2025 Online Sessions

• This session will review advanced tips for improving your close reading essays and videos
• NOTE:  Prof. Pinsker will be away on vacation following this session and until after the Aug. 8 due date.  You can still email him questions or share drafts, but put everything into the body of the email for him to review or post it at WordPress.  No attachments.

FRI AUG 8 :  Second close reading due in evening

 

• Be prepared to discuss the Oakes book at this session and plans for your final essays

• Reminders and discussion about for submission of final essay

 

SUMMARY FROM JULY 31 ZOOM:

• Your next assignment is due on Friday, Aug. 8, a second close reading reflection.  And your final assignment is a comparative essay on the respective reform strategies of Lincoln and Frederick Douglass and the lessons they suggest due by Friday, Aug. 22.  That essay will be the equivalent in length of about two close reading reflections and will require thoughtful secondary source research.  The final essay will be posted online at the same project site and with supporting images, but no video will be required.  Between those two deadlines, you should be reading James Oakes’s book:  The Radical and The Republican, which is the one secondary sources that everyone will need to use in their final essay. We will talk about the book in detail on Aug. 13.

 

• Zoom sessions are mostly designed to be helpful as check ins and enhanced learning opportunities for research and writing strategies.  But remember the real work is in drafting your assignments and consulting with Prof. Pinsker via email (pinskerm@dickinson.edu)

General writing advice for historical close readings:

• • Pick a text that engages your historical imagination
  • Stick to simple past tense
  • Use Chicago-style footnotes (and consult Methods Center for more details
    • SAMPLE FOOTNOTES FOR OAKES:
      • [1] James Oakes, The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007), 27.
      • [2] Oakes, Radical 31.
    • SAMPLE FOOTNOTES FOR WEBPAGES (adapted for online publication):
      • [3] “Phillis Wheatley, On Being Brought from Africa (1773),” Knowledge for Freedom Seminar [WEB]

 

• • Always guard against plagiarism, especially when you paraphrase. REMEMBER:  never summarize a source while you are looking at it.  Close the book or the tab and do it from memory.

 

• Advice for strong openings:
  • Consider attempting a narrative vignette built around a snippet of quotation
  • Provide brief but effective summary context of the document under study
  • Then pivot to a clear thesis statement that offers an original interpretation about the significance of the author’s writing strategy

 

• Advice for strong text summaries:
  • Summarize the entire text (or text excerpt) deftly using both paraphrase and snippets of quotation
  • Don’t forget to describe the format of the text
  • Always acknowledge if you are focusing only on an excerpt

 

• Advice for strong context sections:
  • Good context requires some outside research using high quality secondary sources
  • Judge secondary sources by the expertise of the authors (requires BYLINES) and whether the format has been peer reviewed (requires academic publishing) or at least edited (requires professional publishing)
  • Always start with context information about author and audience and then consider expanding into time period essentials –but always be judicious and don’t overwhelm your analysis with too much context

 

• Advice for strong subtext analysis:
  • The best way to decode subtext is to consider what’s left out
  • The easiest way to understand what’s missing from a document is by wide-ranging comparison. For example, how is this document different from earlier documents written by the same author? How does it compare to similar documents written during the time period by other authors? What about comparing the document to previous classic documents (such as the Declaration of Sentiments with the Declaration of Independence)?
  • Remember to compare backward in time (not forward).  This is a historical close reading exercise.

 

• Advice for strong closing arguments:
  • Return to the opening vignette or idea
  • Reframe the original thesis into something thoughtful –don’t just restate it.

 

• Multi-Media Reminders
  • Don’t forget to include two to three images with captions and clickable credits, expandable (attach to media file) and formatted neatly within paragraphs or between them

 

• • Don’t forget a short document video produced in WeVideo and including clear, well read audio narration, a compelling music track, carefully selected and high quality images, some nice production elements such as call out text or transitions, and a well organized credit slide