WRIT 100 - Writing Seminar for First-Years

FDR: FW
Planned Offering: Fall, Winter
Credits: 3

Winter 2017, WRIT 100-01: Writing Seminar for First Years: Don’t “I” Me: Privilege, Otherness, and Writing Good (3). Concentrated work in composition with readings ranging across modes, forms, and genres in the humanities, social sciences, or sciences. The sections vary in thematic focus across disciplines, but all students write at least four revised essays in addition to completing several exercises emphasizing writing as a process. All sections stress active reading, argumentation, the appropriate presentation of evidence, various methods of critical analysis, and clarity of style. In this section, we examine “One of these things is not like the others” (a.k.a. impostor) syndrome and its effect on the human quest to feel good enough. Our reading and writing explores the complexities of and correspondence between inferiority and otherness based on factors such as color, gender, privilege and language. We dig into works from, among others, Gabriel García Márquez, Peggy McIntosh, Claudia Rankine, Tucker Carlson, Kendrick Lamar, and Wes Anderson. (FW) Fuentes.

Winter 2017, WRIT 100-02: Writing Seminar for First Years: Gender and Genre: The Romantic Comedy from Jane Austen to Trainwreck (3). Concentrated work in composition with readings ranging across modes, forms, and genres in the humanities, social sciences, or sciences. The sections vary in thematic focus across disciplines, but all students write at least four revised essays in addition to completing several exercises emphasizing writing as a process. All sections stress active reading, argumentation, the appropriate presentation of evidence, various methods of critical analysis, and clarity of style. This class examines the romantic comedy, beginning with Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and ending with boundary-pushing rom-coms like Bridesmaids and Amy Schumer’s 2015 Trainwreck. Along the way, we consider classic screwball comedies and chick-lit, as well as theories of film and gender that help us make sense of a popular and much-maligned genre. What makes a good romantic comedy? What do we expect from the genre of romantic comedy, and how have films and novels met (and sometimes upended) those conventions? And what can the romantic comedy tell us about love, marriage, gender roles, and even feminism? (FW) Bufkin.

Winter 2017, WRIT 100-03: Writing Seminar for First Years: Writing in the Age of Digital Surveillance (3). Concentrated work in composition with readings ranging across modes, forms, and genres in the humanities, social sciences, or sciences. The sections vary in thematic focus across disciplines, but all students write at least four revised essays in addition to completing several exercises emphasizing writing as a process. All sections stress active reading, argumentation, the appropriate presentation of evidence, various methods of critical analysis, and clarity of style. In this section, we examine the legal, social, and economic pressures regularly exercised on us by various groups, not all of them benign, as we live our digital lives. In particular, we explore writing as a means of taking back control in a world that is increasingly surveilled and policed. How can we become not only responsible digital consumers but also active contributors to publicly unfolding humanist pursuits on the Internet? A variety of sources, journalistic, public, and academic, frame course discussions. In addition to extensive practice with critical writing, the course also offers an option for pitching and crafting a piece of writing for a public venue. (FW) Walsh.

Winter 2017, WRIT 100-04: Writing Seminar for First Years: Wicked Women (3). Concentrated work in composition with readings ranging across modes, forms, and genres in the humanities, social sciences, or sciences. The sections vary in thematic focus across disciplines, but all students write at least four revised essays in addition to completing several exercises emphasizing writing as a process. All sections stress active reading, argumentation, the appropriate presentation of evidence, various methods of critical analysis, and clarity of style. This section begins with Chaucer’s Wife of Bath and ends with recent essays on Hillary Clinton. In between, we examine witches, femme fatales and prostitutes, considering representations of difficult women in literature, journalism, and film. The course is not for women only—for instance, our discussion of witchcraft and wizardry runs from Miller’s The Crucible through excerpts from Harry Potter. (FW) Brodie.

Winter 2017, WRIT 100-05: Writing Seminar for First Years: Mysteries, Puzzles, and Conundrums (3). Concentrated work in composition with readings ranging across modes, forms, and genres in the humanities, social sciences, or sciences. The sections vary in thematic focus across disciplines, but all students write at least four revised essays in addition to completing several exercises emphasizing writing as a process. All sections stress active reading, argumentation, the appropriate presentation of evidence, various methods of critical analysis, and clarity of style. We concern ourselves with mysteries, not in the generic sense of stories about crime and detection, but mysteries of character, morality, religion, and art. Central to each of the works we study is some puzzle, secret, riddle, enigma, or complexity. Sometimes the work itself is the mystery, a kind of hieroglyph. Each work, in its own way, raises questions about the methods and limitations of human discovery. We approach the student’s writing as a means of investigation and discovery as well, with an emphasis on developing the skills necessary to build convincing “cases” (i.e., arguments) when evidence is incomplete, ambiguous, or contradictory. (FW) Oliver.

