This weekend…

1. This weekend… • Paper 1.3 • Read Presentation Essays • For Monday, be ready to discuss these essays with your group • Think about any questions you have about the essays • Look for “the conversation” between them: • Agreements/shared assumptions/shared ideas • Disagreements/different methods/different evidence • Think about how YOU would want to enter this conversation

2. How to Be a Good Conversationalist TS English/Fall2013

3. “Steps” for Paper 1.3 • In this order… • A short, and purposeful summary that leads to… • The SPECIFIC claim in Richards’s essay that you are RESPONDING to (quote) which leads up to…. • YOUR OWN CLAIM which requires… • One or two pieces of evidence/analysis that support it

4. “Steps” for Paper 1.3 “They Say”… “I Say”… In this order… • A short, and directed summary that leads up to… • The SPECIFIC aspect of Jordanova’s essay that you are RESPONDING to (quote) which leads up to…. • YOUR OWN CLAIM which requires… • One or two pieces of evidence/analysis that support it

5. Being a Good Conversationalist • Summary Tips • Use “action” oriented verbs to describe the author’s argument: • Richards argues, insists, suggests, claims… • Avoid “descriptive” verbs: • Richards says, talks about, mentions…

6. Being a Good Conversationalist • Summary Tips • Even though you are responding, that does not mean that you can’t have the conversation you want to have. • Potential response topics coming out of Richards: journalism, writing, industrial culture, mass media, (technology, gender, professionalization, genre, dialect, modernity, public authority, monsters, or any topic that you can suggest is connected to any of these)

7. Being a Good Conversationalist • Summary Tips: Many different summaries of Richards are possible. Leah Richards argues that by “drawing on the form and practices of the contemporary newspaper, Dracula also appropriates the authority of the press” (441). In doing so, she also interprets the vampire as representing the anxieties surrounding the “spread of information.” Ultimately, she argues that the text’s handling of multiple sources of information is “the means of controlling both Dracula and the anxieties… that the novel embodies” (Richards 448).

8. Being a Good Conversationalist • Summary Tips: Many different summaries of Richards are possible. In her essay about the status of journalism in Dracula, Leah Richards suggests that the novel’s staging of various written materials is representative of the power of the “modern” world. She argues that, while Dracula is himself a keeper of records and information which allows him “stage a covert invasion of England,” the Crew of Light’s ability to reproduce documents is part of his inevitable defeat (Richards 450). In her words, “modernity defeats him again” when he is unable to destroy all of the copies of Mina’s journal, which contains valuable information for his enemies (Richards 450).

9. Being a Good Conversationalist • AGREEING • In a conversation, a person who simply agrees without contributing his own arguments is like a “yes” man who evidently has no thoughts of his own. • If you “agree” be sure to make your own claim by… • Expanding on the present argument. (“While this is true, I would add that…”) • Proposing ramifications of the claim that the original author has not seen. (“This claim is important because it also helps us to understand…”) • Applying their ideas to another object or aspect of the text. (“This claim also applies in X situation, where it helps us to see…”)

10. Being a Good Conversationalist • DISAGREEING • In a conversation, a person who simply disagrees without contributing her own ideas or counter-arguments is like a grump who doesn’t seem to want the conversation to go on at all. • If you “disagree” be sure to make your own claim by… • Defining exactly what the limitations of the claim are (The argument is limited in that it fails to…) • Proposing an alternative solution to the idea that you think is wrong or problematic (Instead, I see this as…)

11. Being a Good Conversationalist • As Graff & Birkenstein suggest, the BEST responses will do a combination of “agreeing” and “disagreeing” - such as: • Agreeing UP TO A POINT and departing on a PARTICULAR, SPECIFIC aspect of the argument’s logic. • Agreeing with the points made, but EXPANDING their significance beyond the claim’s boundaries.

12. Being a Good Conversationalist • CAUTION! Any disagreement you take up in your writing must be justified by evidence/analysis. This means that you should need to consider your own evidence and the evidence of the author you are responding to. • Ex. I disagree with Richards’s idea that journalism was a transformed in 19th C British society. (do you have the historical evidence that would contradict Richards’s historical evidence?)

13. Being a Good Conversationalist • Get into your project groups • Imagine that you are engaging Richards on YOUR GROUP’S topic. Find a quote/claim that is on this topic and can contribute to that conversation.

14. Richards’s “Conversation” Here I am, sitting at a little oak table where in old times possibly some fair lady sat to pen, with much thought and many blushes, her ill-spelt love-letter, and writing in my diary in shorthand all that has happened since I closed it last. It is nineteenth century up-to-date with a vengeance. And yet, unless my senses deceive me, the old centuries had and have, powers of their own which mere ‘modernity’ cannot kill. (Stoker 41)

15. Richards’s “Conversation” In the library I found, to my great delight, a vast number of English books, whole shelves full of them and bound volumes of magazines and newspapers… The books were of the most varied kind – history, geography, politics, political economy, botany, geology, law – all relating to England and English life and customs and manners. (Stoker 25).