6 March. Blazing World & Layout/Sentence Level
Part I. Your New Futures: Layout & Sentence Level
Take five or so minutes and freewrite in response to the following:
- 1. Audience: Who is your audience and how does that determine word choice, explanation, detail, or tone?
- 2. Layout: Remember to incorporate both your brochure/Advertisement, as well as the “blueprint.” What’s the relationship between text and image in your story? What’s the relationship between text and image in Utopia? In Blazing World?
- 3. Transitions: how do you move from section to section? Do you use headings? What sort of work do you topic sentences need to do? How do you move from sentence to sentence?
Known-New Contract (Tips for Sentence Cohesion)
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Take a look at the following sentence:
(a) Some astonishing questions about the nature of the universe have been raised by scientists exploring the nature of black holes in space.
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Which of the sentences below should follow the one above?
(b) The collapse of a dead star into a point perhaps no larger than a marble creates a black hole.
(c) A black hole is created by the collapse of a dead star into a point perhaps no larger than a marble.
- Sentence (c) begins where sentence (a) left off: with black holes. While reading, often we feel that sentences are more cohesive if they begin with what is known to the reader (e.g., “black holes” from the previous sentence) and end with what is new (e.g., “the collapse of a dead star”). This “known-new” contract gives us a sense of flow in our writing.
- Draft: Write one declarative sentence that responds to the project prompt, i.e “how has the future you imagine solved the most pressing threat to life on Earth?” THEN…draft 1-2 developmental sentences using the known-new contract.
Class Leads
- Give us a quick overview of the main highlights from our final discussion of the first part of Cavendish’s The Blazing World and then write your discussion questions on the board
| Class Section | Students |
|---|---|
| 1102.F3 | Thiago, Le Thein, & Baijing |
| 1102.HP2 | Mael-Sanh & Felipe |
| 1102.D3 | Dylan, Uti, & Justin |
Part II. Blazing World Discussion
Let’s chat about the following:
- 1.What are some experiments performed at the Empress’s schools and “several Societies” (26), and what sorts of knowledge do they produce?
- 2.Why do the telescopes cause differences and divisions among the Bear-men? How does the Empress resolve the disputes?
- 3.What prompts the Empress to stop listening to the Animal-men and speak about natural philosophy? Does she know the answers to the questions she asks all along, and if yes, why does she task the Animal-men with answering her questions?
- 4.How does the Empress convert the whole of the Blazing World to her religion without causing all sorts of discord and destruction?
Part III. Panel 2 Presenters
| Class Section | Presentors |
|---|---|
| 1102.F3 | Luke, Le Thien, Anna, Nicolas, Siddarth, Morgan, Thomas, Catherine, Gabriel |
| 1102.HP2 | Nicholas, Mohan, Joshua, Azhar, Hyungjun, & Alahna |
| 1102.D3 | Anu, Dylan, Nikhil, Lilyanne, Andrew, Brian, Jennifer, Shachi, Siddartha |
Presentation II. Discussion
If you are scheduled to present at next Tuesday’s workshop, please stick around for a discussion of the following questions. Please note I will update the Presentation Perimeters on the Presentation Assignment page following our discussion today:
- 1. Does anyone have any lingering questions (or suggestions) about the requirements for the final version of the assignment?
- 2.How far along are each of you in your drafting process? If you were in the audience, what sorts of examples or advice would be most helpful for you?
- 3.Does the New Futures Project address the situation (and assignment) completely? Does it diagnose a contemporary threat to continued existence of life on earth and then invent a future that solves for that problem? Does the New Futures Project include a short introduction that sets up the future world and how it responds to the contemporary problem?
- 4.Does the New Futures Project describe at least five least five topics/elements of the future world? Does the Project explain how those elements are intertwined or related to one another?
