Dr. Sophie Bell
WF 9:05-10:30 (CRN 10588)
WF 10:40-12:05 (CRN 11919)
WF 1:50-3:15 (CRN 15047)
Writing Identity, Writing Community
In
this class, students will be challenged to write honestly and
critically about their own experiences. Student will think deeply
about who they are as writers, and where their voices come from.We
will look at students’ own writing as part of a larger fabric of
narratives of immigration, assimilation, and culture clash that
craft “American” identities and languages out of global experiences
and roots. Reading and discussing autobiographical writing by
Frederick Douglass, Gloria Anzaldua, Amy Tan, Junot Diaz, Barack
Obama, Alison Bechdel, Sherman Alexie, Jay-Z and others, each
student will undertake two major projects: the first a personal
narrative of their own identity formation, and the second an
ethnographic study of their own language or educational
communities.
The course
combines narrative, reflective, observational and analytical
writing and research. Writing instruction emphasizes writing
workshops, peer feedback, and deep revision.
Professor Yoav Ben Yosef
MW 5:00-6:25 (CRN 15042)
T 5:00-7:50 (CRN 15039)
Forming Our Minds, One Word at a Time
This class is designed to improve your writing as well as satisfy
and promote intellectual curiosity. We will see how, in discussing
various topics—from the essence of self-respect to the
ramifications of 9/11--authors use the page to think through ideas
and to reach an understanding of themselves and the world around
them. We will examine the nature of thoughts and opinions; explore
how different essayists question their own assumptions and
prejudices; and attempt to follow suit by looking at ourselves and
our
views.
The class
will also emphasize the importance of close-reading. The premise
here is that the best way to improve one’s writing is to look
closely at the work of other writers: not only at what
they say, but also at how they say it. By paying attention
to style and technique, we acquire the necessary tools to make us
more competent and effective users of words. For that reason, we
will spend a fair amount of time looking at how different writers
shape their language to convey a specific
message.
We will wrap
up the semester on a different note: food! We will read and think
about food as it relates to personal health and to the health of
the environment and the economy. We will look at the American diet
and eating habits and evaluate their long-term sustainability. This
will be the topic of your final research project in which you will
be expected to contribute your own take on our food culture, using
information from outside sources.
Dr. Chiara Cillerai
WF 9:05-10:30 (CRN 10706)
WF 10:40-12:05 (CRN 10704)
WF 12:15-1:40 (CRN 11360)
In
the eighteenth-century, women and men kept what they called
“comonplace books.” These books were hand-written and contained
poetry, prose, song lyrics, newspaper articles, letters. Writers
read these texts, collected them, and as they put these texts
together they wrote about what they have. They were originated by
one person, but the writing in them was that of a variety of
people, and the writing that the “author” produced was in the form
of a conversation with her writing and that of others whose work
she had read and whose writing was included in the book. These
books celebrate one’s mind and its ability to be in a conversation
with other minds; and the writing that they contain reflects this
conversation and shows that writing is not a solitary act produced
in the confinement ofone’s room, but that it is a conversation and
a process. For this course, I would like to encourage you to think
of yourselves, your writing and our class community in the same way
and to think of the body of the work you produce as a commonplace
book. The technologies you will use for writing your book are very
different from those people used in the 1700s, you will have
electronic media and you will not handwrite your work, but your
main task will be to focus on establishing conversations with other
writers and on your work as a process. Throughout the process of
writing your commonplace books, you will explore techniques to help
you communicate more effectively as a writer in the academic and
the professional worlds you are entering. You will work on a number
of separate, but interconnected, projects, you will read, revise,
comment on your own and your classmates’ work. In the end, you will
put together a portfolio of your work, a smaller version of your
larger commonplace book, that I will collect and read before the
end of the course.
Dr. Octavia Davis
WF 9:05-10:30 (CRN 10597)
WF 10:40-12:05 (CRN 11926)
WF 12:15-1:40 (CRN 10594)
People’s Writing
Times are changing. As people, you’re changing: teen to adult,
dependent to independent. How can we capture the present moment as
history? How have other writers and artists documented their
realities as they lived them? How have they communicated their
visions of the world? In this class, we’ll explore techniques for
writing our present and determining our futures.
We’ll begin
the semester by examining how people use stories in everyday
conversations and in a variety of writing situations. We’ll write a
couple of personal stories (narratives) to document important
experiences. At the same time, we’ll pay attention to stories we
see in the news. Who writes these reports, and why? What makes them
more or less believable? We’ll ask similar questions about stories
we find in song lyrics, advertisements, and in documents written by
everyday people who use narratives to create change in the
world.
As we move
through the semester, we’ll extend our investigation to how and why
people include multiple voices and perspectives in their writing.
