POLICIES EN 102 Honors Writing II
In this course, we will explore, to borrow from the poet Philip Levine, "what work is" in the United States. In other words, we will study and speculate about the relationship between Americans and their jobs—what work looks like in the beginning of the 21st century, and, connected to that, how has it changed in the course of our nation’s history, who’s doing what, whether or not they like it, and what all that signifies for us as a society. To fuel our discussions, you will read, research, and write formally and informally, both individually and in groups, about a variety of related topics.
That is the topic of this course, what our work will be centered around and interested in. But the primary concern in this writing classroom is that you learn what it means to be a writer and reader (a particular kind of important and difficult work all its own). Mainly, it is my job to show you how to write for the college classroom—as you may or may not be realizing, the way you write for your college teachers is different in some ways than any way you’ve been asked to write before. There are, as with most things, rules to be followed. I will try to help you understand not only what those rules are but the more important reasons for why we follow them.
But writing to get a good grade is something of a waste of my time and yours since you’ll only be writing for a grade for a relatively short time from this point on. So it is important that we look at other reasons to write—and read. Some of you might read and writer for, I know it might be a stretch, pleasure. This is good. Reading and writing can, I really believe, make us better, more thoughtful people. This is because reading and writing are both ways of making sense of the world around us. This is the more vital thing I will try to convince you of this semester. They are processes that require us to use our brains. And in that way reading and writing are like running short training runs for a longer race—the critical work that I will ask you to try to do as we read and write this semester is practice for the critical thinking and doing you will need to do in real life. And so we will read and write together in order to develop your skills in both areas, better preparing you for the work you need to do here at college, as a well as in your life beyond the classroom in the real world (wherever that is). You will be responsible for reading and writing all kinds of texts, both informal and formal. You will do this work individually and as part of groups of varying size.
Finally, a note on this as an honor’s class:
congratulations to you for having the talent to get in to the honor’s program and the sense to see it for the remarkable opportunity that it is. Stick with it, and you will be rewarded. I’ve overseen one honor’s thesis, one summer research project, several semester grant projects, have helped (or bullied, depending on how you look at it) upwards of 15 students to present at Bridgewater’s annual undergraduate research symposium (something I will strongly urge many of you to participate in), and, finally, I attended the national conference on undergraduate research where no less than 4 of my current or former students presented. I believe in the honor’s program. I think it is a way to get the best education money can buy. I’m serious. And I will expect all of you to be serious about this work too.Goals
By the end of this class you should be able to demonstrate in your writing your developing understanding:
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that reading, writing, research are both processes requiring the active participation of the reader/writer·
that revision is a vital part of that writing process·
that a written "argument" is an orderly, reasoned effort to convince an audience of your particular position using evidence to support your position—and that all texts, all of them, construct an argument in some way shape or form·
And, finally, of the conventions of reading and writing texts in the college classroom, including the conventions of citation as it pertains to research.Texts
The following texts are available in the campus bookstore, but anyway you can get them cheaper is OK by me. I would suggest getting this particular edition of The Jungle. I would also suggest getting the most recent editions of all the other texts if you can (the bookstore has the most recent editions).
| Hacker, Diana | A Pocket Style Manual |
| Clines, Raymond H. and Elizabeth R. Cobb | Research Writing Simplified: A Documentation Guide |
| Donald M. Murray | The Craft of Revision |
| Upton Sinclair | The Jungle (Modern Library Classics) |
| Barbara Ehrenreich | Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America |
Requirements
1. Attendance. This isn’t a correspondence course. We do a great deal of work in class—in groups, in workshops, in class discussion. Missing more than three classes will lower your grade; missing more than six classes will cause you to fail this course. NOTE: Chronic lateness will be treated as absences. In addition, absence is not an acceptable excuse for late work.
2. Participation. Here is my definition of "participation:" come to class on time and prepared with whatever it is you are responsible for that day—the previous nights readings, a draft of a paper for workshopping, the paper that is due that day. If it says on the syllabus that something is "DUE" or to be "READ" than that something is due on that very day—not the next day, not at five o’clock, not in the dark of night when I’m not in my office, and you can slip it under the door, and I won’t see you—you weasel. If the syllabus says to email me something before class, than email me before class. I’m a stickler about two things: attendance and participation. Do both well, and you are off to a good start. Don’t and you’ll fail.
