Journal Entry #2

Mini-ethnography, Essay #2

The main part of this journal assignment is choosing a topic for your Ethnographic Essay. First, make sure your subculture meets the following qualifications:

• it is accessible to you
• its members gather at places you can visit
• it interests you in some way
• it is something you can research online or at the library if you get stuck
• you are not a member of the subculture

Also, you have to ensure that your group meets the definition of a subculture. In order for it to be considered a subculture, the answers to the following questions need to be yes:

• Group Identity: Does the group you want to study feel, at least implicitly, a sense of identification with each other as members? (This doesn't necessarily mean that they all like each other or always get along.)
• Rituals: Do group members share certain behaviors, outlooks, beliefs, or motivations for belonging?
• Language: Do they share a common language? Do they tend to describe things in similar ways, or use words or phrases that have special significance to the group?
• Artifacts: Do they share an interest in certain objects or artifacts? Do they invest these things with similar significance?

Write about how you chose subculture. Describe the subculture, why you chose it, and how it meets the above qualifications (in both sets of questions). 

Setting Your Blog to Private

Students,

Please cut and paste (use the “Edit tab”) the class emails into your blog:

1. Sign-in to your Blogger account
2. go to your dashboard
3. click on “Settings”
4. Click on “Permissions”
5. Scroll down to “Blog Readers”
6. Click on “Only People I choose”
7. Now, click on the blue button “Add Readers”
8. Cut and Paste the class emails into the white box
9. Make sure you have separated the emails with a comma
10. Now, click on the orange invite button

Once you have done this, blogger will send an invite email to those listed. That means you will also be invited to view 20+ blogs. When you receive the invite emails click on the link provided in the email (it means you accept) and then you will be able to access the blog every time. It will only be this complicated while we set up privacy! If you have questions, please email me. Our regular class blog will stay open to all viewers but your personal link will go private once you complete the steps in this email.

 

 

Journal Entry #1

Personal, Expository Essay #1
Select a topic for your own Personal Essay. You can use the fastwritings you have done for this class or something entirely different you've thought about outside of class. Also, remember the suggestions we discussed from the textbook about what makes an effective topic.

Once you've chosen a topic, you'll compose a journal entry reflecting on your choice of topic. In it, please cover the following:
• what your topic is
• how you came to decide on that topic
• what questions do you have about the topic that you expect to work through in your writing (or, what do you want to understand about this topic that you don't fully understand now?) - remember that you don't need to have a perfectly neat 'thesis' at this stage in the process

Keep in mind that the journal style is expected to be written in paragraph form but can have a casual, conversational tone. These are more for you as a writer to practice writing and to learn to discover what you think by writing. You should write between 250-500 words for journal entries, unless otherwise noted. Your response should be posted by September Monday, September 8th.