Second Critique

I critiqued both Rickita's paper and Ann's paper. Hopefully if this works, the critique can be found here:

http://us.f2.yahoofs.com/bc/4281684e_7041/bc/My+Documents/critiques.doc?bfhzWgCB8rKYJ9gu

Ann's critique is below Rickita's on the same file.

I guess it doesn't work so here are the criqitues:

Critique of “Redefining the Black Role: Education in Freedman’s Village, 1863-1888”

Rickita, now that you have a complete essay, this was much easier to critique. Your paper explores an interesting subject while it simultaneously takes the reader through the experience of one particular post-bellum school for black children, which in a way, was a microcosm for the whole educational experience of black children in the South at the time. Additionally, I thought that both the beginning and the end of the paper framed the content nicely.

Unfortunately, although this paper has made significant improvement since last time, there are still some areas that need to be worked on.

I identified your thesis to be “Although there were a number of Freedmen schools developed in the South, few were as successful as Freedman’s Village located in Arlington, Virginia.” With that said, I think its placement at the beginning of the third paragraph is a little awkward. However, I am used to seeing theses only at the beginning of the first paragraph or the end of an introductory paragraph so perhaps I am just biased. What I suggest is moving the thesis to the end of the second paragraph, and turning the rest of that third paragraph into a greater paragraph about the background of the Freedman’s Village. A way to do that is to move the content in “Establishment of Freedmen’s Village in Arlington” to that paragraph.

Similar to what I just suggested, there are entire sections of the paper that don’t appear to be necessary to include in order to understand or reflect on the subject of the paper: education in Freedman’s Village from 1863-1888. The sections that I think should entirely go are “Northern Reactions to the South During the Civil War”, “Organization of the Freedmen’s Bureau”, and the “Historical Background of Arlington.” If you feel that discussing those subjects are absolutely necessary to understand education in Freedman’s Village, then they could easily be mentioned or summarized in a couple paragraphs or less. Ideally, when discussing background, it should be no more than 2 pages in length because such a lengthy discussion of material that is not the subject of the paper tends to cause the reader to forget the subject matter and lose track of what the argument of the paper is. Another way to include the subjects is to introduce them as they become relevant to a discussion directly relating the argument of the paper. For instance, when discussing the ambivalent attitudes the Southerners held about the education of blacks, a brief background or mention of where the ambivalence came from would be helpful. However, in general these subjects don’t really need to be included in detail in order to understand the context of the material. A couple or several paragraphs of information would be fine at the most. A couple others in the class had a similar problem with the inclusion of background information and if I remember correctly, they were recommended to sum up things like the Holocaust and the Russian Revolution in a couple paragraphs.

Other than that, there just needs to be a re-reading of the paper to correct grammatical mistakes. There are a few awkward sentences like “Freed children slaves represented a shift in the role of blacks in the United States” on page 2. In the last paragraph there are a couple of typos like “However once freed people became education…” and “It was one the longest…”. Basically stuff like that. I’m not so sure about the quotes you have in the beginning of “Education Efforts for Freedmen”, “First Years of Freedman’s Village Schools” and “School Year 1863-1864”. They are nice to read and make your paper look like a book, but some teachers might think it’s just taking up space. I guess just use your best judgment. I personally think ones like the quote in “First Years of Freedman’s Village” are effective.

Anyway, overall, it’s a nice paper; it just needs some help with getting rid of all that background and focusing more on the thesis. If I had to give it a grade, it would be between a C+/B.

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Critique of “Negative/Positive, That is Not the Question: Children in Motion Pictures from the Eighties to the Early Twenty-First Century”

Ann, what can I say, overall you have an excellent paper. The introduction is good, the argument is clear; the main paragraphs all have topic sentences relating to the main argument, the argument progresses in a logical manner and the conclusion is strong. I even like the way you handle footnotes, though I have no idea if the way you did them is correct. I only know how to cite a reference, I’ve never actually written out information like you see in professional articles. If it is stylistically correct, then I liked what you did because it gave a lot of the background information outside of the content of the main paper so that one does not get distracted reading about the background.

Honestly, most of the criticism that I can find is grammatical. There are only a few things I would take into consideration stylistically.

