Public Issue Project (Essay/Text-based)

For this essay, you will research and explore various aspects of an issue that interests and affects you.

You will construct an argument (versus a shouting or polarizing argument) that raises questions about a specific issue, explores possible solutions/answers/effects of this issue and then reaches some conclusions.

While your essay will have a thesis--most likely one that develops implicitly as you present your and others' thinking on the issue--your essay should not be thesis-driven. That is, instead of engaging in a monologic discussion that hammers on one point and attempts to prove all other views as wrong, your essay will be dialogic, meaning that you will write about ideas in such a way as to explore and develop multiple perspectives on the issue.

For example, an essay whose introduction closes with this thesis Federal prisoners have too many rights in the United States, and their frivilous lawsuits are wasting resouces that could be best utilized elsewhere does not allow for other perspectives to be explored, except in the context of being raised merely to be proven wrong. But in all the lawsuits filed by Federal prisoners surely some of them are valid and while some prisoners' rights might seem excessive there also must be rights that are not foregrounded enough. Almost all social and political issues that are worth further research are complicated. The thinking on an issue that your writing and argument persents will need to show this complexity.

In a dialogic argument essay you can certainly still argue (in academic sense) for a particular course of action or solution to a problem you've identified, but you will want to do so in such a way that you neither oversimplify the issue nor presume too much agreement between your perspective and your audience's.

Because this is a six- to seven-page essay (although it may be a bit longer if you wish), you will not have the space to be able to effectively explore and argue all aspects of a broad topic, such as abortion or the U.S. prison system. Instead choose a more specific aspect to explore, perhaps even one with which you have personal experience. This week you will brainstorm possible research topics and rhetorical contexts. We will share those and discuss them.

Besides needing to be focused enough to be effectively explored and argued, your argument must be constructed for and addressed to a specific audience.

Over the next few weeks we will study, practice, and experiment with various ways to present multiple sides of an issue and to construct an effective argument for a particular audience.