Eula Biss’s essays Is This Kansas and Notes From No Man’s Land Custom Essay

What to Read This Week:
Read Eula Biss’s essays “Is This Kansas” and “Notes From No Man’s Land”
In “Is This Kansas,” pay special attention to how Biss describes colleges as “feudal systems” (135). Also,

make note of her students’ comparison of looting in New Orleans before and after the looting in their own

town.
In “Notes From No Man’s Land,” pay special attention to how she treats the idea of fear. How does fear

function as a border or, at the very least, create and/or solidify social and national borders?
Lectures, Tools, Information, and Help: To meet this week’s learning goals, you will need to complete the

above assigned reading. If you have any questions about the reading, don’t hesitate to ask additional, meaning

NON-REQUIRED questions (and possibly earn some extra credit points) in the “Eula Biss Final Discussion” forum.

In this discussion, we will be exploring topics, themes, and important questions to help us understand both

the content of the book as well as discuss bigger implications and connections!
This week you’ll be preparing for the art of synthesis — where you take information from several sources and

blend them together to come up with an interpretation or idea that’s your own. Eula Biss’s essays will

definitely be one of the sources you will be using. I would also HIGHLY encourage you to think about what

other texts we have explored so far in this class – Mike Rose’s Lives on the Boundary and supplemental essays-

and IF and HOW these texts and text themes overlap with Eula Biss’s essays. First, you need to understand how

to synthesize. You will, hopefully, find this video helpful in explaining synthesis:
http://youtu.be/JMYuajqcfQ4