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English 101 – College Writing – Fall 2010

X18 MWF 8-8:55AM Kearney 312

X19 MWF 9:05-10AM Kearney 312

Instructor Information

Professor: Dr. Jill Swiencicki(pronounced Swin-ze-key)

Office: Basil Hall 115; Office Phone: 385-8214

Email at

Office Hours: MW 1-2:30pm and by appointment

Course Description

Writing Seminar at St. John Fisher teaches writing as a way of learning, and as a process of communicating what we have learned to others.We will pay particular attention to the writing process, including an emphasis on reading, class discussion, formal and informal writing, research, revision, self assessment, and peer review.You willwrite frequently, both in class and outside. You will share your writing and respond to the writing of your classmates. By the end of the course you will have developed your writing, research, and analytical abilities, and learned a great deal about the role of writingin your intellectual life, and in the larger culture.

Course Outcomes
  • You will study writing as situated, motivated discourse.
  • You will study the conversational and knowledge-creating nature of researched writing.
  • You will practice identifying available choices in writing and making the best choice.
  • You will practice producing interesting texts that reflect academic conventions.
  • You will learn ways to discuss academic writing and reading.
  • You will practice critical thinking and critical reading with an emphasis on identifying and evaluating perspective and standpoint.
  • You will collect, evaluate, select, and integrate material from a variety of sources into your writing.

Learning Community Description

The first-year learning community provides you the opportunity to take your first semester courses in groups, or “clusters.” St. John’s organizes the first semester in this way because research on student engagement has shown that student success, interest, and purpose increases when students are supported in a sustained community of peers and in a coordinated, collaborative curriculum. Courses in the learning community are clustered together from different departments and find common ground through a focus on a central problem.

Our course cluster with sociology is called “The Other America,” and it focuses on issues faced by the overlooked, marginalized, or non-dominant members of our society.Examining non-dominant experiences and viewpoints helps us to recognize the deeper complexities of the social experiences we participate in;understand how ourindividual standpoint influences our beliefs and values; and makes us more reflective, informed participants in these experiences.

Our section of College Writing will think about how food is produced and consumed as a way to understand the experiences of marginalized people, knowledge, and ideas in our culture. What you consume—whether it be eating potato chips or buying blue jeans—connects you to a larger system of social, economic, and international relationships. Because we all eat, and because eating creates relationships of power, reciprocity, and ethics, it offers us a clear way to see how the issues facing “the other America” are actually ones we all have a stake in understanding.

Required Booksand Materials (Available at the Campus Bookstore):

  • Rewriting: How to do Things with Texts by Joe Harris
  • Breadline USA: The Hidden Scandal of American Hunger and How to Fix It by Sasha Abramsky
  • Eating Animals by Johnathan Safran Foer
  • Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer by Novella Carpenter
  • A thin (60 pages should do it, you will fill all 60!), spiral notebook
  • A 2-pocket folder for portfolio submission
  • Daily access to Blackboard and campus email
    Course Responsibilities, Practices and Support

Student-Centered Learning

I strive to create a student-centered learning environment in which you are largely responsible for making the course meaningful. Participation is thus extremely important. I expect you to come to class on time with the assigned reading and/or writing completed before you come to class. I also expect you to treat each other with respect, and to make sincere attempts to listen to and understand what your classmates are saying. You can expect me to do the same.

Revision

Revision means “to see again” and involves much more than mere polishing or fixing. Revision involves a thorough examination of one's intentions, style, audience, and voice to create a unified, specific, and engaging piece of writing. You will revise your assignments actively based on my feedback and on the feedback of your classmates. You are responsible for keeping all your work—including invention activities, drafts, and all responses to those drafts—over the course of the term. This will serve as a chronicle of your progress as a writer. You will turn in all your work in a portfolioat the culmination of each writing assignment sequence.

Conferences and Questions

I encourage you to approach me any time you have questions—about assignments, about my comments on your work, about the movement of the course. If you have questions about your writing, bring it to a conference and we will discuss it. If my office hours are inconvenient for you, let me know and I will arrange an alternative time to meet with you. You should come to my office hours with your writing at least once—ideally more—during the course of the semester.

Attendance & Participation

Because class participation is essential to a course like this one, which uses a discussion format, you will receive a grade for your contributions to daily class discussions, small group work, writing workshops, etc. This grade will reflect not simply the amount of participation, but also the quality. You should bring consistent and dedicated involvement to class discussions and assignments. Two simple rules: If you are more than 10 minutes late, I will consider you absent; you are allowed 2 absences, and each absence after that counts one-half letter off your final semester grade. I make no distinction between "excused" and "unexcused" absences.

