CIE100: Common Intellectual Experience - Between the World and Me Writing Prompt (10 Points)

Assignment Goals

The goals of this assignment are:

1. To reflect upon the course texts in preparation for thoughtful discussion
2. To organize thoughts into a concise and cohesive response to a targeted question
3. To consider multiple viewpoints about ideas

The Assignment

Please read the questions below and answer them in a 1-2 paragraph analytic response. State what you think, support it with at least one quote from the text, and then take up a counterargument or an alternative viewpoint and discuss it briefly. Support that side with a quote as well, either one that illustrates the alternative or one that pushes back against it. Submit your response through Canvas before the start of class.

The analytic response is the default for this reading. If another of the five genres fits better (analytic, letter, dialogue, marginalia+aphorism, or the Four A’s), use it, as long as you still include a quote and a counterargument.

Coates reads best aloud. If the prose is fighting you, How to Read Hard Texts in CIE explains why and what to do about it.

Writing Prompt

1. Coates writes to his son about the vulnerability of the body, insisting that racism is not an abstraction but something visited upon bodies. Choose a passage where the body itself carries the argument, and discuss how this embodiment changes the way we talk about justice compared to more abstract treatments.

2. Coates describes the Dream as a kind of sleep, comfortable and costly. What dream, in your own life, community, or country, might Coates challenge you to wake from? You may mark any portion of this response as private to the instructor if you prefer not to discuss it in class; the thinking matters more than the disclosure.

Submission

Please submit a word processed or PDF document.

Please refer to the Style Guide for code quality examples and guidelines.