Jane Lucas

English 1103, Reading, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Continuing Your Research and Writing

Posted on March 25, 2026 by janemlucas

Today in class, you will explore the HPU Libraries website to locate, read, and annotate additional sources for your final essay and annotated bibliography. The work that you submit at the end of class today should include at a minimum one partial MLA-style annotated bibliographic entry.

To begin my sample search, seen in the image above, I typed David Sedaris’s name in the search bar on the left. Though I could have chosen to narrow my search by source type (Books, Articles, or Videos), I chose the default, Everything, option to see the number and variety of sources it would yield.

The first item my search yielded was David Sedaris’s Theft by Writing, as shown above. That collection of his diaries could serve as an additional primary source, but sifting through all the items that follow would be arduous. Near the top of the screen, you can see that the search yielded “[a]bout 1,600 results.”

Scrolling down the page shows several options for narrowing a search with filters. On the left in the picture above, you can see that those include Content Type and Publication Year. Since I would like to find a critical study of Sedaris’s writing, under Content Type, I chose Peer Reviewed.

Limiting my search to peer-reviewed articles reduced the number of results by nearly 95%. In the image above (near the top), you can see there are eighty-five results, the first of which interests me because the title, “The Ethics of Laughter: David Sedaris and the Humour Memoir,” indicates that the authors consider the ethical nature of Sedaris’s blurring of fact and fiction in his humor.

Clicking View full text opens the page pictured below, which offers five options for accessing the full text of the article.

Though I could have chosen any of the five, I selected the JSTOR option. Unlike the other four database choices, JSTOR provides photographic images of the pages as they appear in the physical issue of the journal. (See the document on the lower right in the photo below.) If I had chosen one of the two ProQuest or Gale options, the full text would be unpaginated, which would require me to number the paragraphs in preparation for citing the article.

JSTOR (short for Journal Storage), a nonprofit digital library and database, houses thousands of journals and e-books, and millions of primary sources. If a search of yours yields a JSTOR option, I recommend you choose it. Its PDFs ease both the processes of reading and citing articles.

Another benefit of JSTOR is the list of links to related texts. In the lower left of the photo above, you can see a link to a study of the monologues of David Sedaris, John Leguizamo, and Spalding Gray. Although the article does not focus solely on Sedaris, the section devoted to him may be vital to a study of his humor–perhaps specifically his public readings of his work.

At the end of the article, seen above on the right, are the credentials for its co-authors. Often, credentials will appear at the beginning or end of an article. Look carefully at both the title page and the final page. If the article doesn’t include the author’s credentials–which is unlikely but nevertheless possible in an academic database–you will need to conduct a separate online search for them. Keep in mind that the absence of credentials may be a red flag. If you can’t locate details about a writer’s qualifications and achievements, that writer’s article may not be a reliable source.

If one of your sources has two authors, you may present the credentials for both of them in one paragraph. If you choose a source with three or more authors, include only the credentials for the lead author, the one whose name appears first on the title page.

After I conducted the search detailed above, I read and annotated “The Ethics of Laughter” in preparation for composing an annotated bibliographic entry. That annotated bibliographic entry appears below.

Sample Annotated Bibliographic Entry

Cardell, Kylie, and Victoria Kuttainen. “The Ethics of Laughter: David Sedaris and Humour Memoir.” Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, vol. 45, no. 3, 2012, pp. 99-114. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44030697.

“The Ethics of Laughter: David Sedaris and Humour Memoir” explores the implications of the blending of truth and artifice in David Sedaris’s writing. In the words of the authors, Sedaris’s “memoirs have attracted controversy for their blurring (or, as we argue, contesting) of boundaries between fiction and non-fiction” (Cardell and Kuttainen 100). While some critics, such as journalist Alex Heard, believe that “Sedaris exaggerates too much for a writer using the non-fiction label” (qtd. in Cardell and Kuttainen 103), Cardell and Kuttainen assert that Sedaris’s use of hyperbole, a staple of his prose style, is ethical in the context of the humor memoir.

Cardell and Kuttainen’s article highlights the complexity of assessing the validity of Sedaris’s mingling of the real and what he refers to as the “realish” in his writing (qtd. in Cardell and Kuttainen 99). “The Ethics of Laughter” could play a significant role in studies that focus solely on Sedaris’s humor, as well as ones that examine both Sedaris’s writing and that of other memoirists who blur the line between fiction and nonfiction.

Kylie Cardell, Ph.D., author of Dear World: Contemporary Uses of Autobiography, is Associate Professor of Humanities at Flinders University. Her co-author, Victoria Kuttainen, Ph.D., author of Unsettling Stories and The Transported Imagination, is Associate Professor of Art and Creative Media at James Cook University.

Note that the blog format of the annotated bibliographic entry above is different from MLA format, which features paragraph indentations and double spacing. The bibliographic entry above and the three paragraphs that follow total 241 words. The minimum word count for the entire assignment (essay and bibliography together) is 1,800 words. If you compose five annotations of the length of the one above, you will be well on your way to completing your 1,800-word minimum. However, keep in mind that a bibliography that is close to, or reaches, the minimum word count by itself does not warrant an insubstantial introductory essay.

Next Up

Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, revisit the Dictionary and World Builder pages on the Scrabble website, or the Merriam-Webster Scrabble Word Finder page, and review the blog posts devoted to Scrabble tips.

English 1103, Reading, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Interview Follow-Up . . .

