Defining the term public

Based on your reading of Michael Warner’s essay, “Public and Private,” how would you define the term “pubic”? How is it different from or related to the term “private”? How might these definitions help you in your final essay for this class?

Weekly blog post from Zach and Jenn

We’ve been working really closely in class with the essay that we are currently working on, so we wanted to take the weekly post in a new direction. Now that the year is winding down, we though it would be a good time to reflect in both a general and specific matter on what we have been doing in this class.

What kinds of community service work did you do in before college? Did you work more closely with people, as we did during the community work portions of our time with project Angel Heart, or did you do work for the organization as we did with our oral history project?

If you did do community service work before college, has your opinion of what it means to volunteer changed? If yes, how so? If not, what is your opinion of what it means to volunteer, and contribute personally to the public good?

Finally, has this class inspired you to continue working in the community? Have you learned anything about volunteerism and working for the public good that has made you want to find or identify a cause or organization with whom you want to volunteer in the future? If so, how do you see your volunteerism grow and progress as time goes on? If you don’t believe you will continue to volunteer in the community, what measures do you think could be taken to help engage students in community work?

Reflecting on writing for Project Angel Heart

Now that you have completed your oral history narrative for Project Angel Heart, I’d like you to reflect about your experience writing for a non-profit organization. First, describe what you did for this project. What was it like writing for a non-profit organization? How did you collaborate with your partner? Then, reflect on the differences between writing for Project Angel Heart and performing other kinds of service. How did writing for the organization differ from preparing or delivering meals? What did you learn about writing, rhetoric, and/or research by completing this project?

Post from Jenna and Matt

As we are getting into the next assignment for this class, we want to know what the brainstorming process has looked like for each of you so far. This assignment is very open-ended, so we believe that writing about and discussing the process will help clarify things for everyone.

· What does “the public good” mean to you, and what aspect(s) are particularly interesting to you? How can you see this definition materializing in a paper?
· What ideas, if any, have you come up with for the focus of your paper? How did you come up with those ideas, and how are you narrowing them down into potential theses? What types of sources are you finding, and where/how are you finding them? How else do you plan to gather information (interviews, surveys, etc.)? What advice might you have for people who are struggling with making these decisions?
· If you are struggling to come up with ideas or sources, what questions do you have? What things seem to be standing in your way?

Don’t worry about answering all of the questions; just answer the ones you feel are particularly applicable to your writing process thus far. We encourage all of you to read and respond to one another’s posts – let’s work together to come up with some awesome paper topics!


Jenna: To me, the public good is anything which is done to benefit another. Particularly, it is seen as something done, usually by a group of people, to benefit another group of people, generally in a public and organized fashion. We have talked a lot recently about what motivates people to contribute to the public good. I am particularly interested in religion, so I want to write something about how religion (or lack thereof) contributes to this motivation. I am still pretty fuzzy on exactly what this will entail for my paper, but I think this is the general topic that I would like to pursue.
I have been finding sources through the tools shown to us in class on Wednesday. I have had the most luck by being patient and entering a variety of synonyms for the keywords in order to get slightly different but still applicable sources. I would also recommend that people don’t go into it with a set thesis, but rather search a general topic and allow the sources they find to help narrow their thesis. I am also considering using a survey (and possibly an interview or two) to support my paper, specifically to apply it to college students.

Matt: So far the focus of my paper is going to be the importance service learning in the classroom with a focus on biology. I will also look at how science teachers adapt their curriculum to effectively use service learning as a teaching tool. I have not done enough research at this point to formulate a thesis but I did find one source that works very well for my topic. The source was about service learning relating to AIDS/HIV in a biology classroom. In fact this is exactly the focus of my research so this should be a strong topic. I feel that the most difficult part of this paper for me is going to find 5 relevant sources what I can pull information from to put into my paper. Even though I found 1 great source, with such a specific topic, I think it will be difficult to find several more. If anyone is having difficulties with any specific part in the paper, it is important to seek help. If someone is having trouble with the research aspect, we now know that the library has great resources to assist with that problem. If someone is having trouble finding a topic, Professor Bateman is always willing to help. It’s crucial to deal with these problems early so you can focus on writing the paper.

Weekly Blog from Anya and Kathryn

Since our class is about illness and the rhetoric of illness, Anya and I were wondering if we could apply the thinking from our previous discussions to the current situation of the swine flu “epidemic.” As one of those modern day illnesses that cause chaos, it seems to represent how society deals with illness. Hopefully, all of you have heard about how the swine flu has spread throughout the world. It has hit Mexico the hardest, but cases have been seen in Europe and across the United States (and just yesterday hit Colorado). How does this type of disease reflect how people and society (government, media, etc.) deal with illness and disease? What are some possible metaphors that might stem from this “outbreak”? We have discussed metaphors for AIDS, cancer, and tuberculosis, but where does this swine flu fit into our discussion of illness?

Anya: I don't think the swine flu can really be categorized in the same way as AIDS and cancer because swine flu is much more recent and very very different than those other two illnesses. I have heard swine flu be compared to bird flu and SARS and so people aren't really taking it seriously since those other two diseases weren't as big of a deal as they were made out to be. However, this outbreak is much closer to home than the other two were. It seems that swine flu is almost contained to the US and Mexico, although it is slowly spreading. People are talking more about not if but when it hits. This is an illness that needs to be handled very differently than AIDS or cancer. Neither of those diseases spread as quickly as this one does or are as contagious in the case of AIDS. The US has tried to treat the flu with a cautious hand with some states taking precautions or I guess reactions is a better word, to keep the flu from spreading even farther or quicker. I think since this disease is so new and is spreading so quickly there might not be time for it to have much of a metaphor. The only one that I could think of would it to be compared to cancer since it is metastizing so quickly. If the illness sticks around for awhile and mutates, maybe then people will come up with a metaphor for it but at this point, I don't think that's likely.

Kathryn: The swine flu seems to be characterized by mass precautions and hysteria. It was interesting that the disease seemed to come out of nowhere. Suddenly, there was an outbreak in Mexico. The fact that this disease is so new will likely lead to misinterpretations in how it is spread and what the symptoms are. Scientists are just now trying to refer to the disease with its scientific name, rather than “swine flu” because of the negative connotations that the media-linked name gives. Just from the name, people probably form their own ideas of what the disease is caused by and what its symptoms are. It could also have negative effects on whether people believe that they can catch the swine flu. If the disease is attributed to pigs and we think of pigs as being dirty, it is possible that certain people may believe that they cannot catch the disease because they are clean. The biggest problem with the disease seems to be how it is spread through the air. Because of this, I think that people will respond differently than they would to diseases like cancer and AIDS. They have limited resources to prevent it from spreading to them. This shows how people often deal with illness in a more hysterical manner in anticipation that they might get sick, not because they actually are sick.