English 208.03 Personal & Exploratory Writing Fall 2000
Stephan Flores
MWF 10:30a.m.-11:20 p.m. UCC 334
Brink 125 (Office hours: MW 11:30-12:30 and by appt.)
885-7419; 5-6156
Course description: This course gives you the opportunity to emphasize and to explore your perspectives, interests, and experiences&emdash;in short, to write about yourself in different ways, to different degrees, and for different purposes. Such "personal and exploratory" writing can present opportunities for discovery, expression, and thoughtful reflection on one's "self." Writing about oneself usually entails&emdash;at some level--writing about others; moreover, exploring ourselves in relation to others may take us elsewhere&emdash;to other times or places as we trace the ways that identity takes on shape and meaning in various contexts and relationships.
The class requires substantial writing and reading. The readings in creative nonfiction are important because they introduce you to diverse modes of personal writing whose subjects and techniques may provide you with instructive models and insights into your own ways of being and of seeing, including perspectives that differ from your experience and understanding. Whether the experiences and points of view in these readings strike you as familiar or strange, they can prompt you to recognize and to articulate your views and values more clearly, and to consider other possibilities that may make a difference in what you write. You are invited to pursue your personal exploration in ways that are most significant and valuable to you. There are aspects of yourself that you may choose not to express or to share, and your privacy is respected in that regard. I hope that as a learning community, we will offer one another support for achieving course goals.
In addition, Joseph Williams's guide to making your prose style clearer and more graceful can help you to become a stronger writer&emdash;a writer who is well aware of the effects of his or her rhetorical choices and strategies, particularly in terms of the structures of effective sentences and paragraphs.
Department of English Statement on Course Goals
English 207, 208, and 209 share the following goals:
1. To understand how a writer's aim shapes and is shaped by other variables, such as topic, audience, rhetorical situation, and genre.
2. To develop a greater awareness and control of formal features in writing, such as arrangement, style, and mechanics.
3. To strengthen the ability to read critically and to analyze how writers present their ideas in view of their probable purposes, audiences, and occasions for writing.
4. To strengthen the ability to collect and evaluate information from a variety of sources and to use the research process as a vehicle for extending the writer's and others' understanding of an issue or topic.
In addition to the common goals for English 207, 208, and 209, English 208 also has these specific goals:
Required texts:
The Fourth Genre: Contemporary Writers of/on Creative Nonfiction, eds. Robert L. Root, Jr. and Michael Steinberg. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1999.
Mason, Bobbie Ann. Clear Springs: A Family Story. New York: Perennial/Harper Collins, 2000. First published by Random House, 1999.
Williams, Joseph M. Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace. Sixth ed. New York: Addison Wesley Longman, 2000.
Additional primary and secondary works on library reserve.
Requirements:
1. Participation in class and group discussion (including informal writing)--please take advantage of the opportunity small groups may provide to discuss your reactions, share your insights and writing, and to listen and reply to others' ideas. I may call from time to time upon groups to facilitate class discussion. I hope group work will enable you to move the class in directions you find most helpful and give you opportunities to develop critical skills through collaboration while I continue to share my perspectives with you.
2. Four graded, double-spaced essays (Essay 1, 4 pp.; Essay 2, 6 pp., Essay 3, 6-7 pp., Essay 4, 7-8 pp.). More on the particular details of these assignments later, but these essays allow you to explore different aspects of personal and exploratory writing&emdash;different modes of creative nonfiction. The first essay asks you to describe a stimulating learning experience, the second is a personal essay/memoir, the third a personal perspective on a larger cultural or academic topic, and the fourth creative nonfiction expressed in the often nonlinear form of a collage or segmented essay. I am interested in seeing the ways that you select, define, and engage questions and contradictions, and I attend to the clarity, imagination, and grace that you demonstrate in expressing and shaping your subject. I do not necessarily expect such essays to conclude by "solving" problems or by "proving" a thesis; I do hope that you address interesting topics in thoughtful, frank, and useful ways. In addition to the class's regular opportunities for responses to drafts, please feel invited to confer with me during the writing process.
3. Ten journal entries (350 words each, single-spaced, titled) in which you identify and respond to some aspect of materials under discussion, particularly the assigned essays and Mason's memoir. Your observations and analyses should be succinct and sharply focused, with potential for substantial further development. Your responses may serve as points of departure for exploring similar issues or experiences in your own life, or you wish to focus on some aspect of the reading that poses an interpretive challenge or which provides a model for consideration. These entries shall be used in class (we'll rotate this opportunity) to invite dialogue and discussion. Journal entries are due at the beginning of class.
4. Attendance is required--your participation is a crucial part of a collective learning experience. Excellent attendance and participation is rewarded; poor attendance is penalized. If you have no absences by the term's end (excused or not), you will receive five bonus points; with one absence, you will receive three bonus points. But five absences will lower your semester total by 12 points with five point reductions for each additional absence (for example, six absences=minus 17 points and so on); more than seven absences will cause you to fail the class, regardless of your semester point total. Almost all absences will be counted--excused or not--if something extraordinary occurs, talk to me.
