Category: English 1103

Interview Assignment

Your final essay and annotated bibliography will focus on one of the authors we have studied or one of elements of the course, including (1) blogging in the classroom, (2) limiting screen time, (3) writing longhand, and (4) playing Scrabble. As a starting point, 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 interview you include in your project must be conducted with a student currently enrolled in section 20 or 21, and the subject of the interview must be the subject of your project.

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 or clause, 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 annotated bibliography entry in this format:

Annotated Bibliography*

Last Name, First Name. Interview. Conducted by Your First Name Your Last Name. Day Month Year.

*Note that you will use the header annotated bibliography, not works cited, in your final essay and annotated bibliography.

Below the work cited/bibliography entry, compose a one-paragraph summary of the interview followed by a second shorter paragraph that identifies the student by class and major (or undeclared) and addresses what role the interview might serve in a larger project. Would it serve as a point of comparison or contrast to another source? Would it support or challenge an idea presented in another source? See the model below.

Sample Quotation with Signal Clause

English 1103 student Jesse Brewer observes that Scrabble has expanded his vocabulary, saying it has “introduced me to new words, which allows me to read and write more capably in everyday life.”

Sample Annotated Bibliographic Entry

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 is a freshman computer science major at High Point University, where he is currently enrolled in English 1103, section 20. His 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.

Note that the first paragraph of the bibliography entry, the summary, is written in present tense and third person. Also note that after the first mention of the interviewee’s name, he is referred to by last name.

The annotated bibliographic entry for your interview will be shorter than your other entries because (1) you are annotating a brief interview, and (2) your classmate does not have the credentials that you will list in the annotations for your other sources.

The complete final essay/annotated bibliography assignment appears below.

Overview

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 the authors’ credentials. That is the type of bibliography that you will compose along with your final essay for the course.

Key Features

• Your final essay, which is an introductory essay of three or more paragraphs that (1) presents the subject of your bibliography, and (2) addresses your purpose for compiling it. In other words: What drives your research? What interests you about the subject, and what question/s do you seek to answer about your subject?
• A complete MLA-style bibliography entry for each source.
• A one-paragraph summary of each source followed by a shorter second paragraph that presents the writer’s credentials and addresses the purpose that the source might serve in a larger project. Would it serve as a point of comparison or contrast to another 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.

Preliminary Work—What to Complete in Class Today

Personal Interview

Your final essay and annotated bibliography will focus on one of the authors we have studied or one of elements of the course, including (1) blogging in the classroom, (2) limiting screen time, (3) writing longhand, and (4) playing Scrabble. As a starting point, 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 interview you include in your project must be conducted with a student currently enrolled in section 20 or 21, and the subject of the interview must be the subject of your project.

1. Begin by conducting a short personal interview and composing an annotated bibliographic entry for the interview. For more information, see the paragraphs under the header PRELIMINARY WORK—What to Complete in Class Today.
2. Compose an annotated bibliographic entry for the source that serves as the starting point for your research. See the list of texts that follows.
3. 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 summaries and commentaries in complete sentences, introduce any quotations with signal phrases, and include parenthetical citations where needed. Your bibliography must include five sources, four of which must be print. (Your personal interview is a nonprint source.) If you wish to include an additional non-print source, such as a video, you may include that as a sixth source.
4. After you have composed your annotated bibliography 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? Address all five of your sources in your essay, and quote at least two of them.

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

Directions for Researching, Drafting, Revising, and Submitting

1. Devote today’s class primarily to conducting a personal interview and composing an annotated bibliography entry for the interview. You will have two additional Wednesdays to work in class on your final essay and annotated bibliography before you post your revision to Blackboard and to your WordPress blog.
2. 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 web site. 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

Bahr, Sarah. “The Case for Writing Longhand.” The New York Times, 21 Jan. 2022. ProQuest, https://libproxy.highpoint.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/case-writing-longhand/docview/2621453011/se-2. 

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

Junod, Tom. “The Falling Man.” Esquire, vol. 140, no. 3, Sept. 2003, pp. 176+. Gale Academic OneFile Select, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A106423422/EAIM?u=hpu_main&sid=bookmark-EAIM&xid=ce48797f.

