English 2150 KTRC: Writing II
From Camelot to Attica: Idealism, Hope, Revolution, and Insurgence in 1960s America
Baruch College—Spring 2016
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:55PM-4:35PM
Room: Lexington 12-224
Instructor: Dr. Linda K. Neiberg Office: VC 7-290D
Email: [email protected] (preferred) Office Hours: Thursday 12:00PM-1:00PM, and by appointment
Required texts (available as PDFs on course Blackboard page and, occasionally, as hardcopy handouts):
* Jane E. Aaron. The Little, Brown Handbook, 7th ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007 (BB—selected sections)
(a very good overview of grammar, punctuation, syntax, argument and paragraph structure, and so forth)
* OWL Purdue https://owl.english.purdue.edu (online grammar, punctuation, and style guide)
* Weekly reading materials (please consult our reading schedule regularly) (BB and handouts)
* A notebook in which you will take copious notes during class and sketch ideas you are working through, and which you will bring to each class.
* Our course blog on our course site, located on Blogs@Baruch (your Baruch email is required for access)
ENG 2150: Writing II (4.0 Hours; 3.0 Credits)
Required for all undergraduate degrees granted by Baruch College, Writing II is an intensive course introducing students to the conventions of academic writing and to writing as a means of discovery. The primary purpose of this course is to enhance students’ writing skills and rhetorical sophistication, particularly with regard to argumentative prose. Students practice and share their written articulation of ideas as a community of writers, and read a variety of intellectually challenging and thematically coherent texts in a range of genres. All semester, the emphasis is on writing and communication skills as processes involving multiple steps, including drafting, discussion, revision, and re-thinking. The work of the class is conducted in classroom, small-group, and one-on-one sessions.
This course is designed to be a gateway of exploration for further writing and research you will do in your courses at Baruch and beyond.
Learning Outcomes for ENG 2100 and ENG 2150 are:
- Rhetorical knowledge: You will analyze and identify 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, and demonstrate an ability to apply such rhetorical knowledge in your own writing.
- Inquiry and research: You will identify credible sources for your research questions; engage with multiple perspectives 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.
- Well-developed thesis: You will develop your ideas into a focused, compelling argument, developed in unified and coherent paragraphs, and supported by, as applicable, evidence from your own experience, your research, and the texts you analyze.
- Composing process: You will 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.
- Style and editing: You will produce effectively organized writing that demonstrates sophistication in word choice, syntax, and sentence structure and that follows conventions of standard English grammar and usage.
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
This intensive course, the second of two required writing courses (ENG 2100 and ENG 2150), shall help you develop your ability to write as a means of discovery and expression. The course intensifies the focus on writing and reading as interconnected practices that develop and sharpen critical thinking skills. We shall continue to emphasize writing as a process—one that entails freewriting, reading, drafting, informal and formal writing, discussion, re-thinking, and revision. We will work in small groups, as a whole class, one-on-one, and individually as we explore some of the following questions: What is the purpose of a particular piece of writing? What rhetorical strategies are employed by the author or speaker of a text? What is the text’s genre? Who is my audience? How should I organize a certain piece of writing? What should I think about in order to revise my work? What is an argument, how do I compose one, and how do I prove my argument? How do I read and write critically? What are some of the various modalities in which we write? How do I convey information through writing? Can reading and writing offer us pleasure?