Winter 2017, WRIT 100-06: Writing Seminar for First Years: Superheroes (3). Concentrated work in composition with readings ranging across modes, forms, and genres in the humanities, social sciences, or sciences. The sections vary in thematic focus across disciplines, but all students write at least four revised essays in addition to completing several exercises emphasizing writing as a process. All sections stress active reading, argumentation, the appropriate presentation of evidence, various methods of critical analysis, and clarity of style.This section studies the development of superhero graphic narratives as a genre and comics as an art form through the 20th and into the 21st century.  Likely texts include Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s Superman episodes in Action Comics (1938), Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s Amazing Spider-Man (1962), Frank Miller and Bill Sienkiewicz’s Elektra: Assassin (1987), and Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona’s Ms. Marvel (2015).  (FW) Gavaler.

Winter 2017, WRIT 100-07: Writing Seminar for First Years: Animals, People, and Cyborgs (3). Concentrated work in composition with readings ranging across modes, forms, and genres in the humanities, social sciences, or sciences. The sections vary in thematic focus across disciplines, but all students write at least four revised essays in addition to completing several exercises emphasizing writing as a process. All sections stress active reading, argumentation, the appropriate presentation of evidence, various methods of critical analysis, and clarity of style. This section examines the relationships of human beings to nature and technology. What kinds of relationships do we have with animals, both wild and domestic? Where do we draw the boundary between humans and machines? Does humanity occupy a (privileged) middle ground between other kinds of being? Our readings come from a mix of science, environmental literature, and science fiction. (FW) Warren.

Winter 2017, WRIT 100-08: Writing Seminar for First Years: AdaptationX2 (3). Concentrated work in composition with readings ranging across modes, forms, and genres in the humanities, social sciences, or sciences. The sections vary in thematic focus across disciplines, but all students write at least four revised essays in addition to completing several exercises emphasizing writing as a process. All sections stress active reading, argumentation, the appropriate presentation of evidence, various methods of critical analysis, and clarity of style. Film adaptations of stories, novels, plays, and even historical events or persons (see, for example, the long career of Oliver Stone and his Snowden, World Trade Center, and JFK) have proven a mainstay of a multibillion-dollar industry along with a perennial concern of newspaper reviews, cultural debates, and dinner-table conversations. We explore this phenomenon through a series of case studies and raise the stakes by looking at instances in which there have been multiple adaptations (here limited to two) of the source. Such material allows for productive classroom discussions meant to prepare students for their individual papers, but advances this central purpose by foregrounding complex, varying, sometimes contradictory perspectives that at once require and foster careful thinking, analysis, and writing. The course showcases four examples (each comprising a written work and two subsequent film adaptations) drawn from numerous possibilities—a myth or fairy take such as “Cinderella,” A Christmas Carol, Jane Eyre, a Sherlock Holmes detective story, The Picture of Dorian Gray, True Grit, Murder on the Orient Express, The Maltese Falcon, Talented Mr. Ripley, Casino Royale, and The Shining. (FW) Adams.

Winter 2017, WRIT 100-09: Writing Seminar for First Years: Immigrant Voices (3). Concentrated work in composition with readings ranging across modes, forms, and genres in the humanities, social sciences, or sciences. The sections vary in thematic focus across disciplines, but all students write at least four revised essays in addition to completing several exercises emphasizing writing as a process. This section stresses active reading, argumentation, the appropriate presentation of evidence, various methods of critical analysis, and clarity of style as we examine how the voices of recent immigrants to the United States speak to us about social struggle, tradition, isolation, discovery, prejudice, identity, transition and freedom. We explore the lives and experiences, cultural differences and challenges of various immigrant communities and different generations within immigrant families. Throughout focused reading and class discussions about contemporary novels, short stories, media, and related articles by and about recent immigrants to the United States, students learn to compose clear, organized, and well-supported articulations of their understanding of the texts and issues at hand. (FW) Ruiz.