After looking at our own practices, attitudes, and access to
audiences, we’ll explore this historical moment in wider contexts.
What kinds of information can we find easily, and what kinds are
impossible to find? How can we increase the odds that we’ll find
relevant, believable information as we research questions we care
about? How do we use researched materials in ways that enhance,
rather than overwhelm, our writing?
Throughout
the semester, you’ll notice what kinds of writing make you care and
believe, and you’ll experiment with techniques you admire. We’ll
document and research living issues and spread the news with
dispatches from home or dorm. Right now happens only once: write
it, remember it, and pass it on.
Professor Francisco Delgado
WF 3:25-4:50 (CRN 11917)
WF 5:00-6:25 (CRN 15046)
Surviving as Individuals
“Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees
us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us. In
the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some
underculture but mainly to save themselves, to survive as
individuals.” ~Don Delillo
Throughout the semester, students will reflect on various aspects
of themselves: as inhabitants of their hometowns and students
at St. John's University, as readers and scholars and as members of
particular ethnic, cultural, and economic classes. Although
the course will be broken up into units, we will see that these
respective parts of ourselves are far from being
exclusive. They are, in fact, not only interrelated but
influenced by one another. The course will emphasize writing
as not only a reflective act but an act of creation: how we create
ourselves via language and how language in turn characterizes our
everyday lives. We will also engage in acts of close reading
and thorough analysis, not only determining the writer’s purpose
behind composition but analyzing their motives and their respective
successes and shortcomings. Although our course focus will
primarily be on non-fiction writing, we will occasionally branch
out into short works of fiction and poetry. We will cover such
diverse writers as John Updike, James Baldwin, Jonathan Lethem,
Gloria Anzaldua and E.B. White. Furthermore, we will also
analyze composition in other artistic mediums, such as film and
music. Students will complete weekly writing assignments - both in
class and out - and will also be asked to regularly review one
another's work, as the revision process is just as important to
composition as the original act of writing. There will be a
research paper, a mock Rolling Style-style write-up, in which the
students interview themselves, and a course portfolio due at the
end of the semester. The research paper will be due on the sixth
week of the semester; the journalistic article will be due on the
eleventh week; and the course portfolio, which takes the place of a
final exam, is due on the final week of instruction. As is the
case with the majority of writing the students will complete, these
assignments will be thoroughly workshopped in class by peers before
being handed in.
Professor Regina Duthely
WR 12:15-1:40 (CRN 10596)
Who Am I?
What are the things that are most important to you? How do you view
the world? How do you express these views back to the world?College
is usually the place where you encounter a new world outside of the
influence of your parents and the structured curriculum of previous
schools. It is a time to begin exploring and finding out what you
believe. You finally get to jump out of the box and figure out your
position in the world. Writing and language are important ways to
embark on this journey to self discovery and ultimately self
expression. In our English 1000C course this semester we will go on
this quest together. We will read various articles about language,
identity, and culture. We will look at writers who use their work
as a means of expressing their belief system. Words are powerful
and we will explore the ways in which language can be oppressive as
well as liberating. We will also look at how life experiences
influence identity development and expression. As a group we will
engage in collaborative work to generate creative introspective
projects on the road to discovering ourselves as writers, thinkers,
and ultimately people. By the end of the course you will shout back
to the world what you believe! You will able to express your
particular perspective in ways that reflect you. You are encouraged
to take risks, be creative, and be yourself. All forms of
expression are valid and valuable. Our classroom will be a free
space open to safe creative exploration. Opinions and ideas will be
exchanged and you will all be engaged and active participants. You
will begin by asking yourself who am I? By the end you will be
standing on a table exclaiming I am!
Professor Ashwak Fardoush
MW 3:25-4:50 (CRN 12837)
Articulating One’s Identity through Writing
This course will explore different ways of articulating one's
identity through writing. Students will interrogate concepts such
as language, place and communities they belong in to better
understand their position in the larger world in which they live
and act. Through various reading selections and writing
assignments, they will be able to think more critically about a
myriad of issues in society, form opinions on subjects that concern
them and express their arguments effectively.
This class
heavily focuses on the writing process. Students will engage in
different types of writing (i.e. journal entries, response papers,
autobiographical account, research-based project, etc.) so that
they become conscious of the various genres of writing and know how
to address different audiences in their work. In a supportive
writing atmosphere, they will produce written texts of their own
and provide constructive criticism to their peers’ work to help
each other become better writers.
