Writing Center

Cross-Disciplinary Analysis

BY Writing Center

Whether we write about neuroscience or politics, electrical engineering or comparative literature, there are certain common factors which nearly always distinguish “good” writing. Nowhere is this more apparent than in essays which bridge the gap between more than one discipline. In her R3 on the works of Vincent Van Gogh, Maya Chande uses “the quantitative world of statistical and mathematical thinking to giv[e] valuable insights on the very qualitative world of art and artists”, as she says in her commentary, while editor Malka Himelhoch shows us how Chande’s clear analysis grounds the discussion, and gives it more weight than it might otherwise have had. In her R3 for the “Gamification” writing seminar, author Theresa Lim uses both qualitative and quantitative measures to analyze the use (and misuse) of gamification in MyFitnessPal; in her commentary on Lim’s piece, editor Meigan Clark then shows us how this analysis allows Lim to make important contributions to the scholarly conversation.

— Isabella Khan, ’21

The Basics

BY Writing Center

As writers, every one of us has had to learn to mediate between the rules of good writing we learned in high school, and the more sophisticated structures required in college essays. For this year’s issue of Tortoise, we wanted to showcase some of the ways Princeton students have done just that. In Kennedy Casey’s psychology paper, the focus is her conclusion; in her commentary on Casey’s work, editor Annabelle Duval draws our attention to the relationship between evidence and motive in the construction of this concluding section. In Jojo Deep’s Writing Seminar essay on conspiracies, the focus is on his “hook”, and how it works to create an effective introduction; in his commentary on Deep’s essay, editor Alex Charles uses Lexicon terms to explain exactly why Deep’s hook is so effective.

— Isabella Khan, ’21

Spring 2021

Editor’s Note

BY Writing Center

The theme of this year’s issue of the Tortoise is, as the title says, the so-called hidden lexicon. What is meant by this? As Writing Center fellows, the other editors and I usually tend to discuss the characteristics of good (and bad) writing in terms of the “lexicon terms” we are taught in Writing Seminar — motive, thesis, orienting, and so on. In many ways, we do this for practical reasons. By having a single set of terms by which we can refer to the parts of an essay, writing fellows avoid confusion, and make it so that a student can have a consistent experience no matter which fellow or professor he or she is speaking to.

In some ways, however, this lexicon also adds a new layer of complexity to the already-difficult task of writing a clean essay. All the editors remember quite clearly how the first time we encountered “motive” in writing seminar, we had no idea what it meant. Was it a research question? What about the so-called “motive layer cake”, and how could you be sure that the particular version (or versions) we chose to lean on for our essay would yield an arguable thesis? At the time, I was certainly confused, and after three years as a writing fellow, I don’t think I am alone in this.

The previous issues of Tortoise all provide excellent examples of the various lexicon terms. Our goal in this issue was to connect the lexicon terms back to the some of the more familiar — though possibly, more ambiguous — phrases and ideas which arise we write essays. The pieces we selected — mostly excerpts, with one full-length essay by Cassandra James, ’23— are varied in both subject matter and depth, from Writing Center papers to Junior independent work. We hope that together with the commentaries by the authors, editors, and in some case, professors for whom the paper was written, these pieces will not only showcase the variety and quality of student writing at Princeton, while also providing inspiration and guidance for future essays.

— Isabella Khan, ’21

News

Tortoise Tuesday: Orienting in “Babylon Berlin”

BY Writing Center

As a PTL project, I’ve finally started properly studying German, and by that I mean watching Babylon Berlin. I’m a diligent student, so I’ve already made it through most of the third and final season. The show, which follows detectives investigating political conspiracies and crimes in late 1920s Germany, gives a fascinating (and, as far as I can tell, fairly accurate) view of the Weimar Republic, but it’s also an excellent example of orienting evidence—in this case, physical evidence in the detectives’ investigations.

Just like in a good paper, pieces of evidence that will be important later in the show are introduced early on, left alone until a point in the structure where they become relevant, and then fully analyzed to demonstrate their relationship to the overarching thesis (or plot). Early in season three, for example, I knew there had to be a reason for the huge bottle of insulin a diabetic character keeps on hand. Sure enough, in the climactic episode, the main characters narrowly escape a hypoglycemic coma after the villain injects them both with a lethal dose of insulin. (The fact that this is one of the series’ more realistic plot twists says a lot about the show.) That the bottle was introduced—oriented—and defined in an early episode makes it easy for the viewer to understand its role when it reappears later. It also avoids the necessity of orienting and defining at the same time that the piece of evidence is actually being used (analyzed, in a writing context), which could come across as clumsy and poorly planned. Instead, the bottle is already in the back of the viewer’s mind, and when its purpose in the show becomes clear, everything falls neatly into place.

