Purpose

The weekly journal entries are intended to help you think critically and carefully about the assigned reading. They provide you the opportunity to demonstrate that you?ve done the reading, of course, but also to record your thoughts and ideas, which might be helpful when you tackle the formal writing and speaking assignments.

Assignment

Each week you will write a journal entry (

minimum

of 350 words) that fruitfully engages the various texts assigned for that week. You need to write about each assigned text (or, in some cases, a podcast, short film, etc.). You should provide enough detail to demonstrate that you?ve read (listened, watched) thoroughly and carefully. You should write in college-level prose and provide specific examples from each text. You need to do more than summarize texts, though. The goal here is to analyze the texts, to really interrogate the thoughts and ideas in the texts, to think hard about the ways various authors approach a topic. It might be helpful to think of it this way: you’re more interested in thinking about

how

the author approaches the subject than writing what you think about the subject. For example, you don’t need to share your ideas about agriculture so much as you need to think about and fruitfully comment on the way the authors approach the subject of agriculture. That doesn’t mean you can’t share personal anecdotes or thoughts, of course. I just want to make sure that everyone is really focused on each author’s word choices, particular phrases the author uses to describe something, the author’s decision to use a particular image, etc.

When you write about a text, make sure you provide its title and the author’s full name. I would also encourage you to share the publication date. Dates/Historical context matter(s) a lot in the humanities.

Note that we are reading three texts this week. (I have attached PDF’s of two of the texts and put the link of the third text here).

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/06/why-are-americas-farmers-killing-themselves-in-record-numbers

Promp

t

To some extent, each of this week’s assigned readings grapple with the pressures or obstacles that farmers must navigate. What are the pressures or obstacles we see in these texts? How are the struggles or obstacles in each text similar and/or dissimilar? How do they alter your perception of farming or present it in a new light? How do they alter your perception of the popular response to farming (that is, the way most people would imagine it, think about it, talk about it, etc.)? How do they complicate your ideas about the lives of farmers?

Criteria for Evaluation

+Your entry is

at least

350 words

+You write about every text assigned for the week

+You provide the titles and author names for each of the texts you write about

+Your entry provides enough detail to effectively demonstrate that you read the assigned texts thoroughly

+You use specific examples and textual evidence to support your claims and ideas

+You write in college level prose