WRIT 100 - Writing Seminar for First-Years

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

Winter 2014 Topics:

WRIT 100-01: Writing Seminar for First Years: Aspects of Elizabeth (3). Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603) is among history’s most fascinating figures. She ruled a small island, beset by threats both external and internal, during a period of tremendous political, religious and cultural change. Her 45-year reign saw the conspiracies and eventual execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, the consolidation of the Church of England, the defeat of the Spanish Armada, and the flowering of English culture in such figures as Shakespeare, Donne, and Marlowe. We learn about both the public and private Elizabeth by focusing on four distinct topics: her own poetry, letters and speeches; the portraits of her as princess and queen; her controversial personal and political relationship with Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex (put to death for treason in 1601); and films about Elizabeth. The primary texts of the course are each other’s essays; we learn about our topic by reading what other students have written, even while focusing most of our class time on improving our writing skills. (FW) Dobin.

WRIT 100-02: Writing Seminar for First Years: Grotesques and Goths: Southerners Describe the South (3). In this section, we examine what makes Southern literature “Southern” and many Americans uncomfortable with a region and a literature at odds with the values we as a people are supposed to cherish. We begin with Edgar Allan Poe’s tales of psychological horror most of us know from childhood, and move on to Flannery O’Connor’s grotesque inhabitants of a “Christ-haunted South.” Along the way, we ask why children enjoy tales like Poe’s, whether you can trust a narrator, and whether we, too, have been warped by place and experience. Emphasis on combining personal responses with research in well-written essays. (FW) Leland.

WRIT 100-03 and 100-04: Writing Seminar for First Years: Dialogue and Discovery (3). Perhaps more than any other philosopher, Plato understood that engaging in dialogue was both a means of discovering truth and a vehicle for communicating truth to an audience. Through a selection of Plato’s dialogues, and other more recent articles, this course investigates the process of finding and expressing truth. We explore thought-provoking questions, such as: Is truth the same for everybody, or can my truth be different from yours? Do we need to be morally good to be truly happy? Does God (the Good) exist? Are we immortal? Does being in love delude us or help us gain knowledge? What is the role of rhetoric in discovering and communicating truth? Does beauty reveal truth? By pursuing discussions that Plato began, we develop the skills of raising questions, constructing arguments, listening to objections, considering counterarguments, and defending claims. Students use these skills to come to their own conclusions about the topics we discuss and learn to write persuasive papers with strong arguments. (FW) Lowney.

WRIT 100-05 and 100-07: 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, femmes 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.

WRIT 100-06: Writing Seminar for First Years: Farce and Friends: Comic Writing Ancient and Modern (3). In this course, we look at comic writing, both ancient and modern. We look at farce, satire and comic novels, and compare ancient and modern instances of each. We also consider the theory of comedy and examine what qualities in writing make it amusing. Comedy is highly diverse, and so, too, are the different qualities comic writing can evince. For example, comedy can be exuberant, and call forth language that is high-spirited, profuse, spendthrift and innovative. Or, comedy can be satirical, and use language that is spare, coiled and lethal. Farce has much to show us about structure and logical development. Satire, on the other hand, often mimics the loose and easy flow of a conversation. In this course, we learn what we can from these different styles in order to improve our writing. (FW) Crotty.

WRIT 100-08: Writing Seminar for First Years: Misfits, Rebels, and Outcasts (3). The title of the course leaves out a lot. If extended, it might include strangers, visionaries, fanatics, prophets, artists, lovers, criminals, transients, deviants, freaks, monsters, and so on. We read stories, poems, and plays about individuals challenging the status quo, either directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously. We consider, among other things, what happens to the individual in the process, and what happens to the status quo. (FW) B. Oliver.

WRIT 100-09: Writing Seminar for First Years: (Human) Nature: Individualism and Community in Environmental Literature (3). What is nature, and how do our relationships to it vary depending on culture and individual experience? How have historical and contemporary writers, thinkers, religious figures and poets understood their relationships to “the natural world”? What is the American understanding of individualism, and how does that understanding influence a cultural relationship with nature? We read widely within American environmental literature; Emerson, Whitman, William Cronon, Annie Dillard, and Wendell Berry, among others, frame our discussion of nature, religious experience, community and individualism. We explore implications that these interrelated themes carry for the individual life as well as for a globalizing world in which ecological concern is a matter of daily news and attention. (FW) Green.
 

Fall 2013 Topics:

WRIT 100-01 and 100-03: Writing Seminar for First Years: Grotesques and Goths: Southerners describe the South (3). In this section, we examine what makes Southern literature ‘Southern’ and many Americans uncomfortable with a region and a literature at odds with the values we as a people are supposed to cherish. We begin with Edgar Allan Poe’s tales of psychological horror most of us know from childhood, move on to Flannery O’Connor’s grotesque inhabitants of a ‘Christ-haunted South’ and conclude with Nobel Literature Prize-winning William Faulkner’s searing examination of selfishness within a family. Along the way, we ask why children enjoy tales like Poe’s, whether you can trust a narrator, and whether we too have been warped by place and experience. Emphasis is on combining personal responses with research in well-written essays. (FW) Leland.