What stuck out stylistically to me was how you structured your thesis, particularly the beginning of it where you say “Before discussing the film Better Luck Tomorrow the first part of the paper will….,” (if I am correct in assuming that is your thesis). When I had my conference with Prof. Petrik, she pointed out something very similar in my paper and referred to it as “stage direction.” Never having looked at that kind of structure before, I realized that it is just better to say something than it is to direct the reader like “before”. In a way, removing the directions strengthens the argument just out of style. Also, the sentence before “Before,” is rather long. If that is part of your thesis, it can be broken up and rephrased so that it is more focused. I write a lot of long sentences, myself, so it’s kind of hard for me to give suggestions other than what’s obvious, but hopefully that helps.

Now, concerning the grammar there are actually a lot of consistencies with the errors I saw. Most of the corrections that need to be made deal with endings, like plurals and singulars and the use of the verb to be in the present tense (is/are), which is also related to singular and plural. Thus, an understanding of singular tense and plural tense would help correct these errors. Here is one example that has other errors relating to singular/plural tense as well. On page 6 you write,

…June exhibit a range of emotions resembling feeling typical nine-year old children might experience.

This is how it would be corrected:

…June exhibits a range of emotions resembling the feelings a typical nine-year old child might experience.

These errors with singular and plural can be found in both the main paper and the footnotes. I wish I knew of a way to help you correct the mistakes. Well, when the subject of a sentence is plural, like films, the “to be” verb relating to it should be plural, such as with the present plural form of to be: are. Together it should be films are instead of films is. I’ve noticed that when the subject is not next to the verb it becomes harder. Here is an example that I’ve made up:

The girls in the movie is attractive.

The correct way would be:

The girls in the movie are attractive.

I am pretty bad at other types of grammar, so that is really all that I spotted. There were some awkward sentences here and there, like the first sentence on page 11, “The four boys adventure in Las Vegas lead to another point that the movie brought forth that is radically daring from other movies are the exploitation of sexuality”, but since that involves the topic sentence of a paragraph and grammatical mistakes I make as well, I’m not really sure how to correct it.

Anyway, as I’ve already said you have an excellent paper that has primarily grammatical problems only. Because of that, if I were giving you a grade I would give you a B+/A depending on how much grammatical errors were important in terms of grading.

#11 Critique

I critiqued Rickita's paper. It can be found here:

http://pastteaches.blogspot.com/2005/04/blog-entry-seven-redefining-black-role.html#comments

Goofed up

After reading Rickita's critique of my paper, I just realized that I sent the prof the incomplete version of my essay. My full essay with title page, appendix and biblio was saved on my A drive and not my hard drive.

OH where are my brains?

If anyone else wants to critique my paper, shoot me an email and I'll email you it.

Paper

Place paper critique comments here.

Correction

My paper has been revised as best as I could, though I'm almost positive that tense is a problem.

As for the images, I will include the few I have that are from the internet that are used in my paper so the paper is not completely bereft of photographs.

Behind

Oh I am so screwed. I thought the papers were due 24 hours before your conferences, not actually in class today.

I don't have any of the images in my paper and I don't think I'll get to revise it, not to mention I've had a hell of a time with tense and grammar. My paper is a mess.

I don't have the images because I have to take digital photographs of them and my dad hasn't had time yet to upload them to his computer and then email them to me where I can edit them and put in captions.

This is probably the most important assignment we've had yet and I went and screwed it all up.

Brief Update on First Draft

As usual with me, my draft has taken a life of its own. It's generally following the outline, but I can't say it fully is. A lot of the stuff I wrote in my outline were either not correct or unnecessary to include. I didn't realize how fast 10 pages would go by! I'm not there yet, mind you, but I'm getting there without having gotten to what I thought my main points were. I may omit my last paragraph entirely since space is running out and that's a concept that has been discussed already in much detail. I'm liking how I'm discussing things that are not focused on a lot.

So yeah, I'm just writing this because while doing a yahoo search my journal came up. I don't want people to read this and think it is entirely accurate. My outlines are always a rough idea of what I think the research shows, as opposed to what I really discover once I dive into my paper.

