CIE100: Common Intellectual Experience - Essay 3 (100 Points)

Purpose, Task, and Criteria

Purpose: To synthesize science, scripture, journalism, philosophy, and fiction into one argument about humanity's place in nature and technology's place in human life.

Task: Write a 1500-1800 word MLA essay advancing an arguable thesis that engages at least two texts from the second half of the semester, built through the draft-and-revision process.

Criteria: I assess your thesis, how you develop the argument, how you synthesize across texts, your organization, and your citations. The revision itself carries real weight; the rubric below has the full breakdown.

Assignment Goals

The goals of this assignment are:
  1. To formulate a clear, arguable thesis statement about humanity's place in nature and technology's place in human life
  2. To support a thesis with carefully chosen quotes from primary sources
  3. To synthesize texts spanning scripture, science, journalism, philosophy, and fiction into a cohesive argument
  4. To engage substantively with the drafting and revision process

Background Reading and References

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

The Assignment

In this final essay of 1500 to 1800 words, please construct an argument that synthesizes texts from the second half of our semester. You have Genesis, Darwin, McPhee, Deloria, McLuhan, and Forster to work with. The essay takes up the third and fourth core questions of the course, how can we understand the world and what will I do, by asking how we should understand humanity’s place in nature and technology’s place in human life.

Prompt

Choose one of the following options. Whichever option you choose, your essay must engage at least two texts from this unit, advance a specific, arguable thesis, and support it with carefully selected quotations cited in MLA format.

  1. Genesis, Darwin, and Deloria give us three very different accounts of humanity’s place in nature. We are created stewards of a garden, we are one branching lineage among many, and we are inhabitants of sacred places to which we owe obligations. Construct an argument about how we ought to understand our place in the natural world, and take at least two of these accounts seriously instead of dismissing either one.

  2. McPhee documents our engineering contests with rivers and mountains, and Forster imagines a civilization that has surrendered entirely to its own Machine. Construct an argument about the limits we should accept on technological mastery. Where does the control of nature, or the handing over of life to machines, cross from prudence into hubris, and how would we know?

  3. McLuhan claims that media reshape us regardless of their content, and Forster dramatized exactly that reshaping nearly a century before the technologies arrived. Construct an argument about what your generation should do about its Machine, grounded in both texts and in at least one earlier text from the semester (for example, Plato’s cave or Coates’ Dream) that gives your argument historical depth.

Scaffolded Deliverables

You will build this essay in two stages, and those stages together make up the 100 points. The complete first draft is worth 40 points and the revised final draft is worth 60. No Writing Fellow conference is required for this essay. You are welcome to book one, and it will help, but unlike Essays 1 and 2 it is not part of this essay’s grade. Your final draft should still respond substantively to your own rereading and to the Forster discussion. Cosmetic edits don’t count as revision.

Unlike Essays 1 and 2, this essay has no separate outline deliverable. You go from the assignment sheet straight to a full draft. By this point in the semester you’ve done the thesis-and-outline work twice, and the harder problem here is synthesis across texts rather than getting started. The Thesis Workshop and the Evidence Workshop are where you do that thinking, and neither one is submitted as part of this essay’s grade.

  1. First Draft. A complete draft of the full 1500 to 1800 words, and not a partial sketch.
  2. Final Draft. The revised essay, accompanied by a brief (one paragraph) revision memo describing what you changed and why.

A note on reading ahead. Prompt options 2 and 3 name McLuhan and Forster, and I have assigned both readings early on the schedule so that every text named in your chosen prompt is read before you draft. Please check the schedule for when each reading and discussion falls. Draft from the text instead of waiting on class discussion, and then let the discussion sharpen your argument when you revise. That is why the revision carries 60 of this assignment’s 100 points.

Submission Instructions

Please 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 purpose the course policy permits, please disclose that use in your Acknowledgements section. The writing itself has to 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

Please submit a word processed or PDF document through Canvas before the start of class on each due date, as listed on the course schedule.

Assignment Rubric

Description Pre-Emerging (< 50%) Beginning (50%) Progressing (85%) Proficient (100%)
Thesis: A Position Neither Text Alone Supports (20%) No thesis, or a topic statement naming the texts without claiming anything about them. A thesis is present, but it is a claim one of the texts already makes, and the second text is decoration. The thesis stakes out a position that requires more than one text, and a reasonable reader could reject it. The thesis takes a position that neither text alone could support, one that emerges from putting them together, and it engages the course's third and fourth core questions (how can we understand the world, and what will I do) as live questions instead of as a frame.
Synthesis Across Texts and Disciplines (25%) The texts are handled one after another with no relation between them. The essay is two short essays stapled together. The texts are compared, but the comparison stays at the level of similarity and difference. Nothing follows from putting them side by side. The texts are in real conversation, with one used to press, extend, or complicate the other, and the essay respects that they come from different disciplines and different centuries. The texts argue with each other on the page and the essay referees. Scripture, science, journalism, philosophy, and fiction are each read on their own terms instead of flattened into one kind of claim, and the essay can say what the pairing shows that neither text shows alone. Where the texts conflict, the essay says so instead of manufacturing agreement.
Evidence and Warrant (15%) Few or no quotations, or passages dropped in without framing or comment. Quotations are chosen for what they are about rather than for how they are written, and they often restate a point you already made in your own words. Quotations are well chosen, framed, and analyzed, and the warrant connecting passage to claim is usually explicit. You chose every passage because its particular words matter, quoted it only as far as you needed to, and followed it with commentary that does work the quotation cannot do alone. Passages that resist your reading are engaged instead of avoided.
Structure and Movement (10%) Paragraphs appear in no discernible order; the essay could be rearranged without loss. There is an order, but your reader has to reconstruct it, and the essay alternates between texts on a schedule instead of for a reason. Each paragraph does one job, transitions connect ideas, and the movement between texts is driven by the argument. The paragraphs are ordered so that each one earns the next, the essay builds toward its claim instead of piling up material, 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 the Works Cited are correct apart from minor slips, and quotations fit grammatically into your own sentences. MLA format is correct throughout across texts of different kinds, quotations are integrated so the sentence reads naturally, and alterations and ellipses are marked honestly.
Revision (Substantive Change Between Drafts) (20%) The final draft is the first draft with the typos corrected. There is no revision memo, or the memo describes edits where it should describe changes. Sentence-level changes only. The synthesis is still the one the first draft had, and you acknowledge feedback without acting on it. The final draft changes something that matters, whether that is a text used differently, a conflict acknowledged, or the claim narrowed to what the evidence will bear, and the memo explains what you changed and why. The revision reconsiders the essay instead of repairing it. The strongest final drafts let continued reading and class discussion change the argument, whether by reading a text more precisely, absorbing an objection, or sharpening a claim. The memo names the specific feedback or discussion and the specific change it produced.

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