Instructor Dr. John M. Ackerman
Course Writing 1150: First Year Writing and Rhetoric
Section 059 MW 4:30-5:45 Stadium 140
Office Program for Writing and Rhetoric: 317 UCB, ENVD 1B62A
Hours MW 3:30-4:30, 6:00-7:00 PM and by appointment
Contact , 303.492.8015 (o), 330.221.5766 (c)
Overview
If you are appropriately enrolled in the course, you are taking it because it satisfies a core, graduation requirement at CU-Boulder and because it satisfies the transfer guarantee across the Colorado system of higher education.[1] You are also taking this course, joining thousands of students across the US, because required and elective writing and rhetoric courses are a centerpiece of higher education in this country. Since the late 19th century, such courses have been required to insure that entering students succeed at the university, according to the conventions and intellectual expectations of the institution. Our course embraces this grand tradition, but it rejects in other ways. Certainly, our primary goal is to prepare you for success in your other course work and as you move through the major to graduation. Toward that end, we focus on the conventions of academic writing and the key roles of analysis, argumentation, and inquiry across the full terrain of the university. We want you to know how to take things apart, and then how to rebuild them in new and productive ways. We want you to learn how to build arguments with evidence so that your voice is heard on campus and in society, and to learn the interrelationship between analysis and argumentation in the pursuit of answers to important questions. CU-Boulder is a research institution, and you are here in part to learn how to conduct research and scholarship within rhetoric and with rhetoric at the heart of the matter. Rhetoric is the art of persuasion.
Yet, our course looks beyond the university and its traditions to consider the natural and built environments that bring meaning to our lives. We live in a global age, where information and people are moving faster and faster. The question this course poses is how does a physical location imbue our writing and inquiry with unique kinds of information and authority. All of our assignments—all of our readings—refuse to separate personal identity and worth in the world from the environments that we hold sacred. All places—large and small, grand and ordinary—are sacred in their way, and we will go to places in our community to determine who we are, what we believe, and how to improve the world around us.
Reading and Viewing Materials
Books Available at the CU-Boulder Bookstore.
Knowing Words: PWR (Albert et al editors), Hayden & McNeil, 2008.
The Rediscovery of North America: Barry Lopez, Vintage, 1992.
A Small Place: Jamaica Kincaid, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1988.
Design: A Very Short Introduction: John Heskett, Oxford, 2005.
Optional Everything’s An Argument: Lunsford & Ruszkiewicz, Bedford, 2004 (3rd edition).
Articles Readings are archived on an intranet site exclusively for our class.
https://tac.colorado.edu/jackerma/ User: elbert\public Password: space
John Berger. Seeing Comes Before Words. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin, 1972.
Tim Cresswell. Defining Place. Place: A Short Introduction. London: Blackwell, 2004.
Mike Rose. The Politics of Remediation. Lives on the Boundary. New York: Penguin, 1990.
Scott Russell Sanders. Beneath the Smooth Skin of America. Writing from the Center, University of Indiana Press, 1995.
John Brinkerhoff Jackson. A Sense of Place, A Sense of Time. A Sense of Place, A Sense of Time. Cambridge, MA: Yale University Press, 1994.
Mary Catherine Bateson. Improvisation in a Persian Garden. Peripheral Visions, Harper Collins, 1994.
Robert Desjarlais. The Street. Shelter Blues: Sanity and Selfhood Among the Homeless. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997.
Delores Hayden. Urban Landscape History: The Sense of Place and the Politics of Space. The Power of Place. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995.
Christopher Alexander. A City is Not a Tree. Design after Modernism (J. Thackara, ed.), New York City: Thames and Hudson, 1988.
Carol Burns and Andrea Kahn. Why Site Matters. Site Matters: Design Concepts, Histories, and Strategies (C. Burns & A. Kahn, eds.). New York: Routledge Press, 2005.
Alain de Botton. Talking Buildings. The Architecture of Happiness. London: Random House, 2008.
Henri Glassie. Vernacular Architecture: Social Order. Vernacular Architecture. Bloomingdale: Indiana University Press, 2000.
Richard Bolton. Architecture and Cognac. Design after Modernism (J. Thackara, ed.), New York City: Thames and Hudson, 1988.
Films All are recommended, and we will view them together as time allows.
