Department of Politics and School of Public Administration
CPOL 501: Women, Power and Politics in Canada
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Oct 15 at 11:59 pm
Please submit an e-copy to the turnitin link on the D2L shell for this course
Learning Objectives: This assignment gives students the opportunity to understand the relevance of academic ideas and debates to contemporary political life. By responding to a contemporary news article on women in politics, students will learn to connect course readings to real world politics and to develop their ability to make connections between academic concepts and political life.
Writing Skills Assessed: Summary; Explication of Course Concepts; Analysis; Organization of Ideas; Development of Logical Argument; Sentence Structure and Grammar; Academic Citations
Instructions:
Choose ONLY ONE of the articles listed below:
1. Judy Rebick, “What’s going on? Is feminism dying again?”
2. Ruby, Latif, “Comments like Doug Ford’s ‘nails on a chalk board’ form political rhetoric meant to silence women”
3. Shari Graydon, “Women candidates and their issues not represented, yet again, during the election”
4. Jennifer M. Piscopo, “Telling women to ‘lean in’ won’t get more of them in politics – the parties left women behind”
5. Karen Attiah, “Vogue’s Kamala Harris cover shows that diminishing powerful Black women is still in fashion”
6. Brigitte Pellerin, “Men need to step up to help us fight toxic masculinity”
Write a letter in response to the article. Your response should not be a rant. It should instead advance an argument grounded in and backed up by the course material. While you may write in the first person, the letter should not just be your personal opinion but should offer an informed opinion that demonstrates an engagement with the course readings and lectures. Think of the readings and lectures as expert opinions that you may use as evidence to support your own claims and arguments.
In developing your argument, you must draw upon ONLY TWO of the following course readings:
1. Newman, White and Findlay, “Introduction”
2. Newman, White and Findlay, Chapter 4
3. Zimmerman, T. 2017. ““#Intersectionality: The Fourth Wave Feminist Twitter Community.” Atlantis 38.1: 54-70. (on D2L)
4. Newman, White and Findlay, Chapter 6
5. Harell, A. (2017). Intersectionality and gendered political behaviour in a Multicultural Canada. Canadian Journal of Political Science, 50(2), 495-514. (On D2L)
Note: You may not use any other source from the course. You may not use sources from outside the course. Failure to comply with these assignment requirements will result in a grade of “0.”
You will be more likely to write an excellent letter if you choose a topic that sparks your interest. “Excellence” includes attention to content, structure, organization, punctuation, spelling and grammar.
Length: 800 words double spaced in Times New Roman font with one-inch margins. Please include word count at the end of submission. The letter should be written in standard English.
All citations to course readings should use the APA in-text citation method and the assignment should include a bibliography in APA format.
For citation advice, see: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/
Please consult the Ryerson Student Code of Academic Conduct http://www.ryerson.ca/academicintegrity/students/studentplagiarism.html
http://www.ryerson.ca/ai/students/studentcheating.html
Students are strongly encouraged to complete the tutorial www.ryerson.ca/academicintegrity.
Late Penalty: Papers received after the due date will be subject to a penalty of 2% for each 24 hour period they are late.
Additional Guidelines:
1. Begin the letter by introducing the author and title of the article, and the general topic that the article addresses
2. The next paragraph should include a brief summary of the journalist’s claims that you plan to respond to in the letter. Here, you do not include your assessment of the author’s views/claims. Your task is to accurately summarize WHAT the author is saying. You will be assessed on how well you summarize the central claims of the author, and whether you can distinguish the author’s central claims from her/his subordinate claims/examples. In this paragraph, direct quoting should be kept to a minimum and the majority of the summary should be a paraphrase of the article.
3. The remainder of the letter should discuss your assessment of the article. Some questions you might ask as you develop your analysis include: Do you agree and/or disagree with the author? Why? What is missing from the article? What does the author overlook that might change or alter the analysis she or he provides? If we took this new information into account, how might it alter the way we understand whatever topic the article addresses? You must draw from the course readings to support your assessment. If you agree or disagree with the author, what evidence can you find in the readings to support this position? If you think the author overlooks an important aspect of the topic, how do the readings remedy this absence? This evidence should be incorporated into your assessment. This part of the letter/blog should be composed of multiple paragraphs, and will be assessed based on the quality of the argument it advances.
4. The conclusion should concisely re-state your argument, and highlight the significance of your position. In other words, it should address the question: Who cares?
SOME USEFUL TEMPLATES (NOTE: YOU ARE NOT REQUIRED TO USE THESE)
All templates are taken from Graff, G., & C. Birkenstein. (2014). They say, I say: The moves that matter in academic writing. pp. 295, 297-299, 303. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
Summarizing Author’s Views
X acknowledges that _______________.
X agrees that ____________________.
X argues that _______________________.
X believes that
X denies/does not deny that
X claims that
X complains that
X concedes that
X demonstrates that
X deplores the tendency to
X celebrates the fact that
X insists that
X observes that
X questions whether
X refutes the claim that
X reminds us that
X reports that
X suggests that
X urges us to
Disagreeing, With Reasons
I think X is mistaken because she overlooks____________________.
X’s claim that ________ rests upon the questionable assumption that __________.
I disagree with X’s view that __________ because, as recent research has shown, _________.
X contradicts herself/can’t have it both ways. On the one hand, she argues _________. On the other hand, she also says_________.
By focusing on ____________, X overlooks the deeper problem of __________.
Agreeing, With a Difference
I agree that _________ because ________.
X surely is right about ________ because, as she may not be aware, recent studies have shown that___________.
X’s theory of ____________________is extremely useful because it sheds light on the difficult problem of _________________.
I agree that _________, a point that needs emphasizing since many people believe that ________.
Agreeing and Disagreeing Simultaneously
Although I agree with X up to a point, I cannot accept his overall conclusion that ____________.
Although I disagree with much that X says, I fully endorse her final conclusion that ___________.
Though I concede that______________, I still insist that ____________.
Whereas X provides ample evidence that ___________________, Y and Z’s research on ______ and _____ convinces me that _______ instead.
While X is probably wrong when she claims that _________, she is right that_______.
I’m of two minds about X’s claim that ___________. On the one hand, I agree that_________. On the other hand, I’m not sure if________.
Establishing Why Your Claims Matter
X matters/is important because______.
Although X may seem trivial, it is in fact crucial in terms of today’s concerns over ________.
Ultimately, what is at stake here is ____________.
My discussion of X is in fact addressing the larger matter of _____________________.
Although X may seem of concern to only a small group of ___________________________, it should in fact concern anyone who cares about ________________________.
Grading Rubric:
Needs Work Satisfactory Very Good Excellent
Summary:
*Ability to summarize the journalist’s claims
*Ability to distinguish the author’s central claims from her/his subordinate claims/examples.
*Minimal quotations
*Accuracy of paraphrases
Analysis and Assessment
*Demonstrates accurate understanding of the course readings/theories/concepts
*Clear explanation and use of concepts from course readings to assess the article
*Ability to use course readings to assess the underlying assumptions of the article; some level of abstact thought
*Assessment of article’s strengths and limitations
*Ability to advance a coherent and cogent argument
*Support argument with relevant evidence from the course readings
Organization
*Coherent organization of ideas; continuity and logical transitions between paragraphs
Paragraphs: each paragraph deals with only one idea or point; clear identification of theme of paragraph in a topic sentence; develops evidence to support your argument
Grammar, Style, Mechanics
Clarity and readability
Spelling, punctuation, proper referencing, proofreading
FINAL COMMENTS AND GRADE