Kay, Jonathan. “Scrabble is a Lousy Game.” The Wall Street Journal, 4 Oct. 2018. ProQuest, https://libproxy.highpoint.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/scrabble-is-lousy-game-why-would-anyone-play/docview/2116081665/se-2?accountid=11411.

Keller, Helen. “The Day Language Came into My Life.” Chapter Four. The Story of My Life. https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/keller/life/life.html.

King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University, https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/sites/mlk/files/letterfrombirmingham_wwcw_0.pdf.

Lewis, Michael. Chapter One: “Back Story.” The Blind Side. 2006. Norton, 2009. pp. 15-16.

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.

Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. “Arriving at an Interpretive Conclusion: Making Choices.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2024. pp. 111-12.

Sedaris, David. “Me Talk Pretty One Day.” Me Talk Pretty One Day. Little, Brown, 2000. pp. 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.

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Grade Criteria

An A final essay and annotated bibliography includes these components:

• An introductory essay of three or more paragraphs 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 one of the subjects that you’ve studied in the course or about one aspect of the course? Also, (3) what larger project might develop from your bibliography? Would it be a project for a course in science, psychology, education, or another discipline?
• A complete works cited/bibliographic entry for a minimum of five reliable and relevant sources, four of which are print. Alphabetize the list by the writers’ last names.
• A one-paragraph summary of each source followed by a shorter paragraph of commentary that presents the writer’s credentials.  

An A final essay and annotated bibliography complies with the requirements above and is also cohesive and relatively free of surface errors.

A B final essay and annotated bibliography effectively meets all of the requirements above but may be flawed by minor issues of organization and/or surface errors.

A C final essay and annotated bibliography meets most but not all of the requirements above and may also be flawed by issues of organization and/or surface errors.

A D final essay and annotated bibliography meets only a few of the requirements above and may also be flawed by issues of organization and/or surface errors.

An F final essay and annotated bibliography fails to meet the requirements above and may also be flawed by substantial issues of organization and/or surface errors.

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Next Up

Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, revisit the Dictionary and World Builder pages on the Scrabble website. Also review the blog posts devoted to Scrabble tips.

Today in class, before you continue planning your group presentations, you will complete an exercise that offers you practice in some of the key moves of academic writing: (1) introducing a quotion with a signal phrase, (2) following it with a parenthetical citation, and (3) developing a paragraph by offering your own ideas on the subject of the quotation.

As model for you, I offer the sample paragraph below, which focuses on the Diego Velaszquez painting above and the Pablo Picasso painting below.

Sample Paragraph

The authors of Writing Analytically note, “There are provocative differences between Velásquez’s original and Picasso’s copy in size, spatial configuration, and palette” (Rosewasser and Stephen 268). Yet despite those differences, The Maids of Honor (Las Meninas, after Velásquez) features all of the figures in the same spirit Velásquez depicts them. Along with the painter’s canvas out of view, the artists’ foregrounding of elements ordinarily relegated to the perimeter—children, pets, servants, the artist, himself—invite a new way of seeing. Both Velásquez’s seventeenth-century baroque rendering of King Phillip IV’s court and Picasso’s cubist reassembling of it challenge viewers’ expectations of the subjects of art.

The paragraph that follows is the same as the one above, but the parenthetical citation includes only the page number because the authors are named in the signal phrase. In academic writing, whenever you quote more than one source, the authors’ names should appear either in a signal phrase or in the parenthetical citation, not both. Your analysis was an exception to this rule because your cited only one source, the text that served as your subject.

Sample Paragraph

David Rosenwasser and Jill Stephens, the authors of Writing Analytically, note, “There are provocative differences between Velásquez’s original and Picasso’s copy in size, spatial configuration, and palette” (268). Yet despite those differences, The Maids of Honor (Las Meninas, after Velásquez) features all of the figures in the same spirit Velásquez depicts them. Along with the painter’s canvas out of view, the artists’ foregrounding of elements ordinarily relegated to the perimeter—children, pets, servants, the artist, himself—invite a new way of seeing. Both Velásquez’s seventeenth-century baroque rendering of King Phillip IV’s court and Picasso’s cubist reassembling of it challenge viewers’ expectations of the subjects of art.

