Paper #2 assignment (in-class writing on Thursday!)

For Thursday's class, we'll be doing an in-class writing to help you get started with Paper #2. I'll also discuss how to find good sources for your papers, and not having to rely solely on a Google search! :) 

The Paper #2 assignment I passed out in class is below. Note that the due date is October 6th, which is a bit later than what it states on the course calendar. I moved it back a week so you could work on it more if you wanted. 

English 1113

Paper #2: The Tourist Trap

INTRO: In Amanda Fortini’s essay about the realities of living in Las Vegas, “The People of Las Vegas,” she writes that “when you have very little experience of a subject, a single point can look like a line” (94). In her case, she notes how many people, both tourists and journalists, think that Las Vegas is only about partying, gambling, crime, and movies like The Hangover. However, there’s much more to Las Vegas, and refusing to see the reality not only limits the tourist’s experience, but also dehumanizes the town. All three articles in class seem to focus on this aspect of travel: if we only travel to be cocooned in a bubble of comfort, we miss the human connections that travel is supposed to offer, and are also blind to injustices that tourism inflicts on the locals (since every tourist destination is someone’s home).

PROMPT: For your second paper, I want you to choose a tourist destination or activity that draws a lot of people and money. This could be a town like Las Vegas, a luxury like a cruise ship, or a tourist community like Serenbe. If possible, try to choose a place you’ve actually been to and have some sort of connection with (to make it more personal). Your paper needs to do three things: (a) explain why people go there—what’s the attraction and how is it sold to people; (b) what are people missing about this place? What don’t they see or understand about it? (c) how does it connect to some of the ideas in the essays from class? For example, if you decided to write about Disneyworld, what might be some of the downsides of this get-away amusement community? How might it be a little like Serenbe in its “utopian” approach, or like a cruise ship in its philosophy of “the customer is always right”?

REQUIREMENTS: This is a true CONVERSATION PAPER, so you need to bring in other sources to have a dialogue with (You + Other Voices). That means you should use (a) at least ONE of the essay from class, though you can use more; and (b) TWO to THREE outside sources, which could be travel or company websites, articles about the place or attraction, or articles about travel/tourism itself. We will discuss how to find reliable articles and websites in class, so stay tuned!

NOTE: Papers that do not have at least 3 secondary sources will be returned without a grade. You can revise the paper with the right number of sources, but until you do so, you will not get a grade for this paper. This is a minimum requirement.

ALSO:

• The paper should be AT LEAST 3-4 pages double spaced, though you can do more.
• The paper should try to start “in the middle,” and think about how to introduce us to the place or activity without giving us a laundry list of details.
• The paper should have a TITLE that clues us into the message of the paper.
• The paper is due Tuesday, October 6^th by 5pm (no class that day)