Posted on March 24, 2026March 25, 2026 by janemlucas

Bryan Curtis photo credit: **The Guardian**, Tom Junod photo credit: **Atlanta Magazine**.

Yesterday in class, you conducted a short personal interview that will serve as one of the sources for your final essay and annotated bibliography. You are not required to type a transcript of your handwritten interview, but I recommend it. With a typed version of your interviewee’s answers, you can easily copy and paste pertinent passages into your essay or your bibliographic entry.

If you have additional questions for your interviewee and want to conduct a follow-up conversation, the date of the follow-up interview will be included in your bibliographic entry. If the interview days are consecutive, use a hyphen between the two days; if they are not consecutive, use the word and between them.

Examples

Brewer, Jesse. Interview. Conducted by Jane Lucas. 20-21 Oct. 2023.

Brewer, Jesse. Interview. Conducted by Jane Lucas. 20 and 22 Oct. 2023.

Including a passage from your interview in your essay is not a requirement of your assignment. You are required to include quotations from a minimum of two of your five sources. Whether you choose to incorporate the interview into your essay, it will still serve as one of the five sources in your bibliography

If you decide that you do not want to use the interview that you conducted yesterday, you are welcome to include another one in your bibliography. Keep in mind, however, that the student interview you include must be conducted with a student currently enrolled in section eight, and the subject of the interview must be the subject of your project.

In addition to your personal interview, you may include a professional interview conducted by a journalist, such as the interview annotated in my sample entry that follows. Unless that interview appears in print in a publication, it is a nonprint source, which means that you will need to include a total of five print sources, rather than four, in your bibliography.

Notice that the format of a bibliographic entry for a professional interview conducted by a journalist differs from that of a personal interview. Because the interview is part of an episode of a podcast, the entry includes the episode title in quotation marks and the podcast title in italics, followed by the date and the complete web address.

Sample Annotated Bibliographic Entry: Professional Interview

Junod, Tom, and James B. Stewart. “James B. Stewart and Tom Junod on Writing about 9-11.” The Press Box, 2 Sept. 2021, https://podcasts.apple.com /us/podcast/ james-b-stewart-and-tom-junod-on-writing-about-9-11/id1058911614?i=1000534129966.

In his interview with Tom Junod, Bryan Curtis, editor-at-large of The Ringer and cohost of The Press Box podcast, talks with Junod on the occasion of 9/11’s then-upcoming twentieth anniversary. In his Q and A with Junod and the one with James B. Stewart that precedes it, Curtis asks the writers about their approaches to writing about 9/11, their writing processes, and the public’s reactions to their magazine features devoted to 9/11: Tom Junod’s on the unidentified Falling Man and James B. Stewart’s “The Real Heroes are Dead.” The latter, published in The New Yorker, focuses on Rick Rescorla, the decorated Vietnam War veteran and head of security for Morgan Stanley, who died in the South Tower’s collapse after leading an evacuation that saved hundreds from the same fate.

The September 2, 2021, episode of The Press Box podcast offers insights into the intricacies of writing about 9/11 and the writing processes of two journalists who reflected on the tragedy after the initial shock subsided: Stewart, six months later, and Junod, two years later. Their conversations with Bryan Curtis provide key first-person accounts for researchers studying the writing of Junod or Stewart in particular, or the journalism of 9/11 in general.

Tom Junod, a senior writer for ESPN, has also written for Life, Sports Illustrated, and GQ, where his articles garnered two National Magazine Awards. Among Junod’s other notable works are his Esquire profile of Fred Rogers, “Can You Say . . . ‘Hero’?”—the inspiration for the Tom Hanks film It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood—and his newly published memoir In the Days of My Youth I was Told What it Means to be a Man.

Credentials Paragraphs for an Author Who Serves as Your Subject

If your focus is on the writing of one of the authors we have read in class, your bibliography will include a credentials paragraph for only one of the sources by that author, the one that falls first alphabetically in the list. Works cited and bibliographic entries are always presented in alphabetical order by the authors’ last names. When a list includes multiple sources by one author, those sources are listed alphabetically by title.

The sample entry above includes a credentials paragraph for Junod, but that paragraph will not appear in the annotation for the podcast in my complete bibliography unless the podcast falls first alphabetically.

Also, Junod’s name will be listed only at the beginning of the first entry in the list. The entries that follow will start with —. (three hyphens and a period) to represent the author’s name. That is the MLA format for additional sources with the same author.

Reading Quiz

Rather than listing the answers to yesterday’s quiz, I have followed each question below with a note regarding where to find the answer. By finding the answers yourself, you will learn more than you would from simply reading them in a list.

Last Thursday’s class notes focus on the research and writing that I have begun as a model for your own. What is my subject, and what prompted me to choose it? See the March 19 class notes.
Thursday’s class notes include a sample annotated bibliographic entry. What source is the subject of that annotation? In other words, for which article did I compose an annotated bibliographic entry? See the March 19 class notes.
What is the topic of the Scrabble list in last Friday’s class notes? See the March 20 class notes.
Last Friday’s Scrabble list includes a word featured in a previous list, one devoted to playable two-letter words. What is that word? See the March 20 class notes.

Your quiz also included a bonus opportunity. For the possible answers to that question, see the class notes for March 20.

Be sure to write notes in your journal on all of your readings, including the notes posted on my blog. Before each class begins, take out your journal and review your notes. That will increase your knowledge of what you read and ensure that you will earn high grades on your pop quizzes.

