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# System prepended metadata

title: 'EXPOS20: From Homer to Jay-Z'

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# EXPOS20: From Homer to Jay-Z
*By Ammara Vaid* 

Students in EXPOS20: From Homer to Jay-Z, harnessed the power of spoken word and oral traditions to structure their final papers for the class. 



After a discussion on why the five paragraph essay is not a valuable pathway for academic writing, students began by exploring academic writing techniques that focused on developing an argument. They then worked through two activities to put this into practice with their own papers. 

### Activity 1: The Art of Improvisation 

Moving from the tension/ problem/ counter argument of their topic to the resolution/ solution/ argument that they will be pursuing. In drawing on their studies of oral traditions, students were encouraged to “pitch” their paper idea over a beat; moving from eight bars of tension and, as the beat drops, to their eight bars of resolution. 

Here [hyperlink to video/ gif/ stills when you receive footage] is Felipe, a student interested in the roll of musicals like Hamilton in creating space for marginalised cultures in the historically white and exclusive landscape of theatre, rapping his tension-resolution argument to the class. 

### Activity 2: Structuring an Argument 
To help the students understand the ways in which their arguments, sources and theoretic lenses fit together to develop a structured argument, students were tasked with allocating cards to each component of their paper and verbally presenting their paper and its structure while a fellow classmate mapped out their argument with the relevant cards. 

## Why it matters:
EXPOS is a formative class at Harvard which has a lot of influence on the way in which students will approach academic writing for the rest of their time at Harvard. To have the ability to speak on a subject in a format which echoes its creation develops an intrinsic understanding of what is being explored. Moreover, developing the ability to move from a list of sources to a multi-sensory and multi-dimensional mapping of an argument and then back again to a written format creates opportunities for the content to be built upon, conceptualised and refined in an extra dimension.

### What's Next For *From Homer to Jay-Z*?
Students in the class are just as interested in the creating of oral traditions as they are in the interrogation of them and will be back at teh Learning Labs soon for an Open Mic night!