Genre

In the Bedford Book of Genres by Amy Braziller and Elizabeth Kleinfield, genres are described as a type given to compositions in order to organize them. In "Navigating Genres" by Kerry Dirk, he describes how genre sets a goal for what an author will write. When an author is aware of the genre he/she will write, he/she knows the rhetoric which the audience should react with. Thus, the author must be aware of the genre in order to effectively write to an audience.

The last genre I composed was a research essay for my world history class. The purpose was to inform and argue about similarities and differences of communism across three countries over a certain time period. In order to write the essay, I had to read and interpret scholarly texts written on communism as an ideology and how communism shaped the countries which I was comparing. In the actual essay, I started by informing the reader about where the idea of communism originated, The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx, and giving a brief overview of the thoughts Marx conveys in his book. Then I described communism in three countries concerning how communist leaders came to power and how the ideology shaped the countries politically, socially, and economically. Finally, I compared and contrasted the countries to one another to show how the different strategies used by the respective governments.