Kudos to Nick Beeker, Aidan Berlin, Madison Davis, Sophia Marin, Dylan Virga, and Sierra Welch for completing Friday’s bonus assignment, and congratulations to the students whose analysis titles were chosen by their classmates. The number in parentheses denotes the number of students who chose the title as the winner.

“Death is in the Lesson Plans” by Izzie McLawhorn (4)
“The Classroom of Loss” by Nicole Marin (1)
“Learning through Loss” by Avery Clark (1)

A Bonus for the Bonus Assignment: Title Allusions

An allusion is a reference that calls to mind a person, place, event, or artwork without naming it explicitly. The title of Tom Junod’s new memoir alludes to Led Zeppelin‘s song “Good Times, Bad Times,” which begins with the line that serves as Junod’s title: In the Days of My Youth I was Told What it Means to be a Man. The first part of the title, In the Days of My Youth, also recurs in the Bible, in Ecclesiastes and Job, and serves as the title of a novel by nineteenth-century author Amelia Edwards.

My title for last Thursday’s class notes alludes to “One Writer’s Beginnings,” the memoir by Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction writer Eudora Welty. (My title omits the s at the end of beginnings, since my focus is the starting point for a single project.)

Stephen King’s title “Strawberry Spring” isn’t an allusion, but the story features two literary allusions, which we examined in class and which I addressed in the March 17 class notes. The first is an allusion to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy: “You half expected to see Gollum or Frodo or Sam go hurrying past” (269). The second is an allusion to Carl Sandburg’s poem “The Fog” (272).

Next Up

Tomorrow’s class will be devoted to finding additional sources through the HPU Libraries site. Details TBA.

English 1103, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Conducting a Peer Interview/Creating a Primary Source

Posted on March 23, 2026March 23, 2026 by janemlucas

Today in class, you will conduct a short personal interview that will serve as one of the sources for your project. If you decide that you do not want to use the interview that you conduct today, you are welcome to include another one in your project. Keep in mind, however, that the student interview you include must be conducted with a student currently enrolled in section eight, and the subject of the interview must be the subject of your project.

Directions

As a group, discuss your subjects with your group members and decide who will interview whom.
Conduct short one-on-one interviews that include the questions listed below. You are welcome to ask additional questions, but be mindful of your time constraints.
Record your interviewees’ answers in your journal. If you aren’t able to record the answers verbatim as the interviewee speaks, ask him or her to repeat them. Questions to ask your interviewee include the following: (1) What experience, if any, did you have with the subject (the reading or the aspect of the course) before you encountered it in English 1103? (2) Has it changed your perspective on reading and/or writing? If so, how? (3) Will you continue to pursue the subject (read more work by the author, continue the classroom practice or activity) after the conclusion of the semester?
After you conduct your interview, compose on the worksheet provided a sentence in which you introduce a quotation from the interview with a signal phrase, such as, According to . . . , or [insert first and last name] notes or observes or points out that . . . .” Your quotation will not be followed by a parenthetical citation because it is a form of oral communication (without page or paragraph numbers). See the sample on your worksheet.
Follow your quotation with an annotated bibliography entry in this format: Last Name, First Name. Interview. Conducted by Your First Name Your Last Name. Day Month Year.*
Complete your bibliographic entry with a three-paragraph annotation. Like the other annotations you will write, it will include a paragraph of summary, followed by a second of commentary. Because your interviewee is not a published writer, the third paragraph will differ from the credentials paragraphs in your model, “Scrabble as a Game Changer in the College Classroom.” See the sample below.

Sample Annotated Bibliographic Entry: Peer Interview

Brewer, Jesse. Interview. Conducted by Jane Lucas. 20 Oct. 2023.

English 1103 student Jesse Brewer recounts how he has played Scrabble for most of his life. Ever since he was a young child, he has played the game with his grandparents whenever he visited their home in Pennsylvania. Brewer will continue to play Scrabble after the end of the semester because the game remains a tradition in his family. In his words, “[M]y grandmother is still going to want to play it every summer.” Brewer also notes that the game has expanded his vocabulary, saying it has “introduced me to new words, which allows me to read and write more capably in everyday life.”

Brewer’s remarks on vocabulary building highlight the game’s verbal benefits, and his observations on Scrabble as a family tradition serve as a point of contrast to that of some other students’–such as Ava Salvant’s–who had not played Scrabble before playing it as a weekly exercise in English 1103.

Brewer is a junior computer science major at High Point University, where he was enrolled in English 1103, section 20, in 2023.

*Note that the bibliographic entries in your MS Word file or PDF should have hanging indents, and the first line of each paragraph should be indented five spaces or one-half inch.

Next Up

Wednesday’s class will be devoted to additional writing and research for your final essay and annotated bibliography. Details TBA.

Bonus Assignment

For the model final essay and annotated bibliography I am writing, I will conduct a student interview–possibly two. If you are available to be interviewed by me during my office hours or before class, between 10:10 and 10:30 a.m., be one of the first two students to email your available time to me no later than 5 p.m. tomorrow, March 24. I cannot interview you right before class. If you are not available to be interviewed during my office hours or before between 10:10 and 10:30 a.m. on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, I cannot interview you for this bonus assignment.

English 1103, Scrabble, Teaching

ENG 1103: Congratulations, HPU Panthers!

Posted on March 20, 2026March 20, 2026 by janemlucas

Congratulations to the High Point men’s basketball team on their NCAA Tournament first-round, bracket-busting win over Wisconsin!

