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: Assessed on your thesis, argument development, synthesis across texts, 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 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, you will construct an argument that synthesizes texts from the second half of our semester: Genesis, Darwin, McPhee, Deloria, McLuhan, and Forster. 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 offer profoundly different accounts of humanity’s place in nature: created stewards of a garden, one branching lineage among many, and inhabitants of sacred places to which obligations are owed. Construct an argument about how we ought to understand our place in the natural world, engaging at least two of these accounts seriously rather than dismissing either.

  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 delegation 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

This essay is developed in two stages, and the stages together constitute the 100 points of this assignment. The complete first draft is worth 40 points; the revised final draft is worth 60 points. 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 do not constitute revision.

Unlike Essays 1 and 2, this essay has no separate outline deliverable. You go from the assignment sheet straight to a full draft, because by this point in the semester you have 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; neither is submitted as part of this essay’s grade.

  1. First Draft. A complete draft of the full 1500 to 1800 words, 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 the course schedule assigns both readings early so that every text named in your chosen prompt is read before you draft. Consult the schedule for when each reading and discussion falls. Draft from the text rather than waiting on class discussion, then let discussion sharpen the argument when you revise. That is why the revision carries 60 of this assignment’s 100 points.

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, 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, 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; 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 is a position that neither text alone could support and 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 rather than 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 the juxtaposition. The texts are put into genuine conversation - one is 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 is the referee. Scripture, science, journalism, philosophy, and fiction are read on their own terms rather than flattened into a single kind of claim, and the essay can say what the pairing shows that neither text shows alone. Where the texts genuinely 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 topic rather than language, and often restate a point already made in your own words. Quotations are well chosen, framed, and analyzed, and the warrant connecting passage to claim is usually explicit. Every passage is chosen because its particular words matter, quoted only as far as needed, and followed by commentary that does work the quotation cannot do alone. Passages that resist the reading are engaged rather than avoided.
Structure and Movement (10%) Paragraphs appear in no discernible order; the essay could be rearranged without loss. There is an order but the reader reconstructs it; the essay alternates between texts on a schedule rather than for a reason. Each paragraph does one job, transitions connect ideas, and the movement between texts is driven by the argument. 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. 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 typos corrected. No revision memo, or a memo describing edits rather than changes. Sentence-level changes only. The synthesis is the one the first draft had, and Writing Fellow feedback is acknowledged but not acted on. The final draft changes something that matters - a text used differently, a conflict acknowledged, the claim narrowed to what the evidence bears - and the memo explains what and why. The revision reconsiders the essay rather than repairing it. The strongest final drafts let continued reading and class discussion change the argument: a text read more precisely, an objection absorbed, a claim sharpened. The memo names the specific feedback or discussion and the specific change it produced.

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