WEEK 13: STRUCTURING Dr.

Will
Kurlinkus
YOUR FINAL PAPERS
 FINAL PAPER REQUIREMENTS
Your paper (5,500-7,500 words—
not including citation or notes)
should have something to do
with rhetoric, composition,
literacy and technology from one
or more of the perspectives
we’ve studied. All approaches/
methods are welcome, and
you’ve already worked with me
to define a direction. You will
present your work in progress
and receive feedback from me
and your peers.
¡  5,500-7,500 words—not including
citation, notes, or images/
captions.
¡  Cover page and page numbers
¡  Section headings + required
sections (intro, methods/lit review,
~3 body complications, conclusion)
¡  Methods and Methodological
description
¡  Clear lit review with key definitions
and theories engaged
¡  At least 4 end notes
¡  At least 15 secondar y sources
¡  Images if visuals are described in
the text
¡  Engages the field of rhet-comp
¡  Choose a specific rhet-comp
journal and make sure you are
writing to it (citing its authors,
understanding its audience)
NEXT WEEK YOU HAVE 6 PAGES DUE
 INTRODUCTION

Key Moves
¡  Make me understand your topic
¡  Show me your problem/topic, demonstrate it
¡  Pose your research question or puzzle in relation to that
demonstration
¡  Clearly signpost

Common Errors
¡  I don’t know what you’re talking about at the end of this section
¡  I don’t know what the parts of the paper will be, what your topic
is, or what your theoretical engagement is.
¡  TLDR—remember, people really want to get to your body
sections/argument proper
 METHODOLOGY+LIT REVIEW+METHOD
+GAP
Key Moves
¡  Make me under stand your topic better
¡  Introduce the tools, conver sations, key definitions, and theories I need to
under stand your topic.
¡  If someone said, “Hey, this author is so cool; I want to be like them and
per form a similar study,” what would they need to know?
¡  Tell me why you chose your specific examples, what you’ll be looking for in
them specifically, and how studying your specific examples will intro
something new.

Common Error s
¡  Looks like you don’t know the ongoing conver sation
¡  You don’t engage the most recent publications on the topic, don’t engage
the most famous people, don’t engage your journal’s author s.
¡  TLDR—you can’t cover ever ything you covered in your annotated bib, it’s a
fine balance between introing key concepts author s here and elsewhere in
your paper.
¡  Gap isn’t real/isn’t an argument: Don’t tell me no one has studied this if
they really have. Illustrate, cite, and argue your gap.
 BODY SECTIONS

Key Moves
¡  Make me understand your topic’s nuances as compared to the
literature
¡  Don’t simply impose order from your lit review—let your subject
and examples break your tools and break your readers’ guessing
machines.
¡  Use citations that explain your subject in nuanced ways, not the
other way around.

Common Errors
¡  Too easy
¡  Not differentiating your sections enough
¡  Not engaging your primary sources epistemologies but pasting
them over with your own
¡  Missing some element of point, evidence, analysis.
 PRACTICE: 10 WORDS A PIECE

1.  What is your topic?

2.  What is your research question?
3.  What is is your theoretical focus? (what tools, concepts,
theories are you engaging)
4.  What is your gap?
5.  What is your method and justification?
6.  Why is your topic important to the world?
 CURATION AS WRITING/RESEARCH

¡  “The careful consideration of seemingly trivial objects,

uncover[s] and explore[s] past lives and individual
interactions, and test assumptions about the present by
interrogating the past.”—Joanne Bernardi and Nora Dimmock

§  Digital Archive of Literacy Narrative

§  What types of collections and curations might we have students do?
 MARKED VS. UNMARKED
¡  Identities and characteristics of the dominant culture go
unmarked, whereas non-dominant culture gets marked.
¡  This is place determined.
¡  High school sports teams
 RICHWOOD SCIENTIFIC

“I argue that, rather than producing “things,” the activities in

the Women’s Studies Multimedia Studio produce space for
modes of thought that put pressure on what matters in digital
humanities scholarship and teaching.”
—Chapter 27, Melissa Rogers

¡  http://richwoodscientific.com/index.php/author/rsiadmin/
 REPAIR CULTURE

“The cultural primacy of making, particularly in tech culture — that

it is intrinsically superior to not-making, repair, analysis, and
especially caregiving — is informed by the gendered histor y of who
is credited with making things and, in particular, who made things
that were shared with the world, not merely for hearth and home.”
—Chapter 36, Debbie Chachra

¡  What does it mean to get something repaired? What are the

values (economic and cultural) of repair over buying new?
¡  How might the idea and values of repair culture be remediated
into academic writing?