Blowin’ in the Wind

The recent strong winds likely reminded you that March is our windiest time of the year. To mark our gusty month, this Scrabble post features playable wind-related words. One of them, oe, appeared in a previous Scrabble post, the one devoted to two-letter words beginning with m, n, o, and p. If your rack contains the right letters, spelling these words will be a breeze.

bayamo: a strong wind found in Cuba
bhut: a warm, dry wind in India (also bhoot)
bise: a cold, dry wind, found especially blowing from the northeast in Switzerland (also bize)
blaw: to blow
bleb: a blister (an extremely intense or severe wind)
bora: a cold wind in lowland regions
brr: used to indicate feeling cold (also brrr)
bura: a violent Eurasian windstorm (also buran)
chinook: a warm wind that flows off the east side of the Rockies; or a type of Pacific Northwest salmon named after the Chinook people)
etesian: a northerly Mediterranean summer wind
fon: a warm dry wind that blows down off some mountains (also fohn and foehn)
haboob: a violent sandstorm or duststorm
oe: a whirlwind or gust of wind, especially in the Faeroe Islands
sarsar: an icy wind (from the Arabic çarçar for a cold wind)
simoom: a hot, violent desert wind (also simoon and samiel)
williwaw: a violent, cold wind blowing down from a mountain (also willyway and williwau)

Next Up

Coming Soon

On Monday, as an exercise in creating a primary source for your annotated bibliography, you will conduct an interview with one of your classmates. Details TBA.

What makes a title effective? That’s an important question to consider since the title contains the first words of yours that a reader will encounter. First, it should be descriptive; it should evoke an image in the reader’s mind. It should also be relevant to your subject; it should convey something about the writing that will follow. Lastly, it should be intriguing; it should create in the reader a desire to keep reading. With those traits in mind, review the titles of your classmates’ analyses listed below. Which of them is most effective and why?

“The Classroom of Loss”
“Confidence in the Face of Language”
“Death is in the Lesson Plans”
“Details Matter”
“Falling Not Jumping: The Power Words”
“Found in the Dark”
“The Impact of One Image”
“Learning through Loss”
“The Man Who Changed the Game Forever”
“On ‘The Falling Man'”
“One Player, New Strategy”
“Working through ‘The School'”

Bonus Assignment Opportunity

Directions

Determine which one of the titles you deem most effective.
Compose a comment of one complete sentence or more that includes (1) the title enclosed in quotation marks, and (2) a brief explanation of its effectiveness. If the title includes a title within it, be sure to inclose that title in single quotation marks. (See the two examples in the list above.)
A bonus for your bonus: You will receive extra points for your bonus assignment if you include the correct answers to the questions that follow. With the title of his new memoir– which I addressed in yesterday’s class notes–Tom Junod employs a device I used in the title of yesterday’s blog post. Stephen King employs that device in “Strawberry Spring” as well, not in the title but twice in the story. What device does Junod employ in his title, and to what does the title refer?
Post your comment as a reply to this blog entry no later than 5 p.m. on, Monday, March 23. (To post your comment, click on the post’s title, and scroll down to the bottom of the page. You will then see the image of an airmail envelope with a leave comment option.)

I will approve your comments (make them visible) after Monday’s deadline.

English 1103, Reading, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: One Writer’s Beginning

Posted on March 19, 2026 by janemlucas

My annotated copy of Tom Junod’s “The Falling Man,” along with March issue of *Esquire*, which features Tom Hendrickson’s article on Tom Junod

When I opened the current issue of Esquire, I didn’t expect to spot the name Tom Junod. What I saw out of the corner of my eye wasn’t a byline; Junod had left Esquire to write for ESPN The Magazine in 2016. The name I’d grown accustomed to seeing as a byline was instead the first words of a feature titled “Family Secrets,” by John Hendrickson.

Hendrickson’s feature focuses on the recent publication of Tom Junod’s first book, a memoir. I realized that “Family Secrets” could serve as a source in an annotated bibliography devoted to Junod’s writing–and, time permitting, I could read his new memoir, In the Days of My Youth I was Told What it Means to be a Man. And that book could serve as a source as well.

Although I could have begun my writing process by drafting a bibliographic entry for “Family Secrets,” instead I began with an bibliographic entry for “The Falling Man,” as a model for those of you who choose Junod’s writing as your subject.

I prepared to draft by rereading “The Falling Man” in its entirety twice, highlighting words and phrases on my first rereading, and writing extensive annotations in the margins on the second. As a result of that close examination of Junod’s article, I was not only able to draft a bibliographic entry but also discover patterns in his prose–including apparent contradictions and repetition of words or phrases for emphasis–that I will be able to address elsewhere in my essay and bibliography.

Twice rereading Tom Junod’s seventeen-page, 7,000-plus-word article was time-consuming, but the effort paid off by generating substantial material for my project. If your own essay and bibliography focuses on Tom Junod’s writing, you should follow the same steps. Examining only the first two paragraphs of a writer’s article is sufficient for a short analysis but not for a research project devoted to his work.

My annotated copy of Tom Junod’s “The Falling Man” and the first page of the draft of my bibliographic entry

Annotated Bibliographic Entry for “The Falling Man”

Junod, Tom. “The Falling Man, vol. 140, no. 3, Sept. 2003, pp. 176+. ProQuest, https://libproxy.highpoint.edu/login?url= https://www.proquest.com/ magazines/falling-man/docview/210268344/se-2.