Late or Missed Work

All assignments are due on the dates listed next to them on the course calendar. I reserve the right not to accept late work. On their assigned due dates, you will bring a complete, typed draft of each of the major writing assignments for peer response. You will share your writing with a small group of classmates in order to get advice about revising. Only a complete draft, delivered to class on time, will be acceptable for peer response. Getting and giving thoughtful peer responses count as a significant portion of your semester grade. Do not miss peer response days. Failure to complete all writing and response assignments may result in failure of the course.

Plagiarism and Other Forms of Academic Dishonesty

In an instructional setting, plagiarism occurs when a writer deliberately uses someone else’s language, ideas, or other original (not common-knowledge) material without acknowledging its source. This definition applies to texts published in print or online, to manuscripts, and to the work of other student writers. Plagiarism and other forms of academic dishonesty will not be tolerated and will be dealt with in accordance with St. John Fisher policy.

Accommodations for Disabled Students

If you have a condition which may impair your ability to complete assignments or otherwise satisfy course requirements, please meet with me to identify, discuss, and implement any feasible instructional modifications or accommodations. Any student with a documented disability may arrange reasonable accommodations with the Office of Disability Services, Kearney Hall 202, 385-8034.

Evaluating Your Final Course Grade

20%—“Coming to Terms” Portfolio

25%—Position Portfolio

30%—Research Dialogue Portfolio

15%—In-class and informal notebook writing

10%—Participation (preparedness and engagement in discussions of assigned reading, small group work, writing workshops, library research)

Writing Assignments: The Three Main Projects of the Semester

1—“Coming to Terms” Essay Portfolio Due Week 4, 9/28

5 pages, MLA format, Works Cited

Requirements: 2 drafts, 2 peer workshops, final draft submitted in portfolio form

Purpose

The purpose of this assignment is to develop your ability to read and evaluate arguments; to examine in more detail how perspective shapes discourse; and to better understand what kinds of perspectives you are most sympathetic to and why.

Goal

The goal of this essay is to “come to terms” with one chapter from Breadline USA. In writing this essay, you will demonstrate your ability to understand the arguments, summarize and distill the big ideas, and assess them in light of your own deepening understanding.

Method

We will be using analytical techniques from Rewriting: How to do Things with Texts, to help you develop your analytical abilities. Take one chapter from Breadline USA and use Harris’s method of “coming to terms” to explain and assess the ideas in that chapter. “Coming to Terms” means answering such questions as: What is Abramsky trying to “do” in the chapter on hunger that you selected? What are his key terms and concepts, and how do they expend on and develop what he is trying to do? What are his methods, and what uses and limits do they reveal to you? What issues, people, ideas does Breadline forward or counter? Where do your sympathies lie in the chapter? And where do you part ways with the author? Harris’s method requires you to select passages from Breadline USA that correspond to the questions above; close work with Abramsky’s writing will help you make sense of his big arguments, and also help you orient yourself in relation to them.

Audience Your classmates and myself; please assume we have read the texts you are analyzing.

Evaluation The “Coming to Terms” Portfolio is worth 20% of your final grade.

#2 – Position Paper Portfolio Due Week 8, 10/29

6 pages, MLA format, Works Cited

Requirements: 2 drafts, 2 workshops, final essay submitted in portfolio form

Purpose

The purpose of this essay is to learn how to articulate your position in a respectful but honest dialogue with the positions of others.

Goal

We’ve read Foer’sEating Animals and Carpenter’sFarm City, and we’ve discussed the rationales each writer has provided for not/eating meat, as well as analyzed how they have made their arguments. In 6 pages, please take a position on consuming meat, doing so in your own style, and in close dialogue with the claims and stories featured in bothEating Animals and Farm City.

Method

We will again be using Harris as a guide for doing our analysis. Taking a position in relation to Foer and Carpenter means FIRST carefully showing you understand their large claims, and THEN“forwarding” or “countering” them at key moments to articulate your unique position on the matter. Using the methods of “coming to terms,”“forwarding,” and “countering”will be important here as you grapple with specific passages and overarching beliefs in both texts.

AudienceYour classmates and myself; please assume we have read the texts you are analyzing.

EvaluationThe Position Paper Portfolio is 25% of your grade.

#3—Research Dialogue Project Portfolio Due Week 14, 12/5

10 page dialogue transcript, portfolio form, MLA format, Works Cited

Requirements: 3-person collaborative research, reading, writing, revision

Purpose

It is vital to take your peers’ ideas as seriously as you do the ideas of published researchers and experts, as well as gain experience in collaboration, research, and analysis. The purpose of this essay, therefore, is to capture the dynamic interaction of responding to the ideas and arguments of your peers on topics of ethical importance.

