In class today (9/16/08), we discussed how to write summaries to an article or chapter effectively. There are five rules to summaries of a text: suspend judgment, main point of the text, use your own language, condense by 50% and finally use in text citation. Suspend judgment is the ability to use the authors ideas and judgment when writing a summary. Don’t use your own ideas and thoughts, it is not a personal reflection. A summary is a paragraph about the text in the words of the author, not yours. Also, a summary gives the reader an idea of what is going to happen in the text when he/she reads it. When reading the text there are a few main parts that come to mind. For example in Zelizer’s essay, one of her main ideas is analyzing the photos from the holocaust. These main ideas should be written in the summary to help the reader understand the text. In many texts, there can be several interesting and informative quotes, that can be useful.But a summary needs to have less details of the text. For example, as a reader of crime stories, I wouldn’t want to read a summary and find out what happens and how the case gets solved. I would want to read a summary that would get me excited about reading the book even before opening the book. By condensing the summary by half, this would keep the reader interested and give less details of what is going to happen in the text. Also, if there is a chance a quote is necessary to get a certain point across, use in-text citation to give the author credit for his work.
Also in class, we talked about about Douglas Crimp’s article on AIDS. In my opinion, Mr. Crimp is a researcher/writer, is an activist, and a member of the gay community living in NYC. Mr. Crimp is writing to the general public, non-activists, art community and people who have AIDS. In his article, Mr. Crimp does refer to President Regan and a few other government legislation and agencies, but I don’t think Mr. Crimp was trying to talk to them personally. His main goal was to get his ideas into the minds of the public and have them learn that the gov’t has done nothing about the AIDS epidemic. During the WW II, the Nazi used an up-side down triangle arm bands to show who was gay in the concentration camps. Now six gay men took that symbol and created there own symbol for the AIDS movement. The new triangle is with the point facing upward and”Silence=Death” underneath, to me, this mean, if the gov’t doesn’t do something soon more people are going to get infected and die. Everyone needs to speak up and be heard and maybe this force government and healthcare to reform. In Crimp’s article this use of the triangle is considered under the historical context in rhetorical situations.
As the final thought of the day, when summarizing a text, use your own words and make it interesting, short, and grab the reader so he/she wants to read more. Also, each essay has a meaning behind it, what could the meaning be for each essay? What is the author trying to hide from us? Last point, Douglas Crimp writes under the alias for Fanny Knapp Allen a professor of Art History at University of Rochester. If he is so open about his gay lifestyle and activism for the gay community, why does he use a different name?
One Comment
I’m going to call you out on this one Andrew. I see that you used the phrase “In my opinion”, in Bartholomae and petrosky’s essay they speak of how people can use this phrase. I mean really now Andrew is it really your opinion?? haha i’m just yanking your chain.
You covered Crimp’s article pretty well. The audience that i think he was trying to write to, is that of the non-activist who is looking to join a worthy cause. He provides many clear details on exactly what it is that ACT UP is really about and give specific examples of different types of demonstrations that they attend. It seems almost like he is recruiting more people to join the cause, to fight for those who suffer with AIDS.
To help provide some clarity to your final question on why Crimp uses a pen name, I do believe that Crimp is a strong activist and is open about his homosexuality. However, it is hard to overlook the way he would be treated by his fellow peers and his students if they knew about his passion for fighting for homosexual rights. Although many students would praise him for what he is doing, there will always be others who disagree with his actions. There are too many stories of hate crimes, and maybe this is just one way of avoiding the hassle letting his students know what he is involved in outside of the classroom, while still being able to follow his passion.