English 325.102 Essay Writing

Dear Readers:

Having been informed yesterday that I've been assigned a theme based writing course in the Spring, and given that this class begins in one week, I've been researching and developing a syllabus for the last ten hours. Moreover, since I now need a drink, and am not quite done yet, I've decided to post what I have in lieu of my usual stuff. I hope it's not too boring.

Love - Randy

PS: The format looks completely different on paper.

“To learn to write is to have ideas.”
- Robert Frost
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English 325.102: Essay Writing
Course Syllabus
Spring 2008

Instructor: Randy Tessier Office Location: 3122 Angell Hall
Office Hours: TTH 12:00-2:00 p.m., & by appt. Email Address: rlt@umich.edu

English Department Mailroom: Angell Hall 3161, Hours: M-F, 8 a.m.-4:30p.m.
NOTE: All materials left in my mailbox MUST include my name.
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Greetings!
Your participation in this course signals a desire to exercise a degree of self-direction in choosing and developing your own topics. While analysis and argumentation may be key aspects of your writings, you will also be encouraged to take risks with exploration and style. Interdisciplinary improvisation as well as experimentation with different genres is welcomed. Personal essays, aesthetic critique, memoirs, argumentative and persuasive essays, as well as various combinations and blendings of these forms are appropriate to our mission. Unlike English 125 and 225, there will be greater latitude given to individual voice, tone, nuance, and rhythm. To this end, we will look at twelve documentary films as writing prompts. While the course has been designed for maximum flexibility in terms of topic choices, the films will fall into five thematic categories: individualism, health care, the environment, politics, and economics. Creativity is encouraged.

My take on this is as follows…
My role is to foster a collaborative learning environment in which we explore the rhetorical methods of various authors as a way of developing our own voice. This requires that we privately, and collectively, examine ours, and the authors we read, beliefs and assumptions. Developing this attitude of critical thought is an indispensable process in adopting the values and opinions that make us who we are. Deciding how to best do this will be our ongoing/overarching goal/aim/pursuit.

What is Essay Writing?
Like other forms of written discourse, essays are irreducible to simple definition or classification. The sheer volume of subject matter essays might cover makes it impossible to give one, authoritative description of what constitutes an essay. It’s no wonder then that Sylvan Barnet’s 1960 Dictionary of literary Terms simply says, “A composition having no pretensions to completeness or thoroughness of treatment.” Notwithstanding the examples of essayistic styles found in the Classical period, the modern essay first appeared in the European Renaissance. At a time of free expression in the pictorial and literary arts, Michel de Montaigne started to experiment with a different kind of prose. Seeing that this newly flexible and personal discourse defied conventional categories he coined the term “essais,” loosely translated in English as “attempts,” “trials,” or “experiments.” For our purposes we might want to consider Justin Kaplan’s modernistic description of the essay: “How like an eel this essay creature is. It wriggles between narcissism and detachment, opinion and fact, the private party and the public meeting, omphalos and brain, analysis and polemics, confession and reportage, persuasion and provocation. All you can safely say is that it’s not poetry and it’s not fiction.” In this class, what we inform or explain to one another in our writings will be left to the form of self-expression we choose to adopt. Given that this is an upper-level writing course you are encouraged to give free rein to your creative ideas.

Course Goals
English 325 will afford you the opportunity to:
1) Write 20-30 pages of revised, polished expository prose;
2) Meditate on your own reading, writing, and thinking processes;
3) Consider traditional and unconventional forms of essay writing;
4) Collaborate with others as a way of understanding the concept of audience;
5) Apply interactive constructive critique as a writing-in-process strategy;
6) Understand the rhetorical power of language;
7) Recognize the force of literacy as a key to self-empowerment, both privately and publicly;
8) Consider the ethical issues inherent to language as a form of empowerment.

Required Texts
Readings will be available on course tools.

A Pocket Style Manual, 3rd edition, by Diana Hacker, published by Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008.

