Writing 111: First Year Writing
Section Descriptions
SEMESTER II, 2011-2012
INTRODUCTION
First-Year Writing seminars emphasize writing and thinking skills. You will be asked to do the following: 1) write frequently, in a variety of genres including expository essays and one or more assignments requiring research; 2) revise some of this writing; and 3) meet your instructor for conferences on your writing. The course is taught in multiple sections and designed for writers with varying levels of experience and confidence.
Section A: MWF 9:05-10:00, M. Westerman
CONNECTING THROUGH NEW MEDIA. In this seminar, we’ll explore Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and other social media to consider how they build communities and spread knowledge. Do these online spaces nourish meaningful connections or isolate users, alone with our screens? We'll also explore newer tools together, celebrating and thinking critically about how writing and research work in a social media environment. How and why do we write on line? To what extent do Wikipedia and Twitter connect us with the information we need? For our major writing project, you will choose a topic you love learning about (football, bioethics, romance novels, whatever inspires you), follow online communities formed around your topic, and write about the topic in a sequence of assignments geared toward different audiences. No tech knowledge or social media experience is assumed or required, though tech-savvy students are welcome to share their knowledge!
Section B: MWF 9:05-10:00, J. Naito
COLLECTIONS. In this seminar, we consider a broad array of collections, from the most mundane of private collections to the seemingly more ambitious collections of museums and official archives. Readings draw from a variety of disciplines including museum studies, literature, art history, anthropology, and philosophy. Over the course of the semester, we will study the history of museums and collecting practices, and spend considerable time examining modern and contemporary debates about art, the representation of technological change and cultural difference, the psychology of collecting, and possibilities and limitations of museums and archives. Throughout the class, we will also consider how artists, writers, and scholars have drawn creative inspiration from collections. This course requires an events fee of approximately $15 for a class trip to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
Section C: MWF 10:45-11:40, J. Dunning
WRITING HOME. In this seminar, we will explore diverse experiences of “home,” including that of the refugee, immigrant (both today and historically), transnational, those who move frequently, and those who stay put. What does it mean, we will ask, to be “at home” in a place? In the world? And how does the experience of home intersect with language? Course texts will include poetry, fiction, and memoir by such authors as Li-Young Lee, Sandra Cisneros, Sherman Alexie, Pico Iyer, Scott Russell Sanders, and O.E. Rølvaag, as well as films and critical readings on the concept of home. Writing assignments will include academic essays, informal writing, and creative expression. Students may elect a volunteer service project such as tutoring in a literacy program in place of a final project text.
Section D: MWF 10:45-11:40, M. Trull
WORDS ON FILM. This seminar introduces students to the study of narrative film and writing on film. We begin by exploring how films are made and analyzing narrative and filmic techniques such as mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, and sound. Students are responsible for both viewing the films independently and reading extensively in film criticism and our writing handbook. Students can expect to find their comfort zone expanded as we screen a broad variety of foreign, classic, and contemporary films including Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989), Tom Tykwer’s Run, Lola, Run (1998), and Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1959). Our writing assignments will include various kinds of film analysis and a research project.
Section E: MWF 11:50-12:45, M. Westerman
CONNECTING THROUGH NEW MEDIA. In this seminar, we’ll explore Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and other social media to consider how they build communities and spread knowledge. Do these online spaces nourish meaningful connections or isolate users, alone with our screens? We'll also explore newer tools together, celebrating and thinking critically about how writing and research work in a social media environment. How and why do we write on line? To what extent do Wikipedia and Twitter connect us with the information we need? For our major writing project, you will choose a topic you love learning about (football, bioethics, romance novels, whatever inspires you), follow online communities formed around your topic, and write about the topic in a sequence of assignments geared toward different audiences. No tech knowledge or social media experience is assumed or required, though tech-savvy students are welcome to share their knowledge!