COURSE THEME:
Our theme for this course is From Camelot to Attica: Idealism, Hope, Revolution, and Insurgence in 1960s America. How do we read into and across a decade? How does one interpret a text or artifact associated with a given decade (a speech, a series of photographs, music, fashion) and get a deep, rich (perhaps even “authentic”) sense of that particular decade? What does the numeric designation of a given decade signify in our cultural consciousness (the ’50s, the ’60s, the ’70s)? Indeed, what characterizes the 1960s politically, socially scientifically, musically, and sartorially? What does it mean to have “come of age” in the 1960s? Or, to have “been there,” to have “been there” and remembered that one had, in fact, been there? What is meant by the expression, “Tune in, turn on, and drop out” and might this expression function as a mantra for the latter part of the decade? How so? How did the era’s politicians, activists, scientists, soldiers, musicians, journalists, photographers, fashion designers, and youth shape this decade? How did they organize words, phrases, lyrics, images—how did they foreground certain ideas and values in their speeches, photos, wardrobes, songs, and concerts? Through a wide variety of reading and writing assignments, our learning community shall explore the various movements, moments, and trends associated with the 1960s—Civil Rights, Black Power, Pro-Environment, Anti-war, Women’s Liberation, LGBT rights, Prisoners’ Rights, Labor Rights, the Baby Boomer phenomenon, radical shifts in music and fashion—and examine the rhetorical elements that helped shape them. Did any of these movements intersect, and if so, at what points (both historically and ideologically)? The primary purpose of this course is to help you further develop your writing skills and rhetorical sophistication, particularly with regard to argumentative prose. Some of the guiding questions of the course are: How does persuasion happen? How does a speaker, writer, or musician use rhetoric to draw auditors and readers into his or her message? How might rhetoric distance an auditor or reader, or indeed, a viewer? What are ethos, logos, and pathos? How do rhetorical facets such as language, images, sounds, emotion, and logic, work to shape our discrete and collective identities, our beliefs, and our everyday realities?
COURSE REQUIREMENTS:
In this course, we will write in several genres, from very low-stakes, ungraded brainstorming assignments, to blogs on our course site, from short, informal analyses, to more formal, argument-driven essays, to a final research paper, and a creative remix of this research paper. This course is designed to be a gateway of exploration for further writing and research you will do in your courses at Baruch, and in your professional lives. In addition to incremental, scaffolded writing assignments, you will write a research paper, which must link, topically, with our course theme. Your research paper topic, within the context of the course theme, is of your choosing, though you need to present your proposed topic to me before you begin working in earnest on it. Revisions of assignments will be encouraged throughout the semester. If you revise and resubmit a piece, the lowest grade of that particular assignment will be dropped. The scaffolded, incremental writing assignments will culminate in the 7-10 page research paper. You shall then remix and remediate your research project into a creative project. In this creative project, you shall refine and revise your writing for a particular audience and purpose, and use a genre, media, and delivery style most suited to the rhetorical situation. The details of each project will be specified in assignment sheets for each project. These assignment sheets will be distributed as hard copies in class, where we will review them in detail, and then the assignment will be added to our Blackboard page and to our Blogs@Baruch site. In addition to producing the writing assignments, you will be required to read texts for each class session, arrive prepared for engaged, meaningful discussions for each class, contribute to our course blog on Blogs@Baruch, and write occasional response papers—all in the effort to build on the skills you began to develop in ENG 2100.
READING ASSIGNMENTS:
Writing assignments for this course are based on our reading assignments. In addition to regular, frequent writing, this course demands considerable reading. You must therefore keep up with the reading starting with the very first reading assignment. Please budget reading time generously. The quality of your work—including all papers (drafts and final versions), class participation, and blogs—depends on having read all of the assignments. Begin your homework well in advance, so that you can arrive in class with comments, questions, and positions. All reading materials for a given day MUST BE BROUGHT TO CLASS either in hard copy or electronic form, since we will be referring to them in discussions. If you arrive unprepared (this includes not bringing your reading materials to class), your grade will suffer.
RESPONSE PAPERS:
Over the course of the semester, you will receive brief response paper assignments that relate to the readings for that particular week. Your responses are to be typed and will either be submitted via hard copy in class, or posted to our course blog before the beginning of class. You will not receive a formal grade for them, but you will receive credit for them, factored into your participation grade. More importantly, through repeated efforts, you will hone your abilities to write about a particular piece you are reading, and engage with your audience(s). I will post these Weekly Response Paper prompts on our course Blogs@Baruch site, or distribute a hard copy in class.
ADDITIONAL WRITING:
Additional writing for our course includes in-class writing exercises, responses to your own work, peer evaluations, and group work. The shorter, informal writing assignments—as well as the response papers and blog conversations—are intended to help you develop ideas and theses that will later be useful to you in write your more formal essays.
