Thursday again

Back from Soc 1 lecture: film on social construction of race.

Reviewed blog entries for Writing 1 on How Are You Feeling and On the Readings.

Wrote up some comments online for assigment 1 in W1 as follows:

Assignment 1

Some reflections on Assignment 1. I just finished reading over your blog entries in response to the readings on emotional intelligence and I think some of you may already have a good start on a paper. You would need to expand of course. One way to do this would be to point to the articles a bit more. Quote. And then be sure to respond to the quote. Tell the reader what you see in it. Don't assume the other readers see the same thing that you do.

Also when you quote somebody, you sound as if you are the authority. "So and so says." That sounds powerful already, as if you really know what so and so says. Also when you write so and so says you separate yourself from so and so (since you are the one quoting so and so) and that avoids the problem of your paper coming out sounding as if you are just repeating what you have read without your being aware that's what you are doing.

If you don't quote, sometimes you come out sound like the ventriloquist's dummy. You are the dummy and the thing you read is talking through you.

So that's one way to expand...look at the readings a bit more.

Another way to expand: use examples. People are already doing this in the blogs. You are using yourself as examples or maybe somebody that you know. Somebody wrote about "clueless Harriet," the very school smart young woman, who lacked common sense. This entry might have been expanded by giving some examples of what it means to say Harriet is clueless or lacking in common sense.

As these remarks indicate, I would like you to quote at least once from part of the readings and to cite at least a couple of times. As I said academic writing is usually writing about other writing. So you will need to quote and cite and learn how to do that a little bit.

Remember, please, this paper is not a test of the reading. I do not want you to repeat material to show that you have read it or just to fill up the pages. I want you to pick the parts of the reading of most interest to you and to what you want to say and to "use" those readings to make your point.

You could write on a specific point or something more abstract. The readings for this first unit all deal with a kind of intellectual problem having to do with the role of emotion in psychological and social life. By picking these readings, I am making the argument that the emotions are too frequently ignored in our understanding of social and cultural activity. Descartes said, Cogito Ergo Sum (I think therefore I am), but I say and more and more people seem to be saying, Descartes was wrong. "I feel therefore I am." would be a better assertion.

Intimately related to this issue of the emotions is another. I am making the argument that there is no mind separate from brain. The emotions seemed to have evolved earlier than reason (that we usually associate with the mind), but the emotions are more primitive and more clearly related to the body. We feel emotions in our bodies in one way or another. Thus the brain and the body are intimately interwoven (and indeed are one) if we place emotions at the center of our understanding of the brain.

That's why I am having you read the spooky little story of poor Phineas Gage. This story and the analysis of it clearly demonstrate critical links between brain and body and personality.