Category Archives: Laura

Claims, Evidence, Reasons, and Warrants

Colby, Course Information, Fall 2013, Laura
Explaining Claims, Evidence, Reasons, and Warrants
Lindsey’s Whiteboard Madness!

Here are the results of today’s class on argumentation. Above, you can see Lindsey’s whiteboard musings, and below are the results of both of our activities! (Hover over any photo to see a caption; click to enlarge it for easier viewing.)

After writing down questions and discussing the primary points behind The Craft of Research‘s chapters on argumentation, we began the activity portion of the class with an “exquisite corpse”-style game, where we traded off writing theses and evidence. Later, these papers were annotated for places where warranting seemed a probable necessity.

After some work isolating each paper’s primary claim, we used that as a starting point for an expanded version of the reasons and evidence activity in Chapter 9 of The Craft of Research. Colby and Laura wrote out their reasons/core ideas (white notecards) and key pieces of evidence (blue & green notecards), and then placed those two sets of information in relationship to one another visually. They were then invited to trade places and rearrange the other person’s material according to what they felt was the most logical pattern. Prof. Isenberg then weighed in, rearranging the work of both students into what he felt to be the most logical pattern. Finally, Colby and Laura added warrants to this structure (gold & yellow notecards), placing them where they seemed most likely to come up. Thank you to everyone for a constructive and thoughtful session!

Research Consultation: Laura

Fall 2013, Laura

We had 2 primary goals for this session:

  1. project management options
  2. Zotero mini-workshop

Project Management: Lindsey started with Lifehacker’s list of 5 top project management tools. We then talked about Google Calendar as a means of projecting out long-term deadlines. This, in combination with Laura’s current to-do list practices, seems to make the most sense at this point.

Zotero: We downloaded the standalone Zotero app for use on Laura’s Macbook, and discussed the benefits of the app versus the browser extension. We covered how you can use Zotero to take notes, how you can edit citations, Zotero for PDF management, and how to use it with Word when you are integrating your source material into your draft. Lindsey recommended making several Zotero folders (and/or tags) for sources: Sources I Have Read, Sources I Have Found, Sources I Have Yet To Find. She also recommended using Zotero’s “Notes” and “tags” functions for note-taking and file sorting.

Productivity Applications: We discussed the “pomodoro” technique (25 minutes of work followed by a 5 minute break), for which Lindsey recommends something like focus booster, and free apps like SelfControl, which shut off the more tempting parts of the Internet while you are working. We also talked about a goal of doing a little bit of work daily.

What I Did This Week (10/8)

Laura
  • tried to find an adviser in the film department
  • inspired by Lindsey’s research workshop to use Tumblr (found behind the scenes and promotional images, reviews, an infographic by The Guardian featuring stats about Hitchcock’s most popular works, real-time posts by Hitchcock fans in honor of Hitchcocktober, etc.)
  • setting up meeting with Joe McElhaney (Hunter’s Hitchcock expert) to run my ideas by him
  • narrowing down primary sources (novels and films)
  • met with Isabel Pindeo; helped me weed out irrelevant sources that were only confusing me and pulling my thesis in different directions
  • started using Zotero to keep my bibliography under control

What I Did This Week #1

Laura
  • Sick in bed with a cold most of last week, but managed to watch a few films Professor Paoli recommended including Audition, a Japanese Horror film about a lonely producer who holds an audition  to find the perfect wife. I dry heaved. It made me think about the limits (if any) that I will place on the types of films and books I wish to include.
  • Figured out a new way to find print sources: AMAZON! I found a book I was already using, added it to my wishlist, and then browsed through the recommended section that pops up afterward. Really useful titles that the Hunter library ended up carrying.
  • Browsed Hunter stacks and found some gems: The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe, The Monstrous Feminine, and a handful of other helpful titles that I’m looking through and scanning.
  • Found some useful articles among the required reading for my Horror Films class.
  • Meeting with Professor Pinedo during her office hours tomorrow.
  • Narrowing down my Poe list.