Dr. David Farley
MW 9:05-10:30 (CRN 10592)
MW 10:40-12:05 (CRN 10867)
MW 12:15-1:40 (CRN 10894)
Creative Passports
This intensive writing course will use the document of the passport
as a means to explore the boundary between the public and private,
a boundary that is both a particular place and an abstract idea. In
particular, we will focus on how the passport organizes information
about us into a neat little booklet and asks us to verify our
identity in a certain way in order to pass. Through a series of
papers that emerge from the different categories present in the
passport – categories such as name, language, gender, nation, and
the like – we will attempt to “reclaim” this document from the
government bureaucracy of which it is a part and recast it in a
form that can better represent who we are and how we engage the
world, ultimately allowing us a greater freedom to travel where we
will. In addition to this series of papers we will read authors
such as Chekhov, Sebald, Tan, and others. Students will complete
weekly writing assignments, both in class and out, as well as a
final “Creative Passport,” where they will collect, reflect, and
reclaim the writing they did over the course of the
semester.
Professor Dominique Ficalora
TW 1:50-3:15 (CRN 10869)
TW 3:25-4:50 (CRN 10870)
Unrealism of Real Societies
Literary critics suggest we are not living in the Real world, but a
copy closer to the worlds presented in films like
the Matrix, The Truman
Show, or The Wizard of Oz. They
argue that we are living, instead, in a hyperreality- a version of
reality, in which we are denied access to the true way of
things. Do you agree? Are we unable to differentiate
between authentic Reality and projections of a
"real" world? We will explore, critique, and investigate
the fantastical society in which we live by reading Don
DeLillo's White Noise and essays by Guy DeBord, Jean
Baudrillard, and selections from Neil Postman's Amusing
Ourselves to Death. We will read images by the
Situationists, Barbara Kruger, and Jenny Holzer. As we survey
these texts, we will sharpen our analytical thinking;
we will use our writing, visual essays,
détournements, and focused discussions as tools to tear down
the curtain of
hyperreality.
Professor Mark Frangos
TW 5:00-6:25 (CRN 15044)
R 5:00-7:50 (CRN 15041)
Propaganda as a Weapon and a Tool
Propaganda is the systematic effort to spread opinions or beliefs
and/or any method or plan used for the broadcasting of those
beliefs. The word is generally used in a political context, but
propaganda can be found anywhere. It describes a "presentation"
that is designed to serve an underlying agenda. Propaganda may
contain truths, deceptions and/or many other elements that might
affect people's beliefs and opinions in a way favoring the
propagandist using it. Propaganda is the all-encompassing art of
controlling civilization without the use of force.
The best way
to learn writing is to write, so be prepared to engage in writing
consistently throughout the semester. We will examine all forms of
propaganda, from the vilest dictators to our favorite
comedians. Since you also need to be a good reader in order to
be a good writer, you can expect that you will read extensively in
this class as well. We will find propaganda in different types of
literature and even attempt to write our own. We will approach the
writing assignments as a process, and you will have the opportunity
to plan, draft, revise and polish essays in a number of different
styles, directed toward varying audiences and with different
purposes in mind.
Professor Roseanne Gatto
WF 10:40-12:05 (CRN 10593)
WF 1:50-3:15 (CRN 10598)
WF 3:25-4:50 (CRN 11811)
(re)thinking memoir, (re)imagining the book
This section of ENG 1000c revolves around a semester-long book
project written about what you are burning to tell the world. Your
book will reflect your personal history, and include stories you
have grown up with and stories you wish to pass on. Think of the
stories you hope are told years from now. I would also like
for you to think about how these histories have shaped who you are
as well as whom you hope to be. In doing this work you will be
drawing on a variety of sources to deepen and contextualize your
narrative. You will be asked to move beyond the surface of your
story and think critically about the social implications of writing
a text of this nature. The book you write will not die in this
class, or my office, or on your hard drive At the end of the
semester you will submit a hand-made book and then determine where
you will send a copy. Think about whom would best benefit from
reading this book. Where can this book do the most
good?
Professor Lauren Kopec
WF 3:25-4:50 (CRN 10600)
WF 5-6:25 (CRN 10898)
Composition and Cornel West: Writing Your Way
Into the Social Justice Movement
Cornel West, a prominent philosopher and Civil Rights activist, has
spent his life fighting on behalf of race, gender, and class
equality. Many of his beliefs focus on the role of the
American citizen; West argues that it is our responsibility to keep
discrimination, cruelty, and injustice in check.One of his most
famous proclamations reads: “You can’t lead the people if you
don’t love the people. You can’t save the people if you don’t
serve the people.”In other words, achieving social justice in this
country relies on three basic ideals: honest leadership, respect
amongst individuals, and the desire to struggle against universal
discrimination (not just the types of injustice that affect you
personally). What is the connection between a freshman writing
course and the social justice movement? The key here is
empowering yourself as both a student and a writer to develop your
written and oral communication skills for a variety of rhetorical
situations.