Goal

Our goal is to produce a 10-page transcript of the written dialogue among you and your two group members as you come to terms with sources on a topic of your groups’ chosing. In the written dialogue you will attempt to pose and answer a research question on food by “coming to terms” with the sources you found, and with your own standpoints on the issue at hand. The transcript will look like a discussion thread in an online chat, but will consistently have more formal elements (in-text-citations of sources, smooth transitions from one group member’s post to another, a Works Cited Page, etc.)

Method

  • Please chose an issue or problem related to the readings we have been doing on non-dominant discourses on food production and consumption.(Topics could range from obesity, to eating disorders, to food and climate change, to food crises in history, to hunger relief organizations—anything related to producing and consuming food, with an emphasis on non-dominant perspectives, is acceptable).
  • Form a group of no more than three people total who share an interest in this topic.
  • Do some preliminary research together, and from that, generate a few key questions your group would like to research and answer. Each group member is then responsible for bringing two sources to the group, and group members are responsible for reading each others’ sources (6 total).
  • After you have read all 6 sources, one group member starts an email dialogue in which you all attempt to answer your research question by “coming to terms” with at least 4 of your 6 sources, and your own standpoints. You will produce screens and screens of email discussion and analysis that you will revise and edit into a polished transcript of your collaborative response to your research question.

Audience

Your audience is people who are outside your research group; we have not read the sources you are discussing nor have we done any research on this question. Don’t make any assumptions that we have prior knowledge about your research question or area of interest.

EvaluationThe Research Dialogue Project Portfolio is 30% of your grade.

Tentative Schedule of Readings, Class Activities, and Assignments

Week One

W 9/8Introduction to the syllabus and each other

Homework:Harris, “Chapter 1: Coming to Terms.” Come to class with notes on the chapter, and having answered the questions: what does he mean by “coming to terms?” Why doesn’t he like words like “thesis statement,” or summary? What are the main things you should do when you “come to terms” with a reading?

F 9/10Discuss Harris Chapter 1 via in-class reading.

Homework: Abramsky, “Prologue,” Breadline USA. In your notebook, please spend two single-spaced, handwritten pages “coming to terms” with the “Prologue.” Keep flipping through Harris’s Chapter 1 to help you fully understand what Abramsky is trying to do in this section of the book.

Week Two

M 9/13Abramsky, “Prologue;” Harris, Chapter 1, continued. Introduce Coming to Terms Portfolio Assignment.

Homework:1) Harris, “Chapter 2: Forwarding.” Takes notes in your notebook on what you think Harris means by “forwarding” (why not just say quoting? Or “taking someone’s ideas”?) and list the kinds of forwarding writers do when they use other people’s ideas. 2) Then, skim the Breadline “Prologue” again and make a check mark whenever Abramsky makes reference to sources that have taught him something—experts, or ideas that are not his own. 3) Bring in a Youtube reference to a song that samples/forwards another song.

W 9/15Discuss “Forwarding” and Abramsky

Homework:1) Harris, “Chapter 3: Countering.” 2) Return a third time to Abramsky’s “Prologue” and make a mark beside each place where the author parts ways with a belief, idea or value in order to make his own point. 3) In your notebook, define “countering” and summarize some of the key moves involved in countering.

F 9/17Discuss “Countering” and Abramsky. Assign chapter groups.

Homework: 1) Read your assigned chapter from Breadline USA. 2) Fill at least 3 single-spaced notebook pages where you come to terms with the chapter, using the method of analysis in Chapters 1-3 of Harris. 3) Make a list of the references he makes that you don’t understand, and “Google” some to see if you can figure them out.

Week Three

M 9/20Small groups “come to terms” with their assigned chapter, using their notes as a guide.

Homework:Read your assigned chapter once more, selecting what you consider to be the key quotes/passages in the chapter.

W 9/22 Chapter groups create visuals to understand their assigned chapter better (quote trains, forwarding and countering vectors, structural flows)

Homework: First full draft of 5-6 page essay due for workshop. Bring one typed copy.

F 9/24Create scoring rubric. Workshop drafts.

Homework:Revise draft according to peer feedback. Bring one typed copy.

Week Four

M 9/26Second required workshop. Discuss Portfolio submission.

Homework: Final revision of your essay due. Assemble portfolio (portfolio contents = notebook draft; visuals/in-class writing; 2 drafts, final, cover letter).

W 9/28Coming to Terms Portfolio DUE. In-class cover letter written.

Homework:Take notes as you do the following: 1) Talk to your friends and dorm-mates about why they do and do not eat meat. 2) Call your family members and ask them their feelings about eating meat. 3) based on what people in 1 & 2 told you, what kinds of attitudes and habits do people have about meat eating? What attitudes about food did you adopt from your family? Which ones did you break away from? Record these answers and impressions in your notebook. 4-5 pages.