COURSE SYLLABUS
Intro to Literature and Writing
Welcome! In this class, we will focus on two things: we will read literature carefully and critically, and we will practice writing. How can we read in ways that help enrich our understanding of writing? How does writing work and what can it do? You will practice different types of writing, and read different forms of literature. The goal is for you to broaden and deepen your skills as a reader and writer, and for you to gain skills that will help you in other classes, and in your life outside of class.
Course Goals
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Read critically, paying attention to the ways that texts reflect their contexts, purposes, and audiences.
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Adapt our writing for multiple genres, styles, and technologies in ways that reflect different rhetorical situations.
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Based on analysis of genre, context, purpose, and audience, deploy language’s many resources, including its figurative power as well as conventions of grammar, punctuation, syntax, and semantics, to shape and communicate meaning with clarity and fluency.
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Research, evaluate, and synthesize evidence in order to build and support effective analyses and arguments for different contexts, purposes, and audiences.
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Cultivate a supportive and challenging classroom environment, treating everyone and everything in the classroom space as a component of a united writing community.
Some thoughts on writing to guide our work
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Writing is a tool for inquiry. We can use writing to understand what we think, and we can use writing to discover and formulate new ideas.
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Writing is a form of critical thinking, and critical thinking requires creativity, imagination, and resilience.
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Writing is social. Our writing is an attempt to address, move, persuade, inform, delight, provoke, or nudge others.
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Writing is rhetorical; what we write and how we write is shaped by the context, genre expectations, purpose, and audience of our writing situation. Writing situations are never identical, although we can draw on prior experiences to navigate new writing situations.
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Writing is a process of rewriting. That is, writing is a process that involves revision and tinkering, and writing can also be a way of recomposing our own thoughts or someone else’s thoughts.
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Writing is a craft. We can practice using language--as well as images and sounds in multimodal compositions--to create effects.
Participation and Assignments
Students are required to attend all class meetings and to complete all of the assigned readings. All the readings will be made available in hard copies at least one week before the relevant class. You are expected to annotate your readings (which means: underline, highlight, and take notes in the margins, noting any thoughts you have while reading, questions, or ideas that arise.) There will be occasional pop quizzes, and I will sometimes collect your readings to assess whether you are truly annotating. If you are unable to attend class due to illness or circumstances out of your control, please do your best to check in with another student in the class to get the assignments and notes.
You will have reading and writing assignments every week. You will be graded based on (a) actually completing the homework on time, and (b) thoughtfully, thoroughly completing the assignments and handing them in on time. Some of what we will read will be extremely difficult, either due to the topic (which is called the “content”) or the way it is written (which is called the “form”). Please be patient and do your best. You will not be assessed on how “correct” your reading and writing is, but rather, the effort you put in to engage the material, and your progress over time.
You will have three papers and one project due over the course of the semester. If possible, please type your assignments (Times New Roman font, size 12). If that’s not possible or much too time consuming, please do your best to write neatly. I suggest doing a first draft, and then coming back to it to make any additions or corrections, and then re-writing it as neatly as you can. Not only will that make it easier for me to read and comment on your work, but your writing will get stronger with each additional draft.
Save the writing that you get back from me. This will be put into your writing portfolio. I will give you feedback on your assignments, which will often have questions. You do not have to respond to these questions each week; rather, the questions are meant to show you where your writing should go further, ways you can clarify and sharpen your writing, and what readers may find most intriguing about your work.
Some additional notes on participation
Writing personally: You will often be asked to write about yourself. You get to choose what you’d like to share, and how you want to express yourself--personally, autobiographically, fictionally, creatively, with humor, gravity, darkness, etc. The goal is to teach you something about writing, not to force you to tell your whole life story.
Sharing with the class community: In order to learn and grow as a class, we will frequently be reading each other’s writing. For example, we will look at some awesome sentences from your own writing to explore why they are so great. We will also do regular “sentence clinics” as a way to fix common grammar errors. I will treat your writing with respect, and use my best judgement when choosing what to share with the class community. Assume that the writing you hand in might be shared with the class. If you do not want a particular piece of writing to be shared with the class, write “please do not share” somewhere on the document. I will collect your homework each week. I will occasionally collect your in-class writing.
Digesting class concepts: I will do my best to be very clear about the goals and main concepts for each lesson. That said, I will definitely sometimes skim over things that need more explanation, and jump between different topics. Please ask questions. If you have a question, chances are, someone else in the class also has that question. At the end of each class, one student will give a short recap of what happened during class and what the main concepts were. (Others can then join in with any questions or thoughts.) At the beginning of each class, one student will give a recap of what happened during the last class. This is to help keep us all on the same page.
Classroom contract: Together, we will make a class contract to determine the most important “rules of play” for our class discussions. Each member of the class community (students, professor, guests) must agree to uphold the contract. Until then, I ask that you simply follow this: treat every person, thing, and text in our class with respect and kindness. If we’re having a full group conversation, keep side conversations to a minimum. If you need to take a break (for bathroom, water, etc.), please exit and enter quietly, and if possible, wait until the class break.
Grades
Overall, course grades will be determined according to the following formula:
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40% = Class participation (which involves: your participation in class as a contributer, active listener and responsible member of our class community)
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20% = Short writing assignments
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40% = Essays
Additional information from the university
[Insert here any info on any policies students must uphold as part of the unviersity.]