In this
class, we will discuss power in a variety of forms; i.e. race,
class, gender, educational, political, sociocultural, etc.
Through our discussions of the assigned texts, and your own
investigative writing activities, we will explore and analyze the
nuances of power and how power structures (like the government) are
upheld or broken down by critical consciousness & writing.
In this course, you will be asked to read memoirs like
Wasted, A Child Called It, and Girl Interrupted,
as well as research based non-fiction about racism and classism in
American society (especially in education) while analyzing
documentaries describing a variety of social justice issues facing
Americans today. Finally, we will finish the semester by
watching and exploring DefJam, spoken word poetry, hip-hop videos
and blues lyrics. You will be required to write your memoir,
create a multi-media research project, and perform your own poetry
and/or music.
Gloria
Steinem says: “Power can be taken, but not given. The process
of taking is empowerment itself.” Think of this class as an
opportunity to grab your share of the power.
Professor Sharon Marshall
MW 10:40-12:05 (CRN 10589)
MW 12:15-1:40 (CRN 10868)
MW 3:25-4:50 (CRN 12832)
Making the Familiar Strange and the Strange
Familiar:Composing and analyzing texts, conducting
research, constructing arguments and experimenting with code
meshing, genre mashing, remixing, and telling it like it
is.
Have you
ever looked at a familiar object with a magnifying glass or
kaleidoscope or viewed a specimen through a microscope? Maybe you
like to take pictures of yourself on your phone or computer and
have played around with funny effects that rearrange your features
and make your own face an unfamiliar sight. These are examples of
making the familiar strange by noticing details that you might not
have seen if you hadn’t taken a closer or different look. In this
English composition class, you will take a closer or different look
at language, your experiences, and a question or issue that
concerns you and has implications for society and the world.
Writing will be the lens and method that will allow you notice,
analyze, and think critically. You’ll make the strange familiar
when you use writing and digital technologies to create and examine
texts, when you explore new ideas and research complex issues, and
when you work on projects with other students. Throughout the
semester you’ll be reading, listening to, and responding to the
work of other writers in the class. You’ll also be analyzing and
reflecting upon how you write, the qualities and conventions
associated with different types of writing and ways of composing,
and the challenges presented by each
assignment.
Dr. M. Amanda Moulder
WF 10:40-12:05 (CRN 12841)
WF 12:15-1:40 (CRN 11916)
WF 3:25-4:50 (CRN11817)
The Rhetoric of American Education
In
1990, activist and New York City Teacher of the Year Award
recipient John Taylor Gatto stated that: “The truth is that schools
don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a
great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work
in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the
abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual
contributions.” His statement upset people and has been
rejected by many, yet it hits on a central tension in contemporary
society: what do we attend school for? What do we learn
when we go to school and are those lessons aligned with what we
need in our lives? How do alternatives to institutionalized
education complement or stand up against mainstream educational
institutions? Do schools have an obligation to educate future
citizens for participation in a public sphere? And/or, do
schools have an obligation to teach skills that will make future
workers marketable and productive in a capitalist economy? Are
these obligations mutually exclusive? These questions are central
(implicitly and explicitly) in the lives of college students, or
indeed, anyone pursuing an education. In this course, we will
study, argue, and write about these and other central debates and
contemporary controversies in education.
Professor Robert Mundy
WR 3:25-4:50 (CRN 11814)
WR 5:00-6:25 (CRN 15045)
Writing in the Digital Age
If
we step back and reevaluate writing as it relates to technological
growth, we begin to see spaces that allow for alternative voices to
exist. Through the fields of new communications technology --
social networking sites, blogs, and Wikis -- we are witnessing, and
often times participating in, an interactive spike between various
cultures and societies. When talking about digital literacy,
it becomes immediately evident that the charge forward to utilize
these fledgling, virtual communities should stem from a desire to
push back against any narrative that stands in discord with one’s
sensibilities. Let’s look at the “Occupy Wall Street” movement
as an example of the internet’s ability to disseminate the views,
needs, and desires of alternative voices. A quick scan of
Google -- searching “Occupy Wall Street Blogs” -- yields just under
five million potential hits in just under fifteen
seconds. What is of value here is how we understand this
information, and how we can use our research and personal thoughts
-- through the creation of the blog and/or Wiki -- to respond as
informed members of the discussion regardless of where we stand in
the conversation.