Directions

• As practice in three of the key moves of academic writing, use the paragraphs above as models for your own paragraph focusing on Ian Falconer’s The Competition. (See page 108.)
• Include in your paragraph a signal phrase that introduces one of the following two quotations:

“At its most serious, The New Yorker cover may speak to American history, in which New York has been a major point of entry for generations of immigrants, embracing diversity and nonconformity, while viewing the rest of the nation as more homogenous.”

“[T]he magazine is [. . .] admitting, yes America, we New Yorkers do think that we’re cooler and more individual than the rest of you, but we also know that we shouldn’t be so smug about it.”

• Follow the quotation with a parenthetical citation. If you name the authors in the signal phrase, include only the page number, 112, in the parenthetical citation. If you do not name the authors in the signal phrase, include their last names before the page number.
• Develop the paragraph with two or more sentences that offer your own reading of the magazine cover.
• Follow your paragraph with a work cited entry:

Work Cited

Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. “Arriving at an Interpretive Conclusion: Making Choices.” Writing Analytically. 9th edition, Wadsorth/Cengage, 2024. pp. 111-12.

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Next Up

Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, revisit the Dictionary and World Builder pages on the Scrabble website. Also review the blog posts devoted to Scrabble tips.

This morning in class, you will plan and draft a short midterm reflective essay that documents your work in the first half of the semester, focusing on your analysis and one or two other assignments or aspects of the course that have contributed to your development as a writer and a student. In addition to your analysis, assignments and aspects of the course to consider include the following:

• Keeping a journal
• Completing Check, Please! assignments
• Studying one of the readings examined class, including “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” “The Day that Language Came into My Life,” “Back Story” (from The Blind Side), “The Falling Man,” “The School,” the sample literacy narrative (“A Bridge to Words”), or the sample analysis (“The Strange Fruit of Sosnowiec”)
• Reading and editing samples of student writing
• Writing for an online audience beyond the classroom/creating and maintaining a WordPress blog
• Collaborating with your classmates on in-class writing assignments
• Playing Scrabble/Collaborating with your teammates on Wordplay Day
• Writing longhand
• Limiting screen time

Include in your reflective essay the following elements:

• A title that offers a window into your reflection
• An opening paragraph that introduces your focus and presents your thesis
• Body paragraphs that offer concrete details from your work to support your thesis.
• A relevant quotation from Writing Analytically. Introduce your quotation with a signal phrase and follow it with a parenthetical citation.  In addition to quoting a relevant passage from Writing Analytically, you may quote one of the texts that we have studied in class.
• A conclusion that revisits the thesis without restating it verbatim
• An MLA-style works cited entry for your source or sources

Sample MLA Style Works Cited Entries

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

Junod, Tom. “The Falling Man.” Esquire, vol. 140, no. 3, Sept. 2003, pp. 176+. Gale Academic OneFile Select, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A106423422/EAIM?u=hpu_main&sid=bookmark-EAIM&xid=ce48797f.

Keller, Helen. “The Day Language Came into My Life.” Chapter Four. The Story of My Life. https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/keller/life/life.html.

King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University, https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/sites/mlk/files/letterfrombirmingham_wwcw_0.pdf.

Lewis, Michael. Chapter One: “Back Story.” The Blind Side. 2006. Norton, 2009. pp.15-16.

Lucas, Jane. “A Bridge to Words.” Jane Lucas, 11 Sept. 2023, https://janelucas.com/2023/09/11/eng-1103-a-bridge-to-words/.

—. “The Strange Fruit of Sosnowiec.” Jane Lucas, 2 Oct. 2023, https://janelucas.com/2023/10/02/eng-1103-the-strange-fruit-of-sosnowiec/.

Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. “Analysis and Argument.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2019. pp. 7-8.

—. “Analysis and Everyday Life: More Than Breaking a Subject into Its Parts.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2024. pp. 6-7.

—. “Integrating Quotations into Your Paper.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2019. pp. 343-46.

—. “The Idea of the Paragraph.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2019. pp. 307-313.

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

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Next Up

Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, revisit the Dictionary and World Builder pages on the Scrabble website. Also review the posts on my blog devoted to Scrabble tips. 

Revising Your Analysis

As you continue to revise your analysis, review “The Strange Fruit of Sosnowiec” and consider the elements of the essay that we examined in class on Monday: the thesis, the examples of connections and separations that I offer as support for my thesis, and conclusion strategies that I employ in the final paragraph.

