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Spartan Savvy: Integrative Model for Information Literacy

Activities covering information literacy topics

Joining the Scholarly Conversation

by Unknown User on 2018-04-18T10:58:00-04:00 | 0 Comments

Synopsis:

Discussion of video and quote on how scholarship is like a conversation.

Activity Time:

20-25 Minutes

Learning Goals: 

Students will be less intimidated by the academic world by imagining themselves joining the scholarly conversation.

Description/Lesson Plan:

  • Provide students with this quote from Kenneth Burke's "Unending Conversation" Metaphor:

"Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally's assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress."

​Burke, Kenneth. The Philosophy of Literary Form. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1941. p.110-111. 

  • Ask them:  If Burke is describing the academic world as an unending conversation as in this quote, what are the parallels?  Discuss in pairs, then as a whole class. 

  • Ask students, is there some scholarly conversation you are more prepared to enter than another? 

  • Show the Joining the (Scholarly) Conversation video: https://youtu.be/79WmzNQvAZY

  • Discuss:  Do you think they meant to reference the Burke analogy?  What might they mean by voices left out?  Can you think of an ongoing conversation where new research continues to inform “the conversation”?  Have some examples at hand, like whether low-fat diets are healthy, whether coffee is good for you.

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