In this
course, we will explore how we see ourselves as individuals and
collective members of cultural communities. It is our goal to
negotiate a world that inundates us with information -- popular
culture, mass media, etc. -- that paradoxically helps to create a
sense of self while constantly redefining the parameters of our
identities. How we choose to identify, in relation to the
prevailing thoughts of our culture, is no longer left to private
rumination. As we look to the internet as a space that offers
far more than the simple storing of information, we see
opportunities to present the thoughts of our local communities on a
global stage. How we choose to self-identify in a “glocal”
context (the local and the global) speaks to the manner in which we
are digesting information -- not simply for consumption -- but for
establishing thoughts, feelings, and attitudes that reflect the
true identities of a technologically savvy culture.
What we will
stress in this class is really quite simple: as active members of
this changing medium, it is our duty to present our pluralistic
traditions by maintaining the colloquial languages of our daily
lives while understanding the tenets of rhetoric that establish
online spaces and writing as far more than simple critiques of
culture, but instead to present discussions, analysis, and in some
cases solutions to the questions that perplex us. How we
write, the audience we have in mind while putting pen to paper or
in this case finger to keypad, is an extension of our understanding
of the world in which we live and the route we plan to take in
establishing ourselves as writing practitioners who are prepared to
understand language -- our beliefs and the beliefs of others -- not
in competition, but as varied notes of the same
chord.
Dr. Sean Murray
MW 12:15-1:40 (CRN 10897)
MW 3:25-4:50 (CRN 12833)
MW 5:00-6:25 (CRN 11437)
Writing and Social Justice
Cheap fast food, energy-saving light bulbs, stereotypes in reality
television, our privacy on social networking sites…What do these
seemingly disparate topics have to do with each other? They
all connect to the theme of social justice. As our
world continues to grow in size and complexity, we must grapple
with pressing questions about how to build the most ethical society
possible. Individually and collectively, we must ask, ‘What’s
the fairest, most responsible way forward?’ when working through
the countless dilemmas facing our communities. Because social
justice is a concept that applies to numerous issues, you will have
opportunities to investigate topics that speak to you, whether they
be related to education, the environment, the economy, health care,
peace and war, gender, race, or social class (to name just a
few). The semester will commence with a manifesto of sorts, a
writing assignment that asks you to announce and explain a deeply
held belief pertaining to social justice. Next, we will write
reviews of pop culture or artistic works of your
choosing. This work could be a film, book, play, album, or art
exhibit that touches on a particular social justice theme. For
our third project, we will look at social justice issues that
are—and are not—making the news. This project will
culminate in a research-driven, argument-based paper on a topical
issue of interest to you. Finally, we will work on a short
piece of writing that has possibilities for going beyond our
classroom, whether it be a letter to a political representative, a
posting to an online forum, etc. As we move through these
writing projects, we will ask questions related to audience and
genre: What do readers expect from a piece like this? What
conventions should I take seriously? Which rules can I
break? Class sessions will often function as writing workshops
where we propose our initial ideas, share drafts, elicit feedback,
and reflect critically on that feedback. At the semester’s
end, we will put together portfolios that illustrate our journeys
as writers and critical
thinkers.
Professor Nela Navarro
M 5:00-7:50 (CRN 15038)
W 5:00-7:50 (CRN 15040)
Crossing the Blvd-Writing in
Motion“America is woven of many strands. I would
recognize them and let it so remain. Our fate is to become one, and
yet many.”“I am a man of substance, of flesh and
bone, fiber and liquids
- and I
might even be said to possess a
mind.
I am invisible, simply
because people refuse to see me.” ~Ralph
Ellison
Crossing the Blvd (Queens Blvd): This course
takes as its framing structure an innovative multimedia
project created by artists Warren Lehrer and Judith Sloan which
makes visible the narratives/stories of people living in the most
linguistically and ethnically diverse place in the United States -
Queens, NY. We will explore why some narratives have become
visible and others invisible. This class embraces a critical
pedagogy approach in which we will examine the social, historical
and political histories that we bring to the classroom. We
will read to become critically engaged thinkers so that you can
discover that, as writers, your thinking, reading and writing
activities are tools of empowerment that you can use to re-visit,
re-vise and re-position your multiple voices/selves. In this class,
we will envision writing as a transformative act whose purpose is
to interrogate, expose and propose solutions to social injustices
and thus enable the invisible to be visible. The course format
combines workshop, group work, peer work and intensive
revision.
Professor Steven Netcoh
WF 12:15-1:40 (CRN 11924)
TW 1:50-3:15 (CRN 10599)
Flippin’ the Script on Writing: The Rap Guide to
Composition
Have you ever felt restricted in writing classes? Has writing
been a burdensome task for you? Do you ever wish you could
write about topics that personally interest you in school? If
you answered yes to any of these questions, get ready to flip the
script on writing in The Rap Guide to Composition. This course
uses Hip Hop as a framework to challenge the politics, practices,
and ideologies of traditionalist composition
classrooms. Students are asked to approach writing like Hip
Hop artists. Rappers are rarely restricted by grammatical and
stylistic conventions when they compose song lyrics. They are
free to express their ideas in any form of language and in any
style. Most emcees also rap about significant issues in their
own lives as they critically reflect on their
surroundings. The Rap Guide to Composition values these
approaches to writing. Students are invited to experiment with
different writing styles and encouraged to address topics that are
relevant to their own lives. The goal of this class is to give
students the freedom to find their voices as writers and socially
conscious
citizens.
