeeper, but fairly good at logic, and I know impeccable housekeepers who can't understand any aspect of logic.

B.Activities:

1) Submit a concise version of a traditional outline to the Forum.

2) Discuss your personal problems with organization in your blog.

3) Live Classroom. Experiment with free drawing, different colors, anything that connotes or suggests aspects of your topic. Save the drawings to show the rest of the class.

4) Note-taking on format.

5) Wikis: Review your research journey to see that you have included everything in your outline.

C.Assignments: Perfect your traditional and creative outlines for next week; research your interviewees and write their bios.

D.Resources

IX. X. Interviews and Field Research

Interviews and field research are excellent ways to develop your own primary sources. The goals of these lessons are to help you with interview techniques, the description of field research, and ways to integrate these into your papers.

Keywords: Interviews, field research, listening, controversy, conflict, conversion, qualitative versus quantitative data

The goal for Lessons Nine and Ten are to:

A. Lectures

1)Find suitable interviewees

2)Prepare interview

3)Improve interview technique

4)Choose and describe field research

5)Incorporate interview and field research into your paper

B. Activities

C. Assignments

D. Resources

1) Choosing and Enlisting Experts
What books or articles have they written in the field and when? What are their biases? How do they differ from yours?

Identify the interviewee. Is the interviewee reserved, talkative, shy, in pain, hysterical, a friend or stranger, a slick politician you must cut through, an expert you must impress or what? How does the person differ from you in terms of experience and beliefs about your topic? Ideally, you are doing many interviews, so pick people for and against you. How can you get the most out of them? You are NOT representing NYU, but yourself. As an excellent global university, NYU wants you to engage in rigorous scholarship, but also have the courage to question critically, to have the imagination to go against the tide, to risk positing unpopular theories, but then to present your findings in a linguistically correct style that still reflects your unique voice and point of view. In other words, if you really challenge yourselves, work critically and creatively, then both NYU and the professor should be pleased. Your goal however is never to please, admire, respect, or worship the professor but to develop your mind and advance scholarship in the field. Obviously you must come to class and fulfill requirements, but controversy, conflict, and conversion are part of most academic reseach papers. Agree to disagree with me, the people you interview, your preconceived notions, and your peers.

2)Preparing for the Interview
How can this person help you solve problems related to your topic?
Research the personal elements of their biography as if you were inviting them to spend the weekend at your home. What questions do you want to ask them? What is the most important thing in their lives? Is there any way you can interview them in their home or office?

3) Interview Techniques
Look at famous interviewers such as Larry King and Barbara Walters to analyze how they listen and ask questions. See how they use eye contact and body language to listen. Observe how and when they interrupt or redirect the conversation. Whether the interview is relaxed or combative, they make the person feel she/he is the center of the world.

Interviews provide in-depth information about a particular research issue or question. Because the information is not quantifiable (i.e., not amenable to statistical analysis), the interview often is described as a qualitative research method. Whereas quantitative research methods (e.g., the experiment) gather a small amount of information from many subjects, interviews gather a broad range of information from a few subjects.

When we analyze the results from an interview we look at how all the statements made by the interviewee are inter-related. What are the contradictions and consistencies? What is the "big picture" of what the interviewee is trying to say - and how does every individual statement from the interviewee relate to this big picture? The interview is a "holistic" research method: all the bits of data from the interviewee provide you this "big picture" that transcends any one single bit of data.

The information from the interview is not objective data as in quantitative research methods. If the interviewee is an expert on some particular topic or possesses some special skill or experience, his or her responses may be "facts" or "opinions" depending on how you look at it. A good interview is the art and science of exploring the subjective knowledge, opinions, and beliefs of an individual.

The structured interview consists of a list of specific questions. The interviewer does not deviate from the list or inject any extra remarks into the interview process. The interviewer may encourage the interviewee to clarify vague statements or to further elaborate on brief comments. Otherwise, the interviewer attempts to be objective and tries not to influence the interviewer's statements. The interviewer does not share his or her own beliefs and opinions. The structured interview is mostly a "question and answer" session.

The "unstructured" interview is more free-wheeling. You may ask the same sort of questions as in the structured interview, but the style is free-flowing rather than rigid. It is more conversational. You adjust your questions according to how the interviewee is responding. You may even inject your own opinions or ideas in order to stimulate the interviewee's responses. Therefore, the unstructured interview requires much more skill, is much more complex, and is a far more fascinating process.

The "content" of the interview is WHAT the interviewee says. This is the easiest component of the interview to study, and tends to be what the novice focusses on. The most accurate way to record the content of the interview is by using a tape recorder.

The "process" of the interview is a much more elusive but powerful component of the interview. It involves reading between the lines of what the interviewee says. It involves noticing HOW he or she talks and behaves during the interview. HOW the interviewee responds will give you more insights into the content of what he or she says. Your observations of the interview process may confirm, enrich, and sometimes even contradict the content of what the person says. This is particulary important when taking medical case histories, or in creating and describing characters for a novel or screenplay.

Think of the interview (especially the structured interview) as a standardized situation to which interviewees are exposed. The questions you ask everyone may be exactly the same, but everyone will react to the interview situation differently. These differences can be very informative! They reveal the "process." They will tell you much about the holistic picture (the "big picture") of each interview session.

