Valencia Writer: Readings

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• Analyze the following passage:
“If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?” (Sojourner Truth)

• How does Adichie define “Feminism Lite”?
• How do you define feminism?
• Analyze the following quotations:
“Being a feminist is like being pregnant” (Adichie)
“’Allow’ is a troubling word. ‘Allow’ is about power” (Adichie)

•Why does Judy Brady want a wife?
•Why do you think Brady chose satire to express their message?
•Why does Brady close their essay with a rhetorical question?

•How does bell hooks define feminism?
•Discuss/analyze the following passage:
“Males as a group have and do benefit the most from patriarchy, from the assumption that they are superior to females and should rule over us. But those benefits have come with a price” (bell hooks)

• Discuss/analyze the following quotations:
“We may smile at this elaborate symbolism, but it is a poet's perception of the power of the hand for good and evil” (Keller)
“For it is my hand that binds me to humanity” (Keller)

'Notes on Nationalism' is an essay completed in May 1945 by George Orwell and published in the first issue of the British magazine Polemic in October 1945. Political theorist Gregory Claeys insists it is a key source for understanding Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

•Why does Eighner prefer the term “scavenging”?
•Discuss/analyze the following passage:
"The second lesson is of the transience of material being. This has not quite converted me to a dualist, but it has made some headway in that direction. I do not suppose that ideas are immortal, but certainly mental things are longer-lived than other material things." (Eighner)

•Who is the “American Scholar”?
•Why must the “Man Thinking” look to nature?
•Discuss/analyze the following passage:
“It is the raw material out of which the intellect molds her splendid products. A strange process too, this by which experience is converted into thought, as a mulberry-leaf is converted into satin” (Emerson)

•What is the “cosmic perspective”?
•Discuss/analyze the following passages:
“Yet the cosmic view comes with a hidden cost” (deGrasse Tyson)
“The day our knowledge of the cosmos ceases to expand, we risk regressing to the childish view that the universe figuratively and literally revolves around us” (deGrasse Tyson)

•“Though literature as an art form may be fading away,” writes Robert Coover, “raw storytelling seems to be part of everyman’s DNA, deeper than form or distribution mode, and as Boccaccio’s plague stories remind us, will probably continue to the end of human time.” Do you agree? Discuss
•How do you define “literature”?

•Discuss/Analyze the following passage:
“Of all days in the year, we will turn our faces towards that City upon Christmas Day, and from its silent hosts bring those we loved, among us” (Dickens)
•As you grow older, does the meaning of Christmas change? Discuss

•Are you a feminist? What is feminism?
•Why can’t many college women “relate to feminism?”
•Discuss/Analyze the following passage:
"Contemporary feminism carries with it a troubled legacy of affirming equality without reconciling the reality of dependency — one that has contributed to our country’s shameful lack of family policies. The challenges inevitably arise when nurturing and raising another human being. That’s where the tenets of mainstream feminism, based on the Enlightenment values of equality, autonomy, and self-determination, have always seemed inadequate." (Laurino)

•Why does Douglass repeatedly use “You” and “Your” in the speech?
•Discuss/Analyze the following passage:
"To [the slave], your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour." (Douglass)

Potential Discussion Questions:
1. How would you characterize the author’s tone? Do you detect any bias in this text?
2. The author notes that acid rain is a “regional environmental issue that [has] affected Western Europe and eastern North America” (Bradford). Based on causes of acid rain the author explains, why might those areas have seen more of it?
3. Identify two or more modern causes of acid rain.
4. In the “Solutions” section, the author states that many utilities companies “offer solar packages to their customers that require no installation and low costs” (Bradford). What is the implied benefit of this as regards acid rain?
5. What methods does the author use to create credibility in her presentation of the details of acid rain generation?