#8. Native American Children in Photos from the 1860s-1920s OUTLINE

Outline

Like Keith, a formal outline is awkward and usually not representative of my final paper. It generally provides the skeleton of my paper, but not the details. I am the kind of writer that changes things as I write. Many times, I end up discovering new things as I go along, or completely toss out earlier ideas. My thesis is the main victim of this style of mine because usually by the end of a paper, it will have been changed at least two times. With that in mind, this is just a general idea of what I plan. I may or may not stick to it. At this point, I am not comfortable inserting quotes or sources that I will use. It’s easier for me to find the exact support that I will use once I actually write my paper. This is because of the way I write and how things and even ideas change as the words flow from my head to my fingers.

Introduction and Thesis Statement
1 paragraph
The introduction will open with a quote from Edward Curtis on photographing Native Americans. I will then briefly comment on the meaning and significance of the quote in light of the time period and general history of the photography of non-Whites of that period. I will then connect this with Native Americans and continue by alluding to the attitudes towards Native Americans through the 1860s-1920s. From there I will bring in the scantily analyzed significance of children in understanding the history of the portrayal of Native Americans in photographs from that time period. I will conclude with my thesis statement which should be something along the lines of: Photographs of Native American children from the period of the 1860s-1920s mirror the concepts that existed among non-Native Americans about how a Native American should look.

Background
1-2 paragraphs
Here, I will go into the background of photography during the 1860s-1920s, which will elaborate on how the camera became an anthropological and ethnographic tool for anyone who could find Native Americans and take their picture. From here I will further explain how because it was being yielded by those without an anthropological background, the photographs did more for understanding the photographers than it did for understanding Native Americans. If this flows accordingly, I will go into the second paragraph with an explanation of the cultural attitudes towards Native Americans through the 1860s-1920s and how these photographs became reflections of the concepts. I will end the paragraph by mentioning how children were particularly good for serving these concepts.

First Example
2 paragraphs
The first concept I will tackle is the photograph of the Native American child as the exotic “other”. This category involves images of Native American children in studio or studio-like settings that imitate White portraits in terms of sitting styles, but are distinguishable by their costume, which is often gaudy or stereotypical of how a Native American should look. Some of these are noticeably from the 1860s, but in general, this, like many of the styles, these depictions can be found throughout the late 1800s. It all depends on the photographer, and not the time period, per se. When portraying the exotic “other” child, it is frequently seen swaddled in a cradleboard [description of such an image]. When the child is older, it is generally sitting in front of the adults on the floor, if not being held. Rarely is the child standing with or above the adults, like is seen in many White photographs of the period. I will analyze why this could be [compare and contrast examples].

Second Example
2 paragraphs
The second concept will focus on the portrayal of Native American children as examples of savagery or wildness. At some point I will briefly discuss Social Darwinism and its role in these pictures, but I don’t want to elaborate on it too much because it is better fitted for the example of forced assimilation. These photographs will involve images of children running around naked with messy hair and dirt on their bodies. An example will be provided and another will be described. I will then discuss how the composition of these photographs is usually wide and from a distance, which suggests the separation between civilization (the camera and the cameraman) and savagery (the children, Native American culture). I may include some mention of exhibitions of Native American photographs that reflect this. Also, there will be mention of people like Edward Curtis, who assigned their own understandings to the various Native American cultures, by incorrectly describing what they took a picture of (generally simplifying the subject matter). Although he will be more thoroughly included later, I will show how he has his own “wild child” photographs (which are where the descriptions come from). Two photographs will be shown in this paragraph and two or more described.

