Image Credit: Koshu Kunii, Unsplash

Timeline: late in semester, almost entirely in class; we’ll take as long as we need for each part

Text: a short work of social issue/social protest fiction (or poetry) that aligns with class themes; story will be printed out, with generous margins and space between lines to facilitate writing all over it) 

Examples:

• “Thoughts & Prayers” by Ken Liu
• “The Finkelstein 5” by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
• “A Small Needful Fact” by Ross Gay (slightly different assignment as this is a short poem)
• Everything Belongs to the Future by Laurie Penny (novella, almost certainly too long but maybe not)
• “The Screwfly Solution” by James Tiptree Jr

Reading Objective: to apply practices and strategies developed in reading, understanding, and evaluating non-fiction to a work of fiction/literature

Discussion & Analysis Objective: to identify realistic and fantastic elements of the story and ask how realistic and fantastic fiction illuminate social issues similarly and differently

Research Objective: to research both the author and the publication of the story and find one non-fiction source on the free web about the same issue 

Writing Objective: to draft a mini-essay about a theme in the story and its real-world relevance using conventions of writing about literature and synthesizing two sources, the story and a mass media longform/ thinkpiece on a related topic (could be in-class final essay)

Terminology & Concepts: 

• before story – social problem/social protest literature; fiction; realism; fantastic
• after story – some foundational literary terminology, some language relevant to the story (in “Thoughts and Prayers,” doxxing, troll, misogyny, deepfakes, revenge porn . . .)

Stage 1, individual: 

Check out the structure – without reading the story itself. How many pages is the story, or how many scrolls down a webpage? Does it flow as one undivided text? Or does there seem to be some kind of division or change in the text as it goes along? Write down what you see. 

Now look at the title – again, without reading the story. What does the title immediately suggest? What words, images, emotions, allusions, or questions does the title make you think of? Write a few sentences in response 

(half the class, individually) Google the author and the publication information about the story. Write down anything that you think is important. (the other half of the class will do this after they read the story, and then we’ll discuss how that knowledge helps, hinders, or otherwise shapes your interaction with the story) 

Stage 2:

Read the story out loud in class (the Ken Liu story is great for this reading process because it is cyber epistolary), asking students to interact with and write all over the text.Pause throughout to go back over important passages and ask any clarity questions. 

Sit with what you’ve read for a bit.  Then jot down a quick summary of the story, two or three sentences. 

(handout) So what did you say about the plot? In This Thing Called Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing, Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle note that thinking about how you recount the plot will show “what matters to you,” the reader, “in the story.” They also rightly suggest that “the way you retell a plot is never innocent or neutral: you are inevitably being selective and partial, and thus, in effect, already foregrounding a particular reading” (61). So what did you foreground–what was most important to you–in your plot summary? Did you mention any specific characters, or elements of the setting, or how the story was told? 

How does the story seem to “be alluding to, echoing, or explicitly referring to stories, poems, or other kinds of texts” (Bennett and Royle 61)? What does it remind you of? How does this add to the text, or “complicate” the story? 

Bennett and Royle ask you to think about what “the most striking, memorable or significant aspect” of the story was – for you (61). You might respond to its “overall impact” on you, or with a “particularly powerful image or situation or idea or word or phrase” (61). How does this shape your response to the story? This may or may not be a similar response, but also ask yourself what was your FAVORITE thing in/ part of the story? A character? A Scene? A relationship? A sentence? 

Think about ways the story might intersect with other ideas, based on your own experience, and in ways that are not necessarily mentioned explicitly by the author. 

Stage 3: 

• introduce literary terminology
• crowdsource definitions of terms related to the story itself
• (second half of class research author and story)
• Discuss realistic/ real episodes and the more fantastic elements of the story. How do we know when something is purely fiction/ fantastic? 
• Discuss the story as literature/ fiction, using literary terminology.

Stage 4: 

Discuss first how research into the author and the publication of the story influenced students’ reading of the story.

In small groups, find one non-fiction source (longform thinkpiece) on the free web about the same issue: each person should find a different possibility and then the group will read together and discuss to choose their submission. 

They will then present to the class and provide a collaborative written summary according to the following guidelines. These sources will be the basis for a curated source bank for the mini-essay. 

1. Divide the source into 4-6 parts based on content. It may not be every paragraph (with articles) or equal blocks of time (with audio/video). To do this, identify the thesis and then look at how the source makes and supports their argument.
2. Establish the parameters for your division: why did  you divide the article as you did? 
3. Draft a short summary of each part. 
4. After presenting to the class, leading a brief discussion, and responding to any questions, draft a short summary of the article that includes carefully chosen quotations (integrated and cited) from each part.

Stage 5: 

Choose between the following prompts and write a few sentences that explain why you chose the prompt you did and what you intend to argue.

In an essay of 500-600 words, make a claim about the social issue that you then support both with evidence from the story and from one of the sources from the class source bank. 

OR 

In an essay of 500-600 words, make a claim about the short story  that you then support with evidence from both the story and a source from the source bank. 

Then draft the essay. (I do process slideshows for the mini-essays, so there will be more instruction than this.)