CLASS PARTICIPATION:
Your preparedness for each class meeting is essential to the success of this course. Please come to class having read all the material for that day. Be prepared to initiate and contribute to engaged discussion and respectful debate, write frequently in class, at home, and on our blog, share your writing with your peers and offer constructive feedback to them. This course is a community of writers, so we will also discuss our works-in-progress, share concerns and solutions about writing dilemmas, and so forth. Therefore, you need to be prepared to discuss your
rough drafts, blogs, weekly writing assignments, etc. If I notice that you are not contributing to class discussions, I will call on you. My aim is not to “put you on the spot,” but to include you and your ideas and questions in our learning community. Moreover, I don’t want you to simply respond to me, but also to engage each other. This is a seminar and workshop, not a lecture course. Please note that your lack of participation will adversely affect your course grade. Consistent, engaged participation, on the other hand, will positively influence your final grade. Class participation also includes being an engaged, helpful participant during in-class group work and peer review.
BLOGGING (Blogs @ Baruch) https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/):
We have a course blog on our course site, and I will be asking you to blog regularly. I am not expecting polished writing with arguments and evidence. In fact, blogs often have a conversational tone. As Andrew Sullivan notes in “Why I Blog,” blogging is “an idiom [whose] truths are provisional, and its ethos collective and messy.” Try to think of your blog as a way to express your ideas or questions about a reading assignment, or some of the struggles or successes you are experiencing with your drafts and writing assignments. Think of your blog as a way to draw your classmates into an online conversation. I encourage you to have fun and be creative. Ideally, your posts and responses will explore ideas related to our course theme and to the various stages of writing. Occasionally, I may offer a prompt, but very often I will be following you, rather than the other way around. Each student is responsible for initiating one blog and being a respondent to at least five blogs. I will leave the length up to you.
Blogging Protocols:
Please make sure that what you write, as well as what you might link to, is not offensive to anyone in our classroom or in the blogosphere. Blogs are often informal, though some tend to be more formal. I want you to use our blog as a chance to practice your formal writing style (complete sentences, correct spelling and grammar, standard English, etc.), as well as to experiment with more informal styles (using sentence fragments, slang, a conversational, colloquial tone, etc.). However, please avoid swear words and language that is clearly insulting or denigrating. If you are offering a critique, or a differing viewpoint, please make it respectful.
ATTENDANCE AND COMPORTMENT:
Because this class will follow a sequential series of assignments, and because we will be creating a community of writers, readers, and critics, regular attendance is essential. If you miss even one day, you will miss a lot. School policy states that after four absences a student is to be dropped from the course. Reasons for excused absence are documented cases of illness and family emergency, observance of religious holidays, and participation in scheduled college sports matches and games (not practice and preparation). You are responsible for all material covered in class, even if you are absent; therefore, get to know your classmates so you can get notes and updates from them. I will not chase you down to inform you about what you missed. And, yes, you missed something important. Also, please take care of your restroom needs before class. You may not exit the class, unless you are having a medical emergency. If I see that you keep exiting the classroom, I will start marking you absent.
LATENESS:
I do not tolerate lateness. If you arrive more than ten minutes late for a class, you will receive half an absence. Thus, two late arrivals = one absence. The math is rather straightforward. Similarly, if you leave before the end of the class period, you will be noted as absent for that day.
ELECTRONIC DEVICES:
As a general rule, laptops, notebooks, and cell phones must be turned OFF and kept in your bags during class. However, many students use electronic versions of the day’s readings (rather than hard copies). In this instance, devices are, of course, permitted. Likewise, our in-class workshops may require the use of electronic devices—not to mention those moments when we may need to consult GrammarGirl™, look up a synonym, or access statistical data. In other words, electronic devices enhance our world, and we want to learn the most effective and creative ways to use them. These very devices, though, can also be a distraction—not only to the people using them, but to people sitting near them. If I see that you are futzing around with (rather than productively using) your phone, notebook, or laptop, I will ask you to put it away. To assure that our use of electronic devices enhances rather than intrudes upon our learning community, I ask that you please respect these guidelines.
EMAIL ETIQUETTE:
We will write in several genres, from informal, in-class freewriting to formal essays. Emails to me fall somewhere between these two styles. Please think of your emails to me as brief, semiformal electronic letters.