Published in the September 2003 issue of Esquire, Tom Junod’s “The Falling Man” focuses on the now-iconic 9/11 image of an unidentified man in downward flight, who appears to bisect the Twin Towers. Junod chronicles the moments leading up to AP photographer Richard Drew capturing the photo, Toronto Globe and Mail reporter Peter Chaney’s search for the true identity of the Falling Man, the reactions to the picture—both those of the public and of grieving families (whose loved one could be its subject), and the photograph’s status as a national symbol.

Junod’s thorough and riveting account of Richard Drew’s photograph and its life beyond the frame illuminates the role of the Falling Man in American culture and showcases the writer’s award-winning prose. “The Falling Man” remains an essential reference for studies of the iconography of 9/11, as well as studies of Junod’s writing.

Tom Junod, a senior writer for ESPN, has also written for Life, Sports Illustrated, and GQ, where his articles garnered two National Magazine Awards. Among Junod’s other notable works are hisEsquire profile of Fred Rogers, “Can You Say . . . ‘Hero’?”—the inspiration for the Tom Hanks’ film It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood—and his newly-published memoir In the Days of My Youth I was Told What it Means to be a Man.

Next Up

Coming Soon

On Monday, as an exercise in creating a primary source for your annotated bibliography, you will conduct an interview with one of your classmates. Details TBA.

English 1103, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Beginning Your Final Essay and Annotated Bibliography

Posted on March 18, 2026March 18, 2026 by janemlucas

Today, you will draft an annotated bibliographic entry for the source that serves as the starting point for your research. For a list of sources, see the complete assignment directions under the heading Final Essay and Annotated Bibliography.

Key Features

Your bibliographic entry will consist of these elements:

A complete MLA-style work cited entry for the source that serves as the starting point for your research.
A paragraph that summarizes the source.
A second paragraph, one of commentary, that elucidates the usefulness of the source to you and others researching your subject. Would it serve as a point of comparison or contrast to another primary or secondary source? Would it support or challenge an idea presented in another source? Is it a secondary source that sheds light on the meaning of a primary source? The last question pertains primarily to bibliographies that focus on one of the writers studied in the course. Do not write in your commentary, this source is useful because . . . Instead, demonstrate the source’s function
A third paragraph that consists of one or more sentences that provide the writer’s credentials: the qualifications and achievements that demonstrate his or her competence and credibility.

For models, look to the annotated bibliographic entries in “Scrabble as a Game Changer,” the sample assignment you will receive today.

Directions for Bibliographic Entry

Draft a bibliographic entry that includes all the elements outlined above.
For directions on drafting the third paragraph, see the Credentials section that follows.
Compose your bibliographic entry on the lines provided on the exercise handout and/or additional paper, and submit it before you leave class.

Credentials

The third paragraph of each of your bibliographic annotations will consist of one or more sentences that provide the writer’s credentials: the qualifications and achievements that demonstrate his or her competence and credibility.

Directions for Credentials (Paragraph Three)

Locate the author of your source in the list that follows
Compose a short paragraph of one or more sentences that includes the writer’s first and last names and the credentials listed in the bulleted points. Do not comment on the writer’s qualifications. Like a summary, a paragraph of credentials is an objective presentation of information.

Aubrey, Allison

Correspondent for NPR (National Public Radio) and a contributor to CBS Sunday Morning, the PBS NewsHour,
Recipient of awards from the New York Press Club, the National Press Club, the Alliance for Women in Media Foundation, and the James Beard Foundation

Barthelme, Donald

Author of the novel Snow White and the collection Sixty Stories, among others
His short story collection City Life was named by Time magazine as one of the best books of 1971
Recipient of the National Book Award, the Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction, The Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship

Chu, Charlotte

Journalist who has covered science, health, and technology for Vox, Scientific American, Popular Science, Discover Magazine, Business Insider, and GenomeWeb, among others

Junod, Tom

Senior writer for ESPN.com
Previously wrote for Esquire, GQ, Life, and Sports Illustrated
Recipient of two National Magazine Awards from the American Society of Magazine Editors

Keller, Helen

Author of The Story of My Life and The World I Love In, among others
Named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century

King, Martin Luther, Jr.

Civil Rights leader
Author of Strength to Love and Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
Recipient of the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize

King, Stephen

Author of Carrie, The Shining, Pet Cemetery, and more than sixty other novels
Recipient of the 2003 National Book Award’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters and the 2014 National Medal of Arts.

Klara, Robert

Senior Editor of brands at AdWeek
Author of three nonfiction books: FDR’s Funeral Train: A Betrayed Widow, a Soviet Spy and a Presidency in the Balance, The Hidden White House: Harry Truman and the Reconstruction of America’s Most Famous Residence, and The Devil’s Mercedes: The Bizarre and Disturbing Adventures of Hitler’s Limousine in America

Lee, Harper

Author of To Kill a Mockingbird, awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961
Wrote two posthumously published works: Go Set a Watchman and The Land of Sweet Forever
Recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007, for her contributions to literature

Lewis, Michael

Author of The Blind Side and Moneyball, among others
Named a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2023
Two-time recipient of the Gerald Loeb Award for Feature Writing

Richtel, Matt

New York Times journalist
Author of A Deadly Warning (2014)
Recipient of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting

Sedaris, David

Author of Happy-Go-Lucky and The Land and Its People, among others
Recipient of the Thurber Prize for American Humor
Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2019

Wolf, Maryanne

Director of the Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners and Social Justice at UCLA
Author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain
Recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, the American Psychological Association Teaching Award, and a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study of Behavioral Sciences at Stanford

Final Essay and Annotated Bibliography, Complete Assignment

An annotated bibliography is a list of sources on a subject that includes a summary of each source. Some bibliographies include additional information, such as commentary on the source and the authors’ credentials, which is the type of bibliography that you will compose along with your final essay for the course.