Section F: MWF 11:50-12:45, C. Gallego
20TH CENTURY AMERICAN CULTURE AND THE DEATH OF THE DREAM. The recent economic downturn—what many have called a collapse—has raised concerns regarding the financial health of future generations. It is now widely accepted that the potential for younger Americans to do better than previous generations—the narrative of social mobility popularly understood as the American Dream—is no longer a reality. Instead, there is a growing consensus regarding the death of this dream and with it the very possibility to improve one’s economic, social, and cultural condition. It seems that rather than progressing toward a healthy democracy, the United States has spiraled into a science fiction reality where the media controls our thinking, politics is governed by self-interest, and corporations are powerful enough to hire private armies to impose their will around the globe.
The main theme of this seminar centers on twentieth-century American culture, particularly as it relates to issues of historical progress, national identity, cultural change, and aesthetic experimentation. The main question we will address is “What has happened to the American Dream?” In addition to literature, we will read some philosophical and political texts. Requirements include short writing assignments, a mid-term paper, and a final paper. Some of the texts we will discuss include Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and DeLillo’s White Noise, as well as films like The Corporation, Revolutionary Road, and American Psycho.
Section G: MWF 12:55-1:50, M. Titus
STUFF. “Things are in the saddle, And ride mankind” – Emerson
In this seminar we will think, talk, and write about “things.” Although we will pay some attention to how people make things, we will explore much more fully how things make people, dipping into creative and theoretical readings from the emerging field of material culture studies. As always in a first-year seminar, we will work throughout the semester on writing skills, both at the sentence level and in a variety of essays. Some books we may read together include Fabrication: Essays on Making Things and Making Meaning by Susan Neville, Stuff by Daniel Miller, and Mongo: Adventures in Trash by Ted Botha.
Section H: MWF 12:55-1:50, R. Richards
DOING DEMOCRACY: THE POLITICS OF FOOD. Why do you eat what you eat? What does your diet say about you and your relationship to people, the environment, animals, and politics? This seminar explores food consumption and distribution, examining why certain communities experience obesity and abundance while others suffer from starvation and lack. This seminar investigates topics involving farming, agribusiness, politics, philosophies of food consumption (e.g., vegetarianism), and personal food habits. Students will frame their writing around advertisements, documentaries and film, fiction, essays, cookbooks, personal experiences, and academic texts. Students can expect to write a wide variety of assignments including a narrative, a blog, a rhetorical analysis, a researched argument, a public argument, and a manifesto. Since writing is a recursive process, most assignments will require more than one draft in order for students to learn how to target a specific audience and incorporate revision strategies.
Section I: MWF 2:00-2:55, C. Gallego
20TH CENTURY AMERICAN CULTURE AND THE DEATH OF THE DREAM. The recent economic downturn—what many have called a collapse—has raised concerns regarding the financial health of future generations. It is now widely accepted that the potential for younger Americans to do better than previous generations—the narrative of social mobility popularly understood as the American Dream—is no longer a reality. Instead, there is a growing consensus regarding the death of this dream and with it the very possibility to improve one’s economic, social, and cultural condition. It seems that rather than progressing toward a healthy democracy, the United States has spiraled into a science fiction reality where the media controls our thinking, politics is governed by self-interest, and corporations are powerful enough to hire private armies to impose their will around the globe.
The main theme of this seminar centers on twentieth-century American culture, particularly as it relates to issues of historical progress, national identity, cultural change, and aesthetic experimentation. The main question we will address is “What has happened to the American Dream?” In addition to literature, we will read some philosophical and political texts. Requirements include short writing assignments, a mid-term paper, and a final paper. Some of the texts we will discuss include Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and DeLillo’s White Noise, as well as films like The Corporation, Revolutionary Road, and American Psycho.
Section J: MWF 2:00-2:55, C. Wilson
REDEMPTION IN FILM. This seminar will introduce first-year students to college writing through critical readings on and viewing of a set of thoughtful films suitable for theological and philosophical conversations (e.g., One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Last Picture Show, The Shawshank Redemption, Cries and Whispers). The class will view these films together on Thursday evenings (time to be arranged). This seminar will give special attention to writing the argumentative essay. Suitable only for students who can be free to watch the films on many Thursday evenings.
