Comparative Literature 240: Matters of Life and Death

Professor Benjamin Paloff

Fall 2014
M 11-12, Plus Discussion

Response 1: When does life begin?

Rationale
Your first response paper calls on you to answer the question, Where does life begin? You are
encouraged to interpret this question in whatever way best speaks to your personal interests and
intellectual ambitions. For example, you could approach the question with an eye toward the
biology of conception. Or you might consider the politics of reproduction, whether having to do
with abortion rights or the evolving science of fertility. You could take a theological approach,
reflecting on notions of soul or spirit, or an epistemological approach, considering definitions of
mind. Everything we have read together so far can be understood and used in multiple ways. For
example, the passages from scripture lend themselves to religious interpretation, but they can
also be grounded in a comparative history of religion, or else you might examine the rhetorical
differences and similarities in how scriptures formulate life.
Really, the way you choose to answer this question is entirely up to you. The primary goal of the
assignment is to challenge you to use the conceptual tools weve been collecting to answer a
difficult question, one that is both highly theoretical and deeply practical.
There are only three requirements.
1. Refer to at least four of the readings from across the first four weeks of the syllabus.
Alternatively, you may bring in a text, image, or video from outside the syllabus, and this
will count as one of your required four readings. If youd like, what you find from outside
the syllabus can even be the focus of your response, but you must connect it to the
material from the syllabus as well.
2. Identify the most fundamental assumption or given underpinning your claim. For
example, Tony Hopes argument in Chapter 4 of Medical Ethics assumes that existence,
no matter how fleeting or miserable, is always preferable to non-existence. This is
something he asserts as a given, not something he argues. Without this most basic
assumption, he could not make his argument about identity-preserving and identityaffecting actions.
3. Your response should be about 1200 words in length. It will take the form of a blog post,
meaning that you may adopt a style that is as formal or informal as you please. Take care,
however, not to allow compositional errors that would distract from your argument.

Instructions
When you are ready to compose your blog entry, go to Lacuna Stories Create Write a
Response.
From the Lacuna Stories team:
The first step is to upload an image! Lacuna Stories encourages users to think across
mediathrough text, images, audio, video, etc. In this way, each blog post must have an
image attached to it, which encourages you to consider how to represent your post
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Comparative Literature 240: Matters of Life and Death

Professor Benjamin Paloff

Fall 2014
M 11-12, Plus Discussion

visually. Feel free to grab (non-copyright) images off the web, upload pictures you have
taken, or even have a stock folder of images that you like to have handy.
Next, choose a title! Shorter titles (7 words or less) look better on the site, and being
concise helps you narrow down your topic broadly for other users.
Write the Post: there is a standard text editor for writing your posts. Feel free to play
around with the fonts, alignment, and others to format your writing exactly as you like.
Bibliographic References: Your response paper should reference readings or other
materials that weve explored as a class. Use the Bibliographic Reference field at the
bottom of your writing screen to note these connections. In this field, type the title of any
of the materials on Lacuna Stories. A list of suggestions will come upafter you select
the one you want, your paper will be automatically linked to that resource. When you
publish your paper, the links will be shown at the bottom, which means that anyone who
is reading your response can go directly to the original text.
Media: You can attach any media to your posts that you would like to include.
Audience for Writing: the default is the course for which you are registered. This means
only students registered for your course will see your posts.
Genre: Select one genre, which will help in filtering the many posts, responses, and
blogs that end up populating this section.
Topic: Select one or more topics that your post could fall under. Feel free to revisit the
Topics page on the sidebar to see what general guidelines frame the different topic
classifications and what kinds of things belong to each of those.
Publish: You can publish, and at any time return and unpublish your post. Publish
means students in your course can read and comment. Unpublish essentially saves it as
a Draft that is only visbile to you. With a single click, you can use Unpublish to keep
drafts that you intend to publish later, or use these for private writing that you want for
yourself, but dont intend to share with others. Remember, Lacuna Stories can be as
social or private as you like!
Comparing different media and texts is a complex, interpretive act. As you link your
writing to materials on Lacuna Stories, you are engaged in a creative endeavor where
your own perspective on the materials gives them fresh meaning. You are also implicitly
creating a network of connections between the materials you reference. This network is
visually represented in the Map View, which provides an overview of the connections
made in all of the Responses in the class. Showing these connections lets you explore
similarities and differences in the resources that you and your classmates have chosen to
connect. These patterns or variations that can often be illuminating or give you new ideas.
The Map View is also a visual reminder of the complexity of the work you are doing as
you write and think your way through the questions of the course.
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