I thought that the feedback I got on my rough draft was very helpful. I think the general consensus was that I should work on strengthening my argument, especially introducing my thesis on page one instead of page thirteen. That’s definitely something I plan on doing, and I’ll work to expand my conclusion and make it feel less abrupt. I think if I push my argument further, perhaps reflecting on the strengths and weaknesses of an absolute monarchy versus a popular democracy, and speak a little bit about the ironies of the popularization of inoculation in America, I can create a more interesting finish to my paper. In the substantive category, I want to add a paragraph about how American elites embraced the inoculation much as Catherine the Great did. I think this will emphasize that top down support has little impact in a decentralized democracy like 18th Century America. I also want to do more research into the long-term effects of the public health reforms in Catherine the Great’s Russia. I do think that there will be evidence to argue that these reforms were not as far reaching as those in the United States, and that will help complicate my argument for the benefits and drawbacks of Catherine’s reforms. Other small details I want to fix: making the context paragraphs for Russia a little more interesting, explaining French-Russian relations for the Enlightenment angle (especially the ‘French critique’ that I referenced and never explained), and making sure that my argument is worked into the evidentiary paragraphs. Thank you all so much for your feedback; it’s been tremendously helpful!
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Helen Higuera - Week 9 - Revision Comments
I think I’ve received a lot of useful comments so far, and it’s definitely given me a lot to think about for revision. Writing in general is a pretty painstaking process for me, especially revision, so it’s slow going, but I’ll try to give an overview of my plan. Suzanne suggested that instead of starting out with so much background on British policing, I should start out with stereotypical views of Russia in travel writing. That way I could focus in on what is unique about McCoy’s account and then focus in on themes of her discussion of the police. I’m taking this tactic now. I’m still going to start out with background on McCoy initially, but after the first couple paragraphs I’ll go into some of the tropes in more detail rather than just rattling them off without explanation because I realized that really just confuses the focus of the paper in the beginning rather than giving helpful information. This will also allow me to incorporate the image of the wolf more, as Suzanne suggested, which I had initially planned to do but couldn’t find a way to fit in my first draft (a sign of a problem looking back on it). I think this plan will also help me weave McCoy into the paper better, which has come up in comments before, but I wasn’t really able to resolve at all in my draft.
Nancy suggested that I make my background discussion clearer and also clarify the structure of each stage in the development of policing so that the reader can see the relevance more clearly. I think that all the background information I gave definitely got confusing and vague at times, so I’m working on honing it down and keeping it to direct parallels to McCoy’s account as we discussed in class (It’s hard for me to cut out some of the not directly related stuff because I think it’s so interesting).
I think it was useful to present another paper in class. Although, I am one of those people that thinks that it always informs your own writing to edit the writing of others. It’s also just useful to see how others tackled organizing all of their research given that we’ve been discussing this in class. I don’t know how useful any comments I gave were in themselves, but I think we got a good discussion going on the papers that was helpful.