Your emails to me must include the following:
Subject heading: Please include: Course Title and Section, plus keywords indicating the purpose of your email:
ENG 2150 TMWA – Request for conference
Salutation: Dear Dr. Neiberg, Greetings Professor Neiberg, Hello Dr. Neiberg,
Benediction: Sincerely, Best wishes, Regards, Kind regards,
Your name Your name Your name Your name
For example, do not attach a rough draft and hit “send” without stating “Rough Draft of Paper #1” in the subject heading, or describing briefly in the body of your email why you are sending the attachment. Don’t make me guess. Please don’t address me as “Hi,” with no name. Never use texting abbreviations in your emails. Please be professional and courteous in your emails.
ONE-ON-ONE CONFERENCES:
You are required to schedule one half-hour conference with me during the first half of the semester to discuss a current assignment you are working on and to share your thoughts about any issues you are having with writing, or linking the readings to the writings. This is a chance for us to have a productive conversation about your work, your ideas, and formulate some strategies that may be particularly useful for you. I will provide the class with a list of my available meeting times. Please email me your top three choices for the half-hour blocks noted on the list, or make your appointment with me during class. As an alternative, we can also Skype.
ACADEMIC HONESTY:
Borrowing any words or ideas from another source—without proper citation—is plagiarism. We will have ample opportunities to review examples of plagiarized work so that you know what it looks like—and how to avoid plagiarizing. I have failed students for plagiarism and my policy is strict: if you plagiarize or commit any other act of academic dishonesty, you will fail the assignment and possibly the course. Among the tools I may use to confirm plagiarism are internet sources such as “turnitin.com.” The school’s policy on academic dishonesty states in part: “Academic dishonesty is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. Cheating, forgery, plagiarism and collusion in dishonest acts undermine the college’s educational mission and the students’ personal and intellectual growth. Baruch students are expected to bear individual responsibility for their work, to learn the rules and definitions that underlie the practice of academic integrity, and to uphold its ideals. Being unaware of the rules is not an acceptable excuse for disobeying them. Please refer to Baruch’s website for the full statement. Any student who attempts to compromise or devalue the academic process will be sanctioned.” I will formally report instances of plagiarism to the Office of the Dean of Students. Turn to me if you are having an essay crisis.
ACADEMIC ACCOMODATION:
Students with disabilities may be eligible for a reasonable accommodation to enable them to participate fully in courses at Baruch. If you feel you may be in need of an accommodation, please contact the Office of Services for Students with Disabilities at (646) 312‑4590. For additional information: http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/facultyhandbook/DisabilitiesInformation.htm
OFFICE HOURS:
My office hours are listed at the top of this syllabus. Please use my office hours—and you don’t have to wait until the end of the semester to do so! Feel free to drop by, but setting up a time in advance guarantees that I will save that particular segment of my office hour just for you. I also urge you to supplement my office hours with visits to The Writing Center and to the Student Academic Counseling Center (SACC).
GRADING:
I do not give grades. You earn them. Please note that I do not issue “warnings” if your grade is in jeopardy. It is up to you to remain aware of your attendance record, your degree of class participation, your contributions on our blog, and your grades on all written work and quizzes.
Writing Assignment #1 (Rhetorical Analysis, 2-3 pp.): 10%
Writing Assignment #2 (Intertextual Analysis, 3-5 pp.): 20%
Writing Assignment #3 (Research Paper, 7-10 pp.): 30%
Creative Remix of Research Paper (media + 2-3 pp. summary): 20%
Attendance, Class Participation, and Preparedness*: 20%
*(includes engaged in-class participation, attendance, taking class notes, journaling, blog posts & comments, additional writing outside of major assignment, bringing texts to class, etc.)
Student Resources
Writing Center Student Academic Consulting Center (SACC)
VC8-185 VC2-116
646-312-4012 646-312-4830
http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/writingcenter/ http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/sacc/tutorial_service.htm email: [email protected]
Writing Center @ Newman Library
151 E. 25th Street
Reference Desk, 2nd floor
Grammar Girl: Quick and Dirty Tips for Writing™
http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/
OWL (Online Writing Lab, Purdue University)
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/
Please use these resources regularly. They are there to support you and offer you guidance in your development as proficient writers, readers, critical thinkers, and engaged intellectual members of the Baruch community, and beyond.