For your initial discussion post, you should select one of the prompt questions below and write a strong response paragraph that uses the assigned readings for the week as the basis for your response. Your paragraph should establish a claim followed by quoted support from the literature. Follow MLA formatting guidelines for in-text citations when you quote. For the purpose of this course, “literature” is defined as poems, short stories, novel excerpts, non-fiction narratives, speeches, sermons, etc. While you can quote from the editorial sections (author biographies, historical context sections, summaries of artistic and geopolitical changes, etc.), you must focus your response paragraph on the assigned literature and quote from the assigned literature. You should spend time explaining how the the quoted evidence you offer proves your claim to be true. Your response paragraph should be five to seven well developed sentences long.
Question to answer:
- What is the value of a first person narrative?
- The Declaration of Independence
- The Small and Large World of American Writers
- Abraham Lincoln Biography
- Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg, November 19, 1863
- Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865 pp. 801-802
- Slavery, Race and the making of American Literature
- Thomas Jefferson Biography
- from Notes on the State of Virginia
- William Lloyd Garrison Biography
- To the Public
- Sojourner Truth Biography
- Speech to the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron Ohio, 1851; also known as, “Arn’t I a Woman?”
- Harriet Becher Stowe Biography
- from Uncle Tom’s Cabin “Chapter VII”
- Harriet Jacobs Biography
- from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
- Henry David Thoreau Biography
- Resistance to Civil Government; also known as, “Civil Disobedience”
