From Round to Square (and back)

For The Emperor's Teacher, scroll down (↓) to "Topics." It's the management book that will rock the world (and break the vase, as you will see). Click or paste the following link for a recent profile of the project: http://magazine.beloit.edu/?story_id=240813&issue_id=240610

A new post appears every day at 12:05* (CDT). There's more, though. Take a look at the right-hand side of the page for over four years of material (2,000 posts and growing) from Seinfeld and country music to every single day of the Chinese lunar calendar...translated. Look here ↓ and explore a little. It will take you all the way down the page...from round to square (and back again).
*Occasionally I will leave a long post up for thirty-six hours, and post a shorter entry at noon the next day.

Saturday, January 14, 2023

Mountains Final Assignment 2023a

Mountains
History 150
Spring 2023

Final Assignment
A Mountain of Analysis

The Assignment
Now that you have chosen "your mountain" and spent the better part of the term getting to know it (so to speak), your task for the final assignment is to bring all of the readings you have done thus far, as well as your growing skills in interdisciplinary analysis to the task of writing an introduction to your mountain in the form of a review essay. What this really amounts to is a combination of all of the work that you have done to this point, combining our readings, which should give you a sense of geological, historical, ethnographic, and environmental issues to go with your Friday "lab" studies of your particular mountain.

In other words, I am not asking for a sizable amount of "outside" reading (beyond the Friday study that is build into the syllabus). What I want is for you to think about your mountain in terms of our syllabus readings, and then write a review essay-style piece helping your reader to think about that particular mountain through the lens of our studies. Think about this assignment as the next step in a three-part process that starts with the letter assignment, moves to your midterm essay about "your mountain," and then concludes with your final assignment in May.
[b] Text to Temple RF

I strongly encourage you to think about this assignment in terms of various sections that might make it easier for you to write (we can discuss what these might be, but they will reflect our readings). The most important reminder is that this is an essay about your mountain and our readings. We will discuss this point, as well as further essay ideas, as the course proceeds.

Due as a .pdf file sent no later than 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday, May 9 (the end of finals week).
Please note that this deadline is very serious. Beloit professors only have forty-eight hours to have all grades in after finals week.

Reading the Sources 
This assignment is for an analysis of what you have learned about "your mountain," and the full range of our readings. It is not a traditional persuasive essay ("why my mountain is the best, for example). Your task is to introduce it to readers as a way of thinking about history, ethnography, geology, and the environment. 

Writing the Paper
Audience, audience, audience.  As you begin to write your paper, have a clear audience in mind. In this case, you should imagine  the larger faculty and student body of Beloit College—in other words, people who are interested in ideas and unafraid of detail.

Don't let this go too long. You could choose your sources and approach right now, and then finish a first draft a week before the paper is due. Don't delay!

                                             (.pdf or hard copy—either is fine)


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