Essay2

FORMAL
WRITING ASSIGNMENT #2

 

ROUGH DRAFT: The first version of your rough draft should be
prepared and submitted via our Blackboard page by the end of the day on Monday, April 26. Your first draft
should be typed and must be at least 4-5 double-spaced pages in length (with
margins of no more than one inch). You can submit your rough draft as a Word,
PDF, or Google Docs document. Any rough
drafts submitted after Monday, April 26 will be considered late and penalized
accordingly.

 

RECEIVING FEEDBACK FROM ME: Once you have submitted your rough
draft of this essay, you will have two choices in terms of receiving feedback
from me: 1) I will send you written comments on your draft, which you will
receive by Friday, April 30; or 2) you can have a 10 minute individual meeting
with me (via Zoom), in which I will provide spoken comments on your draft—that
meeting will take place by Friday, April 30. I will post a sign-up sheet where
you can let me know your preference for either written comments or else an
individual meeting. (Please note: if you submit your rough draft after April
26, I will only be able to provide you with written comments, since I’ll
already have arranged times for all the individual meetings.)

 

FINAL DRAFT: The final draft of your essay will be due by the end
of the day on

Monday, May 10. Please submit your final draft via Blackboard; you
can submit it as a

Word, PDF, or Google Docs
document. The final version of your essay must be at least 5-6 double-spaced
typed pages in length. Any final drafts
submitted after Monday, May 10 will be considered late and penalized
accordingly.

 

There are, of course, many
similarities between Angela Davis’ Are
Prisons Obsolete? and Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing
California. The primary similarity is that both books deal with prisons and
policing, analyzing what both authors would describe as “the prison industrial
complex” and arguing for the abolition of this system. But there are also
important differences between these two books, at the level of style, approach,
and writing techniques, and also in terms of the arguments that each author is
making. 

 

For this essay, I will ask you to
discuss some of the similarities and differences between Davis’ and Gilmore’s
texts. This will involve a careful analysis of selected sections of these two
books, with a number of specific references to passages from their texts; that
is, be sure to cite and analyze some specific quotes from their texts, rather
than just making general statements about each book. Try to go beyond the
obvious points that can be made too easily. For example, rather than just
pointing out some of the very apparent differences, talk about how these
differences affect the work that they do as writers. That is, how do these
differences affect their language, their tone, their approaches to writing, the
way they tell their stories, the audiences they choose to address, and the
arguments that they make? Are there similarities in their experiences and in
their approaches? Are there differences in the conclusions that they reach
about their topics, and in the suggestions they make about how to address the
problems that they describe? How would you imagine them responding to each
other if they were brought into a dialogue? (This is something that you, as the
writer, can do: invite Davis and Gilmore to have a conversation, and figure out
how to stage it.) 

 

Obviously, you will not be able
to write about everything in these
two books, so your job is also to figure out how to focus your comparison of
these books around a central argument or main idea of your own. In doing so,
feel free to draw on points you have already made about Are Prisons Obsolete? in your first essay—although you should work
to expand and adapt these ideas to fit your argument in this essay—and also
points that you have raised in your weekly informal writing assignments and in
the Discussion Forum. You are also welcome (but not required) to bring in other
writers we have read this semester. My only concern is that in discussing the
similarities and differences between Angela Davis’ and Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s
texts, and in bringing them into some sort of conversation with each other, you
bring in your own perspective and your own arguments as well. 

 

I look forward to reading your
drafts! Please be in touch with any questions.