Writing I:
Identity and Representation
ENGLISH 2100 HMWB
Fall 2019
Professor Jennifer Sylvor
MW 9:55 – 11:35
17 Lex 1405
Office: VC 7-290, cubicle O
Office Hours: W 1 – 2:30 and by appointment
Email: [email protected] (the best way to reach me)
Course Blog: https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/eng2100f19
Welcome to English 2100! This course is, first and foremost, an introduction to college writing. We will work together over the course of the semester to equip you with the skills, confidence, and understanding you will need to be a successful writer in college and beyond. The theme of our work together this semester is “Identity and Representation.” This means that we will both be looking inward to gain a better sense of our own complex and multifaceted identities and looking outward to explore some of ways in which the elements of identity (gender, race, sexual orientation, class, nationality, ethnicity, religion, et al) find representation in cultural texts.
Central to this course is the difficult, yet satisfying and stimulating work of writing. There is no magic secret to becoming a more skilled writer; the only way to improve your writing is to write more. Expect that you will be engaging in writing of one sort or another for the duration of the semester: either thinking about a writing project, composing drafts, responding to your peers’ writing, writing about things you’ve read or seen, exploring your own life experience through writing, posting to our class blog, and more…. Formal assignments include personal narrative, , textual analysis, and research-based writing. The course will emphasize both the process and the product of essay writing. Every piece of good, successful writing undergoes an evolution and develops over time through reading, questioning, and careful editing. For this reason, you will learn how to develop, organize, draft, and revise your essays through the processes of critical reading, informal writing assignments, in-class workshops, self-analysis, peer review, and individual conferences with me.
This course is designed with the English Department’s learning objectives in mind. After completing ENG 2100, you should be able to:
Read and analyze texts critically.
Write your own texts critically, with an awareness of context, audience, and rhetorical conventions.
Identify and engage with credible sources and multiple perspectives.
Experience writing as a process involving multiple drafts, review by your writing community, revision, editing, and reflection.
Use conventions appropriate to audience, genre, and purpose. Adapt writing and composing conventions (including style, content, organization, document design, word choice, syntax, and grammar) to your rhetorical context.
Text:
Join the Conversation – required (available at the Baruch College Barnes and Noble bookstore)
Links to additional readings will be posted on our course blog.
Course Policies:
Attendance: Regular attendance and active participation are a critical part of this course and will affect your grade for the semester. You are allowed two absences over the course of the semester, no questions asked. Additionally, absences in observance of religious holidays are excused. After two absences, each subsequent absence will result in a lowering of your final course grade by a “half step.” (This means that an A becomes an A-, an A- becomes a B+ and so on.) Students who accumulate 6 or more absences are subject to earning a grade of “F” for the course. Students with perfect attendance will receive extra credit in the calculation of their final grade for the semester.
Students are responsible for all work covered in their absence. To avoid being penalized for submitting late work, if you are absent on a day that something is due, you must submit the work electronically on the due date. I will frequently give short term assignments in class (reading or writing due the following session) that will not appear on your syllabus or course blog. Therefore, identify a classmate whom you can contact to find out what you’ve missed in the event of an absence.
Lateness: Coming to class late is disruptive and disrespectful. Three late arrivals will be treated at an unexcused absence. Arriving more than 15 minutes late will be considered the same as an absence.
Preparedness: It is your responsibility to come to class prepared to discuss the assigned readings. Please come to class with a hard copy of the text. Additionally, you should come to each class with a pen and paper, prepared to complete in-class writing assignments. On days when we’ve scheduled peer review, you will be asked to bring copies of your work to share with your peers.
Participation: This class cannot succeed without your participation. I hope you will feel comfortable adding your voice to our classroom conversations on a regular basis. Expect that you will periodically be asked to share your writing with the group and to offer feedback on your classmates’ writing. Keep the Golden Rule in mind, and treat your classmates’ work with the same respect and consideration you’d like your own writing to receive. We will undoubtedly be discussing sensitive issues in class; it’s important to we all commit to creating an open-minded, respectful space in our classroom community, so that we all feel comfortable participating.
Technology: I understand that some of you may choose to use laptops or other devices to take notes or to access assigned texts in class. However, let me be clear: there is absolutely no texting, no cell phone usage, and no internet use during class time. If you fail to adhere to this policy, you will be asked to leave the room, and you will be considered absent for that session.
Housekeeping: You are welcome to eat breakfast in the classroom before our session begins, but once class starts, please limit yourself to beverages! Be sure to take any trash with you when class is finished. Should you need to leave the room during class for any reason, please try to minimize the disruption caused by your leaving and reentering the room. If you take advantage of this “open door” policy (by taking a bathroom break during every class, for example), we will reevaluate and adjust the policy accordingly.
Blog: We will be making ample use of our class blog. I will upload all handouts and assignments to the site. We will be also be using the blog to share and comment on outside sources related to our theme. If you have ideas about how we might make better use of this or other technology, please let me know.
