ENG 3080J
Essay 3: The Connected “Good Citizen”
In the last assignment, we studied literacy practices related to a social group,
perhaps tied to an issue of social justice or activism. For this assignment, I want
you to engage in a literacy event. I’d like to see you show your voice as an active
participator in civic conversation, in the spirit of the ancient Greek tradition of the
“good citizen.” The Stanford Encyclopedia described that the aim of each citizen
was “to be an asset to his friends, to his family, and, most important, to the polis.”
So, for the Greeks, education was aimed at building better citizens who
participated in development of the polis, which resulted in better citizens, and so
forth in a recursive process. This tradition has persisted in writing instruction
through the influence of rhetoric. In this assignment, we’re imagining a new milieu
of writing technologies for civic engagement.
For this assignment, you are encouraged to think about the “polis” in a broader
way to include subcultures you are a part of. You might think of the university,
your hometown, a student group, a Web community you are a part of, etc. as a
“polis.”
This could mean creating a meme related to a social issue you are concerned
about, creating a video, designing a Twitter campaign with a hashtag, writing a
letter to the editor or drawing a comic strip, a short graphic novelette, recording a
podcast or composing some other text. Equally important, though, is your ability
to analyze and reflect on your text, the motivation that spawned it, if applicable,
how it relates to course readings, such as B and H or Buckingham or Douglass or
Anzaldua or others. And, finally, you will have to situate that in the context of the
“good citizen.”
For this assignment:
•You will compose two texts. One may be of any medium or combination of
media that could be (but doesn’t have to be) shared in some public arena. The
other will be a short, written analysis of that text and reflection on it (3-4 full
pages). (You are not required to actually post/share the first text with the world.)
•You should be participating as a “good citizen” (according to our broad
interpretation of what that means) and be able to explain that in your reflection.
While this is open to interpretation, the outcome shouldn’t engage in hate
speech or other activity that is expressly warned against in the Ohio University
Student Code of Conduct:
