Directions for Report on Secondary Reading:

Brief Summary and Application

I. Summary/Abstract

1. Select a secondary source that will make useful contributions to your major project's presentation of your topic and argument--an article or a chapter from a book about the topic for your group project.
2. Make a clean Xerox copy of the article or chapter to hand in with your report.
3. Write a short summary (abstract) of the article. Begin your summary with a statement of the source's thesis. (A sample sentence might start: Joe Smith argues in "Suffrage's Lost Stories" that the contributions of black women involved in the movement deserve increased attention from scholars. OR Louise Jones explains in "Writing about Reconstruction" that women's short stories about American Missionary Association schools in the South provide a window into the classrooms of an earlier era.) Move into a section-by-section review of the content. Limit your summary/abstract to about one page typed, double-spaced at most.
4. Work at least two brief quotations into your abstract. Punctuate/cite in MLA style.
5. Proofread and edit your abstract, since one dimension of your grade for this part of the assignment will involve looking at your style and editing.

II. Drafting your cultural context essay using information from your source

1. To write a draft of (part of) your cultural context, draw upon information in your source chapter/article/essay to provide background information that will illuminate an image your team is using for the major project. Revisit the secondary source to see what information there would be especially helpful to a visitor to the website who wants to understand the image you are writing about and its connection to the overall argument your group is making about your series of images.
2. Write a paragraph in your own words (but in third person point of view) to explain cultural information that was presented effectively in your source and that will help a website visitor understand your image. This information should relate to what is portrayed in your image, but you should not simply describe the image directly; rather, you should write an explanatory discussion of cultural (historical and/or literary) context that will help viewers interpret the meaning of the image as an artifact depicting women's work in the long nineteenth century.
3. This part of your assignment will not be graded for proofreading, since it is a draft at this point. However, we will make editing suggestions on the draft if you would like for us to do so.

Scoring Rubric for Secondary Reading and Application Assignment

Name _______________________________