Key Features

Your final essay, an introductory essay of three or more paragraphs, presents the subject of your bibliography and addresses your purpose for compiling it. In other words: What drives your research? What interests you in the subject, and what question, or questions, do you seek to answer about it? Also, it considers what larger project might develop from your final essay and annotated bibliography, and lastly, what would serve as its theoretical framework? In other words, through what academic lens would you examine your subject?
A complete MLA-style bibliographic entry for each source.

Assignment Directions

Begin by drafting an annotated bibliographic entry for the source that serves as the starting point for your research. See the accompanying handout for directions.
Use the HPU Libraries site, https://www.highpoint.edu/library/, and Google Scholar to locate a minimum of three additional reliable and relevant print sources (articles, essays, and/or books) devoted to the same subject. Compose your summary, commentary, and credentials paragraphs in complete sentences, introduce quotations with signal phrases, and include parenthetical citations where needed. Your bibliography must include five sources, four of which must be print. (The interview you conduct is a nonprint source. Details TBA.) If you wish to include an additional non-print source, such as a video, you may include that as a sixth source. Also, if you choose to use both articles on limiting screen time that were distributed in class (Allison Aubrey’s and Maryanne Wolf’s), you will need to include an additional print source.
After you have composed your annotated bibliographic entries, write an introductory essay that (1) presents the subject of your bibliography, and (2) addresses your purpose for compiling it. In other words: What drives your research? What question do you seek to answer about your subject? Also, (3) What larger project might develop from your bibliography? Would it be a project for a course in psychology, science, education, or another discipline? What would serve as its theoretical framework? In other words, through what academic lens would you examine your subject? Address all five of your sources in your essay and quote at least two of them.

Though your introductory essay will precede your annotated bibliography, you will compose it last because you will need to reread and summarize your sources before you will know how to address them in your essay.

Directions for Researching, Drafting, Revising, and Submitting

Devote today’s class to drafting the annotated bibliographic entry for the source that serves as the starting point for your research.
In class: Conduct a personal interview and compose an annotated bibliographic entry for the interview. Details TBA. Note: Additional class periods over the course of the next two weeks will be devoted to writing and research.
Before class on the due date: Post a copy of your revision to Blackboard and to your blog. In your blog post, omit the first-page information included in your file submitted to Blackboard (your name, professor’s name, course and section, and date). Add to your blog post an image that documents some part of your writing process away from the screen, such as the summary of your source in your journal, today’s worksheet, or a page of your draft. Also, add an embedded link to a relevant website. Even though your work for this assignment will take place primarily in front of the screen, your writing process still involves putting pen to paper, and photographic documentation of that on your blog is a requirement of the assignment.

Sample Annotated Bibliography Entries

Aubrey, Allison. “A Break from Your Smartphone Can Reboot Your Mood: Here’s How Long You Need.” NPR, 24 Feb. 2025. https://www.npr.org/2025/02/24/nx-s1-5304417/smartphone-break-digital-detox-screen-addiction#:~:text= Researchers%20studied%20what%20happened%20when,felt%20better%20after%20the%20break.

Barthelme, Donald. “The School.” The Best American Short Stories 1975, edited by Martha Foley, Houghton Mifflin, 1975. pp. 8-11.

Hu, Charlotte. “Why Writing by Hand is Better for Memory and Learning.” Ed. Lauren J. Young. Scientific American, 21 Feb. 2024, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-writing-by-hand-is-better-for-memory-and-learning/.

Junod, Tom. “The Falling Man, vol. 140, no. 3, Sept. 2003, pp. 176+. ProQuest, https://libproxy.highpoint.edu/login?url= https://www.proquest.com/ magazines/falling-man/docview/210268344/se-2.

Keller, Helen. “The Day Language Came into My Life.” https://janelucasdotcom. files.wordpress.com/2025/08/a0461-3.thedaylanguagecameintomylife_keller.pdf.

King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” U. of Texas at Austin, https://minio.la.utexas.edu/webeditor-files/coretexts/pdf/1963_mlk_letter.pdf.

King, Stephen. “Strawberry Spring.” Nigh Shift. Anchor, 2011. pp. 268-82.

Klara, Robert. “Scrabble.” Adweek, vol. 61, no. 13, 15 June 2020, pp. 22-23. ProQuest, https://libraryproxy.highpoint.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/magazine/scrabble/docview/241647624/se-2.

Lee, Harper. Chapter One. To Kill a Mockingbird. Lippincott, 1960. pp. 9-19.

Lewis, Michael. Chapter One: “Back Story.” The Blind Side. 2006. Norton, 2009. pp.15-23.

Richtel, Matt. “Blogs vs. Term Papers.” New York Times, 20 Jan. 2012. ProQuest, https://libproxy.highpoint.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/blogs-podcasts-websites/blogs-vs-term-papers/docview/2216251885/se-2.

Sedaris, David. “Me Talk Pretty One Day.” Me Talk Pretty One Day. Little, Brown, 2000. 166-73.

