Research

You may want to review the Formal Essay Assignment before reading the following info.

One of themes we've encountered again and again in this course is that writing is a conversation that a writer is having with hir audience and with other informed writers.

In our last mid-term, for example, you wrote essays that conversed with me about how your ideas relate to Will Saletan's ideas about humility in politics.

There are two different kinds of research. 

• One type of research is forensic.  It's all about gathering background facts and information and context and concrete information to draw a particular picture of the world.  A cell biologist gathers data about how fast cancer cells grow in mice to draw a picture about metabolism and cancer.  A sociologist gathers data about funding and laws and other factors that shape an immigrant's secondary education in Sacramento.  A literary scholar gathers data about how American literature represents black masculinity.  

• Another type of research finds other informed writers to include in the conversation about their particular topic.  Informed writers will be other expert researchers who have well-developed, coherent opinions about the topic that interests you.  When we explain to our readers the particular picture of the world that these other writers have drawn, and when we explain how that picture differs from our own, we clarify and strengthen our arguments.

This kind of research is like taking the mid-term (do you agree or disagree or something in between and why?), but it allows you to respond to essays of your own choosing, which are interested in the same topic you have chosen.

Today, I want you to check out this information from Cornell University about how we choose these other informed writers for the second formal essay assignment. 

Here is the link to our Sacramento City College library.  PLEASE ask the librarians for help!
And keep in mind that we will be using MLA style citations in this class.