CIE100: Common Intellectual Experience - Essay 1 (100 Points)

Purpose, Task, and Criteria

Purpose: To turn close reading into a specific, arguable claim by asking what it takes to see the world, and ourselves, more clearly.

Task: Write a 1200-1500 word MLA essay that advances a contestable thesis on one of the prompts, grounded in close reading of Plato, Adichie, and/or Merz, and built through the draft-and-revision process.

Criteria: Assessed on your thesis, argument development, use and synthesis of textual evidence, organization, and citations, with real weight on the revision itself; see the rubric below.

Assignment Goals

The goals of this assignment are:
  1. To formulate a clear, arguable thesis statement
  2. To support a thesis with carefully chosen quotes from primary sources
  3. To engage substantively with the drafting and revision process
  4. To explore the question of what genuine education and unlearning require

Background Reading and References

Please refer to the following readings and examples offering templates to help get you started:

The Assignment

In this first essay of 1200 to 1500 words, you will construct an argument grounded in close reading of the texts we have discussed so far: Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Adichie’s Dear Ijeawele, and Katie Merz’s Live the Questions. The essay takes up the first core question of the course, what should matter to me, by asking what it takes to come to see the world, and ourselves, more clearly.

Prompt

Choose one of the following options. Whichever option you choose, your essay must advance a specific, arguable thesis and support it with carefully selected quotations from the text(s), cited in MLA format.

  1. Plato and Adichie both describe processes of unlearning: the prisoner must turn away from the shadows, and Ijeawele’s daughter must be raised against the grain of the “conditioning” her culture supplies. Construct an argument about what genuine education requires, grounded in close reading of one or both texts. You are welcome, but not required, to test your argument against an example of unlearning from your own experience or from contemporary life.

  2. The freed prisoner returns to the cave at real personal risk, and Adichie writes a letter she knows may be resisted by the very people it hopes to help. Construct an argument about the obligations of those who come to see differently: what do they owe to the communities they came from, and what limits, if any, bound that obligation?

  3. Katie Merz’s Live the Questions poses questions in glyphs and images rather than sentences. Using the Smokestack installation alongside one written text from this unit, construct an argument about how visual and written texts pose questions differently, and what each form can do that the other cannot.

Scaffolded Deliverables

This essay is developed in three stages, and the stages together constitute the 100 points of this assignment. The thesis statement, quote list, and rough outline are worth 10 points; the complete first draft is worth 30 points; and the revised final draft is worth 60 points. You must meet in person with our Writing Fellow between the first and final drafts, and your final draft must respond substantively to that conversation; cosmetic edits do not constitute revision. This is worth 10 of the 100 points, all or nothing: meeting without revising earns zero on that row, and so does revising without meeting. Name the change the conference produced in your revision memo so the credit is easy to see. Book early - the whole section shares one Writing Fellow.

  1. Thesis Statement, Quote List, and Rough Outline. A one to two sentence working thesis, a list of four to six quotations (with page numbers) that you expect to use as evidence, and a paragraph-level outline.
  2. First Draft. A complete draft of the full 1200 to 1500 words, not a partial sketch. The more complete the draft, the more useful the Writing Fellow conference will be.
  3. Final Draft. The revised essay, accompanied by a brief (one paragraph) revision memo describing what you changed and why.

Submission Instructions

Submit each deliverable through Canvas before the start of class on its due date, as listed on the course schedule. If you consulted a generative AI tool for a permitted purpose under the course policy (such as refining a research question), disclose that use in your Acknowledgements section; the writing itself must be entirely your own.

If collaboration with a buddy was permitted, did you work with a buddy on this assignment? If so, who? If not, do you certify that this submission represents your own original work? Please identify any and all portions of your submission that were not originally written by you.

Submission

Submit a word processed or PDF document through Canvas before the start of class on each due date.

