“What’s Missing?”

In order to articulate arguments that matter, academic writers often ask what’s missing from the current archive. By asking what’s missing, a writer can engage the archive in new and important ways, which contribute to ongoing academic discourse.

The goals of this response paper are:

• To compose your first argument for an academic audience in English 131.
• To practice intertextualizing multiple forms of evidence in a single, complex argument.
• To identify and better understand how warrants function in arguments.
• To “revise” the current course archive of mapped compositions.

For this paper, you will exchange “Capturing Evidence” with a peer. Then, you will carefully read, annotate, and analyze your peer’s paper and her or his captures in order to contribute to the analysis of a particular campus space.

After reading your peer’s “Capturing Evidence,” visit the campus space that she or he captured and re-capture it. Here, your primary question is: “What’s missing?” What didn’t your peer capture? What practice or perspective is currently absent from the class archive? To answer these questions, use both your capture(s) and your peer’s captures as evidence.

Once you re-capture the space, please geo-locate your capture(s) on the class map.

Then write a two- to three-page, formal academic argument that makes a complex claim about why what’s missing from the archive matters. As you unpack your claim, be sure to include both you and your peer’s captures as evidence. Also, think about how your peer defined her or his campus space. How does your claim complicate or support that definition?

Your audience is academia, which includes me, your peers, and professors from your other classes. As you write, consider what your audience knows and needs to know.

All Example Writing Prompts:

Four prompts for short, “response” papers:

Writing Prompt 1: “The Autogeographical Map”

Writing Prompt 2: “Capturing Evidence”

Writing Prompt 3: “What’s Missing?”

Writing Prompt 4: “Re-Mapping”

And one prompt for a longer paper:

Writing Prompt 5: “This Map Matters”

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