5. Due dates: All required work is due at the beginning of class on the due date--work turned in later will be marked late and graded accordingly. All required graded written work will be downgraded one notch (for example, B+ to B, converted to points for each assignment) for each weekday late (not just days classes meet but counting just one day for a weekend). Work more than a week late will not be accepted. I will grant short extensions for medical and family emergencies--but talk with me as soon as possible to request an extension. ALWAYS KEEP EXTRA COPIES OF YOUR WORK.
6. Grades: Ten journal entries (60 points total, 30 points for each batch of five entries); Essay 1 (70 points); Essay 2 (90 points); Essay 3 (100 points); Essay 4 (110 points). These required assignments add up to a maximum of 430 points. Thus 387-430 points equals an A, 344-386 equals a B, 301-343 equals a C, 258-300 equals a D, and anything below 258 merits an F. I shall also reserve a potential five bonus points based on my perceptions of the strength of your participation and efforts over the semester.
7. Office hours: I encourage you to confer with me--especially before assignments are due--to talk about your interests, intentions, and writing strategies. I also expect you to meet with me in early November to review your progress. My office is not accessible to the handicapped, so please let me know if you need to meet me elsewhere. If you cannot make my regular hours, we'll arrange another time. I also welcome communicating with you by E-mail (sflores@uidaho.edu), and I expect that you will also have an e-mail address so that I can communicate with you and with the class in this fashion from time to time.
English 208.03 Syllabus Flores
Unless noted otherwise, all assigned writers/essays are in The Fourth Genre, additional secondary works and several assigned readings shall be available on reserve. Further specific assignments for exercises in Style shall be announced as the semester proceeds.
8/28 Overview; Murray, "Amid Onions and Oranges, a Boy Becomes a Man"; determine peer to profile/introduce
8/30 Hongo, "Fraternity"
9/1 Blew, "The Unwanted Child"
9/6 Hampl, "Parish Streets"
9/8 Blew, "The Art of Memoir"; Style, Lesson 1
9/11 Hampl, "Memory and Imagination"; Journal entry #1 due, on Blew, Hampl, or Hongo.
9/13 Peer-edit full draft of Essay 1&emdash;bring two copies to share.
9/15 Essay 1 due; Lopate, "What Happened to the Personal Essay?"; distribute handout on memoir
9/18 Steinberg, "Trading Off: A Memoir"; memoir handout
9/20 Style, Lesson 2
9/22 Bradley, "The Faith"; reminder that Dilliard's essay is on reserve
9/25 Sommers, "I Stand Here Writing"; Journal entry #2 due, on Steinberg, Bradley, or Sommers.
9/27 Style, Lesson 3
9/29 Mellix, From Outside, In"
10/2 DeBuys, "Aerial Reconnaissance"; Style, Lesson 4
10/4 Optional peer-edit Essay 2 (bring two copies if peer-editing, otherwise one copy for me to check)
10/6 Essay 2 due; Sanders, "The Singular First Person"
10/9 Sanders's "Singular" continued;
10/11 Dillard, "Seeing" (on reserve); Journal entry #3 due, on Sanders or Dillard.
10/13 Saner, "Pliny and the Mountain Mouse"; reminder about next week's choice of essays on reserve
10/16 Tompkins, "At the Buffalo Bill Museum, June 1988"; Journal entry #4 due, on Tompkins.
10/18 Style, Lesson 5
10/20 Journal entry #5 on one of these essays on reserve: Lopate, "Against Joie de Vivre"; Acimun, "In Search of Proust"; Burroughs, "Compression Wood"; Lahr, "The Lion and Me"; Singer, "Nonfiction in First Person, Without Apology" (The Essayist at Work)
10/23 Elbow, "About Personal Expressive Academic Writing"; "Portfolio" of first five journal entries due
10/25 Tompkins, "Me and My Shadow"; Journal entry #6 due, on Elbow or Tompkins.
10/27 Peer-edit Essay 3 (bring two copies to share)
10/30 Style, Lesson 6
11/1 Essay 3 due; advice: start reading Mason's memoir, Clear Springs, on daily basis
11/3 Murray, "One Writer's Secrets"; reminder of Quammen, Nussbaum on reserve
11/6 Root, Jr. "Collage, Montage, Mosaic, Vignette, Episode, Segment"
11/8 Pope, "Teacher Training"; Pope, "Composing Teacher Training"; Journal entry #7 due, on Murray, Root, or Pope.
11/10 Style, Lesson 7
11/13 Quammen, "Planet of Weeds" (on reserve)
11/15 Nussbaum, "Victims and Agents" (on reserve); Journal entry # 8 due, on Quammen or Nussbaum.
11/17 Style, Lesson 8
11/27 Mason, Clear Springs, chapters 1-3
11/29 Clear Springs, chs. 4-6; Journal entry #9 due, on Mason.
12/1 Clear Springs, chs. 7-9; Style, Lesson 9
12/4 Clear Springs, chs. 10-12; Portfolio of journal entries nos. 6-10 due (entry #10 on any topic)
12/6 Clear Springs, chs. 13-16
12/8 Clear Springs, chs. 17-19; Style, Lesson 10
12/11 Essay 4 due; Clear Springs, chs. 20-22
12/13 Clear Springs, chs. 23-26
12/15 Clear Springs, ch. 27
12/? Last class meeting