This course will help you use appropriate style, structure, evidence, and vocabulary when writing formal and informal essays for well-educated audiences.  To that end, you’ll implement compositional strategies found in published and unpublished material read throughout the semester.  Essays demonstrating complexity of thought, mastery of academic conventions, such as grammar and style, and general improvement through process work will receive a passing grade or higher.

English 495AU is a workshop of peers. Our success depends on our willingness to share ideas and review each other’s work. 

REQUIREMENTS

Three-Chapter Memoir
Your memoir will include three personal essays of approximately seven pages in length, typed, titled, double-spaced, and formatted according to MLA guidelines.  These chapters need not follow a strict chronology but should be cohesive enough to suggest a memoir in progress.  Most important is that you use a life moment to put forth an argument about some aspect of our world.

Workshops
Our workshops consist of peer reviews and class reviews. 

Peer Review: On essay-chapter due dates, you will form groups of three or four and read and comment on your classmates’ essays.  You will then revise your essay based on your classmates’ comments and submit a clean draft to me for an instructor review.  I’ll read and comment on your essays. You’ll revise this instructor draft for your final portfolio.

Class Review: Each student will have one chapter reviewed by the class.  You are responsible for distributing twenty stapled copies of your chapter to the class one week before your workshop review. 

Short Papers
You will be reading a great deal this semester and often asked to respond more formally than your WebCT posts yet less so than a full term paper. 
 
WebCT
Each week post an informal yet thoughtful response to our readings and class discussion on our WebCT page. This reflection is a very important part of our coursework and a great opportunity for you to establish a meaningful dialogue with your classmates since they will post there, too.  I don’t count words, but I do look for clear, convincing reflections in a conversational tone.  Make connections to texts and things outside the class; go beyond summarizing.

Final Portfolio
At the semester’s end, you’ll submit a portfolio containing your final three-chapter memoir, drafts, and other work completed during the semester.  To revise substantially, you’ll have to undertake a variety of writing tasks and academic habits of mind: you may need to complicate an idea, revise a theory, connect your ideas to other texts, incorporate some research, try out different rhetorical “moves,” or simply develop an idea or strengthen your support. 

POLICIES AND GRADES

Because of the collaborative nature of this class, regular attendance is required.  You cannot pass ENG 495AU if you miss more than two classes. Late papers will be penalized unless you make arrangements with me before a due date.

I grade holistically, so there will be no grades given until your portfolio is assessed in its entirety at the semester’s end.  Until then, I’ll write comments and suggestions on your papers and discuss your progress in person.  Please feel free to come by my office, email, or phone me if you have concerns.  To pass this course, you must complete all work in a timely fashion and receive a passing grade on your portfolio.   

The quality of your writing and your overall commitment to our class will determine your grade. Failure to participate enthusiastically in workshops will most certainly lower your overall grade.

                                                      

FALL 2008 SYLLABUS

8/25         
Introductions
Who is Jane Stern?
Begin reading Claude Brown’s Manchild in the Promised Land
           
9/1             
Labor Day Holiday

9/8                       
Brown, Chapters 1 - 2
Hetata, "The Self and Autobiography"
Autobiography and Argument
Memoir Outline Workshop
                    
9/15                     
Due: Essay I, Draft 1 for Peer Review
Brown, Chapters 3 – 6
Howarth, “Some Principles of Autobiography”

9/22                      
Due: Essay I, Draft 2 for Instructor Review
Brown, Chapters 7 – 9
Olney, “The Autobiography of America”

9/29                     
Brown, Chapters 10 – Conclusion
Begin reading Alice Sebold’s Lucky
de Man, “Autobiography as De-facement”

10/6                     
Sebold, Introduction and Chapters 1-5 
Hesford, “Reading Rape Stories: Material Rhetoric and the Trauma of Representation” 

10/13                   
Due: Essay II, Draft 1 for Peer Review
Sebold, Chapters 6 – 10
         
10/20                   
Due: Essay II, Draft 2 for Instructor Review
Sebold, chapters 11- 12 and “Aftermath”   
Begin reading Trevino’s Eyewitness

10/27            
Trevino, Forward-Chapter 6
Perez-Torres, “Chicano Ethnicity, Cultural Hybridity, and the Mestizo Voice”
                      
11/3            
Trevino, Chapter 7-11
                    
11/10                   
Trevino, Chapter 12-18
Pike, “Time in Autobiography”

11/17                        
Due: Essay III, Draft 1 for Peer Review  
Workshop
 
11/24                   
Due: Essay III, Draft 2 for Instructor Review        
Workshop
                         
12/1                     
“Author’s Note”
Portfolio Workshop

12/8            
Final Thoughts

12/15          
Portfolios Due in Conference

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