Reading Notes Structure and Guidelines:

Reading notes are supposed to assist the rest of the class in understanding the text. The idea is to condense the information in each reading to make it comprehensible to the rest of the participants of the course. You are to thoroughly read the article and to garner two things from it. Think of it as writing a summary or a study guide entry for your fellow students. The structure I’m proposing here is what is required for each submission off reading notes. Each Reading Notes submission is worth 5 points in total.

About the Author (1pt)

Who is the author? Where are they from? What is their field of study/ What type of work do they do? (e.g. are they an historian, sociologist, ethnographer, anthropology, dance scholar etc.). What makes this author a credible source of information for the area of research in question.

Thesis/Premise (1pt)

A thesis is a declaration of what the article/research intends to prove.  It is a road map for the reader. It is the main idea of the paper.  What is the question they are answering in the essay? It is not just about what the writer is going to discuss, but also how they are doing it or going to do it.

Main Points (2pt)

For this section, write—in point form— no more than five key ideas, thoughts or pieces of evidence that the author uses to make their argument. These could include historical facts, philosophical concepts, ways in which they are answering their thesis questions, or the main pillars of their argument.

Conclusion (1pt)

Here you can relay the conclusion the author came to and/or your own conclusion after reading the work. You may also note ideas that the reading sparked in you and/or a closing thought for the people who will be reading your notes.

BELOW IS THE PDF READING FOR THE ASSIGNMENT

African american

Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book

Hortense J. Spillers

Diacritics, Vol. 17, No. 2, Culture and Countermemory: The “American” Connection. (Summer,
1987), pp. 64-81.

Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0300-7162%28198722%2917%3A2%3C64%3AMBPMAA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-B

Diacritics is currently published by The Johns Hopkins University Press.

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