Composing a Civic Life: A Rhetoric and Readings for Inquiry and Action, 2nd Edition

Composing A Civic Life promotes informed, active citizenship by encouraging the reader to write as a means of inquiry and civic participation.

Preface

1. What Does It Mean to Be a Citizen?

Getting Started: Picturing Citizenship

First Inquiry: Using Mind Maps to Assess What You Know About Citizenship

Continuing the Inquiry: Dictionary definitions

Continuing the Inquiry: Official documents

            U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Request for Naturalization requirements

            Excerpts from the U.S. Constitution

Continuing the Inquiry: Visual Messages

Continuing the Inquiry: Narratives of Citizenship

            Eva Paus, “Reflections of a New U.S. Citizen”

            Benjamin Franklin, from Autobiography

            Ralph Ellison, excerpt from "Prologue" to Invisible Man

            Writing Your Own Narratives of Citizenship

Assessing the Progress of Our Inquiries

Projects for Inquiry and Action

2. Critical Literacy: The Skills to Live an Examined Life

Getting Started: Critical Thinking as Examining Life         

First Inquiry: Critical Reading as Active Conversation

            The Declaration of Independence

Second Inquiry: Using a Writer’s Notebook to Connect Thinking, Reading, and Writing

Third Inquiry: Developing Your Writing Process

Conceiving: The Early Stage of Writing

Clarifying: The Middle Stage of Writing

Crafting: The Later Stage of Writing

Continuing the Inquiry: Critical Literacy and Citizenship

Projects for Inquiry and Action

3. Researching: Inquiry as Action

Getting Started: Inquiring in Our Communities

Ursula Le Guin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”

Second Inquiry: Developing a Research Plan

Third Inquiry: Inquiring Effectively Using Research Methods

            Becoming Information Literate: Researching Electronic, Print, and Broadcast Media

            Researching on the World Wide Web

            Researching in the Library

            Researching with Broadcast Media

            Getting the Lived Experience: Inquiring Through Field Research

Weaving Together Inquiry and Action in Community-based Service Learning

Conclusion: Inquiry as Argument

Projects for Inquiry and Action

4. Arguing: Action as Inquiry

Getting Started: Arguing in Our Communities

First Inquiry: What is Arguing to Inquire?

            Summarizing an Argument

            Analyzing an Argument

            Susan B. Anthony, “Women’s Right to Vote”

            Black Panthers, “Ten Point Plan”

Second Inquiry: Developing an Arguing Mind

Third Inquiry: Arguing Effectively

            Appealing to Evidence

            Appealing to Reason

            Appealing to Character

            Appealing to Emotions

            Appealing to Visual Arguments

Conclusion: Argument as Inquiry

Projects for Inquiry and Action

5. Writing in Communities: Academic Research and Social Action

Getting Started: Critical Literacy and Civic Participation

First Inquiry: Writing in an Academic Community

            Re-seeing the Research Paper

            Forming a Research Question

            Planning the Research Project

            Understanding the Conversation on Your Subject

            Writing the Research Paper

            Citing and Documenting Sources

            Research Process in Action: One Student’s Story

            Holly Van De Venter, “Educating the New America”

Second Inquiry: Writing in Civic Communities

            Student Participation in Public Debate

            The Genres of Public Debate

Projects for Inquiry and Action                            

6. The Family as Community

Getting Started: How Do We See the Family?

Mary Pipher, “Beliefs About Families”

Tony Earley, “Somehow Form a Family"

Gigi Kaeser, “Love Makes a Family” (photograph)

Jeff Riedel, “Inward Christian Soldiers” (photograph)

Margaret Talbot, “A Mighty Fortress”

James McBride, “Black Power”

Fatima Mernissi, “Moonlit Nights of Laughter”

Case Study: A More Perfect Union: Defining Family through the Marriage Protection Amendment

Text of the proposed federal Marriage Protection Amendment 

Rick Santorum, “The Meaning of Family”

Maggie Gallagher, “What Is Marriage For”

Tom Tomorrow, “A Brief History of Marriage in America” (cartoon)

Jonathan Rauch, “What is Marriage For?”

Barrie Jean Borich, “When I Call Her My Husband”

George Lakoff, “What’s in a Word?”