Section K: T 9:35-11:00 / Th 9:30-10:50, J. Hepburn
PERSONAL NARRATIVES. Students in seminar course work the whole semester to develop a single personal narrative, one made of shorter essays that develop their skill at writing description, analysis, and argumentation. For the short essays, for example, they develop statements that draw on their memories from childhood, involving recollections of a place, person, and incidents. Ultimately, they produce seamless stories that integrate these accounts and incorporate an array of genres. In the course of writing a neighborhood biography or migrant or farm story, or an immigrant account or family secret, or a recession story, they also learn to research in the library crucial details and to gather information from interviews. Finally, after reading models of excellent writing produced by contemporary American authors who focus in their work on issues of American identity and after working regularly in peer groups, they develop a keen sense of their audience.
Section L: T 9:35-11:00 / Th 9:30-10:50, J. Kwon Dobbs
WRITING TO END THE FORGOTTEN WAR. Long after the 1953 armistice signing, the Korean War continues today between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the United States. This course engages cross-border perspectives as represented in a variety of texts in order to trace the war’s origins and ongoing violence. We will consider why, despite the cease fire, the war paradoxically remembered as The Forgotten War remains a constellation of forces and legacies that shape foreign policy and everyday lives. Students will write essays, nonfiction, and research papers to develop personalized strategies to strengthen their writing processes and to engage audiences in multiple settings to imagine an end to the war.
Section M: T 11:45-1:10 / Th 12:45-2:05, C. Holly
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ACTS. This seminar will focus on contemporary autobiographies and memoirs that represent American life in the late 20th- and early 21st-centuries. We will read, for example, the story of a woman who, in the wake of her husband’s death, embraces her work as a Unitarian chaplain to a Game Warden and rescue service in Maine and the account of a man who, married with two children, decides to undergo the difficult, but ultimately life-affirming, process of becoming a woman. In the case of these and other texts, we will consider the autobiographical narrative itself, the significance of the autobiographical act, and the reasons that autobiography and memoir are such popular genres today. In addition to reading, students will write personal and expository essays, some of them analytical and academic. Possible texts include Lori Alvord’s The Scalpel and The Silver Bear: The First Navajo Woman Surgeon Combines Western Medicine and Traditional Healing, Jennifer Boylan’s She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders, Kate Braestrup’s Here If You Need Me: A True Story, Jennifer Thompson-Cannino and Ronald Cotton’s Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption, Vicki Foreman’s This Lovely Life: A Memoir of Premature Motherhood, Scott Sanders’s Hunting for Hope: A Father’s Journey, Anthony Swofford’s Jarhead: A Marine’s Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles.
Section N: T 1:20-2:45 / Th 2:15-3:35, K. Tegtmeyer Pak
REFUGEES. After World War II, states promised to welcome refugees, that is, people who have a well-grounded fear of persecution in their home country. In this seminar, we will consider multiple interpretations of what it means to be a refugee. Questions guiding our reading and writing include: How do different countries interpret their commitment to protect refugees? What motivates people to advocate on behalf of refugees or against them? How do individual refugees make sense of their experiences? We will read memoirs, policy papers, and social science materials to answer these questions. Films and guest speakers will complement assigned readings. Writing exercises include journal entries, policy briefs, and a research essay.
Section O: T 1:20-2:45 / Th 2:15-3:35, J. Hill
THE STORIES WE TELL. In this seminar, we will consider the various forms we use to tell our stories – factual stories, made-up stories, and all that lie between. You will tell stories, listen to and watch performances of ballads (old and contemporary), read and “perform” short plays, read short memoirs and nonfiction novels, and watch several movies to consider the unique way film can tell stories. In class, we will discuss these forms of art and literature and work on writing; out of class, you will write three analytical essays, a research paper, and an original story (as part of your research project). Over the term we will take up such questions as why we love stories and seem to need an endless stream of them in our lives; why some but not all stories are considered literary; why some stories come free while others cost money; what it means to say a story is true or not true; and perhaps the most intriguing question: who owns a story? who owns your story?
