Syllabus

To download syllabus, click HERE.

Writing II:

Setting the Table

ENGLISH 2150 JMWD

Spring 2021

Professor:  Dr. Jennifer Sylvor

 

COURSE BLOG: https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/eng2150sp21sylvor

 

Welcome to English 2150! I am looking forward to getting to know you and working together over the next several months as we continue to develop your skills and confidence as a reader and writer. This syllabus is a document designed to let you know how our course will work, what you can expect from me, and what I will be expecting from you in English 2150. It contains important information that you may want to refer back to, so you may want to print it out (if you’re like me and like having something concrete to hold in your hand) or just remember where you can find it in the future (under the tab marked “syllabus” at the top of our blog.)

Scheduled Meeting Times: MW 12:25 – 2:05

This is a fully ONLINE course, but we will be using these scheduled times to come together as a class, to work in small groups, and for individual conferences. Generally, we will be using our Monday sessions for work in small groups and one-on-one conferences. On Wednesdays, we will be having a more traditional class from 12:30-1:30 pm. We will be using zoom on both days.

 

Email: [email protected] (the best way to reach me) or [email protected] (Use this email address when you need to hear back from me immediately.)  If your communication is not time sensitive, use my Baruch email address.

 

I will sometimes use email to reach you as well. Please check your baruchmail email address at least once a day!

As you know, English 2150 is the second semester of our two-semester First Year Writing sequence. This semester you will continue to develop and expand many of the skills and practices you established in English 2100. After completing ENG 2150 you should be able to:

  • Analyze texts critically in a variety of genres:Analyze and interpret key ideas in various discursive genres (e.g. essays, news articles, speeches, documentaries, plays, poems, short stories), with careful attention to the role of rhetorical conventions such as style, tropes, genre, audience and purpose.
  • Use a variety of media to compose in multiple rhetorical situations:Apply rhetorical knowledge in your own composing using the means of persuasion appropriate for each rhetorical context (alphabetic text, still and moving images, and sound), including academic writing and composing for a broader, public audience using digital platforms.
  • Identify and engage with credible sources and multiple perspectives in your writing:Identify sources of information and evidence credible to your audience; incorporate multiple perspectives in your writing by summarizing, interpreting, critiquing, and synthesizing the arguments of others; and avoid plagiarism by ethically acknowledging the work of others when used in your own writing, using a citation style appropriate to your audience and purpose.
  • Compose as a process:Experience writing as a creative way of thinking and generating knowledge and as a process involving multiple drafts, review of your work by members of your discourse community (e.g. instructor and peers), revision, and editing, reinforced by reflecting on your writing process in metacognitive ways.
  • Use conventions appropriate to audience, genre, and purpose:Adapt writing and composing conventions (including your style, content, organization, document design, word choice, syntax, citation style, sentence structure, and grammar) to your rhetorical context.

 

COURSE THEME:

The theme of our work together this semester is “Setting the Table.”   Our reading, writing, and research will all be related in one way or another to the subject of FOOD. Food is at once the most universal theme (we all need food to survive) and the most personal and complex. Some of the questions we will be considering this semester include:

  • What role does food play in the construction of our identities?
  • How are food and memory intertwined?
  • What ethical or moral issues does our consumption of certain foods raise?
  • What is the future of food?
  • What kinds of foods are representative of our own families, neighborhoods, or communities?
  • What does hunger look like in our communities?
  • How do cultures distinguish between foods that are allowed and those that are taboo?
  • What messages does our culture send about food and morality through its messaging around nutrition, body image, and appetite?
  • What are the environmental implications of our 21st century food production?
  • What do we make of some of the food media that are particularly popular right now?
  • Where does our food come from? What is its history?

 

These questions just scratch the surface.  My hope is that, as we delve more deeply into these issues, you will find food-related topics that speak directly to you and questions that will guide your own research and learning.

 

MAJOR PROJECTS

 

The following are your major formal assignments for English 2150.  I will be providing you with detailed instructions for each of them over the course of the semester, posted to our course blog.

 

Project 1: Personal Narrative

This project situates you within the context of the course theme by asking you explore your own identity through the prism of food. This might involve sharing a story in which food figures prominently, describing your own culinary identity, or using food to understand a central relationship in your own life.

 

Project 2:Rhetorical Analysis

Analyzing texts is a key skill for being a good reader and writer and forms one of the core goals of this course. It involves a number of processes that we do all the time intuitively, but which you may never have thought much about or which you may not yet be able to name.   For this assignment, you will be drawing connections between two or more of the works included in our readings, analyzing their rhetorical structures, and adding your own voice to the writers’ conversation.

 

Project 3: Research-Based Writing

This project will involve a “deep dive” into a food-related topic or question that you personally find compelling. This might mean delving into the political, historical, or cultural implications of a particular food, trying to understand a contentious or controversial issue more fully, or seeking to understand more fully some aspect of our own food world or experience. The most important thing is to find something that you truly connect to as a researcher – whether it’s the history of school lunches, the meaning of “food tik tok”, or the labor conditions of food delivery workers.

 

Project 4: Digital Re-Mix

This final project of the semester will involve multi-modal composition. This means that it will be a project designed for a digital space, rather than a traditional essay. Your project will probably involve some writing, but it also might include audio, video, and other modes of composition. Your task here is to take something that you have worked on earlier in the semester, take it off the page, and translate it into a multi-modal, digital context. You will use one of your first three projects as the jumping off point for this Digital Re-Mix.

Additional Work:

In addition to the major projects, you will have informal assignments each week. These may include:

–posting to our course blog or slack workplace

–planning and facilitating parts of class discussion

–collecting sources to enrich our exploration of our topic

–offering feedback to your peers

–reading and annotation of assigned texts

Your sustained effort in all of these areas is just as important as the major projects!