Assignment Rubric

Description Pre-Emerging (< 50%) Beginning (50%) Progressing (85%) Proficient (100%)
Thesis: An Arguable Claim About the Text (20%) No thesis, or a statement of topic ('This essay is about Plato's cave') rather than a claim. A reader cannot tell what you are arguing. A thesis is present but it is something no one would dispute - a summary of what the text says, or an observation the text itself states outright. There is nothing at stake. The thesis makes a claim a reasonable reader could reject, and it is specific to this text rather than to the topic in general. It may still be broader than the essay can actually support in 1200-1500 words. The thesis makes a specific, arguable claim that the essay is the right size to defend, and it engages one of the course's core questions - what should matter to me, how should we live together, how can we understand the world, what will I do - rather than floating free of them. A reader knows by the end of the first paragraph both what you claim and why someone might disagree.
Quotation and the Work It Does (20%) Few or no quotations, or quotations dropped into the essay with no framing and no comment - the passage is left to speak for itself, which it does not do. Quotations appear but are chosen for topic rather than for language. They restate the point already made in your own words instead of giving the reader something to look at. Quotations are well chosen and introduced, and most are followed by comment. Some passages are quoted at greater length than the point requires, or the comment paraphrases rather than analyzes. Every quotation is an anchor passage in the sense we practiced in the close reading workshop: chosen because its particular words matter, quoted only as far as it needs to be, framed so the reader knows where they are in the text, and followed by commentary that does work the quotation cannot do alone. The essay reads as though the passages were selected in a second pass, not found in the first.
From Observation to Interpretation (15%) The essay reports what happens in the text. Observations are listed without being connected to any claim. Some interpretation appears, but the essay returns repeatedly to summary, and the reader is left to supply the connection between the evidence and the claim. Observations are consistently turned into interpretation, and the warrant - why this passage supports this claim - is usually stated rather than assumed. Some paragraphs still stop one step short. Each paragraph moves from something specific on the page to something the reader could not have seen without you, and states the warrant connecting them. Where an alternative reading of a passage is available, the essay acknowledges it rather than pretending the passage can only mean one thing.
Structure and Movement (10%) Paragraphs appear in no discernible order; the essay could be rearranged without loss. The essay has an order but the reader has to reconstruct it. Paragraphs cover more than one idea, or transitions announce topic changes without connecting them. Each paragraph does one job and the transitions connect ideas rather than merely marking a change of subject. The overall arc is clear, if occasionally repetitive. The order of the paragraphs is itself an argument: each one earns the next, the essay builds rather than accumulates, and the conclusion says something the introduction could not have said.
MLA Citation and Quotation Mechanics (10%) Citations are absent, or quoted material is not marked as quoted. Citations are present but inconsistent in format, or page and line references are missing. MLA in-text citations and Works Cited are correct with minor slips; quotations are integrated grammatically into your sentences. MLA format is correct throughout, quotations are integrated so the sentence reads naturally with the quoted words in it, and alterations and ellipses are marked honestly.
Writing Fellow Conference and Response (all or nothing) (10%) No conference took place. 0 of 10 points - this row carries no partial credit. No conference took place, or one was scheduled and missed. 0 of 10 points. The conference took place but the final draft does not respond to what was said in it. 0 of 10 points - attending is necessary but not sufficient. You met in person with our Writing Fellow between the first and final drafts, and the final draft visibly responds to that conversation - a change you can point to and name in your revision memo. Full 10 points.
Revision (Substantive Change Between Drafts) (15%) The final draft is the first draft with typos corrected. No revision memo, or a memo that describes edits rather than changes. Some sentence-level changes, but the argument, the evidence, and the structure are the ones the first draft had. Writing Fellow feedback is acknowledged but not acted on. The final draft changes something that matters - a claim sharpened, a paragraph resequenced, weak evidence replaced - and the revision memo explains what and why. At least one change responds to the Writing Fellow conference. The revision reconsiders the essay rather than repairing it: the thesis is different because the drafting taught you something, or evidence was cut because it did not survive scrutiny. The revision memo names the specific feedback and the specific change, and can say what the essay now argues that the draft could not.

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