Course Syllabus
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Expo E--25 Academic Writing and Critical Reading Spring 2016 Monday nights 7:40-9:40 CRN 24138 Instructor: Christina R. Grenier, M.A.
“I love short stories because I believe they are the way we live. They are what our friends tell us, in their pain and joy, their passion and rage, their yearning and their cry against injustice.” ― Andre Dubus.
Course Description Writing about Short Fiction encourages students to examine how authors craft short stories through narrative techniques including point of view, tone, plot, setting, characterization, and symbolism. Along the way, we’ll hone our textual interpretation skills, learn about the development of the short story as a genre, and consider how particular authors’ historical, philosophical, religious, and linguistic backgrounds influence their writing. Readings include works by James Baldwin, Toni Bambara, Sandra Cisneros, William Faulkner, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Nathaniel Hawthorne, D.H. Lawrence, Bharati Mukerjee, Tim O’Brien, Joyce Carol Oates, Edgar Allan Poe, and John Steinbeck.
Writing Assignments The course and syllabus are designed around three required essays for which you’ll submit preliminary short assignments and a draft for each unit: an analysis of a short story testing a theory, and an interpretation of a group of short stories in context of biographical and critical material.
Required Textbooks Barnet, Sylvan, Patricia Bellanca and Martha Stubbs. A Short Guide to College Writing. 5th Ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2012. Lawn, Beverly. 40 Short Stories. 4th Ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2013.
Recommended Textbook Barnet, Sylvan and William E. Cain. A Short Guide to Writing About Literature. 10th Ed. Boston: Pearson, 2006. Additional readings may be assigned and will be available either through the course iSite or as an Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) download.
Grading Criteria While you will receive grades for the final revisions of the three major essays only, every aspect of your preparedness and participation for class discussions, workshops, and preparations for our conferences will count toward your final grade in the course. Your essays will be assessed using Harvard’s “Elements of the Essay” which we will go over in our first class and is available on our course website under Handouts. A paper in the A range deploys the “Elements of the Essay” with exceptional grace and mastery:
A C range paper may in part resemble a B range paper but may also exhibit any of the following
An F paper fails to meet the requirements of the assignments and displays minimal or no understanding of the “Elements of the Essay.” Your final grade in the class will be computed using the weighting below: Essay 1 = 20% Essay 2 = 35% Essay 3= 45% Thoughtful participation in class discussions, thorough preparations for our conferences, and consistently well-developed responses to the assignments are expected. Vague or under-developed responses and cover letters and a failure to participate in class and prepare for workshops and conferences will drive a grade down at least a half a letter (from, for example, a B to a B-.)
Seminar Format This is a seminar class in which everyone’s active participation is not only encouraged, but expected. I hope that even if you are generally reserved, you will make an effort to participate in discussions and our website blogs. Sharing ideas—especially those you may feel tentative about—is a mark of intellectual generosity. Most importantly, registered students should begin the class familiar with our online classroom before our first class; you should also have a microphone so that you can participate in class discussions.
Collaboration Over the course of the semester, everyone’s writing will be workshopped in class. You will also be responding regularly, in writing, to each other’s work. Since most writers—whether they are neophytes or professionals—struggle with the same sorts of problems, you will find the workshops and peer reviews pertinent to your own work, even while you examine that of your classmates. Indeed, responding to your peers’ work will help you become a sharper critic of your own writing.
Schedule and Class Preparedness Writing courses at Harvard are rigorous and move along at a quick and steady pace. This means that we must make the most of the time we have together each week. Class begins Monday nights at 7:40; you may logon as early as 7:10 You are expected to be logged on and to be fully prepared to participate when class begins—that is, to have read and thought about whatever readings were assigned and to have the required writing with you (including copies for your peer review group, if necessary) and to have all technology in working order (eg. headphones and microphone).
Class Pacing Although I am sympathetic to the exigencies of your hectic schedules and many deadlines, lateness of any sort—in joining class or turning in work—will be penalized. Such lateness is extremely disruptive to our schedule and discussions, and is unfair to the other students who do login, participate and hand their work in, on time. Please note that excuses related to computer or printer failure, collapse, theft, damage (or any other mishap) won’t be accepted. Be sure your technology is in good working order, that you keep your work backed up and have extra hard copies, and that you know where you can turn for help should any of the aforementioned tragedies befall you.