Rivers and Tides (2004)
Koyaanisquatsi (1983)
Wall (Mur) (2005)
Unforeseen (2007)
Inner-city Blues: Sprawling of America (2001)
The Social Life of Urban Spaces (1989)
Shrinking Cities: Complete Works 1 & 2 (2002/2006)
Web Sites This list will grow over time.
http://arts.envirolink.org/literary_arts/BarryLopez_LitofPlace.html
http://www.gltv.org/documentary/index.php
http://www.shrinkingcities.com/index.php?L=1
http://www-iurd.ced.berkeley.edu/scg/
http://web.mac.com/derekgregory/iWeb/Site/On%20Geography.html
http://www.pps.org/
http://ucblibraries.colorado.edu/pwr/index.htm
http://library.monmouth.edu/spcol/mumford/mumford.html
Course Expectations
For 16 weeks we are a community of scholars and citizens of the same planet, city, and university. We depend upon each other for insight and guidance. My responsibilities are to design and deliver this course and to prepare for each class meeting to help you to produce the writing assignments outlined below. Your responsibilities are to prepare for each class, attend and participate in class, work outside of class to the degree necessary to succeed, and to contribute to our course through your inquiry and composing.
Rhetorical Methodology
Take note of the title of this course and the program that delivers it. Writing does not occur apart from rhetoric, which we will define as the art and craft of persuasion. In order for you to write persuasively, you will need to learn how best to marshal evidence, and in our case, the evidence we can find and control about a place. This means we will work with a broad array of evidence: memory, observation, images, artifacts, film, anecdotal accounts, scholarly accounts, sensory information, dialogue—the list will grow. A central challenge in this course is for your to gather information, often easily overlooked, and then craft it into a persuasive text. Wherever your studies at CU-Boulder will lead you, you will face this question of method. Good writing can be seen as methodical (e.g., Everything’s an Argument) and we will draft, revise, share, critique, and draft again to methodically improve our art. But place is methodical too, as we approach it. You will venture into places to gather information as the raw material of your writings.
Major Assignments
Each of our four major assignments will be introduced in class with handouts, web links, images, and where appropriate sample texts. Briefly, we will inquire into:
1. Place/Experience. Choose a location on campus or in Boulder, some location that you return to, because it shapes your imagination and identity or because you are curious to know its capacity.
2. Map/Proxemic. No one is ever alone in a place because every place tells a story. We ask you to map your chosen location according to the people (and animals) and structures that frequent this same site, whether they are in the present or past. We ask you literally to map your place to study the proximity of other places (and people) and their ways of life.
3. Site/Analysis. Choose a location to analyze according to its design, its use, its precedent, its material composition, its image, and its discourse (what has been said or written about it). Just as you must learn how to take a part a text to see how it works, we can analyze a site for its essential elements. Through your analysis, what makes the site whole?
4. Design/Change. Poeisis is the Greek word for “a bringing forth” and we will try to engender a sense of design that transcends the control of experts and returns to the user and the occupant the authority for design. Your talent with place, map, proxemic, site, and analysis will help you to study a location to determine why and how it could change, guided by your designs.
Evaluation
Our schedule is generous in providing you with unstructured time to complete your work. Therefore, attendance on the day we meet is mandatory. Excused absences are accepted only with some form of verification. Our course is based on 100 points, and unexcused absences will reduce your final point total by 3% for each missed class.
Eighty percent of course performance is directly or indirectly tied to your scholarship. We have a mid-term examination to insure your comprehension and the utility of our readings, concepts, web sites, films, and practices—I strongly advise you to keep a note or sketch book throughout this course taking notes each week on what we have covered. I will hold back 10% of our course points to assess your participation in class. Participation will manifest in enumerable ways: talking, sharing, coaching, providing examples, arriving on time, respecting the work of others, and otherwise making sure our course is a successful one. Participation will also be documented through weekly tasks, for example, the completion of the RIOT tutorial the week of March 9.
Writing #1 10
Writing #2 15
Writing #3 15
Writing #4 25
Presentation of #4 05
Midterm Exam 10
Final Portfolio 10
Class Participation 10
TOTAL 100%
Weekly Schedule
I will make additions or changes in this schedule from time to time, and as our project evolve. You must attend class and monitor your email to remain currant.
Week / Monday / Wednesday1.12-14 / Orientation & Introductions
Who are we? Where are we? Why are we? / Film: Rivers and Tides
A Sense of Place: Introduction
Literature of Place (web site list)
1.19-21 / No Class – Martin Luther King / Book: Rediscovery of North America
What is an argument?
