<p>Writing Across the Disciplines</p><p>Writing/Reading for the Break</p><p>For Tuesday, March 30</p><p>Read: Geertz’s "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight" and Miner’s "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema" (available on course website at akbar.marlboro.edu/~jsheehy/ courses/wlink.)</p><p>Write: Both of the articles I've given you to read are "academic" pieces, and both of them are from the field of anthropology. After you've read them both, write a piece where you examine how each of these writers thinks about his job as an anthropologist. How does each approach his "subjects"? How does each view his role in studying those subjects? How does each approach his readers? What you're really trying to define, I guess, is the persona adopted by each writer. Try to compare them -- do they have anything in common? What are their differences? Go into as much detail as you can, and consider everything, from the way the argument is set up, to the kinds of conclusions drawn and not drawn, to the kinds of words each writer uses.</p><p>For Friday, April 2</p><p>Read Swift’s “Modest Proposal” (Rottenberg, page 640). We’ll talk about the essay in class on Thursday. But for Thursday as well, write your own "modest proposal." Choose any issue -- social, political, global or local -- and try to write an ironic response to it. Like Swift, try to use restrained language -- try to adopt a persona. More importantly -- but, again like Swift -- try to write the proposal in such a way as to let your real opinion come out through the irony. Take this to some length -- I'd say four to five pages at a minimum. Above all, have fun with it: you know Swift did. (Note: it might be interesting to use the same topic for your modest proposal as you did for your first editorial piece.)</p>