Read “Cultural Beings in Context: Reassessing the Individual Locus of Cosmopolitanism”.

Ma Haitian wrote this essay for our Writing as Inquiry (Writing II) course. In this second major assignment, students were asked to perform a considered analysis of a central text, to add a second text to this analysis, and then to situate their own claims in relationship to these two texts. The assignment required students to consider deeply the arguments, assumptions, and methods of other scholars, and to place their own ideas among those given to them by the texts’ authors.

In this essay, Haitian has created a rich and insightful critique of philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah’s conception of the individual. In building her own argument, Haitian deftly uses each source, selecting textual evidence to great effect. This essay models the excellent academic argumentation that arises from thorough close reading and careful attunement to the implications of another author’s claims.

—Jennifer Tomscha, Associate Director of and Lecturer in the Writing Program