Third Example
2 paragraphs
This example will connect with the previous one, but show Native American children as an extension of nature that promotes an idea of “wild innocence”, almost like the image of a wild animal baby would. Here is where Edward Curtis’ position is uncertain. His “wild” photographs fit into both categories. Irregardless of that, this concept will have pictures of children in the wild doing everyday things or seemingly doing nothing. These are more romanticized than the wild child photographs, but still insinuate that the subjects possess a certain degree of savagery, if not noble savagery. Joining with the first concept, they will also come off as being somewhat exotic because of their connection with nature. Many of these photographs will show girls as opposed to boys. These girls may be indirectly sexualized because of an association with nature (and the natural world) with uninhibited sexuality. Ora Eddleman Reed’s “Types of Indian Girls” will be examples of how the attitude was present and how she attempted to defeat it by having girls indoors. I can say that this example will be taken from the article “Strike a Euroamerican pose”. However, after quoting her, I will put my own interpretation to it by suggesting not a savage wildness from the first category, but a more romanticized wildness that is more appropriate to this subject (the article suggests just wildness, thus making my interpretation different). From my experience with Bedouin images and images of African girls, all of whom are similar in terms of a connection with nature and thus sex, these images are romanticized and sold for excitement than to portray savagery. In a way, it is like the Victorian man’s interest in things like fictional harems that were full of naked women. I will probably have to go into attitudes of the time period to correctly explain this. I will probably just use one photograph and then describe maybe a couple others.

(For the following I can’t figure out what order to put them in. It will just have to snap into place once I actually write the paper)

Fourth Example
3 paragraphs
For now, the first and maybe second paragraph will focus on the use of Native American children as a means to symbolize Native American womanhood. Since in the majority of these photographs, the derogatory term “squaw” is used, I’ll explain how in a way, these babies serve as a means to indicate “squawness”. These images are in abundance and can be found among all types of photographers. What’s more amazing is that they basically all look the same (show one example, explain others). These photographs are generally comprised of profiles of women with a cradleboard on their back, which is generally labeled as a “papoose” even though that is not the correct term for it. With the constant abundance of these images, it calls into question what the purpose is. I will analyze how these photographs represent what qualifies a woman to be a “real” Native American in the eyes of the photographers and the people seeing the photographs. In these photographs, the poor children are just a nameless symbol referred to only by “papoose”. When there is no woman present, the babies are alone but still bound in the cradleboards and are again, rarely named, unlike the adults. This then becomes the symbol for Native American babies and how they are supposed to look, which can be called “papooseness”. Rarely, are babies shown outside of a papoose. When they are, it’s a photograph that’s not professional or artistic (example will be shown). This will be the third paragraph.

Fifth Example
3 paragraphs
Now this example will focus on the blatant examples of Social Darwinism and acculturation, among other similar concepts. For these paragraphs, I will show how Native American children are used to portray the “noble savage” and their “civilizing”. This might take up the first paragraph. The second paragraph will go into the popular examples of Indian school photographs. The group photographs always have before and after shots. Then, from there are photographs of the various activities the children took part in, whether staged or real. Finally, I can show the photographs of the children after attending school, usually posed in the same manner and dress as White people. The last paragraph will deal with the ambiguous or obviously requested photographs of Native American children that are culturally assimilated partially or fully. One picture I will either describe or include has a man dressed in “Native American” clothing while his son is in a Western suit. I will discuss why photographs like these exist. Others I will talk about are photographs that seem to be of normal families who have adapted to American culture, most notably photographs from the 1920s in which those are most prevalent form of photograph of Native American children.

Sixth Example
3-4 paragraphs
Lastly, this paragraph will address the very popular subject of the concept of the “vanishing Indian”. I will explain what that means and how Native American children figure into those types of photographs. There will probably be a lot from the more famous photographers who really defined that style, like Edward Curtis. I will hopefully take a new slant on the subject by getting into the over-romanticized and inaccurate depiction of such children. I will also go into how those photographs, even while romanticized, still conformed to stereotypes about Native Americans. Hopefully, I will be able to connect this subject with various parts from the other subjects, like how these photographs amplify the notion of the exotic “other” as well as the wild child, the natural child, and the “Indian child/Papoose/Squaw”. Since this incorporates a lot of elements, and will probably require three photographs, I’m planning for it to be somehow divided into about 3-4 paragraphs, making it the longest part of the essay.

Conclusion
1 paragraph
The conclusion will restate the thesis in different words. It will then go over the significance of the attitudes of the various periods and how they were reflected on the portrayal of Native American children in photographs from the 1860s-1920s. I will explain the effect the concepts and attitudes the various periods embraced and how Native American children are used to satisfy these concepts, whether intentional or subconscious. Basically, this will sum up the historical significance with some message about culture.