3. Readings and informal writing. Students should come prepared to talk and write about whatever reading is due that day (see participation defined above). Anything identified with a red "READ" on the syllabus is due on that date. We will write informally almost everyday about these readings. All of this writing will serve as evidence that you are doing the reading. Reading and informal writing will count for 10% of your grade.
4. In-class Group work. You will work with a small group both in class and online to discuss readings, workshop each other’s drafts, do research, and, finally, do group presentations. Group work only sucks when there are awful people in the group. If you are such an awful person, it will adversely affect your grade. If you are a great group member, it will help your grade. Ultimately, though, the success of your group work and your group project will be measured in terms of the work that you produce and present. Group work, including the group presentation and workshop efforts, will count for 10% of your grade. The details of the group presentation are available online under the "assignments" link for this class.
5. Book club. A little known truth about college is that you have to read differently in college than you do, say, the newspaper or a romance novel. People don’t realize this. People also don’t realize that you have to practice reading in order to become a better reader—it works like writing that way. With all this in mind, you will practice reading for college as part of a book club. You’ll read the book on your own, write an in-class journal about the book, talk with your classmates about the book and your journal, and do a brief presentation on a selected topic that I will assign your group. You will be evaluated on your in-class efforts, the quality of your in-class journals, your group presentations. At the end of the club, you will collect all of your responses and write an introductory letter that talks about the experience. Then we’ll go on Oprah Winfrey—no, no, just kidding. During this first week of classes you will pick which book you want to read from the list you find under "texts" above. I’ll give you short summaries of the novels to help you make the decision.
Details for the bookclub are available online under the "assignments" link for this class. Successful completion of the book club assignment will count towards 15% of your final grade.
6. Formal writing: in addition to the informal writing you will do, you will also complete roughly four other formal writing projects of varying degrees of length and difficulty. These writing assignments are briefly explained here. More complete explanations can be found under the "assignments" link for this class on my website. For more specific information about timelines and due dates see the "syllabus" link for this course.
My Life As a Working Stiff: Work Histories. For this first, short paper you will need to write a short reflection on your own work experiences so far, what they have meant to you, and how they connect (or don’t connect) to your experiences in school. To help you write this paper you will read a number of short essays by writer Studs Terkel from his important collection entitled Working; people talk about what they do all day and how they feel about what they do. I think you can guess from the title what the essays are about. You should also get a sense from the title exactly what I’m asking you to do in this 3-5 page essay.
Working Redux, or Thanks Studs: Interview Project. There are two parts to the second paper, making it a "project" in my mind and not just a paper. For the first part, you will need to interview two working stiffs—anyone, related to you or not. We will work on what makes for good interview questions in class. The second part will ask you to write a three-page introduction to your interviews that analyzes what people seem to be saying about their jobs. Your analysis should try to answer this question: what does work seem to mean to people in this day and age, much like the Terkel pieces you have read. Your three page analysis/thesis should develop a thesis that comments on the comparisons and contrasts you can trace in your own stories and the stories of those you interview.
Ethnographic Project. Working as part of a small group, you will do a three-week study of a job site that none of you work at. You will write the 8-10 page papers independently, but will present on your research as a group at the end of the project. To help you understand the work of ethnography, you will read selections on how to do ethnographies and two examples of ethnographic research—a long version, Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed and a short version that looks more like the kind of piece you will write, Marcus Laffey’s Cop Beat.
Reel Work: Movie Review. This is a sort of fun project designed to help you develop your research skills as well as make the distinction between summary and analysis brutally clear. For this short paper, 3 pages, you will need to watch a movie about, of course, working in America (and, no, you can’t all do Office Space) and find at least two different reviews written about the movie. You’ll read some Marxist Criticism as well. Your job will be to tell me what assumptions this movie makes about working in the world today. You will need to compare or contrast what the reviews you find with your own opinion. To help you out, you will get to work with a small group to find reviews and discuss the film. You won’t have to watch it together unless you want to, but you can use each other to help figure out what’s going on.