The course
is composed of four main units that promote critical thinking and
reflection. In the first unit, students investigate
traditional definitions of literacy and examine how they practice
multiple forms of literacy in their everyday lives. The major
writing assignment for this unit asks students to reflect on past
writing experiences and explain how they would have been different
if their multiple and “ill literacies” were valued in the
classroom. The second unit invites students to critically
analyze their positionality in society while experimenting with
different approaches to autobiographical writing. In the third
unit, students engage with various forms of popular culture and
investigate the media’s impact on society. The final unit
affords students an opportunity to explore their academic interests
while re-conceptualizing the “traditional” research
paper. Collectively, these units shape a course designed to
foster critical thinkers and inspired writers.
Professor Nicole Papaioannou
M 5:00-7:50 (CRN 10586)
Writing Class 2.0
This course is built around the idea that writing is a powerful
communication tool and a social transaction. Writing can enable you
to share histories with future generations, explain complex
concepts, keep in touch with high school friends, or even change
the world. The purpose of this course is to enable you to use
writing to accomplish personal goals as well as academic ones. In
this class, you will be asked to write in a variety of genres that
include everything from narratives and essays to blog posts and
multimedia projects. Because much of today’s writing occurs online,
this course also makes use of Web 2.0 technologies, such as Twitter
and Blackboard. Students will be asked to bring their laptops to
each class.
Professor Jon Peacock
TW 1:50-3:15 (CRN 10893)
TW 3:25-4:50 (CRN 11930)
TW 5:00-6:25 (CRN 15043)
Us & Them: A Critical Look at Stereotypes and
Misconceptions
This English Composition class will focus on developing your skills
as a critical reader and writer. The class theme, “Us & Them: A
Critical Look at Stereotypes and Misconceptions,” looks at
misconceptions, prejudices, and other factors that create social
barriers. We will read articles throughout the semester, and will
use these as a starting point to take a critical look at social
difference. The semester will be divided into three sections,
“Language,” “Social Class,” and “Culture and Race.” The readings
will correspond with their sections, and class discussion of each
reading assigned will be a core component of this course. Beyond
these discussions, you will create and discuss weekly reading
responses and four formal writing projects throughout the
semester.
Professor Radha Radkar
R 5:00-7:50pm (CRN 12834)
Living Languages & Literacies in the First
Year Writing Classroom
First and foremost, our class will be driven primarily by
your inquiries about your
literacies. A connecting thematic for our course will be
investigating and interrogating the literacies we are all in
contact with daily, along with how we will define literacy
throughout the semester not only within the context of academia but
outside the classroom: how can we make the way we speak,
read, write, and hear our daily lives a powerful means for
understanding our relationship to language, discourse, and
democracy? How can we use the definition of literacy by New
Literacy Studies scholars as a lived and communal
practice to understand our world more deeply and critically?
Potential projects for the semester will include a Self Portrait
that describes and analyzes your literacies, a Self and Community
Project, and a critical response project to our readings, all of
which will be included in the end-of-semester Final
Portfolio.
Professor Tara Roeder
WF 10:40-12:05 (CRN 11920)
WF 12:15-1:40 (CRN 11918)
WF 3:25-4:50 (CRN 11016)
Forms that
Challenge: Traversing
GenreArtists and intellectuals have a
commitment to try to make their work […] not in the watered down
forms that only capitulate to the mediocracy, but in forms that
challenge, confront, exhilarate, provoke, disturb, question, flail,
and even fail. —Charles Bernstein,
“Revenge of the Poet-Critic”
I couldn’t
agree with the above quote more. That’s why this course is
designed to give you, as artists and intellectuals, the opportunity
to explore writing through multiple lenses, forms, and
approaches. For the next few months, we will become a
community of writers, thinking about our craft and looking at how a
variety of texts—especially your own and those of the other writers
in class—work.
The texts
you create this semester will come out of your passion, your
experiences, and your beliefs, and they will grow as you critically
re-envision them. I will not give you a list of topics
to write about; this course will allow you the opportunity to
create your own content, exploring concepts like self,
family, memory, place, culture, and politics through the use
of forms such as memoir, research project, documentary, manifesto,
poetry, graphic text, critical analysis, and letter. You
will have the opportunity to craft your own vision as a
writer while exploring the conversations surrounding various
genres.