Course Policies
Attendance: Attendance is mandatory. Our class’ collective success is only possible through your commitment. Three misses are allowed without consequences. If you are tardy I mark you as absent and circle it when you arrive. Three circled marks equal one absence.

Conferences: You will meet with me twice over the course of the semester. These conferences will aim to address any questions you might have and provide you feedback on your writing. A missed conference equals an absence.

Class Participation: Participation will vary according to the character and disposition of the student. Active listening, oral/verbal engagement, reading and formulating questions on the assigned subject matter, entering into on-line discussions, and making critical observations of your peers work all constitute modes of intellectual interaction. While a person’s degree of participation may vary from class to class, our goal is to achieve a comfortable academic environment for all.

Office Hours: Should we need to meet outside of our mandatory conferences and regularly scheduled office hours, we can set up another appointment.

Late Work: Late work will not be accepted. Should unforeseen events arise, you will be afforded one extension during the semester.

Format: You are expected to turn in all finished work in double-spaced, typed, Times New Roman, 12-point typeface format. Please staple your papers and keep all work in a portfolio.

Plagiarism: Plagiarism may be defined as “Submitting a piece of work (for example, an essay, research paper, work of art, assignment, laboratory report) which in part or in whole is not entirely the student’s own work without attributing those same portions to their correct source.” This would include submitting assignments you have done in one course to fulfill the obligations of another course. Do your own work! If you plagiarize you may be expelled from the university subject to the findings of the LS&A academic judiciary board.

Disability Accommodations: The University makes allowances for students with physical and/or learning disabilities. Should you require special accommodation we can set up a confidential meeting to discuss this. The University of Michigan also has Services for Students with Disabilities Office (SSD) that addresses these concerns.

Evaluation: Not counting unexcused absences and missed assignments, my grade calculations are as follows:

Participation 10%
Rough and Final Draft Essay #1 10%
Rough and Final Draft Essay #2 15%
Rough and Final Draft Essay #3 15%
Rough and Final Draft Essay #4 20%
Portfolio 30%

I will provide rubrics for each assignment that provide some estimation of the grading criteria. Additionally, as a way of de-mystifying how your grade is arrived at, we will stop along the way and discuss the evaluation process.


Education is not a product: grade, diploma, job, money - in that order; it is a process, a never-ending one.
- Bel Kaufman, 1967

Assignment Schedule
Aside from occasional handouts on current affairs, the readings can be found on course tools, which is also a useful source for keeping track of the assignments.

Week 1 INDIVIDUALISM

04.29.08 Introductions
In-Class Writing Assignment

05.01.08 Read: “Harpers,” 12/06, ‘The Secret Mainstream,’ Tom Bissell
New York Times Movie Review 8/12/05, Manohla Dargis
“The Spectator,” 6/9/06, ‘Steve Irwin’s Death by Stingray,’ Rod Liddle
Film: Grizzly Man (2005) Werner Herzog
In-Class: SIGN UP FOR CONFERENCES

Week 2

05.06.08 Read: “Film Quarterly Review,” vol. 33, no. 3, Spring 1980, pp. 47-50, ‘Gates of Heaven,’ Michael Corvino
“The Believer,” March/April 2008, Conversation between Werner Herzog and Errol Morris
Film: Gates of Heaven (1978) Errol Morris
Write: ROUGH DRAFTS OF ESSAY #1 DUE
(Bring 3 Copies)

05.08.08 In-Class: Discussion

Week 3 HEALTH CARE

05.13.08 Read: New York Times Movie review 6/22/07, A. O. Scott
“New England Journal of Medicine,” 8/23/07 #8, vol. 357, ‘Healing Our Sicko Health Care System,’ Jacob S. Hacker, P.h.D.
Film: Sicko (2007) Michael Moore
In-Class: Discuss Critique Content and Format
In-Class: Distribute 2 Student Drafts