Additional Citations

You are not required to cite any text other than the essay, essay excerpt, or chapter excerpt that serves as your subject, but if you include any ideas from my class notes, you should name me in sentence and include a parenthetical citation and a work cited entry for the blog post in which the idea appears. In class on Monday, I distributed a handout with samples of additional citations and am including them here as well:

Example

Dr. Jane Lucas observes that “choosing not to divide the first paragraph creates an unbroken movement that parallels the unbroken downward flight of his [Junod’s] subject, the Falling Man” (par. 3).

Work Cited

Lucas, Jane. “ENG 1103: Tom Junod’s ‘The Falling Man.’” Jane Lucas, 19 Feb. 2024, https://janelucas.com/2024/02/19/eng-1103-tom-junods-the-falling-man.

The example above includes the parenthetical citation (par.3) because the source, the February 19 blog post, is an unpaginated source.

Work cited entries for the blog posts that include notes on the texts we have studied are listed below.

Sample Works Cited Entries

Lucas, Jane. “ENG 1103: A Second Look at Sedaris and a First Glimpse of Heller.” Jane Lucas, 22 Jan. 2024, https://janelucas.com/2024/01/22/eng-1103-a-second-look-at-sedaris-and-a-first-glimpse-of-keller-2.

—. “ENG 1103: Donald Barthelme’s ‘The School.’” Jane Lucas, 20 Feb. 2024, https://janelucas.com/2024/02/20/eng-1103-donald-barthelemes-the-school.

—. “ENG 1103: Field Notes and Peer Responses.” Jane Lucas, 13 Feb. 2004, https://janelucas.com/2024/02/13/eng-1103-field-notes-and-peer-responses.

—. “ENG 1103: ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail.’” Jane Lucas, 15 Jan. 2024, https://janelucas.com/2024/01/15/eng-1103-letter-from-birmingham-jail-2.

—. “ENG 1103: ‘Me Talk Pretty One Day.’” Jane Lucas, 17 Jan. 2024, https://janelucas.com/2024/01/17/eng-1103-me-talk-pretty-one-day.

—. “ENG 1103: Tom Junod’s ‘The Falling Man.’” Jane Lucas, 19 Feb. 2024, https://janelucas.com/2024/02/19/eng-1103-tom-junods-the-falling-man.

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Planning for the Midterm Reflection

In class on Wednesday, you will plan and compose a midterm reflection that documents your work in the first half of the semester, focusing on your analysis and one or two other assignments or aspects of the course that have contributed to your development as a writer and a student. In addition to reflecting on your analysis, you may reflect on one or two of the following:

• Keeping a journal
• Completing Check, Please! assignments
• Studying one of the readings examined class, including “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” “The Day that Language Came into My Life,” “Back Story” (from The Blind Side), “The Falling Man,” “The School,” the sample literacy narrative (“A Bridge to Words”), or the sample analysis “The Strange Fruit of Sosnowiec”
• Writing for an online audience beyond the classroom/creating and maintaining a WordPress blog
• Collaborating with your classmates on in-class writing assignments
• Playing Scrabble/collaborating with your teammates on Wordplay Day
• Writing longhand
• Limiting screen time

You will be required to include a relevant quotation from Writing Analytically. To prepare for that element of the reflection, review the sections of the textbook listed below, and select a relevant sentence, clause, or phrase to quote.

Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. “Analysis and Argument.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2019. pp. 7-8.

—. “Analysis and Everyday Life: More Than Breaking a Subject into Its Parts.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2024. pp. 6-7.

—. “Integrating Quotations into Your Paper.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2019. pp. 343-46.

—. “The Idea of the Paragraph.” Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2019. pp. 307-313.

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Next Up

In class on Wednesday, you will compose your midterm reflection. (See the notes above.) Wednesday, March 6 (before class) is also the due date for your analysis; the hard deadline is Friday, March 8 (before class). Review the assignment submission requirements, and be sure to post your analysis both as a Word or PDF file to Blackboard and as a blog entry on your WordPress site.

The analysis that follows is one that I wrote as a model for my students in 2021. As you read it, note how I turn from summary to thesis (in bold) in the first paragraph. Also note how the paragraphs that follow offer support for the thesis with concrete details from the comic’s panels.