To explore the interview process, consider these sorts of questions:

• when does the interviewee sound confident or uncertain, confused or clear, convincing or doubtful, rational or illogical, etc?
• does the interviewee ever contradict himself or herself?
• how do the pieces of what the interviewee says fit together?
• at what points does the interviewee show enthusiasm and emotion, and what kinds of emotion?
• what is the interviewee's body language; when does it change?
• how does the interviewee speak: slow or fast, soft or loud, clear or mumbly, with simple or elaborate language, etc?
• does the interviewee's appearance or surroundings (e.g., his or her office or home) provide any insights?

• What thoughts and feelings get stirred up in you: irritation, affection, excitement, boredom, inspiration, anger, jealousy, confusion, etc?
• Do any pictures, memories, or daydreams flash through your mind?
• How do you find yourself behaving during the interview?
• Can you pinpoint exactly when your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors change in reaction to the interviewee?
• Do you react differently to different interviewees? What might these differences tell you about the interviewee's response to the interview (and what do they tell you about yourself)?

Interviews can be exploratory, explanatory, developmental, critical, evaluative, or just plain fun! It's your job to get the most out of the person, so be sympathetic and present.

ESTABLISH RAPPORT: Introduce yourself. Be polite, friendly, but also professional. Establishing good rapport will help the interview along. Give them enough information so that they respect you. Establish common interests or bonds.

DESCRIBE THE PROJECT: Tell the person who you are: that you are a student at NYU, what requirements the project fulfills for you, what professor is working with you on the project, why you are interested in this project, etc. Or tell them you are publishing an article in an international online journal. Tell the person what your project is about, what the interview entails, and the purpose of the interview for your project. Ask the person if it is O.K. to tape record the interview. If they say no, just drop the topic, although you may want to try to persuade them another time.

OBTAIN INFORMED CONSENT:Ethical standards do not require that informed consent be written. Many researchers in the past have simply relied on a verbal consent. Feel out how your interviewees will react to written consent. To make sure the interviewee understands the project, it's often best that they see the information about the project in written form. It's usually best to have written consent.

GO AHEAD WITH THE INTERVIEW: The goal is to get the person to express their ideas about particular issues. Everyone is different and everyone reacts to an interview differently. As the interviewer, your learning how to deal with these differences is an ART. You will be trying to help the interviewees to: (1) open up and express their ideas, (2) express their ideas CLEARLY, (3) explain and elaborate on their ideas, (4) focus on the issues at hand rather than wander to unrelated topics.

Techniques:

Clarification: Getting the person to clearly explain himself.
"Could you tell me more about the part about xxx"
"I'm not sure I understood the part about xxx - could you explain that some more?"

Even experts take things for granted. Without being obnoxious, clarification is crucial to help everyone understand the breadth and depth of the claims.

Reflection:Reflecting back something important the person just said in order to get them to expand on that idea.
"So you believe that depression is hereditary."
"Then you do disagree with Dr. Smith."

Reflection will help you analyze later on, and encourage the interviewee to say things that you can quote.

Encouragement: Encouraging them to pursue a line of thought.
"The part about xxx is interesting. Could you say more about that?"
"I find that fascinating! Tell me more."

Everyone likes to be admired. I have always enjoyed being interviewed, especially when the interviewer is fascinated with me.:) Make the interviewee the center of your world.

Comment: Injecting your own idea or feeling to stimulate the person into saying more.
"I always thought that ..."
"That part about xxx scares me."
"If I were in that situation, I would ..."

Sometimes disclosing intimate details of your life, can trigger a like response in the interviewee, if that is what you are looking for. Many people are not comfortable exposing themselves to strangers, particularly with audio recorders and a critical eye. If you are interviewing rape victims or something similar, you can increase sympathy through mutual exposure.

Spur: Saying something to tease, spur, or challenge the person (in a friendly way) to say more.
"But isn't it true that ...?"
"But some people would say that ..."
"Do you honestly believe that?"

You don't have to be like Fox News or Crossfire, but some subjects, especially slick politicians, need a more incisive approach to jar them out of their beaten track.

When I was sixteen, I interviewed the Prime Minister of Canada for the CBC radio. I was so nervous that when he arrived and asked if he knew our parents, I said, "I am Bob Keefer's son," instead of daughter. Then my companion, my age, said, "I am George Allison's father." These faux-pas disarmed him so much, as well as our blunt, deceptively naive questions, that we spurred him on to tell us things he never told journalists, and then to suddenly blurt out in frustration, "The Prime Minister is not God?" The CBC LOVED it and broadcast the interview nationally!

Summary: Try to summarize the person's ideas to see if you really understood what he or she was saying.
"So what your saying is ..."
"So your major point is that ..."
"Let me see if I can summarize what you've said..."

Some people get mad when you summarize, but that is okay. Treat their rebuttals with respect as they will help you END ON A POSITIVE NOTE: Make the interviewee feel great about themselves. See if you can summarize their major points. Ask them again if they have any questions about the project. Let them know how to contact you if they need to. Thank them for their help.