Directions for Compare/Contrast Paper #1 (4pages) on Encounters in Contact Zones
The Revision is due one week after you receive my comments.
Begin your paper with an address to your audience. Your audience is a group of scholars who are familiar with Mary Louise Pratt’s ideas on contact zones. However, they have not seen how that argument works in relation to Columbus’ discovery narratives. You will be informing the reader about how power is abused in small, seemly innocent ways before a violent genocide. You will be arguing about how social practices emerge more out of cultural attitudes inherent in populations than out of the encounters themselves. This prepares your audience for your main idea about the cultural frame that influences the encounter. We are using the Zuni text to imagine the Taino’s cultural frame since their texts did not survive. We will be doing close readings of primary texts to construct our arguments. In your readings you will rely on examining how the texts frame the cultural practices that influence exchanges in trade, religion, and language.
Next, write your Main Idea
Begin with your main thesis. Next, briefly summarize how you will prove your thesis by proposing the differences you see between Columbus and the Amerindians in relation to trade, religion and language.
Body of Proof in Analytic Paragraphs
Before writing the body of the paper outline your argument so you can see it clearly and stick to it as you write. Check yourself to make sure you are not repeating ideas but expanding them.
Next, write out the 3 main topic sentences that will guide the reader through your expanded thesis in the body of the paper. These statements are ideas rather than descriptions, summaries, and examples. As such they are usually written in complex sentences.
Complex sentences put elements in relation to one another by seeing the logical influences putting pressure on those elements. It is essential to guide the reader through the logic of your argument by signally how the main idea is expanded in topic sentences. This way the reader follows the thread of your argument throughout the paper. Without any topic sentences or thesis statements the reader does all the work of figuring out through your descriptions how elements in the text relate. Once the reader begins to form the idea instead of the writer, you have lost credibility as an author. Make sure that your topic sentences relate back to and expand on the original thesis without repeating that thesis.
In a compare/contrast essay the usual thesis statement / topic sentence structure takes the form of explicitly stating differences. What they have in common is the topics we are comparing: Trade, religion, and language.
While the Zuni……… , Columbus…………..
You want your sentences to be in parallel logic.
For instance: While the Zuni proceeded in their journey learning by experience, Columbus is guided by authorities, mainly the church.
Your three topic sentences in this case would be about how the Zuni approach trade, religion, and language by being open to experience which you would name in a specific way in each section. For instance, in trade they did not ask for specific things they were open to what was offered. In language, they organized an encounter so they could listen to the other. In religion, the Sun Father does not give them directions but the rainbow twins say, “ you decide.”
In your body of the paper, each paragraph is organized around a topic sentence followed by evidence from a close reading of text. Do not do a loose summary full of speculation. Give me the direct quote followed by the MLA citation. After you give me the direct quote interpret the quote the way you want to make it work for your argument, but make sure you are doing a valid interpretation:
Topic sentence
Evidence from close reading of text with (MLA Citation).
Explanation and interpretation
Transition to next paragraph
When referring to action in a text, write in the literary present tense.
Reflection: The last paragraph of the paper will be a consideration of the way we witness micro-aggressions in social practices today. Be specific. Focus on your own experience and step through a process that you have witnessed to see the way these encounters can be handled skillfully to avoid escalations. What kind of preparation informs the participants to help them avoid normalizing an unstable practice? Think about the work place, social interactions, seller/buyer trades, or classroom practices. Do a close reading of an experience.