Attendance and Participation Attendance and participation are required and essential. If you are absent from class without valid excuse more than twice, you risk being excluded from and failing the course. A student who is regularly late by even a few minutes can expect to see his or her final grade suffer as a result. Any student who is more than 15 minutes late in joining class will be counted as absent. A missed conference appointment (see below) also counts as an absence from class. If you must miss a class, please notify me by email in advance, and consult our class website for recorded classes and any missed materials. Before each essay is due, you are also responsible for scheduling a conference with me during mutually convenient times. These conferences will be devoted (1) to discussing how to revise your essay to make it express more effectively what you want the essay to say and (2) to setting goals for the assignments to come. Please prepare for these conferences by rereading your draft and making some notes for yourself regarding the possible ways you might go about revising.
Writing Center Be sure to take advantage of the resources available to you through the Extension School’s Writing Center in Grossman Library. Students who are enrolled in online courses may schedule appointments up to one week in advance, but are limited to two tutorials per week totaling no more than 7 tutorials per semester. To request a tutorial, send an email detailing the course you are enrolled in, an explanation of the assignment and due date to writing_center@dcemail.harvard.edu. Be sure to attach your assignment as a Word (.doc) or Google Docs (.docx) file and as always when seeking detailed feedback, ask specific questions and explain your concerns about your writing. You should receive a response within 72 hours. If you are a local student, the Writing Center asks that you come for an in-person tutorial. For more detailed explanation, click here for the Writing Center link on the Harvard Extension School’s website.
Procedures and Required Formatting for Submitting Work All response papers, drafts, and final versions of essays must be submitted as a Word (.doc or .docx document), double-spaced, titled, paginated and with one-inch margins left, right, top, and bottom (See the sample formatted essay in this syllabus or “Preparing the Manuscript” in the Short Guide). Due to limited Commenting and Track Changes features, Google Docs is not acceptable. Your last name and a page number must appear in the top right corner of every page. Every Essay submission (drafts and final versions) should be accompanied by a letter to me explaining the idea of the essay, its clear thesis argument, the challenges in its composition, and its detailed strengths and weaknesses as you see them. Work must be proofread before you submit it. Error-ridden essays—whether the errors are due to mechanical or formatting problems—will be marked down. For this course, please use the MLA in-text citation style. (Although we’ll discuss academic citations in this course, I’d like you to learn how to use this citation style on your own time. Refer to the Harvard Guide to Using Sources.) Note: When submitting the Final Drafts of essays, you must also submit all drafts commented upon and/or graded by me, peer reviewers as well as any Writing Center tutor feedback as well as reader letters given to you by peers, Writing Center tutors and me. This means you are responsible for keeping files of your work . Your portfolio will reveal your growth as a writer over the course of the semester. You’ll also want to be able to consult this material when you write cover letters for subsequent drafts and revisions, and you’ll want to acknowledge accurately the advice you’ve received when you prepare your final revisions. All assignments must be turned in to the Instructor’s Dropbox in our class iSite before the beginning of class—on the assignment’s due date—no late assignments are accepted, unless you are otherwise instructed. Please note: when you submit an assignment to the course iSite or are asked to email it to me directly, please format the document in the following manner: yourlastname_assignment#.doc All assignments must be a .doc or .docx file. No other formats are accepted.
Online Course Overview Harvard Extension School’s website Division of Continuing Educations offers an overview of Web Conferencing Student Information for online courses which you may access by clicking by clicking here. Because this class is taught in a participatory seminar format, recordings of each class will be available to registered students. Students will benefit from the classes conducted in Blackboard as well as our course website blog. Before registering and attending our first class, students are expected to be familiar with Harvard Extension School’s distance education policies, which you may access by clicking here. If you have questions about the technical aspects of the course, need help with downloading the appropriate software or accessing our classroom website link, please click here. And for answers to Harvard Extension School’s Frequently Asked Questions, please click here.