Write #1 Introduced: Place/Experience
1.26-28 / The Street
Improvisation in a Persian Garden
Beneath the Smooth Skin of America
A Sense of Place, A Sense of Time / Book: A Small Place
2.02-04 / Workshop on Writing #1 / Film: Wall (Mur)
Write #2 Introduced: Map/Proxemic
Write #1 Due 2.06.09 @ 5:00 PM
2.09-11 / Urban Landscape History
Revising Strategies / A City is not a Tree
2.16-18 / No Class –
Film: Koyaanisquatsi (on reserve, Hulu) / Structure of Arguments/Visual Arguments
Why Site Matters
2.23-25 / Workshop on Writing #2 / Film: Unforeseen
Write #3 Introduced: Site/Analysis
Write #2 Due 2.27.09 @ 5:00 PM
3.02-04 / Revision Strategies
Buildings That Talk / Building coherence and cohesion
Vernacular Architecture
3.09-11 / No Class –
RIOT Tutorial (web site list) / Mid-term Exam: Take Home
3.16-18 / Workshop on Writing #3 / Film: Inner-city Blues: Sprawl of America
Write #3 Due 3.20.09 @ 5:00 PM
3.23-25 / Spring Break / Spring Break
3.30-01 / Revision Strategies
Write #4 Introduced: Design/Change / Book: Design - Very Short Introduction
4.06-08 / Book: Design - Very Short Introduction
Architecture and Cognac
Conference on World Affairs / Film: Social Life of Urban Spaces
Conference on World Affairs
4.13-15 / Building arguments with evidence / Consultations
4.20-22 / Site Visits and Presentations / Site Visits and Presentations
4.27-29 / Workshop on Writing #4 / Portfolio Workshop
Portfolio + Write # 4 Due 5.01.09 @ 5:00 PM
5.04-06 / Finals Week / Finals Week
Portfolio
All of your work will comprise a Portfolio and the course concludes with your delivery of a portfolio of all your major writing assignments. It will deliver your final project, Writing #4 and any revisions you wish to include. All writing assignments are revisable to the point of submitting your final portfolio for your final grade in the class. This means that you can improve upon an initial grade, if you spend the time to revise. Be careful. The stronger your graded writing assignment, the easier it will be to revise, should you find the time to do so later in the course. Do not presume that you can repair a weak draft, late in the semester. Revisions must be accompanied with a revision memo, explaining what you did to improve the draft. We have no final exam in this course.
Other Rules for the Road
Conferences
During the course of the semester, I may schedule conferences (either individually or in groups) to discuss your writing. Conferences are regarded as a class period. If you don’t show up for your scheduled time, it will be counted as an absence. If you are unable to attend and you know beforehand, please contact me to reschedule.
Due Dates
Unless we change the due date for a paper for the entire class, your work is due without exception. Late work is accepted only if is accompanied by a documented excuse. Papers must be submitted hard copy unless I agree to do otherwise. Our final portfolios will be delivered on CD or other portable memory. Planning in this course is essential. You will need to manage your time wisely to visit your places and gather your evidence well in advance of when a draft is due.
Writing Center
If you want additional help with your writing, the Writing Center in Norlin Library is a great place to go to talk about ideas, improve your thesis or essay organization, or just generally work on your writing skills. Check the Writing Center website for more information about hours and services, or request an appointment online at: http://www.colorado.edu/pwr/writingcenter.html.
Disabilities*
If you qualify for accommodations because of a disability, please submit to me a letter from Disability Services in a timely manner so that your needs may be addressed. Disability Services determines accommodations based on documented disabilities (303-492-8671, Willard 322, www.colorado.edu/disabilityservices).
Religious Observances*
Campus policy regarding religious observances requires that faculty make every effort to deal reasonably and fairly with all students who, because of religious obligations, have conflicts with scheduled exams, assignments, or required attendance. In this class, I ask that you contact me at least one week ahead of the date(s) that you will be absent so that we can discuss any assignments/class material that you will miss.
Classroom Behavior*
Students and faculty each have responsibility for maintaining an appropriate learning environment. Those who fail to adhere to such behavioral standards may be subject to discipline. Professional courtesy and sensitivity are especially important with respect to individuals and topics dealing with differences of race, culture, religion, politics, sexual orientation, gender, gender variance, and nationalities. Class rosters are provided to the instructor with the student's legal name. I will gladly honor your request to address you by an alternate name or gender pronoun. Please advise me of this preference early in the semester so that I may make appropriate changes to my records. (See policies at http://www.colorado.edu/policies/classbehavior.html and at