Winter 2017, WRIT 100-10: Writing Seminar for First Years: The Science of Sherlock (3). Concentrated work in composition with readings in which students write at least four revised essays in addition to completing several exercises emphasizing writing as a process. Stress on active reading, argumentation, the appropriate presentation of evidence, various methods of critical analysis, and clarity of style. Sherlock Holmes, the world’s most famous literary detective, uses the power of observation, deductive reasoning, and a bit of forensic science to solve crimes. In this section, we explore the scientific methods and forensic science techniques used by the great detective in Arthur Conan Doyle’s original stories and in modern television adaptations. Moreover, we examine Holmes’ influence on the development of modern forensic science. (FW) LaRiviere.

Fall 2016, WRIT 100-01: Writing Seminar for First-Years: The Good Wife (3). The good wife, or, how to survive a marriage, run a household, and save a kingdom. We examine two iconic wives in literature: Griselda and Scheherazade. One is known for her sacrificial patience, the other, cunning fabrication. Yet both share the status of female paragons around whom a community coheres.  Reading an eclectic range of texts from the medieval to the postmodern, we ask how gender shapes representation, and vice versa.  We chart the various transformations of the two female archetypes through literary history and are on the lookout for moments of breakdown under the burden of exemplarity. Throughout the seminar our emphasis is on learning the craft of academic writing via close reading, research, and engagement with critical sources.  (FW) Kao.

Fall 2016, WRIT 100-02: Writing Seminar for First-Years: The Literary Memoir: Power, Pilgrimage and Politics (3). Patricia Hampl says, “…a memoir reaches deep within the personality as it seeks its narrative form and it also grasps the life-of-the-times as no political analysis can.” In this seminar, we analyze short prose, graphic novels, poetry, and digital narratives by writers using memoir as a tool to construct and inhabit an identity. How does each writer convey a sense of self within key cultural moments? (FW) Miranda.

Fall 2016, WRIT 100-03: Writing Seminar for First-Years: Strangers in Shakespeare’s London (3). We use as our springboard for this course on college writing three plays by William Shakespeare. Each of these plays has, as a central character, a figure that would be a foreign and unwelcome presence in Shakespeare’s London. A Moor, a black man employed as a general in Venice, is the main character in Othello. Shylock, a Jewish moneylender, occupies the heart of The Merchant of Venice. And The Tempest features a barely-human character, Caliban, who represents the natives of the continents opened up by European exploration. We bring to our study of the plays themselves a wealth of historical and cultural material about such aliens in early modern Europe. Written assignments range from literary analysis, to historical research, to theoretical approaches to the problem of “otherness,” and to reviews of performances on stage or film. (FW) Dobin.

Fall 2016, WRIT 100-04: Writing Seminar for First Years: Life in the Valley of Death (3). The topic of this section: Recognizing the fact of our mortality, that we walk in the valley of death, how should we live our lives? What is death, and can we transcend it? We study some answers in poems and other literature and in two films, and the writings of naturalists, psychologists, philosophers, and doctors, as well as Buddhist, Christian, and other religious thinkers. Students may not take this course together with REL 213. (FW) Marks.

Fall 2016, WRIT 100-05: Writing Seminar for First-Years: Faith, Doubt and Identity (3). In this writing-intensive seminar, we explore the topic of belief and how it shapes a person’s selfhood. How does being a part of a religious community, or a variety of religious communities, shape one’s identity? How does identity change with the adoption of either belief, skepticism, or another culture? We ask these questions primarily through the genres of novels, short stories, and personal essays, examining lives of faith and doubt. Religious contexts include Catholic, Protestant, Muslim and Buddhist communities, and noted authors we study include Marilynne Robinson, Orhan Pamuk and Jonathan Franzen. Students have the option of writing a personal or creative essay after developing argumentative, analytic papers.  (FW) Gertz.

Fall 2016, WRIT 100-06: Writing Seminar for First-Years: Terror and Violence (3). Using cross-cultural examples, we investigate violence and terror in historical and contemporary societies. We use ethnography (books and articles) as our guides in this seminar. What are the causes and effects of violent behavior on both individual and collective levels? What are the economic, political, and social institutions that cause violence? How do terror and terrorism transform society? Finally, we discuss possible ways to subvert, as well as heal from, physical and emotional trauma. (FW)  Goluboff.

Fall 2016, WRIT 100-07: Writing Seminar for First-Years: The Romantic Comedy from Jane Austen to Trainwreck (3). What makes a good romantic comedy? What do we expect from the genre of romantic comedy, and how have films and novels met (and sometimes upended) those conventions? And what can romantic comedy tell us about love, marriage, gender roles, and even feminism? This class examines the romantic comedy, beginning with Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility and ending with boundary-pushing rom-coms like Bridesmaids and Amy Schumer’s 2015 Trainwreck. Along the way, we consider classic screwball comedies and chick-lit, as well as theories of film and gender that help us make sense of a popular and much-maligned genre.  (FW) Bufkin.