WRIT 100-02: 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 and short stories, examining lives of faith and doubt. Texts include Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Gilead, about a Congregationalist minister descended from abolitionists; John Patrick Shanley’s play, Doubt, covering Catholic education and priest abuse scandals; selected short stories from Flannery O’Conner; and a story by Jhumpa Lahiri, from her Pulitzer Prize-collection, Interpreter of Maladies, on a Hindu woman who keeps Catholic shrines in her new home. (FW) Gertz.

WRIT 100-04: 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. This seminar examines 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. And if their goodness resides in securing common profit, how do Griselda and Scheherazade compare to other figures of femininity, such as the diva and the whore? Throughout the seminar, our emphasis is on learning the craft of academic writing via close reading, research, and engagement with critical sources. That is, we read, think, and write like Griselda and Scheherazade—with fortitude and deftness. (FW) Kao

WRIT 100-05: Writing Seminar for First Years: Power and the Cultural Imagination (3). With an eye to deciphering our contemporary political and cultural landscape(s), this course aims to build our conceptual vocabulary on the topics of both power and cultural imagination. We trace the development of these terms–as well as their relationship to one another–throughout readings in media studies, literature, philosophy, political, and psychoanalytic theory. Some of the abiding questions we concern ourselves with are: What is the nature of image, representation and icon? Can such things be ‘culturally shared’? If so, how do images, representations or icons intervene in or influence our social and political relationships? Through class discussion, reflective writing exercises and essay composition, students are encouraged to develop clear, convincing articulations of their own insights into the texts and issues at hand. Thinkers to be engaged in this class include: Berger, McLuhan, Brecht, Plato, Machiavelli, Freud, and Kracauer. (FW) Renault-Steele.

WRIT 100-06: 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.

WRIT 100-07: Writing Seminar for First Years: Misfits, Rebels, and Outcasts (3). The title of the course leaves out a lot. If extended, it might include strangers, visionaries, fanatics, prophets, artists, lovers, criminals, transients, deviants, freaks, monsters, and so on. We read stories, poems, and plays about individuals challenging the status quo, either directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously. We consider, among other things, what happens to the individual in the process, and what happens to the status quo. (FW) Oliver.

WRIT 100-08 and 100-12: Writing Seminar for First Years: I See Dead People (3). This course analyzes literary representations of ghosts and the afterlife. Texts may include: Henry James, The Turn of the Screw; Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle; Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit; Thornton Wilder, Our Town; Caryl Churchill, Top Girls; Toni Morrison, Beloved. (FW) Gavaler.

WRIT 100-09: Writing Seminar for First Years: Nonconformity and Community (3). What’s the proper role of nonconformity in the healthy community? How much conformity is needed to sustain a culture? Are complete nonconformity and strict conformity even possible? Through readings by classic and contemporary writers, we explore the importance of sameness and difference within the various communities to which we belong. In the process, the course includes an examination of some of Washington and Lee’s core values, including honor and integrity. (FW) Pickett.

WRIT 100-10: Writing Seminar for First Years: (Human) Nature: Individualism and Community in Environmental Literature (3). What is nature, and how do our relationships to it vary depending on culture and individual experience? How have historical and contemporary writers, thinkers, religious figures and poets understood their relationships to ‘the natural world’? What is the American understanding of individualism, and how does that understanding influence a cultural relationship with nature? We read widely within American environmental literature; Emerson, Whitman, William Cronon, Annie Dillard, and Wendell Berry, among others, frame our discussion of nature, religious experience, community and individualism. We explore implications that these interrelated themes carry for the individual life as well as for a globalizing world in which ecological concern is a matter of daily news and attention. (FW) Green.

WRIT 100-11: 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 some 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.

WRIT 100-14: Writing Seminar for First Years: Speculative Fictions (3). Readings for this course focus 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.

WRIT 100-15: Writing Seminar for First Years: The Press and the Civil Rights Movement (3). This first-year writing seminar explores the news media’s role in the Civil Rights Movement of the South in the 1950s and ‘60s. Documentary recordings, individual research in primary documents, class discussions and readings in the journalism of the period and in works of history(especially the Pulitzer-Prize winning 2006 book The Race Beat, and the professor’s book on The Southern Press) provide the basis for writing assignments. Students produce short papers on the readings, an oral history project on a veteran journalist who covered the movement, a research paper and a magazine-style article. (FW) Cumming.

WRIT 100-16: Writing Seminar for First Years: Indian Country: Reading America Through Native American Eyes (3). In his film Smoke Signals, one of Sherman Alexie’s characters asks two other Indians about to leave the reservation, ‘Hey, do you guys got your passports? [The United States] is as foreign as it gets. Hope you two got your vaccinations!’ What does this country’s landscape, history, literature, and culture look like from an Indigenous perspective? Who is telling the contemporary Indian’s story? How does this contribute to our understanding of American identity and destiny? Concentrated work in English composition with readings from contemporary Native American authors such as Linda Hogan, LeAnne Howe, Carter Revard, Janet McAdams, Joy Harjo, Sherman Alexie, Leslie Marmon Silko in a mixture of genres, such as drama, poetry, nonfiction prose, and narrative fiction. (FW) Miranda.