Today in class we will use the “Notice and Focus” strategy as we examine a page of Art Spiegelman’s graphic memoir Maus. As the authors of your textbook observe, the strategy “help[s] you to stay open longer to what you can notice in your subject matter” (Rosenwasser and Stephen 17).
We will closely examine the page featured above, write what we notice (not what we think or like/dislike about it), and discuss our observations as a way of moving toward analysis.
Afterward, we will study an analysis of the page that I wrote as a model for my students last semester. An MLA style copy of the analysis can be downloaded from the link that follows. The assignments that you submit to Blackboard–your own analysis and your other major assignments for English 1103–should follow the same format.
Next Up
At the beginning of class on Wednesday, you will submit your completed worksheet for the first lesson in the Check, Please! series. If you did not receive a copy of the worksheet or you have misplaced yours, you can download and print a copy from the link below.
On Wednesday you will also begin drafting your analysis in class. That prelimary draft and the first drafts of all of your papers will be handwritten in class. Be sure to bring loose leaf paper, a pen with dark ink, and your copies of “Blogs vs. Term Papers” and “Skim Reading is the New Normal.”
Work Cited
Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. Writing Analytically, 8th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2019.
Jane Lucas 