Males out there, with hyphenated last names…

After taking in your SOP essays, we’ll start with learning how to write like David Foster Wallace. Footnotes rule! Send the results here.

Next, we’re on to A Modest Proposal. We’ll share our MPs and then talk a bit about the Swift piece using the questions and then we’ll answer some multiple choice question. Store them here.

Next is Dave Barry’s “Lost in the Kitchen” (in 50 Essays). We’ll read it and then have small groups write 4 multiple choice questions about it. Be able to explain what type of question it is.

HW: Read Sarah Vowell’s “Shooting Dad.” (in 50 Essays) Write a short blog post using this question (#4 in the book).

Part of the appeal of Vowell’s work is its humor.  Humor is a notoriously hard thing to analyze: we know when we find something funny because we laugh, out loud or to ourselves, but we have a harder time explaining why something is funny. Pick five different moments in Vowell’s essay, and try to explain what it was that was funny about each moment. Then see if you can come up with a hypothesis, generalizing from these specific moments, about what makes things funny.

Image Credit: boston.com