1 of 17

ENGL 131A

Critical Reading Synopsis/Pulling Quotes/Lines of Inquiry

2 of 17

Agenda

  1. Week 7 Overview
  2. Free…discussion
  3. Critical Reading Synopsis
  4. Quoting Workshop

3 of 17

Free… discussion

What was the last “rabbit hole” you went down? If you haven’t gone down any recently, what are some things you’ve been thinking about? As in, what random thoughts have occurred to you outside of an academic context?

4 of 17

Following a Thread

Galerie Arnot, 1914/1915

Self-Portrait with Chinese Lantern Plant, 1912

5 of 17

Following a Thread

  • How did I come across this piece of art to begin with?
    • What about this piece “spoke” to me? (found interesting, etc.)
  • Lead me to look at the artist holistically
    • Bio
    • Facts
    • Other pieces
  • Down a guided “rabbit hole”

6 of 17

Following a Thread

  • Let’s practice, then, how we can use intuition to follow these lines of inquiry in a guided context…
  • I’m going to show a pair of words/ideas on the screen, and you have to go from the Wikipedia page of the first one to the second one as quick as you can.

7 of 17

Following a Thread

  • Portland Trail Blazers —> Iceland

8 of 17

Following a Thread

  • Nike Air Max —> Nirvana

9 of 17

Following a Thread

  • Egon Schiele (1890 - 1918)
    • Austrian Painter
      • What was his life like? Why’d he pass away at a young age?
    • Portraits
    • Raw, visceral
    • Early Expressionism
      • What’s Expressionism?

10 of 17

Following a Thread

Critical Reading Synopsis

MVQ: Why are you pursuing this thread to begin with? What brought you here?

Methods: How is the text thinking through its points?

Frameworks: How does the source contextualize itself?

Interventions: What is the source actually saying? (note: varies depending on type of source)

Further citations: Does the text cite anyone/anything else I should pursue?

11 of 17

Following a Thread

Egon Schiele bio synopsis: https://www.egon-schiele.com/

MVQ: Who was Egon Schiele? What was his life like, and what were his contributions to art? How did he influence Expressionism?

Methods: Textual (art, history)

Frameworks: Historicized the contexts of art history in Austria/Austria’s place in world history in the early 1900’s, before discussing Schiele’s life in depth chronologically

Interventions: (IMPORTANT) as a biography, it doesn’t really make any claims, just states historical facts rather

Further citations: Gustav Klint, Expressionism, Symbolism, French Impressionism, Schiele’s art

12 of 17

Following a Thread

When breaking sources down like this, how can I quote properly? Most importantly, why am I quoting something to begin with?

  • Quotes are basically fragments → need your own thoughts to frame it
  • X says “______”
  • X argues on page Y that “__________”
  • I agree with X that “______________”

13 of 17

Following a Thread

  • According to the biography on Schiele’s own website, they attest that “as he grew less self centered and more outward-looking, his art grew less anguished and introspective.”

How is the quote here functioning? Is it doing enough work to justify its inclusion?

14 of 17

Pulling Quotes

From: “What Money Can Buy,” by Bryce Covert, The Nation

As a way to combat poverty, Lowrey contends that a UBI could work in the United States, too. It “could be a powerful tool to eliminate deprivation…. About 41 million Americans were living below the poverty line as of 2016,” she notes. “A $1,000-a-month grant would push many of them above it.”

Lowrey’s argument about poverty is persuasive. By giving every family in the United States $250 a month for each of its children, we would reduce child poverty by about 40 percent and effectively wipe out the most extreme cases. By giving every American about $3,000 a month, we would cut the official poverty rate in half and provide a higher standard of living for all—even for those who are not impoverished. In a review of the existing research on universal cash dispersals in developed countries—the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend, for example, which gives every Alaskan resident a cut of the state’s oil profits—economist Ioana Marinescu found that universal basic incomes help people improve their nutrition, education, and health.

15 of 17

Pulling Quotes

As a class…

  1. Let’s make a claim about this excerpt
    1. Do we agree? Disagree? Why?
  2. Let’s pull a quote to support/contradict our claim.
    • What makes this quote important?
    • How does it reinforce/contradict our claim?
    • Who is saying it, and so what?

While Lowrey feels UBI could work in America, we disagree because an analysis into similar UBI programs, like “the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend, for example, which gives every Alaskan resident a cut of the state’s oil profits,” has not worked to increase quality of life because Alaska has high violent crime rates

16 of 17

Pulling Quotes

According to Lowrey, a UBI could also address one of the central problems in today’s precarious labor market: By allowing workers to walk away from a job, it could give them considerable leverage over their employers and provide them with more say in shaping the terms of their employment. A UBI, she argues, would

ameliorate the catastrophic loss of worker power…. With a basic income, workers could refuse to take a job with low pay. With a basic income, workers could demand better benefits. With a basic income, companies would have to compete to win workers over.

Here Lowrey encounters the same challenges as Hughes and Stern: None of the amounts being proposed by UBI supporters come close to giving workers the power to walk away from an exploitative job. Lowrey’s version of the UBI would consist of $1,000 a month for every citizen of the country, potentially paid for by a potpourri of policy options. (Hughes promotes an even stingier one: just $500 a month for a limited slice of the populace.)

17 of 17

Workshop

For the rest of class:

  • Work on the critical reading synopsis for a source of your own