CIE100: Common Intellectual Experience - McPhee Writing Prompt (10 Points)
Contents
Assignment Goals
The goals of this assignment are:
- To reflect upon the course texts in preparation for thoughtful discussion
- To organize thoughts into a concise and cohesive response to a targeted question
- To consider multiple viewpoints about ideas
The Assignment
Please read the questions below and answer them in a 1-2 paragraph analytic response. Say what you think, support it with at least one quote from the text, and then give a counterargument or alternative viewpoint a brief hearing, with a quote behind that too. Submit your response through Canvas by the due date on the syllabus.
Analytic is the default genre for McPhee, but you may swap in any of the other four (letter, dialogue, marginalia+aphorism, or the Four A’s) so long as the quote and counterargument requirements are still met.
If the reading is what’s slowing you down, please see How to Read Hard Texts in CIE.
Writing Prompt
-
McPhee asks you to imagine spans of time that no one can feel. Choose a passage where he makes deep time something you can touch, such as the unconformity at Carlin Canyon, and discuss what his comparison helps you understand and what it hides. Does he finally leave you feeling that you have grasped deep time, or that you cannot?
-
The Perkiomen Creek flooded during Hurricane Ida in 2021, and people here still remember it. Set an event like that beside the time scale McPhee describes. Where in your own community can you read a long history in the land, in a road cut, a creek bed, or the stone of a building? What would McPhee notice about that place that its residents might not?
Submission
Please submit a word processed or PDF document.
Please refer to the Style Guide for code quality examples and guidelines.