When I’m reading other students’ essays at the Writing Center, people sometimes say they’re concerned that orienting a source but not fully unpacking it until later in the paper might lead their reader to think they’re just doing a bad job of analyzing the material. Actually, I find it very helpful as a reader when sources are briefly introduced and key terms are succinctly defined at the start of a paper, so I have some idea of the analysis that’s coming. It would have seemed (even more?) ridiculous if the bad guy in Babylon Berlin had whipped out a bottle of insulin with no previous orienting, as if the show’s writers had thought of this plot development while they were writing but then hadn’t bothered to go back to earlier episodes and adequately set up their plot (thesis). Just setting up the sources that you’re planning to use and trusting your reader to understand that you’ll come back to them later is orienting enough, and it usually won’t kill you.

— Ro van Wingerden, ’21

Evidence, Spring 2021

Searching Inside a Cut: Ethnography as a Lens to Examine Emergent Relationalities

BY Writing Center

In a Tortoiseshell: In her essay, Ariadni Kertsikof weaves together evidence from several ethnographic works to argue that ethnography allows us to discover truths about the world through attending to relationships. The following excerpt focuses on the importance of relationships in Savannah Shange’s ethnography Progressive Dystopia. Through exceptional source orientation, Ariadni contextualizes her evidence in light of Shange’s argument. She then selects and summarizes a specific example from Shange’s work, effectively illustrating not only the author’s point but her own.

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Spring 2021, Thesis

The Hypocrisies of Wonka’s Chocolate World: Flipping Dahl’s Story Inside Out

BY Writing Center

In a Tortoiseshell: In the following introduction and excerpted body paragraphs from her final Writing Seminar paper on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Paige Min adopts an against-the-grain argument. She complicates the mainstream understanding of the text, namely that good children like Charlie who resist capitalistic temptations are rewarded while bad children who succumb to their desires are not. Paige frames her motive and thesis by orienting the reader to this common argument. Based on a close reading of the text, she argues that the story actually normalizes dangerous elements of capitalism and teaches children to blindly accept authority. Continue reading →

Evidence, Spring 2021

“Does it have to be complicated?”: Technologically Mediated Romance and Identity in Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends and Normal People

BY Writing Center

In a Tortoiseshell: In this close-reading of Sally Rooney’s work, Julia Walton’s junior paper explores the role of technology-aided communication in complex romantic entanglements. This excerpt deftly engages with evidence to provide compelling analysis on the significance of mirrors and photographs in Rooney’s Conversations With Friends.

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Narrative, Spring 2021

Agents of Change: Hollywood Agents and Gatekeeping

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In a Tortoiseshell: In her Junior Paper, Jacy Duan explores the role of Hollywood agents in perpetuating a lack of racial diversity among actors. She carried out seven interviews with agents, which she draws on here in order to explore whether agents recognize their role as gatekeepers controlling the presence (or lack) of diversity in the industry. Jacy establishes a strong motive in her introduction and then weaves together the individual opinions of the agents into a broader narrative about diversity in Hollywood. Jacy’s treatment of narrative ensures that her argument is both accessible and engaging.

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Evidence, Spring 2021

The Futile Female Fight

BY Writing Center

In a Tortoiseshell: In a paper for the Humanities Sequence, Noori Zubieta strikes a balance between carefully working through her evidence, orienting her reader, and building to a nuanced thesis in a close reading of a passage in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

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Non-textual sources, Spring 2021

The Feminized Male Lead Dancer: How Chinese TikTok Dances are Redefining Gender Roles

BY Writing Center

In a Tortoiseshell: In her essay, Julia Zhou uses an unconventional primary source to argue that while male-led Chinese TikTok dances engage in gender subversion, they do so by operating within an artistic framework that welcomes innovation. To help readers engage with her analysis, Julia carefully describes key choreographic techniques, then orients readers to the significance of each technique. Having made the dances legible to her readers, she then engages in a rewarding close reading of their choreography.

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