Fall 2016, WRIT 100-08: Writing Seminar for First-Years: Talk or Text? (3). In recent years, a spate of books and articles has created an ever-mounting sense of crisis about our reliance on digital devices:  always within an arm’s reach, these computers (we are told) are corrupting the human experience. But to what extent is this really the case? How much of this concern is legitimate, and how much is a product of a general resistance to change? “Talk or Text” investigates this 21st-century anxiety about digital devices, whether phones at our dinner tables, GPS in our cars, or computers in our classrooms. Looking at a wide variety of sources, this course examines the way that technology affects our relationships, our capacity for empathy, our ability to learn, and our willingness to be alone. Through regular writing assignments, students learn persuasive argumentation and clarity of expression. (FW) Walle.

Fall 2016, WRIT 100-10: Writing Seminar for First-Years: Scum and Villainy (3). How do we recognize villains? By how they twirl their mustaches? By the masks they wear? By the color of their clothes? By the music that swells each time they appear? What happens when all of those indicators are removed? Can we recognize a villain by his or her actions? Intentions? This class examines the ways in which theatre complicates how we think about villains by humanizing them and presenting them in bodily form on stage in front of us. We read and analyze plays both classical and contemporary that present villains as people rather than as symbols of pure evil. And we come up with our definitions of scum and villainy. (FW) Levy.

Fall 2016, WRIT 100-11: Writing Seminar for First-Years: Mysteries, Puzzles, and Conundrums (3). We concern ourselves with mysteries, not in the generic sense of stories about crime and detection, but mysteries of character, morality, religion, and art. Central to each of the works we study is some puzzle, secret, riddle, enigma, or complexity. Sometimes the work itself is the mystery, a kind of hieroglyph. Each work, in its own way, raises questions about the methods and limitations of human discovery. We approach the student’s writing as a means of investigation and discovery as well, with an emphasis on developing the skills necessary to build convincing “cases” (i.e., arguments) when evidence is incomplete, ambiguous, or contradictory. (FW) Oliver.

Fall 2016, WRIT 100-12: Writing Seminar for First-Years: The Nature of Nature: Environmental Thought and Literature (3). This course is an exploration of the human relationship to nature. How do writers, poets, and environmental thinkers understand their relationships to “the natural world”? How can we understand our own? In this class we read widely within environmental literature. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, William Cronon, Annie Dillard, and Wendell Berry, among others, provide scaffolding for our discussion of “nature,” “truth,” “individuality,” “community,” “life,” “death,” “knowledge,” and “mystery,” and the relationships these ideas have to one another. We explore the implications of these ideas for an individual life as well as for a globalized world in which ecological concern is a matter of daily news and attention.  (FW) Green.

Fall 2016, WRIT 100-13: Writing Seminar for First-Years: A Whole New World (3). In this age of global travel, economics, and politics, people can go almost anywhere and find similar technology and consumer goods, experiencing a new place as a comfortable and in some ways familiar variation on home. At other times visitors and newcomers really have discovered a whole new world. In this section, students study novels, movies, and other accounts of cultural encounters between people who have been in the same place but experienced very different worlds. Works include James Welch’s Fools Crow about white men first meeting the Blackfeet Indians in Montana, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart about the English first coming to Nigeria, and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road about the breakdown of shared culture in a post-apocalyptic world. We also think about how such encounters are depicted in popular culture, from Disney movies to international thrillers. We compare these fictional encounters with international experiences, issues, and conflicts today. (FW) Smout.

Fall 2016, WRIT 100-14: Writing Seminar for First-Years: Wicked Women (3). This section begins with Chaucer’s Wife of Bath and ends with recent essays on Hillary Clinton.  In between, we examine witches, femme fatales and prostitutes, considering representations of difficult women in literature, journalism and film. The course is not for women only—for instance, our discussion of witchcraft and wizardry runs from Miller’s The Crucible through excerpts from Harry Potter. (FW) Brodie.

Fall 2016, WRIT 100-15: Writing Seminar for First-Years: Speculative Fictions (3). This course focuses on contemporary tales and poems containing elements of fantasy, science fiction, and horror. Authors may include Stephen King, Octavia Butler, Ursula Le Guin, and Neil Gaiman. In addition to extensive practice of critical writing, there are creative writing options. (FW) Wheeler.