On the Job in America: Critic-at-Large Research Paper. The last major piece of writing will be the traditional research paper, with a few twists. As a culminating piece of writing that reflects all the kinds of research, reading, and writing we’ve been doing all semester long, you will choose a topic connected to our class work that you will research and write about. You will be required to interview at least one "expert" on your topic for inclusion in the paper. You will present a version of your paper to your classmates. To help you with this project, you will read historical documents related to particular issues and then essays that analyze and comment on those issues so you can see how to use your research to prove a larger point. We will also read pieces on a variety of issues in labor to help you to see how many different ways you could go with this paper and encourage you to take big risks on this final paper of the semester.
7. Portfolios. The best way I have found to help students understand and appreciate what it means when I say "writing is a process" is to include a portfolio component in all of my writing classes. Twice this semester you will be responsible for collecting and revising the work you’ve done so far in class. At midterm and again at the end of the semester you will turn in both formal and informal writing, some of it revised, some of it not. You will also include, both at midterm and at the end of the semester, an introductory essay that explains what you’ve learned to that point in the semester and provides a self-evaluation of your writing. These portfolios will be returned with formal letter grades attached that evaluate the work in the portfolio as well as your progress in the class up to that point.
Details for the midterm and final portfolios, plus the introductory letters, are available online under the "portfolios" link for this class. Successful completion of the midterm portfolio will count towards 10% of your grade. Successful completion of your final portfolio will count towards 15% of your grade.
8. Conferences. Twice this semester, just before midterm and just before finals, you will come see me for a one-on-one conference. Classes will be canceled to accommodate these meetings; they will last approximately 20 minutes and will be held in my office. In the midterm conference we will work on a draft of your completed ethnography, as well as a time for you to ask questions about the midterm portfolio in general. In the final conference we will work on a draft of your Critic-at Large paper. Failure to come to these two conferences and/or failure to come to these conferences prepared with a draft to work on will count as two, count them, two absences—it will also engender my ill will towards you for the rest of your time in this class for frittering around with my time, buster.
In addition to these two scheduled conferences, you are more than welcome to come see me during my office hours or during an arranged meeting to talk about your work.
evaluation and grading
You will not receive letter grades on individual drafts and assignments in this class. This will make some of your nuts, I know, but it really is for the best. After all, if I slap an "A" on a first paper, how much are you likely to work at getting better at your writing? Not very, you’ve got to admit. And, likewise, what if you get a C? What will that do to your ego and effort? It allows me the chance to give you credit for the things that grading individual papers will not let you do: this system, a portfolio system, allows me to count effort and revision, and improvement—things crucial to good writing.
Even though you will not be getting letter grades on everything you turn in, you will receive extensive comments on your writing that should both give you a sense of the quality of your work as well as a way to begin to revise and improve your writing. At midterm, you will receive a grade-so-far letter. At the end of the semester you will receive a final grade. These two letter grades will be based on the following criteria:
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Meeting all of the requirements described above,·
The quality of your written work, including how successful your revision work is,·
The quality of your effort in the class, in workshops, in class discussion, in your groups, and in general,·
Your demonstration of a willingness to try new things, think in new ways, and explore different perspectives as both a reader and a writer.From my comments you should have a clear understanding of your progress in this class; if there is ever a time where you are not sure, come see me.
Breakdown of assessment percentages. Different assignments require different amounts of effort. The percentages that accompany each of the requirements in this class should give you an indication of the time and energy that each should take up in your student life.
Reading and informal writing 10%
Group work and presentations 10%
Book Club 15%
Formal Writing
Work History 5%
Interview Project 10%
Ethnography 10%
Movie Review 10%
Critic-at-Large 10%
Midterm Portfolio 10%
Final Portfolio 10%
Plagiarism. Don’t do it. I’ll know. You’ll fail the paper for sure, and you could well fail the class.
Students with learning disabilities. Students who need special accommodations due to a documented learning disability must come to see me with written documentation of the specific disability and suggested accommodations before the end of the drop add period. We can discuss specific accommodations at that time.
The Writing Studio. Located in the Academic Achievement Center, on the bottom floor of the Library, the Writing Studio is available to any and all students at whatever level of expertise you might be at. They are a marvelous resource for this class. You can talk to them at any stage of your writing—from brainstorming, to drafting, to editing. If you are interested in getting useful and thorough feedback, the Writing Studio is a good place to go. The work they do will reinforce everything we are doing in this class. In addition, a great number of students who work there have been students in my classes. Finally, I will look kindly on any student who makes good use of this service.
I know this seems like a lot, but it will be a great class. Stick with it.