Would you like to earn double credit for PRELIM 10: Evolving Annotated Bibliography by creating a Blog post or Page on your Blog in addition to turning it in on Canvas? Below are some instructions on how to do so!

First, sign in to your WordPress website (or other blog host program if you’re not using WordPress to host your Blog).
Second, choose “Posts” or “Add New” located in the left hand menu of the Dashboard.

“Add New” (to start with a completely new Blog Post)

You can add text by copying + pasting from another text file (i.e. MS Word, .pages, etc.) OR by typing in the window. For example:

Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Thorpe, Ulverscroft,  2018.
[Novel Chapter] In a future where most animals are a rare commodity, bounty hunter Rick Deckard tracks deviant androids, hoping to earn enough money to purchase a living sheep (as opposed to the robotic one that he already possesses). In the process, he falls in love with an android. Struck by this unprecedented dilemma, Deckard struggles to differentiate between humanity and inhumanity as he reassesses his situation. Since my essay focuses on the portrayal of robots in media, this classic felt like the perfect reference point. As Deckard realizes the dangers associated with making androids as human as possible, I see a chance to analyze why the androids even need to be human-like in the first place. The book also provides an opportunity to define androids in the context of classic fiction, setting a reference point for the reader audience. Plus, the novel opens the following discussions: What makes a human? What about the androids makes their emotions so uncanny? Why give them the ability to emote in the first place? Are they meant to be better than us? If so, again, why give them emotions? And so on.

If you have images, upload them to the Media library by clicking on the Media item in the Dashboard menu. Then choose “Add Media” at the top of the composition window menu to add them where you want to place them in the Post. Here is an example::

• You can include an image or link to a video or other source in the annotation beneath your bibliographic citation. When you add sources or links to sources to a Post, you can edit the entries on the Post by revising or adding annotations, and also by making Hypothes.is to annotate your own Post.
• If you have links to web-based sources you have found doing your own research, such as web-pages, images, or audio or audiovisual material,  you can include them in the Post by clicking on the “link” icon in the composition window menu, typing the URL, and typing title information for the source. For example: “She’s a Replicant” from Bladerunner (1982).
• ALWAYS SAVE YOUR POST.
• PUBLISH your Post or schedule your Post to be published on a particular date. You can also un-publish a Post while you are in the process of revising entries or adding new entries to PRELIM 10.
• You can also create a PAGE and add it to your MENU and write PRELIM 10 (i.e. add any of the above information by copying & pasting or uploading a PDF of PRELIM 10 to the page).

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Examples from former Expository Writing students:

Myth of the American Dream (2020)

Great Gatsby: Myth to Meme (2021)

 Doppelgängers & Doubles (2022)  

Doppelgängers & Doubles (2022)

 

How to Write PRELIM 9b as a Movie Pitch or Movie Trailer:

* Be Brief + Detailed + Specific + Concise [2-3 minutes]
* Include significant information w/succinct language + keyterms
* Set a Tone appropriate for your research Topic-Focus-Motive-Stance-Emerging Thesis/Argument
* Incorporate Important Research Keyterms
* Write for an identifiable Audience . . . to Persuade them
* Use questioning or other hook strategies to draw that Audience in . . .
* Imply Motive (why is the topic/potential argument important?)
* Evoke Stance (To what extent am I invested in this topic+ why?
* Exhibit credible ethos, but be interesting, provocative, controversial
* An Audience should want to read your essay after hearing your Movie Pitch for your project!
* Note the Conversation(s) you are entering
* Gesture to a specific Thesis argument or possible arguments
* Don’t give it away! (No Argument Plot Summaries or Spoilers!)

You will deliver your Research + Argument Presentation  as either a Movie Pitch or Movie Trailer in class: you can either read/share live or record your Pitch and then play it in class

If you want to you can try to sound like Movie Man Voice!

“Meet the Epic Voice Behind Movie Trailers”

Movie Pitch Text + Movie Trailer for The Last Sumurai

Official Movie Trailer for The Last Sumurai

Example Trailers

M

Pulp Fiction

Blair Witch Project

Forrest Gump

Opening for the original Star Trek TV series

Space, the final frontier
These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise
Its five year mission
To explore strange new worlds
To seek out new life
And new civilizations
To boldly go where no man has gone before

Example Student Movie Pitch as a Movie Trailer

His Life, His Way (Frank Sinatra as American Gangster)

“Finland has done it again. The 2024 World Happiness Report is out, and for the seventh year in a row, Finland has been named the happiest country in the world.

But the news isn’t as good for the United States—which has hit a new low. The U.S. didn’t even make the top 20 list—the first time it has ranked so poorly since the World Happiness Report was created in 2012.?

Read more in “Ranked: The 20 Happiest Countries In The World In 2024, According To A New Report” from Forbes.

Osage Nation Singers Receive Standing Ovation For Powerful Oscars Performance

The Gap Band’s Charlie Wilson Discusses Hit Song’s Connection to 1921 Tulsa Massacre

“Anyone who is a fan of 1970s funk knows The Gap Band. The three musical brothers captivated fans with their records for years.

One of their biggest hits is “You Dropped a Bomb on Me.” For some time now, a rumor has swirled about the real meaning of the song.

Listeners who know the origin of the band have long suspected the song may have been written to shed a light on the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.”

