ENGL 1102 (Erben)

Hello, and welcome!  This guide has been created specifically to help you complete assignments for your ENGL 1102 course with Dr. Erben.

For your group presentation and debate, you'll need to find 3-4 short "texts" (including, photos, news coverage/articles/clips, blogs/social media, music, etc) reflecting the current public debate and media coverage about your topic. In selecting, analyzing, and presenting your texts, your group should ask some of these larger, critical questions: 

• How do the literary texts and the public conversations treat a certain issue differently, but also what questions, terms, arguments, and ideas do they have in common? 
• How/where/why do the examples from the media polarize or simplify an issue that is treated in a more nuanced way in the literary text?
• Or, vice versa, do the media examples add any dimensions that the literary texts did not illuminate? 
• What differences do you see in the language (word choice, tone, attitude, rhetoric, visual representation) that the media coverage uses vs. the literary texts we examined?
• Also, what kind of “real life” or concrete significance do the media/current events texts give to the topic covered in the literary texts?  In other words, does the media coverage allow us in any way to grasp better the stakes/relevance of an issue highlighted in the literary work(s)? 

If you get stuck, do not hesitate to get in touch with a librarian for help on finding and thinking critically about how to use a resource. My contact information is to the right--feel free to email me with quicker questions, or to set up an appointment if you need some more in-depth help.

You can also take advantage of our librarian office hours--Monday-Thursday between 11-5, you can meet one-on-one with a librarian without an appointment! Just ask someone at the check-out desk or a student reference assistant and they'll send a librarian your way!