Wolf, Maryanne. “Skim Reading is the New Normal. The Effect on Society is Profound.” The Guardian, 25 Aug. 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/25/skim-reading-new-normal-maryanne-wolf.

*Note that the samples above lack the hanging indents that should be included in the Word document or PDF that you post to Blackboard. See the sample entries on the assignment handout for MLA-style format.

Next Up

Coming Soon

On Monday, as an exercise in creating a primary source for your annotated bibliography, you will conduct an interview with one of your classmates. Details TBA.

English 1103, Reading, Teaching

ENG 1103: “Strawberry Spring” Follow-Up

Posted on March 17, 2026March 18, 2026 by janemlucas

King, Stephen. “Strawberry Spring.” *Night Shift*. 1978. Anchor, 2011. pp. 268-82.

Tomorrow morning, before you begin work on your final essay and annotated bibliography, we will revisit Stephen King‘s “Strawberry Spring” and discuss the answers to your collaborative exercise on the story.

For that exercise, I asked you to determine whether you could identify any details that indicate why the narrator may have murdered any of his victims. Although there is no indication that the narrator knew Gale Cermann, Adelle Parkins, or Marsha Curran, he did know Ann Bray, which he reveals after he tells the readers that she was editor of the school newspaper: “In the hot, fierce bubblings of my freshman youth I had submitted a column idea to the paper and asked for a date–turned down on both counts” (275). Though the narrator’s rejection by Ann Bray could have motivated him to murder her, the fact that the other victims were virtual strangers to him indicates that the phenomenon of Strawberry Spring itself awakens his killer instinct

I also asked you to identify words and phrases that illustrate how the story is not only a horror story but also a commentary on war, the Vietnam War in particular, and the Vietnam era. I offered these examples as models:

King’s description of the snow sculpture “caricature of Lyndon Johnson” (269) signifies the derisive responses to the President’s Vietnam War policy.
The description of the snow sculpture “caricature of Lyndon Johnson” (King 269) signifies the derisive responses to the President’s Vietnam War policy.

Some of the words and phrases you may have identified include these:

Civil War cannons (269, 275, 282)
the dove “lost its frozen feathers” (269)
the fog (269, 270, 272, 277, 279, 280)
“who had been drafted” (273)
SDS (276), Students for a Democratic Society
quagmire (277)
“a series of draft protests and a sit-in” (281)
“well-known napalm manufacturer . . . holding interviews” (281)

I also asked you to try to identify the two literary allusions in King’s story. The first is an allusion to J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy: “You half expected to see Gollum or Frodo or Sam go hurrying past” (269). The second is an allusion to a poem by Carl Sandburg, titled–perhaps unsurprisingly–“The Fog” (272).

Pop Quiz

What did you learn about Stephen King from the author’s page that you read for today’s class? See the author’s page on King’s website.
What is a primary source? See the class notes for March 12.
Name one primary source that you have read for class. See the class notes for March 12.
What is a secondary source? See the class notes for March 12.
Name one secondary source that you have read for class. See the class notes for March 12.

Your quiz also included two bonus opportunities. For the answers to those questions, see the class notes for March 13.

Next Up

At the beginning of tomorrow’s class, we will continue our discussion of “Strawberry Spring.” Afterward, you will have the remainder of the period to devote to your preliminary work for your final essay and annotated bibliography. Details TBA.

English 1103, Reading, Teaching

ENG 1103: Stephen King’s “Strawberry Spring”

Posted on March 16, 2026 by janemlucas

King, Stephen. “Strawberry Spring.” Night Shift. 1978. Anchor, 2011. pp. 228-82.

Today in class we will read Stephen King‘s short story “Strawberry Spring,” which was published in Ubris magazine in 1968 and included in King’s first short story collection, Night Shift (1978).

For the collaborative exercise that you will complete after we read the story, I will ask you to determine whether you can identify any details that indicate why the killer may have murdered any of his victims. Although there is no indication that he knew Gale Cerman, Adelle Parkins, or Marsha Curran, he did know Ann Bray.

I will also ask you to identify words and phrases that illustrate how the story is not only a horror story but also a commentary on war, the Vietnam War in particular, and the Vietnam era.

Lastly, I will ask you to try to identify the two literary allusions in King’s story. We will discuss your findings near the end of class today or at the beginning of class on Wednesday, and I will include the answers in tomorrow’s class notes.

Next Up

We will review “Strawberry Spring” at the beginning of Wednesday’s class, and you will have the remainder of the period to begin work on your final essay and annotated bibliography.

English 1103, Scrabble, Teaching

ENG 1103: Toponyms, Part I

Posted on March 13, 2026March 13, 2026 by janemlucas

The first Scrabble post of the semester featured first names that are also common nouns, making them playable in Scrabble. Today’s post includes place names and words derived from places, or toponyms–more proper nouns that are playable in Scrabble because they’re also common nouns. Studying these words offers you additional opportunities to broaden your vocabulary and up your game.

