For Weds. (10:45)

Hello all,

Today instead of our traditional exercise we shared a morning intellectual devotional. Today's reading was about the Italian Renaissance, in recognition of the experiences that the Italian people are facing in light of the earthquake. Remember, Renaissance means rebirth.

We spent some time discussing the de Beauvoir reading. We shared some of our perspectives on the work. We spoke briefly about the other and the absolute. Remember the key point in the reading is the binary of Self/Subject and Other. The Self/Subject is the active, knowing subject and is by default male. De Beauvoir argues that the Other, who exists for the Self/Subject is female and feminized, occupying a secondary place in both concrete activity and subjective consciousness. The Other is not an equal complement to the Self/Subject, but rather serves as a projection of everything the Self/Subject rejects: immanence, passivity, voicelessness.

Keep these thoughts in your head as you read the selection from "The Bell Jar." We will have a knowledge nugget on Weds.

We also discussed how to conduct holistic peer reviews. I shared a writing sample from my past, and we discussed ways that we would offer feedback to the writer. I also shared a small handout that should help you as you peer review your peer's text. Remember, you should be crafting a one to two paragraph overview for the writer to aid in revision. Here is a sample:

You provide a very basic introduction, which has a basic thesis or focus statement—an exploration of hydrothermal vents—, but your text tends to meander a bit from your focus and seems to lack a true focus. Your text could benefit from a more-developed focus and therefore, a more developed and connected text. At times, the essay wanders around the topic and lacks connections for your reader. You seem to be attempting to connect ideas and research to your observations, but this process is not clear for your reader. You have a lot of great source material, but you seem to be just placing these into the texts without connecting the ideas in the sources to your overall focus for the text.

You have a lot of quotes that you just ‘drop’ into the text without providing connections and therefore, clarity, for your reader. Remember, when you use a quote to support or to express an idea, you need to guide your reader to understand the connection between your observation and the material quoted. You have a lot of research, but you are not implementing it to showcase your observations; instead, it appears that you are simply listing quotes that relate to your topic not support your point of view. APA is loosely followed. One of your reviewers observed that you have issues with references. You will want to review the proper methods for using research, as you do not want to plagiarize others’ ideas.

The text also suffers from a lack of clarity in sentence structure and word choice. Remember the text is all that your reader has in front of them, so you will want to make sure that as the writer you are crafting targeted and specific structures so that your reader clearly understands your point of view. Clarity is key.


I hope that the sample helps you as you craft your peer review. Remember this is similar to how we will be evaluating the texts as final polished drafts.

For Weds...

Read-The Bell Jar Selection

Write-Peer review reflection

Do-Peer Review

Take care, and thanks,

Kat