Revision blog post response

I’ve had a chance to look over your original and revised paragraphs, and in some case comment on individual posts with questions or suggestions for further revision, so check your posts! Overall, I have a few suggestions to make as well. In many cases, I noticed that “revised” paragraphs hadn’t been revised so much as copy-edited and expanded with a few new sentences. This is NOT revision. The purpose of the assignment was to get you to re-THINK your claims, which oftentimes entails scrapping old work and writing entirely new sentences in their place. As added incentive, I will remind you that a paper cannot pass if it does not undergo substantial revision.

My suggestion for those of you who still need to revise their paragraphs is to work out from your examples in order to develop a more specific claim. This means looking at the evidence you’re using and asking yourself not just “How are these two (or three) things related?” but also “What distinguishes them from one another?” As you begin to articulate the distinctions between two things you’re connecting, you can use that finer description as the basis for a more specific claim. We’ll have an example to practice this on Thursday (for hybrid students) and/or look at examples of effective revision (non-hybrid students).

One other important thing to note is that when you’re developing your argument, you don’t have to agree entirely or disagree entirely with your sources. In fact, you may disagree with large parts of what Davidson, Lethem, or Johnson is saying, but that does not preclude agreeing with or finding support in smaller claims within their texts. The important thing to remember is that many of their examples or claims are open to multiple avenues of interpretation. You can use the example of ant colonies, for instance, to make any number of claims: perhaps ants are examples of systems that don’t need hierarchy, or of the fact that “intelligent” individuals are not required to create “collective intelligence.” Use interpretation (i.e. close reading) to make it clear how an example supports your argument, which doesn’t necessitate summarizing or agreeing with an author’s entire claim. Perhaps, even, you could use examples from one author to refute the claims of another. It’s up to you to figure out how to put the texts in conversation with one another.  

Special note to hybrid students: it’s been pointed out to me that you won’t be able to hand in your peer review sheets until after your final draft is due. That’s fine: just bring them to class on Thursday, October 13^th.