Prior to attending Joseph Harris' lecture Teaching the Moves of the Critical Essay, I had already been introduced to his book, "Rewriting: How to Do Things with Texts", and was greatly influenced by his work in my own writing and critical reflection. He briefly touched upon each 'move', which he addresses in his book. However, his lecture provided a more nuanced understanding of his text's purpose as well as it's meaning. The first point he offered is that he begins at the point where he expects that his students or readers to have already done their research, so that writers may say something that the text doesn't. It was extremely helpful to have a starting point in which Harris' moves benefit the most. He provided his audience with an outline of his text's main points, however he allowed those concepts to come to life during the workshops that he introduced with several of his moves. The workshops allowed for the diverse audience to speak with individuals to hear, learn from, and speak our ideas and compare similar or dissimilar thoughts of the workshop in arriving at final conclusions. He encouraged others to speak and offer their opinions during the workshop.
Personally, I received wonderful and beneficial insight from attending Harris' lecture. His experience and insight of critical writing assisted my own writing in my historical-causal analysis, specifically in terms of incorporating other sources to add to personal claims and concepts. 'Thinking with another writer' along with 'moving ahead' were two moves which illustrated what Harris articulates with the 'forwarding' move. His lecture and workshops were all helpful and insightful pieces of resources in revising my research project.
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