In our cultural artifact analysis, we investigated an artifact in order to make an idea about the values and

practices of the cultures engaged with it. Now we will make a more specific inquiry. We will investigate the

written artifacts of an academic culture in order to create an idea about our discipline.

Purpose. Your goal is to tell an engaging story about the way your discipline writes. You’ll look closely at the

writing artifacts that your discipline produces and make meaningful connections between that writing and your

discipline’s “identity kit”: its mission, traditions, attitudes, values, beliefs, rhetorical forms, social roles,

etc. In other words, we are trying to connect meaningfully the writing to the community it comes from. How does

this writing serve the discipline’s purpose?

Audience. Your audience should be members or potential members of your discipline who haven’t yet looked at the

way the discipline writes. Or your audience can be your fellow classmates.

Evidence. Here are the kinds of disciplinary artifacts we must investigate:

1) a scholarly article
2) a trade article or textbook
3) a scholarly blog or other Internet-specific source
4) an interview with a member of the discipline

You are also free to use whatever other evidence is valuable to your inquiry. What else might give you a sense of

your discipline’s writing and its purposes?

Form. You’ll deliver your findings periodically in the form of posts to a tumblr of your own making. Your writing

on this tumblrmust total at least 1500 words. You will also deliver each of the 3 required posts on the duedates,

uploaded to Angel as MS Word documents.

Rules:

1) You must make at least 3 synthetic moves in the course of your blog writing. Synthesisis where you make sense

of two or more sources together.
3) You will also deliver at least 3 comments on your classmates’ blogs. Try to spread the wealth. Make your

comments relate to the matter and hand and remember that this is an academic blog, part of our classroom

community.
4) Each blogger must respond to at least 3 times to comments on his/her own blog.

Reflection. You will deliver an MS Word document, uploaded to Angel. Using the MS Word cut and paste feature,

arrange your blog writing paragraphs and order them how you would for a traditional academic paper (TAP). Using

the comment feature in MS Word, give yourself and me a sense of how you would approach revision to repurpose your

blogas a TAP if you had to (but you don’t), including what you might do to further develop your ideas. Your

reflection will be assessed according to the quality and thoroughness of its thinking.

Technology. Let’s all use tumblr so we can all follow each other. If you already have a tumblr, set up a

different one dedicated to our course.

Ethics.Set your own privacy settings. But because we are practicing among ourselves, do not share anyone’s tumblr

stuff with anyone outside our classroom.

Learning objectives

To learn more about how literacy works in a discipline or profession and to begin to see ourselves as new members

of this discipline.
To locate, evaluate, analyze, andsynthesize source materials to generate new ideas. Use inquiry to generate new

ideas.
To understand how research arises from and responds back to communities.

Skills to practice

Investigating and practicingthe rhetorical styles of your discipline.
Using invention, arrangement, and revision strategies. Reading the invention, arrangement, and revision

strategies of sources.
Analyzinga range of sources and synthesizing analyses.
Using MLA citation and bibliographic practices.
Usinginvention, arrangement, and revision strategiesas writing process.
Using internet-based media for writing.