Since concluding paragraphs can be particularly difficult to write without repeating the introduction, today’s group work will include a close look at strategies for conclusions.

The Strange Fruit of Sosnowiec

In Chapter 4 of Art Spiegelman’s graphic memoir Maus, he depicts his father Vladek’s account of the hangings of four Jewish merchants in Sosnowiec, Poland. Vladek and his wife, Anja, learn from Anja’s father, Mr. Zylberberg, that the Nazis have arrested his friend Nahum Cohn and his son. With his head bowed in sorrow, Mr. Zylberberg says to Anja and Vladek, “The Germans intend to make an example of them!” (83). That image of Mr. Zylberberg speaking with Vladek and Anja overlays the larger panel that dominates the page, one that depicts the horror that Mr. Zylberberg anticipates: the murder of his friend Nahum Cohn, Cohn’s son, and two other Jewish merchants. That haunting panel and the smaller ones that frame it illustrate the complexity of Spiegelman’s seemingly simple composition. His rendering of the panels of the living in conjunction with the fragmented panels of the hanged merchants simultaneously conveys connection and separation: both the grieving survivors’ ties to the dead and the hanged men’s objectification at the hands of the Nazis.

The placement of the overlaying panel not only hides part of the horror behind it, but it also connects Vladek’s father-in-law to one of the victims. Mr. Zylberberg’s head and torso appear directly above the suspended legs and feet of one of the hanged men, creating an image that merges the two.

Spiegelman further emphasizes the mourners’ identification with the hanged men by extending two of the nooses’ ropes upward to the smaller panel above them, linking the living to the dead. Additionally, Spiegelman underscores the link with Vladek’s line of narration at the bottom of the smaller panel: “I did much business with Cohn!” (83). The word “with” appears directly above the rope, punctuating the connection between both Nahum Cohn and his friend Mr. Zylberberg and Zylberberg’s son-in-law, Vladek.

While the panels of the hangings yoke the living to the dead, Spiegelman’s presentation of the hanged men in fragments also objectifies them. The final panels on the page depict only their shoes and part of their pant legs suspended above the onlookers, images that may evoke in some readers thoughts of the last remnants of the Jews who stepped barefoot into the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

Whether the hanged men’s shoes call to mind those mountains of leather left behind by the Jews, the separation of their lower legs and feet from the rest of their bodies turns them into something less than human—not people, but mere parts. Thus, Spiegelman creates a picture of the hangings that illustrates both the mourners’ identification with the victims and the Nazis’ perception of the Jews as less than human: the malignant ideology that the artist has pinpointed “at the very heart of the killing project.”

Spiegelman’s transformation of the Nazi propaganda portrayals of Jews as rats remains an astounding achievement thirty-five years after the publication of the first volume of Maus. But seeing the hanged merchants in Modrzejowska Street in the midst of the George Floyd murder trial in Minneapolis and less than three months after the January 6 Capitol riot reminds readers that the panels of Spiegelman’s memoir have grown more prescient. The nooses evoke images of Officer Derek Chauvin’s knee on George Floyd’s neck, the January 6 chants to hang the Vice President, and a T-shirt glimpsed in the Capitol crowd, one with a Nazi eagle below the acronym “6MWE” (Six Million Wasn’t Enough), a reference to the numbers of Jews slaughtered in the Holocaust. Our heads are bowed in sorrow with Mr. Zylberberg’s. The strange fruit of our past, both distant and recent, should seem far stranger.

Works Cited

Spiegelman, Art. Maus I. Pantheon, 1986.

—. “Why Mice?” Interview by Hillary Chute. The New York Review of Books, 20 Oct. 2011, https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2011/10/20/why-mice/.

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After we examine “The Strange Fruit of Sosnowiec,” you and two or three of your classmates will collaborate on an exercise that asks you to consider an example of the connections and separations that I address in my thesis. The exercise will also ask you to explore the conclusion strategies that I employ in the final paragraph.

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Next Up

In class on Wednesday, you will compose a reflective essay that focuses on your work over the first half of the semester. In your reflection, you will be required address your analysis and one or two other assignments or aspects of the course that have contributed to your development as a writer and a student. You will also be required to include at least one relevant quotation from a section of Writing Analytically devoted to analysis.