HOW WILL THIS COURSE WORK?

 

Synchronous (“live”) Meetings:  We will be having regular zoom sessions on Mondays and Wednesdays at 12:30.  You can find the link for our call on the course blog (url listed above.)   We will be using our Monday sessions for meetings in small groups, work on writing projects, and for conferences. On Wednesdays, we will be meeting all together.  You may not need to log on for a meeting every week during our Monday class session, but you should leave this time slot open and dedicated to English 2100. Our zoom calls will usually last 60 minutes, though we will occasionally run a bit longer.

 

Asynchronous Work:  If “synchronous” refers to things that we all do at the same time, “asynchronous” is its opposite, meaning not at the same time.  A significant portion of the work for this course will happen asynchronously. Each Friday, your work for the coming week will be posted on our class blog, and you will be expected to work on these assignments on your own throughout the week, reaching out to the professor with questions or problems and consulting with your classmates as needed.  Checking the blog each Friday is a critical step in keeping up with the course and managing your workload. It’s up to you to figure out how to organize this independent work.  Keep in mind that the rule of thumb for college classes is that students should expect to do two hours of work outside the classroom for every hour of scheduled class time.  You may find that you do even more that that during the weeks when major assignments are due and then less on weeks with no major writing assignments.

 

Weekly Schedule: Each Friday I will post your work for the coming week on our course blog. This will include preparation and information about our Monday and Wednesday sessions, so it is critical that you get in the habit of checking the blog regularly, particularly on Fridays!

 

Attendance:  You are expected to attend all scheduled zoom meetings as well as all scheduled small group meetings and one-on-one conferences with the professor.  If you need to miss a session, it is your responsibility to reach out to the professor to notify her of your absence, to contact a classmate to find out what you missed, and to make up any work. We will begin class with a check-in each week, but I will be taking official attendance later during the session.

 

Preparedness: It is your responsibility to come to class prepared to discuss the assigned readings, where appropriate, as well as to have completed any assignments that were to be done before class.   If reading has been assigned, be sure to have the reading accessible and ready to refer to during our zoom calls.  Additionally, you should come to each class with a pen and paper or the ability to take notes or complete writing assignments on your computer or other device.

 

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.   What does participation look like in an online course?  It will mean speaking up and sharing your thoughts during our zoom calls, participating in online discussion on our course blog, and working with your peers on group projects both inside and out of class.  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.

 

Grading:

Grading for this course will happen in a somewhat non-traditional way.   Over the course of the semester, I will be keeping track of your attendance, class preparation and participation, and homework and in-class assignments, and I will be giving you detailed feedback on your written work. However, I will not be assigning grades to your essays or other work. At the end of the semester, as part of a broader process of reflection, you and I will agree on a final grade for the course that reflects your effort, learning, and overall performance over the course of the semester.

I am embracing this approach in an effort to de-emphasize grades and keep our focus where it belongs – on learning.   You will be my partners in this effort. This approach (sometimes called “ungrading”) doesn’t mean that this course will be “easy” or that you don’t need to take it seriously. But it does mean that you have full control over the grade you will earn in this course. Please feel free to reach out with any questions you have about this policy or the thinking behind it. I do not want this policy to add to your stress; if you feel anxious about how you are doing in the class, you can always reach out to me to discuss your progress!

 

 

Technology:  Technology is what makes remote learning possible.  To participate fully in this course, you will need access to a computer or tablet and reliable internet service.  We will be using several different applications or platforms for communicating with one another – blogs@baruch, e-mail, Zoom, and google docs among others.  See below for more details.

 

Blogs@Baruch: Our course blog is the heart of our online course.   This is the first place you should go if you have any questions about the course.  This is where you can find your weekly assignments on Fridays, where you will be participating in online discussions with your peers, where you will be posting your informal writing assignments, and where I will share announcements with the class. 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.  This is a collaborative site that belongs to all of us, so I expect to see it grow and change with your contributions.  You have already been added to the blog as an “author,” so you shouldn’t have any difficulty logging on and posting. Be aware that, while it’s unlikely that anyone outside of our course will be looking at the site regularly, this is technically a public blog.  The url for the blog is:  https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/eng2150sp21sylvor.

Please bookmark it, and keep it handy!

 

Zoom:  We will be using Zoom’s videoconferencing technology for our class meetings, small group sessions, and one-on-one conferencing by appointment or during open office hours.  Links for these sessions will be shared on our class blog.  You are expected to attend all scheduled sessions and to notify me in advance if you will be missing a class or a scheduled meeting or group session.  I will do my best to make our Zoom classes engaging and effective.  In order for them to be successful, we will all have to be active participants.  There will be regular opportunities during our calls for you to share ideas with the class, pause for brief writing exercises, and connect with your classmates in small groups.  All of this will work best if we all have our cameras on.   I recognize that there may be times during the semester when turning on your camera is simply not a good option for you, but my expectation is that we will all make an effort to keep our cameras on as much as possible.  If you have a technological limitation or other issue that will make that impossible, please reach out to me about as soon as possible, so that we can come up with an alternative plan for your participation.

 

Essays:  All formal essays will be submitted via Google Docs.  Informal work will be either posted to our class blog or shared with me via email or google docs. Essays must be typewritten in 12 pt. type and double-spaced.  If you do not have regular access to a computer or tablet, informal writing assignments may be handwritten and submitted as photos or scans.  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.

 

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, I encourage you to reach out to the Baruch College Writing Center.  You can schedule an appointment and find out information about their workshops at https://bc.mywconline.com.