05.15.08 Read: New York Times Movie Review 10/3/07, Manohola Dargis
“L. A. Film Weekly,” J. Hoberman
Film: Lake of Fire (2006) Tony Kaye
Bring: 3 1-2 Page Single-Spaced Critiques
In-Class: Workshop 1, Essay 1
Write: ROUGH DRAFTS OF ESSAY #2 DUE
(Bring 3 Copies)

Week 4

05.20.08 Read: Kenneth R. Morefield, Lake of Fire Review (Google)
Tony Kaye Interview, about.com
Film: Lake of Fire (2006) Tony Kaye
In-Class: Critical Thinking and Claims with Reasons
In-Class: In-Class: Distribute 2 Student Drafts
Write: REVISED ESSAY #1 AND REFLECTIVE COMMENTARY DUE
Bring: 3 1-2 Page Single-Spaced Critiques
In-Class: Workshop 2, Essay 2

05.22.08 ENVIRONMENTALISM
Read: “Jump Cut: A review of Contemporary Media,” #49, Spring 2007, ‘Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth: A Case of Environmental Nostalgia, Robin Murray and Joseph Heuman
“Harpers,” 5/08, ‘Hell Hath No Limits,’ Wendell Berry
“Harpers,” 10/07, ‘Toxic Inaction,’ Mark Schapiro
“Harpers,” 8/07, ‘The Idols of Environmentalism,’ Curtis White
Film: An Inconvenient Truth (2006) Al Gore/Davis Guggenheim
Write: REVISED ESSAY #2 AND REFLECTIVE COMMENTARY DUE

Week 5 POLITICS

05.27.08 Read: “The Journal of Popular Culture,” vol. 24, issue 4
Spring 1991, ‘Leatherstocking in ‘Nam: Rambo, Platoon, and the American Frontier Myth,’ Harold Schechter and Jonna G. Semeiks
“Atlantic Journal of Communication. Summer 2005, ‘Separated by Birth: Argument by Irony in Hearts and Minds and Fahrenheit 9/11, by Carol Wilder
Film: Hearts and Minds (1974) Peter Davis
In-Class: Close Reading and Rhetorical Strategies
Write: ROUGH DRAFTS OF ESSAY #3 DUE
(Bring 3 Copies)

05.29.08 Read: New York Times Movie review 7/27/07, A. O. Scott
New York Times Book Review 3/30/08, ‘War on Error,’ Barry Gewen
Film: No End in Sight (2007) Charles Ferguson
In-Class: Distribute 2 Student Drafts

Week 6

06.03.08 Read: “Harpers,” 3/06, Notebook: ‘Terror Alerts,’ Lewis Lapham
“Alternet,” 10/1/07, Seymour Hersh Interview
Film: Baghdad E. R. (2006) HBO John Alpert and Matthew O’Neill
Bring: 3 1-2 Page Single-Spaced Critiques
In-Class: Workshop 3, Essay 3
Write: ROUGH DRAFTS OF ESSAY #3 DUE
(Bring 3 Copies)

06.05.08 ECONOMICS
Read:
Film: Okie Noodling (2001) Bradley Beesley
In-Class: Connecting and Comparing
In-Class: Distribute 2 Student Drafts
Write: ROUGH DRAFTS OF ESSAY #4 DUE
(Bring 3 Copies)
In-Class: Distribute 2 Student Drafts
Bring: 3 1-2 Page Single-Spaced Critiques
In-Class: Workshop 3, Essay 3

Week 7

06.10.08 Read:
Film: What Would Jesus Buy (2007) Rob VanAlkemade
Write: REVISED ESSAY #3 AND REFLECTIVE COMMENTARY DUE
Bring: 3 1-2 Page Single-Spaced Critiques
In-Class: Workshop 4, Essay 4
In-Class: Portfolio Review

06.12.08 Read:
Film: Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit, and the Era of Predatory Lenders (2006) James Scurlock
Write: REVISED ESSAY #4 AND REFLECTIVE COMMENTARY DUE

Portfolios due by 4:30 p.m.