afghan: a wool blanket
alamo: a cottonwood poplar tree
alaska: a heavy fabric
berlin: a type of carriage
bermudas: a variety of knee-length, wide-legged shorts
bohemia: a community of unconventional, usually artistic, people
bolivia: a soft fabric
bordeaux: a wine from the Bordeaux region
boston: a card game similar to whist
brazil: a type of tree found in Brazil used to make instrument bows (also brasil)
brit: a non-adult herring
cayman: a type of crocodile, also known as a spectacled crocodile (also caiman)
celt: a type of axe used during the New Stone Age
chile: a spicy pepper (also chili)
colorado: used to describe cigars of medium strength and color
congo: an eellike amphibian
cyprus: a thin fabric
dutch: referring to each person paying for him or herself
egyptian: a sans serif typeface
english: to cause a ball to spin
french: to slice food thinly
gambia: a flowering plant known as cat’s claw (also gambier, which is a small town in Ohio)
geneva: gin, or a liquor like gin
genoa: a type of jib (a triangular sail), also known as a jenny, first used by a Swedish sailor in Genoa
german: also known as the german cotillon, an elaborate nineteenth-century dance
greek: something not understood
guinea: a type of British coin minted from 1663 to 1813
holland: a linen fabric
japan: to gloss with black lacquer
java: coffee
jordan: a chamber pot
kashmir: cashmere
mecca: a destination for many people

What a Bonus a Z Makes

Because they knew that da (a father) and od (a hypothetical force) were playable words, the members of one of last Friday’s teams played dozers (ones who doze) in the upper right corner for a triple-word score. Because the z was played on the double-letter square, the team earned a total of eighty-four points for dozers (seventy-eight), da (three), and od (three).

Kudos

Six students took advantage of last Friday’s bonus assignment and posted comments on their classmates’ analyses.

Nick Beeker
Aidan Berlin
Jermaine Cain
Sofia Marin
Izzie McLawhorn
Dylan Virga

Kudos to Nick, Aidan, Jermaine, Sofia, Izzie, and Dylan. You can view their comments on the March 6 blog post.

Next Up

Coming Soon

In class on Monday, we will read and analyze “Strawberry Spring,” a short story by Stephen King. In preparation for our study, read the author’s page on his website.

English 1103, Reading, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Secondary Sources, Reporting, and Commentary . . .

Posted on March 12, 2026March 12, 2026 by janemlucas

The four articles that served as the subjects for your group presentations are all secondary sources: texts that address information originally presented in primary sources. Primary sources include research studies and other original works, such as historical documents, essays, and fiction. Each of the essays, the short story, the letter, and the chapter that you read previously for class can serve as primary sources for your research. For example, David Sedaris‘s “Me Talk Pretty One Day” is a primary source for a study of Sedaris’s writing.

In “Blogs vs. Term Papers,” Matt Richtel reports on the findings of the National Survey of Student Engagement and a study of high school writing requirements conducted by William H. Fitzhugh, editor of The Concord Review, as well as the writing curricula of then-Duke University Professor Cathy Davidson and Stanford Professor Emerita Andrea Lunsford.
In “Writing by Hand is Better for Memory and Learning,” Charlotte Hu reports on research published in Frontiers in Psychology, conducted by Audrey van der Meer and Ruud van der Weel at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).
In “A Break from Your Smartphone,” Allison Aubrey reports on research conducted by Noah Castelo, Kostadin Kushlev, Adrian F. Ward, Michael Esterman, and Peter B. Reiner, which was published in PNAS NEXUS, the journal of the National Academy of Science.

Although Maryanne Wolf’s “Skim Reading is the New Normal” cites research originally published in primary sources, she is not reporting on that research objectively. Instead, she argues that in light of researchers’ findings, “[w]e need to cultivate a new kind of brain: a ‘bi-literate’ reading brain capable of thought in either digital or traditional mediums” (par. 12). If you look at the heading on your copy of Wolf’s article, you will see the word opinion, which indicates that her article appeared in the opinion section of The Guardian‘s website and on the Op-Ed page of the physical paper.

Informed opinion pieces–such as Wolf’s, which draws on scholarly research–are suitable sources for your research, but it’s important to recognize the difference between reporting and commentary.

Great Britain’s The Guardian, which published Wolf’s article, and The New York Times, which published Richtel’s “Blogs vs. Term Papers,” are two of the most well-regarded newspapers of record, known for their accuracy and high-quality reporting. NPR (National Public Radio), which aired Aubrey’s “A Break from Your Smartphone,” is another premier news outlet. The magazine Scientific American, which published Hu’s “Writing by Hand is Better for Memory and Learning,” is yet another first-rate publication, one known for its authoritative and accessible coverage of science and technology news, written for a general audience.

AP Style vs. MLA Style

As you read the four articles that served as your presentation subjects, you probably noticed some differences among their styles and MLA (Modern Language Association) style, which you use for paper assignments in English 1103 and other courses in the humanities. Most news publications use AP (Associated Press) or their own in-house style book that shares many of AP’s rules. One of reason style rules are difficult to remember is the differences among the requirements. Here are some of the important distinctions between AP style and MLA:

In AP style, a sentence may begin with a quotation. In MLA style, a quotation must be introduced with a signal phrase. Otherwise, it is considered a dropped quotation.
AP style does not include parenthetical citations. In MLA style, quotations and paraphrases are followed by parenthetical citations–unless the sources are interviews or other nonprint sources.
In AP style, titles of publications are not enclosed in quotation marks or italicized. In MLA style, titles of short works are enclosed in quotation marks; titles of longer works are italicized (underlined in longhand).
Almost all numbers are expressed as figures in AP style. In MLA style, any number that can be expressed in one or two words is written as a word.
AP style omits the Oxford or serial comma, the comma before and in a series of three or more. Most publications other than newspapers use the Oxford or serial comma, and MLA advocates its use.
In AP style, an em dash is preceded and followed by a space. MLA style requires no space before or after an em dash.