‘This is still being suppressed’: OU professor’s book of recovered photos preserves history of Tulsa Race Massacre

“After half a century without pictures of the massacre readily available, OU professor Karlos Hill compiled images like the ones of Mount Zion and others as part of his latest project, “The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre: A Photographic History.” His photobook is centered on the experiences of Black survivors and is intended to contextualize images taken by white participants. In his research on the massacre, Hill has seen countless images depicting destruction, damaged buildings and, simultaneously, the wrecking of the hopes and dreams of a prosperous Black community. But in his mind, one stands out from the rest — an aerial image of a smoky sky above a smattering of buildings, with a caption scratched across the bottom of the picture.”

[Click on the link above to read the entire article and to access additional links to articles published by the OU Daily.]

A Justice for Greenwood Virtual Public Lecture took place on 23 April 2021.

From “The Bezos of Black Wall Street”, Forbes, June 18, 2020.

“The significant thing about Greenwood is it was not just a Black thing. It was quintessential America,” says James O. Goodwin, owner of weekly newspaper The Oklahoma Eagle, which traces its roots to Greenwood’s Tulsa Star, where his grandfather worked. Goodwin was born in Tulsa in 1939, the son of a Black Wall Street resident. “It was like any other developing neighborhood, whether that’s Irish, or Greek, or Jewish,” he explains. “These people embraced faith, they believed in education and hard work. They believed in capitalism and freedom.”

“People should look at Greenwood as a part of Americana, and not some aberration or a freak of nature,” he adds.” Continue reading “Greenwood’s Black Wall Street was “Essentially America””

“The PROMISE OF OKLAHOMA: How the push for statehood led a beacon of racial progress to oppression and violence”

Continue reading ““The Promise of Oklahoma””

You can watch footage of Jimi Hendrix playing the “Star Spangled Banner” live at Woodstock in 1969 by clicking here

“Rewinding Jimi Hendrix’s National Anthem” by Paul Grimstad

“What Hendrix did with “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Woodstock, in August of 1969, was something else altogether. It was, among other things, an act of protest whose power and convincingness were inseparable from its identity as a fiercely nonconformist act of individual expression.

Hendrix had been a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne (from which he was honorably discharged), and the young men fighting and dying in Vietnam are evoked in the sounds that start eating away at the tune at about the place the words “rockets’ red glare” would be sung. Bombs, airplane engines, explosions, human cries, all seem to swirl around in the feedback and distortion. At one point, Hendrix toggles between two notes a semitone apart while burying the guitar’s tremolo bar, turning his Fender Strat into a doppler warp of passing sirens, or perhaps the revolving blades of a helicopter propeller. A snippet of “Taps” toward the end makes explicit the eulogy for those left on the battlefield, transcending Vietnam and becoming a remembrance of all those lost to the violence of war (emphasis added by Dr. Mintler).

The solo might also be registering a different war, one that had been going on at home. The previous year, Martin Luther King, Jr., had been fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel, in Memphis, and the blow delivered to the civil-rights movement—centrally inspired by King’s dream of a time “when people will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”—seems somehow part of the rage flying out of Hendrix’s amplifiers. All the exalted ideals of the American experiment, and the bitterness of its contradictions and hypocrisies, are placed in volatile admixture through an utterly American contraption, a device you might say is the result of a collaboration between Benjamin Franklin, Leo Fender , and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the mongrel machine that Hendrix made into a medium for a new kind of virtuosity. In the Woodstock performance of the national anthem, we find that an electric guitar can be made to convey the feeling that the country’s history could be melted down, remolded, and given a new shape.

Continue reading “A 2021 Reflection on a 1969-1970 Rendition of the American National Anthem on Electric Guitar”

I’m looking forward to working with you  as you develop + evolve your reading –  critical thinking  – research – and writing this semester as we read + write + research about and discuss + analyze + reflect upon the American Dream!

The Myth of the American Dream course website will be where you can access the chapters of our writing text, They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing, as well as digital course materials, i.e. readings – videos – documentaries/films – images, etc. for Unit 1, Unit 2, Unit 3, and Unit 4.

First, the course materials in Unit 1, Unit 2, Unit 3, and Unit 4 are all password protected with the same password. I will tell you the password during class and in private emails/Canvas messages. Contact me by Canvas message or email if you forget the password for the Units. They Say, I Say is not password protected and you are also not required to share annotations. If you’d like to annotate They Say, I Say chapters, save your annotation comments “to me.”

Second  click on the LINK corresponding to your Expo Section in the right margin of Dr. Mintler’s American Dream Songs blog to join our private hypothes.is annotation gropu. Once you click on the link, you will be prompted to create a hypothes.is account AND join the group. I recommend using your personal email address since hypothes.is is an internet app that exists outside of this course and is not part of OU.

Once create your hypothes.is account, you will need to download the browser extension or bookmark for Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge. Here is the link to the instructions on the hypothes.is website for downloading and installing: hypothes.is browser extensions and/or bookmarks.

In addition to annotating materials for Myth of the American Dream, you can annotate ANYTHING on the open web!

We will use hypothes.is to practice digital social annotation, takes/share notes on course materials, create collaborative class roadmaps on selected readings, and to annotate sources during the research paper unit. Always remember to POST your ANNOTATION COMMENTS to your Expo Section annotation group and NOT to PUBLIC.

Click the following link for a demonstration of how to post a comment using hypothes.is: hypothes.is annotation tutorial video

Your third task will be to send me the link to your Myth of the American Dream Dreamweavers Blog once you have created/designed it. We will review how to create student blogs in class using OU Create in Week 3. Then I will add your blogs to the right column on the Myth of the American Dream website!