As you
compose your texts, both your work and you as a writer will grow in
significant ways. We’ll look at writing both as an act of
self-construction and a way of connecting to a larger world, and
we’ll engage in a process of dialogue with each other, one that
includes drafting, sharing, responding, listening, and
revising. We'll move through various genres, exploring
their possibilities and pushing their boundaries, as we
attempt to make meaning out of issues we care deeply
about.
Professor April Sikorski
MW 10:40-12:05 (CRN 10595)
MW 12:15-1:40 (CRN 11813)
MW 3:25-4;50 (CRN 11935)
Research Revisited“The essence of
a person lies in a question.” ~Martin
Heidegger
We all have
questions that we are, as Ken Macrorie writes, “itching” to ask
(66). According to Martin Heidegger, “The essence of a person
lies in a question.” When I put Macrorie together with
Heidegger, I get the sense that scratching these itches, or raising
these questions, that lie within us will help people better
understand their own “essence.”
I believe
there is some truth to the idea that searching out answers to
questions we have whispering at the backs of our minds can help us
to learn about ourselves. By learning what we want, need, or
think, we are then in the position to take that knowledge out into
the world and share it with others. In this way, allowing
ourselves to ask questions we’ve been avoiding or discrediting can
help us realize how we can affect change in the communities we see
ourselves as a part of.
Throughout
the semester, this course asks you to mix songs, interviews,
surveys, and other sources together in order to search out the
answers to real life questions, answers that fulfill needs in your
life. If you are undecided, you could use this course to
search out an ideal major. If you aren’t sure if you are
really interested in the major you’ve chosen, you can use your
Search Projects to talk to professors, students, and professionals
in your prospective field who might help you learn more about other
avenues you could take. If you’ve always wanted to know the
story of your grandmother coming to the States, you can use your
Projects to talk to your family, hear their stories, and write your
own family history. An ideal course for inquisitive students
with a desire to talk to people, interact with classmates, and
engage in the fieldwork aspects of the research
process. (Works Cited: Macrorie, Ken. The I-Search
Paper. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook,
1980.)
Professor Deborah Taranto
WR 3:25-4:50 (CRN 11921)
WR 5-6:25 (CRN 12836)
Memoir Writing: A Window into Ourselves
Writing is a powerful tool for learning. When we write we
become conscious of ourselves. We define ourselves, and we
come to understand our lives. We give our inner voice a more
public place in the world. By choosing Memoir as the focus of
this class, it becomes a window into our life. Memoir-making
offers a chance to pause and take a vantage point from which to
explore the inner and outer landscape. These pauses may cause
us to ask questions of ourselves that we may not ordinarily do, or
that we deliberately shy away from. What window are you
opening? What is its frame? When I look at my past is
there a pattern that tells me something about my relationships and
myself? What have been my standards? What do I regret?
Working with these questions and with examples of
contemporary memoirs and guided exercises, this course will help to
give the student the confidence he/she may need to be honest and
open about expressing themselves in their writing and in their
class.
If Memoir is
a window into our life then every window needs a
frame. Finding and working the frame is what limits and holds
together a memoir. Frames consist of anything: a time period,
an incident, a setting, an abstraction, a photo, whatever the
framework it's the writer's job to fit the pieces of the story into
the frame in such a way that the story resonates. This will teach
the student discipline, how to choose what to keep in one's work
and what to take out, editing, the importance of revision, the
basic landscape of what we know and understand to be the art of
writing.
Through the
various readings the student will discuss the author's particular
issues and come to understand the motivation behind the action
and/or thoughts. Questions such as: "How does this apply to
my life? "When have I felt these same emotions?" and many others
will be addressed and connections between the readings and the
student will be realized. It will also serve as a bridge of
cultures and genders by openly exploring the commonalities that
populate our communities, environments and
world.
Professor Philippe Theise
TW 12:15-1:40 (CRN 11922)
Relationships with Music
In
this course, we will be examining and creating relationships with
music. To ground this work, we will first explore our relationships
with sounds, by writing about the sounds we heard in our homes,
amidst our communities, and during our travels throughout our
lives. How did the voices of relatives, the creaks of wooden
floors, the honks of passing trucks, or the emissions of toy laser
guns help us form identities, understand concepts, and ask
questions? In short, in what ways did our aural environments
influence us?
After we
have begun thinking and writing about sound, we will shift towards
thinking and writing about music—the arrangement of sounds in time
(American Heritage Dictionary). We will read popular and academic
essays about songs, albums, and artists, as well as practice
writing our own. We will create, annotate, and write introductions
to pedagogical playlists that focus on particular genres or periods
of music history. We will read and write about the politics of
various musical styles and figures, as well as about the changing
nature of music distribution. Throughout the semester, we will
strive to produce original writing on the sounds and music that
have informed our lives, our communities, and our
societies.