Essays: All written work will either be submitted at the beginning of class on its due date or submitted electronically via turnitin.com. Grades will be reduced at a rate of one half-grade a day for each day an essay is late. Essays must be typewritten in 12 pt. type and double-spaced. Informal writing assignments may be handwritten. Late drafts will receive no feedback. You will have opportunities to submit rewrites for most of our formal assignments, provided that you consult with me before embarking on the revision.
Turnitin.com: You will be submitting your formal essays via turnitin.com, and I will be using their electronic platform to read and grade your work. In order to submit your essays, you first need to create an account on turnitin.com. Even if you’ve used turnitin.com before, you will need a new account that uses your baruchmail e-mail address. Once you have an account, you need to enroll in our course on turnitin.com using the following information:
Class ID: 21989612
Enrollment Key: identity
Academic Integrity: Plagiarism and cheating are serious academic offenses and will not be tolerated. Plagiarism means presenting another author’s words or ideas without crediting them to their source. When you include another author’s words in your work, whether from a printed source, from the internet, or from a live presentation, those words must appear in quotation marks and be properly cited. When you include another person’s ideas in your work, you must indicate where you found those ideas, even if you are paraphrasing rather than quoting them. If you have any questions at all about what constitutes plagiarism, please consult me. Any work submitted for this course that has been plagiarized will receive a failing grade and be reported to the Dean.
Cheating is also a serious academic offense. Examples of cheating include, but are not limited to: submitting essays or portions of essays written by other people, including friends and family;
collaborating on an assignment without the explicit permission of the instructor; submitting an essay written for one course to another course without the explicit permission of both instructors; submitting work as one’s own that has been purchased or copied from a paper preparation service or website. All work submitted in this course must be entirely your own!
Accommodations Policy: Baruch College is committed to making individuals with disabilities full participants in its programs, services, and activities through compliance with Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990. It is the policy of Baruch College that no otherwise qualified individual with a disability shall be denied access to or participation in any program, service, or activity offered by the university. Individuals with disabilities have a right to request accommodations. If you require any special assistance or accommodation, please let me know as soon as you can, ideally during the first three weeks of the semester.
Writing Center: I will always be available to work with you on developing and executing ideas for your essays, reviewing writing mechanics, and revising and refining your work. For additional support, you are encouraged to visit the Baruch College Writing Center in VC 8-185. You can call 646-312-4012 to make an appointment or schedule an appointment at https://bc.mywconline.com.
Grading:
Your grade will be calculated as follows:
Attendance and Participation (including homework, blog posts, student-led discussion, and in-class writing) 25%
Project #1 – Literacy Narrative 20%
Project #2 – Textual Analysis 20%
Project #3 – Analytical Research Paper 25%
Project #4 – Presentation 10%
Schedule:
What follows is merely a preliminary schedule for the semester. This schedule is intended to give you the broad parameters of our work over the course of the semester. We will be adding readings and making changes as the semester progresses. Please check the blog and our classroom whiteboard each day for changes and additions.
W 8/28 Introduction to Course: setting group norms, writing diagnostic, syllabus review
M 9/2 Labor Day (no class)
W 9/4 “Reading” and Analyzing Images: Bring to class a photograph that documents a significant aspect of your personal story.
M 9/9 Edward Jones, “The First Day” (link to text on blog), Introduction of Project #1 – Literacy Narrative
W 9/11 Amy Tan, “Mother Tongue” (JTC, pp.91-95), Chang-rae Lee, “Mute in an English-Only World”
M 9/16 Gloria Anzaldua, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” (JTC, pp. 77-87)
W 9/18 Anne Lamott, “Shitty First Drafts” (JTC, pp. 33 – 35), George Dila, “Rethinking the Shitty First Draft”
M 9/23 Writers Workshop
Richard Straub, “Responding – Really Responding – to Other Students’ Writing” (JTC, pp. 43-54)
W 9/25 Chimamanda Adichie, “The Danger of a Single Story” (video)
F 9/27 Project #1: Literacy Narrative – Due by 5pm via turnitin.com
M 9/30 No Class – Rosh HaShana
W 10/2 What is Intersectionality and what does it have to do with me?
Olena Hankivsky, “Intersectionality 101”
M 10/7 Z.Z. Packer, “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere”
W 10/9 No Class (Yom Kippur)
M 10/14 No Class (Columbus Day)
W 10/16 Junot Diaz, “Drown”
M 10/21 Reading tbd
W 10/23 Working on Project #2: Textual Analysis
M 10/28 Writers’ Workshop
W 10/30 Introduction of Analytical Research Paper
F 11/1 Project #2: Textual Analysis – Due by 5 pm via turnitin.com
M 11/4 Crafting a Successful Research Proposal
W 11/6 Finding Sources
M 11/11 Andrea Lunsford and John Ruszkiewicz, “Using Sources” (JTC, pp. 180-193)
W 11/13 Conferences
M 11/18 Conferences
W 11/20 Crafting a Bibliography
M 11/25 Writers’ Workshop: Drafts Due
W 11/27 No Class
M 12/2 William Zinsser, “Clutter” (JTC pp.40-42), Editing for Concision
W 12/4 Project #3: Analytical Research Paper – Due by midnight via turnitin.com
M 12/9 Presentations
W 12/11 Presentations
F 12/13 Final Reflections Due
