I’m hoping that by titling these posts with what I searched as I looked for these kinds of things I can help future students who are also in search of these kinds of things.

These came to me via a friend who got them from another friend who got them from Cindy Selfe and Laura Allen, both of whom work in the R(hetoric)C(omposition)L(iteracy) department here at OSU. I’ve not met either of them in person, at least not more than in passing, but I am grateful to them for their wonderful questions that translate pretty well to other disciplines. I also won’t commit to answering all of these questions in every post or for every reading, but I will try to answer the ones that seem important for whatever reading I’ll be writing about. I’ll use these questions as an outline to format each reading-specific post.

With that, here’s the list of questions

Reading Questions (with thanks to Cindy Selfe, Laura Allen)

1. Summary & Implications: What is the author’s project and why is it important now? What’s the narrative about the field that’s emerging from the reading? What narratives are silent? Whose voices are silent?
2. Context: Who is this author debating with and why? What is the context of the text’s production and distribution? What historical, cultural, etc. factors affect the way it makes meaning? Does the author seem to be in conversation with other scholars and/or paradigms? Where is this piece of writing centered in the field? What is their intervention in the literature/field? What text is this text in conversation with?
3. Methodology: What is the methodological framework of this text? What methodological moves or questions does the author engage? What is their object of analysis?
4. Rhetorical Moves: What are the major rhetorical moves of the author’s arguments?
5. Engagement & Application: How do I engage this text? How does this apply to my work? Does it support or provide a counterargument or model for strong intro or lit review? In other words, why is this piece of writing useful to me and/or how is it limited (bad writing style, problematic, didn’t consider x, y, and z)? Does it intersect with other items on the list?
6. Key Terms: What terms are key to the author’s argument, and are they operationalized explicitly or implicitly?
7. Significant Quotations: What key quotations from this work would I want to have quick access to?

via GIPHY