Professor William J. Torgerson
MW 9:05-10:30 (CRN 10915)
MW 10:40-12:05 (CRN 11810)
CRN 10590 (online)
Choose Your Own Investigation: Writing in
Digital Texts
What do you want to investigate? What writers or texts will
your work be in conversation with? These are a couple of the
questions the writers in this community will face from the first
day, and they will begin to try and answer these questions by
participating in a listing and sharing activity in which they will
develop their writing territories. Conversation will be a prominent
feature of this classroom, and the writing territories are meant to
help each writer to survey the landscape of possibility for their
reading, writing, and thinking. Students will begin their
research in the scholarly databases of the library but work to
branch out to other texts including personal interviews. Much
of the work in this class will be done via blogs and the writing of
a hybrid research paper called the Scholarly Personal
Narrative. It is a documentary style voiced paper in which the
writer tells a personal story and weaves in research. Students
will then complete a short documentary film and compose a “Writer
on Writing” paper that will serve as an introduction to a
reflective writing portfolio. It is the goal of this course to
reinvigorate intellectual curiosity and to begin conversations that
will continue long after the semester ends.
Professor Christine Utz
TR 5-6:25 (CRN 11815)
Reading the Self
Identity is conveyed through various means, from the clothes we
wear to the people we associate with, but above all, our voice says
the most about who we are and what we believe in. In this class, we
will explore what it means to have a “voice” not only in writing,
but also in the way we think and respond to written content. How do
our backgrounds, experiences, culture, family, and friends affect
the way we think/read/write?
Though you
will be working toward a similar goal—whether that involves writing
a particular kind of essay, or reading the assigned text—you will
all approach it from different perspectives. This is the beauty of
our differences, the value of individuality. By embracing your
unique perspective, you will be able to produce original writing
that is thoughtful and creative, while also adhering to academic
conventions. You will learn to take your essays through multiple
revisions in order to re-visit your purpose and
re-shape your ideas, understanding that an essay might
never be totally “finished;” even professional writers write, and
rewrite, and rewrite again. Throughout your investigation of self,
you will examine and try your hand at various genres of writing,
such as the personal essay, analytical essay, research essay,
documentary, letter, dramatic dialogue, editorial, and analogy. We
will work collaboratively to respond to each other’s written work
in peer groups and as a class, and we will continually question,
study, and comment on perceptions (and misperceptions) of identity.
The course will conclude with the handing in of a final portfolio
that displays the quality and breadth of your work over the course
of the semester.
Professor Elizabeth Weaver
MW 3:25-4:50 (CRN 11816)
MW 5:00-6:25 (CRN 10587)
MW 7:10-8:35 (CRN 12835)
Choices: 8000 Utopia, Many Roads
Most students learn to hate writing by the time they reach college.
For many, this is because they've been encouraged to just race
through, quickly finishing papers about topics they never cared
about to begin with. When those papers come back, marked with
arbitrary grades – often a measure of how well they do things
the teacher expects of them but hasn't taught – student ideas are
left for dead, like victims of a hit-and-run.
In this
writing course, students will spend most of the semester
experiencing the more pleasurable but often overlooked early,
scenic stages of writing: 1) exploring or “brainstorming” (not
only through writing but also in ways that recognize an
individual's need to make the exchange of ideas an interaction that
is at the same time social -- at times even visual or physical) and
2) getting and giving suggestions. (Think of planning a road
trip: what are some other routes? What are the benefits of the
different paths? And wait! First, doesn't it matter where you're
trying to go?)
Writers in
the course will not only be given great freedom in choosing their
own journeys, but they will even get to decide which projects they
continue with and which ones they choose to ditch along the
way. Much of the research in the class will be hands-on (after
all, no one ever got anywhere just reading maps), and all of the
research will be determined by where each individual writer wants
to go – both literally (what place he or she chooses to visit,
hands on) – and figuratively.
As is
consistent with the First Year Writing policy that individual
papers not receive grades, nothing will be regarded as a
“completed” journey until the end of the semester; rather,
individuals will be rewarded along the way based on their efforts –
not only to work on their own writing but to also be a supportive,
considerate contributor to our classroom (and website) writing
community. The routes to success in the course are many and
accessible to all: staying alert at the wheel, being open
to detours (but ultimately choosing your own route), sharing the
road, offering a lift, setting out early enough to arrive on time
(so that others, who are depending on you, are not kept waiting!),
and, worse case scenario, getting in touch when a roadblock causes
delays.
And we're
off!