DISABILITY SERVICES OFFICE The Extension School is committed to providing an accessible academic community. The Disability Services Office offers a variety of accommodations and services to students with documented disabilities. Please visit www.extension.harvard.edu/resources-policies/resources/disability-services-accessibility for more information.
ACADEMIC HONESTY You are responsible for understanding Harvard Extension School policies on academic integrity (www.extension.harvard.edu/resources-policies/student-conduct/academic-integrity) and how to use sources responsibly. Not knowing the rules, misunderstanding the rules, running out of time, submitting “the wrong draft,” or being overwhelmed with multiple demands are not acceptable excuses. There are no excuses for failure to uphold academic integrity. To support your learning about academic citation rules, please visit the Harvard Extension School Tips to Avoid Plagiarism (www.extension.harvard.edu/resources-policies/resources/tips-avoid-plagiarism), where you'll find links to the Harvard Guide to Using Sources and two, free, online 15-minute tutorials to test your knowledge of academic citation policy. The tutorials are anonymous open-learning tools.
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COURSE SYLLABUS What follows is a provisional syllabus; any changes will be announced in class.
Unit 1: Close Analysis of a Single Text In Essay 1, you will argue for an interpretation of one of the short stories we’ll be reading for this unit, complex stories , stories that are also at times quite startling in their directness. Your evidence for your interpretation will derive from the short story you choose to focus on. The final essay should be about 5-6 pages. The ideas you offer should be your own, informed by your analysis and by ideas and questions we develop during discussion. No outside sources are required, nor should you consult any. Most good occasions for academic writing begin with a question—one that poses a challenging problem or issue to address or figure out, sparking an essay that analyzes rather than one that describes or summarizes. Identifying such a question or problem for your readers makes sure that there is something “at stake” in your essay, a reason your argument needs to be made. Here is some specific advice for the essay that you’ll want to keep in mind as you’re drafting and revising: Provide a close analysis that leads to argument. You will answer your analytical question with a thesis, which you support by an argument based on close analysis. To arrive at that analysis, you’ll begin with observing and annotating (“annotating” literally meaning “to note down”)—noticing details that seem important, interesting, confusing, or striking. (In a literary text, this means looking at such elements as narration, tone, dialogue, imagery, and diction.) From there you move to analysis, or drawing inferences from these observations—offering explanations about what that evidence might plausibly mean in context. Developing those moments of analysis and finding connections among them leads to your larger argument. Work closely with evidence. It’s also necessary to guide your readers through your evidence and your analysis (interpretation of that evidence) in support of that thesis. Don’t’ assume (1) that readers know what evidence to look for, (2) that they’ll read that evidence in the same way that you do, and (3) that they’ll draw the same conclusions. Your analysis of the evidence should provide your readers of the validity of your claims. Orient the reader. You should address your essay to readers who do not know the short story you have selected. You will need to orient them with appropriate information (quick summaries of scenes, explanations of the context of the quotations). Your readers should always know where you are in the text. But don’t bog the essay down with long patches of summary—make sure your explanations serve an analytical purpose in the essay. Express your ideas in strong and active prose. In our one-on-one conferences, we’ll work on the issues of style and clarity that seem most important to your work. In class together we’ll work on two of the most fundamental approaches to strong and effective prose: sentence clarity and strong verbs. Cite all quotations and include a Works Cited page in both the draft and the revision. See The Short Guide for information on MLA in-text citation, the style we will use in this class. Unit 1 Weekly Breakdown Week 1 Critical Reading, Critical Vocabulary, and Analysis (Class focus: Structure and content of course described. student responsibilities, class policies outlined, and brief questionnaire and writing assignment.) Reading Assignments for next week:
Note: While multiple readings may be assigned each week, class discussion may focus primarily on one story. Students are responsible for reading and being fully prepared to discuss both texts. Writing Assignment for next week:
Week 2 Framing an Approach to the Academic Essay; Avoiding Plagiarism Reading Assignments for next week:
Note: While multiple readings are assigned, class discussion may focus primarily on one story. Students are responsible for reading and being fully prepared to discuss both texts. Writing Assignment for next week:
Week 3 Sample Student Essay with Cover Letter Reading Assignments for next week:
Writing Assignment for next week:
Week 4 Revising: How to work with feedback; Exchange Peer Review Essays Reading Assignments for next week:
Writing Assignment for next week:
Week 5 Peer Review Week 6 Essay 1 Revision and Final Cover Letter due
Unit 2: The World of the Short Story In Essay #2 you will explore a question of importance for one of the writers we’re studying, a question that will lead to other questions. In this essay assignment, you are asked to consider at least two pieces of writing—a pair of stories written by different writers—that engage the issue of setting. Setting is never static—this is, each character in a story relates differently to setting; characters in different stories relate differently to similar settings. For instance, in “Sonny’s Blues,” Sonny relates one way to Harlem, his brother another. Chekov’s “The Lady with the Dog,” begins in the resort town of Yalta, then moves to Moscow, to Anna’s town of S., and back to Moscow—how the characters respond to place tells us much about their situation, their desires, who they really are. You may define place geographically or by era, or in another way—for instance, such place categories might be possible: schools and stores; cemeteries; night club; etc. As you can see, you have enormous freedom here; in fact, you must come to and define the essay’s central questions by yourself—which will be very challenging. Before you embark on this essay, you will need to work on two response papers detailing your plan for the essay. You may think of these as abstracts or as preliminary interpretive summaries of the essay you have yet to write. It ought to lay out the general topic of the essay, the central questions you intend to explore, and the sources you intend to use. The motive of the as-yet unwritten essay thus ought to be clear, but again remember that working your way into and through the essay will be challenging.
Unit 2 Weekly Breakdown Week 6 Writing about Setting; Sample Student Essay Reading Assignments for next week:
Writing Assignment for next week:
Week 7 Planning a comparison/contrast essay Reading Assignments for next week:
Writing Assignments for next week:
Week 8 Sample comparison/contrast essays; What is at stake? Reading Assignments for next week:
Writing Assignment for next week:
Week 9 Exchange papers for next week’s Peer Review Troubleshooting in advance of the Peer Review Reading Assignments for next week:
Writing Assignment for next week:
Week 10 Peer Review Writing Assignment for next week:
Unit 3: The Story and Its Writer In Essay #3, you will consider multiple short stories by a single author (whose work we have read in Units 1 or 2 and who you have not yet written about) in the context of that author’s biography. You’re going to build on the skills of close literary analysis we honed in the first and second essays to consider the author’s philosophical theory on writing in his or her own particular biographical context. Either explicitly or implicitly (but in either case quite clearly) your essay will make an argument for the writer’s role. There are innumerable questions to ask about this topic (philosophers, literary theorists, educators, even psychologists have built careers on trying to answer them), but there are a few we’ll probably be discussing in class. (I expect if you have others, and that those questions will generate new ones: What is the writer’s relation to a political, cultural, social, or historical issue? Do the specific strictures of fiction as a genre give the writer freedom from social responsibility or do they make that social responsibility even greater? To what extent do the answers to these questions depend on our assumptions about art, about reading, about the nature of political life? To what extent do they depend on our assumptions about authorship and authority? Does fiction actually have a social or apolitical life? How might we define that kind of life, and what might the ramifications of such a definition be? What are we talking about when we talk about politics and society in terms of fictional representation—are we talking about writers representing the world in specific ways, or about representing the world “truthfully”—and what might that kind of truth look like? What might it mean for a fiction writer to be “truthful”? Or, does art have a different function altogether—is there something else a fiction writer is undertaking that puts his work outside this whole discourse? What would that something else be? However you answer these questions, and others you’ve no doubt already come up with, you’ll need, in your essay, to consider carefully the implications of that answer. (What are the serious and different counter-arguments to some of the answers we might come up with here?) In your essay, you will focus on one of the authors whose texts we have read in the prior units within the context of their philosophy about writing. Your argument will use their short stories and test their their philosophy to explore how their particular context informs their writing. Week 11 Introduction to Library Research Reading Assignment for next week:
Final cover letter and revision of Essay 2 due. Week 12 Case Study: Flannery O’Connor Writing Assignment for next week:
Week 13 What is at stake? Why does your essay need to be written? Writing Assignment for next week:
Week 14 Final Peer Review Week 15 Final Cover Letter and revision of Essay 3 due. |
Course Summary:
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