1. welcome
to a super class

2. quot;God Says Yes To Mequot;
by Kaylin Haught
I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don't paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I'm telling you is
Yes Yes Yes

3. metonym / metonymy

4. synecdoche
(si-NECK-de-key)

5. Writing Prompt: pick your favorite of
your 5 possible paper questions and
write about it. What interests you
about it? What would you write about?
What do you know already about the
topic? Will this topic keep you
interested for a few months?

6. What makes a good
research paper question?

7. Good questions =
good thesis statements

8. When you come across a thesis that seems strong to you, you
always, always, have to ask: Would any competent and
moderately attentive reader of this work disagree with me? If
not, then it’s not a good thesis, period.
That doesn’t mean, though, that you need to start over. You may
just be asking the wrong questions. That Hector fights for his
family, that Wiglaf is faithful to Beowulf — these are
uncontroversial statements. But what if you asked other
questions? For instance: How does Homer reveal to us Hector’s
deepest concerns? What scenes or events or conversations are
especially important in revealing his character to us, and how do
they do so? Why does the Beowulf poet place such emphasis on
the unique loyalty of Wiglaf? What key themes or ideas emerge
trough that character? These are matters reasonable people
could disagree about.

9. Questions I like:
What’s ideal? (con artist, church, school,
voting system)
Why? (Harry Potter’s popularity... Martin Luther’s
Reformation... zoos ... )
How? (coffee houses in England, mutants, literary
prose, volcanoes, Jesus as American icon)

10. Two kinds of questions I
don’t like:
Moral/ethical questions:
They become opinion pieces.
Questions requiring
original research:
Humanities questions seem to work better than science questions for
what we’re trying to accomplish.

11. For Friday: come up with 5
more possible questions. (Or
rewrite the ones you have to make them better if you
really like the ones you have already. )
For Monday: read (online,
encyclopedia, library, etc.) more
about 2 or 3 of your
questions.

12. For Tuesday:
Quick, individual meetings about topics.
For next Friday:
THE PROSPECTUS

13. The sharing of
possible ideas...