Creating a Conversation Assignment
Now that you have read all of the articles about 9/11 and all of the articles about the Saudi/Qatari border conflict, it’s time to find your opportunity for conversation. Remember that an opportunity can be a moment or a series of moments in which you observe something worth commenting on is happening. There are obvious links between the texts that you have chosen, but the obvious links are the most general ones. Let’s try to shift over to finding something more specific that is happening in these articles. Think about the reaction words (shock, perplex, fascinate) and the actionable words (gap, tension, ambiguity, contradiction, difficulty). Given the topic, it shouldn’t be hard to find examples of places where you have reactions to the texts. Focus, instead, on the actionable words. Where do you see any of those things happening between or across the texts? Remember- we will need to focus on all of these articles, not just one. Try doing the following, and writing your answers down to submit here:
1) Write the claim of each article next to each other. Do you see anything that might lead to the actionable words?
2) Write the intended audiences of each article next to each other. Do you see anything that might lead to the actionable words?
3) Write the way that each organization views themselves, vs how they’re talked about next to each other. Do you see anything that might lead to the actionable words?
4) Do the same for the author. Do you see anything that might lead to the actionable words?
By thinking about all of the articles at the same time, rather than one by one, you’ll start to be able to see them as a conversation that you can enter into and make a unique claim in response to, based on those opportunities for conversations you’re seeing.
First article https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/06/04/qatar-won-the-saudi-blockade/amp/
Second article https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2017/06/05/middleeast/saudi-bahrain-egypt-uae-qatar-terror/index.html
Third article https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/24/qatar-state-news-agency-hacked-fake-positive-story-israel-iran
Fourth article http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/gulf/2018/10/09/Qatar-Attorney-General-s-role-in-Qaeda-operatives-release-returns-to-haunt-him.html
Solution Preview
The Foreign Policy article addresses the movement of four states; Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates against Qatar (Hassan, 2018). The report targets the citizens of the region, explaining that this movement was created due to claims that Qatar is going against the Gulf Communities’ agreements of not taking part or supporting terrorism, and therefore, Qatar is harshly accused of accepting terrorisms and extremism by supporting the Al Qaeda and ISIS militia groups.
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