Questions for Inquiry and Action

Continuing the Case Study

7. The Higher Education Community

Getting Started:  Why Are You in College?

Arthur Levine and Jeanette S. Cureton, "Collegiate Life: An Obituary,"       

Mark Edmundson, “On the Uses of a Liberal Education: As Lite Entertainment for Bored College Students”

Roger H. Garrison, “Why Am I in College?”

bell hooks, “Engaged Pedagogy”

Peter Sacks, “The Sandbox Experiment”

Case Study: Free to Teach, Free to Learn: Academic Freedom and the Academic Bill of Rights

David Horowitz, “Why an Academic Bill of Rights is Necessary”

“Is Your Professor Using The Classroom As A Political Soapbox?” (poster)

"What is Academic Freedom?  Is it License for Professors to Engage in Classroom Indoctrination?”  (poster)

Stanley Fish, “'Intellectual Diversity': The Trojan Horse of a Dark Design”  

Questions for Inquiry and Action

Continuing the Case Study

8. Citizens of the World: The Global Community

Getting Started: Becoming a Global Citizen

Peter Mayer, “Earth Town Square”

Pico Iyer, “The Global Village Finally Arrives”

James L. Watson, “China’s Big Mac Attack”

Ngugi wa Thiong’o, “Decolonising the Mind”

Roz Chast, “One Morning, While Getting Dressed” (cartoon) 

Slavenka Drakulic, “On Bad Teeth”

Case Study: “Jihad vs. McWorld”: Seeking a Way of Talking about Civilizations in Conflict

Benjamin R. Barber, “Jihad vs. McWorld”

Letters to the Editor

Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?”

David Brooks, “All Cultures Are Not Equal”

Barbara Ehrenreich, “Christian Wahhabists”

Seyla Benhabib, “Unholy Wars”

Questions for Inquiry and Action

Continuing the Case Study

9. Citizens of the Earth: The Planetary Community

Getting Started:  Taking your Ecological Footprint

Regina Austin and Michael Schill, "Activists of Color"

David W. Orr, “Saving Future Generations from Global Warming,”

Bruce Stockler, “Saved by Sequoias”

John Haines, “Snow”

William Wordsworth, “The World is Too Much With Us” 

Muriel Rukeyser, “St. Roach”     

John Clare, “The Badger”

Case Study: Caretakers of the Earth: Comparing Visions of Ecological Responsibility

Rachel Carson, from Silent Spring

Richard Louv, “Don’t Know Much about Natural History: Education as a Barrier to Nature”

Steve Chapple, “Eco-Rednecks”

Frances Moore Lappé, “An Entry Point”

Questions for Inquiry and Action

Continuing the Case Study

10. Communities of Faith

Getting Started: Observing Worship Practices in Faith Communities

Anne Lamott, "Why I Make Sam Go To Church"

Stephen J. Dubner, “Choosing My Religion”

Michael Wolfe, “Islam: The Next American Religion?” 
Wendy Kaminer, “The Last Taboo: Why America needs Atheism”

Bill McKibben, “The Christian Paradox: How a Faithful Nation Gets Jesus Wrong”

Case Study: The Role of Faith Communities in the Civil Rights Movement

Robert M. Franklin, "Another Day's Journey: Faith Communities Renewing American Democracy"

Martin Luther King, Jr., speech at Holt Street Baptist Church, Dec. 5, 1955

Bernice Johnson Reagon, interview excerpt from Eyes on the Prize

James Lawson, “Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Statement of Purpose”

Questions for Inquiry and Action

Continuing the Case Study

11. Virtual Communities

Getting Started: Imagining the World Brain

Esther Dyson “Communities”

Jeff Dietrich, “Refusing to Hope in a God of Technology”

Jake Mulholland and Adrienne Martin, “Tune Out”

David Shenk “Technorealism: An Overview”

Case Study: A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Blogosphere: Blogs and the Standards of Professional Journalism

Lev Grossman "Meet Joe Blog: Why are more and more people getting their news from amateur websites called blogs?  Because they're fast, funny, and totally biased." 

“The Blogger Manifesto (Or, Do Weblogs Make the Internet Better or Worse?”)

Bonnie A. Nardi, Diane J. Schiano, Michelle Gumbrecht, Luke Swartz, “Why We Blog”       

Questions for Inquiry and Action

Continuing the Case Study