Potential Discussion Questions:
1. What examples of Disney’s “appealingly safe and familiar” food presentation strategies does the author provide? How did those foods prepare her to try less familiar foods later?
2. Why does she describe the “Africa outpost” as “confused” (Owens)? Why might this continent not see a Disney-fied version of a dish?
3. Examine how the author uses the word “authentic” in the essay. What does she imply makes a food authentic?
4. Explain how the author thinks that “Epcot’s lack of [culinary] authenticity” (Owens) generated an interest in trying more different foods

Potential Discussion Questions:
1. The claims in this essay are pretty commonly heard. What gives Hanke some standing/credibility in making her case?
2. The author states that nearly ¾ of Millenials prefer digital conversation, which she argues “helps them communicate more efficiently [but] diminishes their communication effectiveness” (Hanke). What’s more efficient about social media communication? In what ways is it less effective than in-person interaction? 3. Why might regular social media use cause a “decline” in interpersonal communication? What claims does the author make about this decline?
4. “Poor grammar is now commonplace, while abbreviations and acronyms have become commonplace,” according to Hanke. So what? Why might this be problematic?
5. Hanke refers to a study that indicated that “people in device-free conversations were better listeners and more empathetic to those speaking.” What would cause better listening and empathy in face-to-face situations?

Potential Discussion Questions:
1. Why does Carson suggest that “biocide” would be a more appropriate term than “insecticide”? How does such a term change help her argument/thesis?
2. How does the book’s title imply its main cause-and-effect argument?
3. What does Carson think about single-crop farming? What role does that process play in the need for stronger insecticides?
4. Carson quotes the American ecologist Paul Shepard saying, “Why should we tolerate a diet of weak poisons, a home in insipid surroundings, a circle of acquaintances who are not quite our enemies, the noise of motors with just enough relief to prevent insanity? Who would want to live in a world which is just not quite fatal?” How might Shepard’s descriptions match modern life? Do you agree with such a characterization?
5. Why did people not recognize the dangers of DDT when it was first used as an insecticide? Summarize the effects of DDT on plants, people, and animals that Carson enumerates.
6. Explain Carson’s use of the analogy of Medea’s robe.
7. What role does water play in the dissemination of DDT, malathion, and other pesticides?

Potential Discussion Questions:
1. Explain how Klein applies the biological idea of “mistiming” to human activity. What does she suggest gets in the way of global collective action on climate change?
2. Summarize the ways in which Klein states or implies that consumer behavior contributes to climate change.
3. Since Klein’s article is short and doesn’t do so, come up with some specific examples of how people’s consumption and/or daily behaviors can contribute to the climate crisis.
4. What do you think of Klein’s claim that our culture is “of the perpetual present, one that deliberately severs itself from the past that created us as well as the future we are shaping with our actions”? How do you see this in your own life (or do you)?

Potential Discussion Questions:
1. What does Tocqueville mean when he writes that the American “clutches everything, holds nothing fast, but soon loosens his grasp to pursue new gratifications”? Do you see this in people today?
2. How does Tocqueville see American notions of equality as a cause for American dissatisfaction and restlessness?
3. Consider this line from the excerpt: “Besides the good things that he possesses, he every instant fancies a thousand others that death will prevent him from trying if he does not try them soon. This thought fills him with anxiety, fear, and regret and keeps his mind in ceaseless trepidation, which leads him perpetually to change his plans and his abode” (Tocqueville). How does Tocqueville imply that the knowledge of death affects American behavior?

Potential Discussion Questions:
1. What is “meritocracy”? How does Cooper argue against the idea that America is one?
2. Define the idea of epigenetics as presented in the essay. How does Cooper suggest that the expression of DNA plays into the possibility of future success for many people?
3. Explain why Cooper states that it is “expensive to be poor.”
4. Examine the cause-effect relationship implied by Cooper’s statement that math performance is a “symptom and not a cause” of the achievement gap between students from poor households and those from more affluent households. How does Cooper explain the math gap as an effect of poverty rather than an effect of educational strategy?