Course syllabus
RE REVISED WRITING SELVES COURSE OUTLINE - May 2017
Course details
| Course name: | Writing Selves |
| Course code: | ENGLISH 263 / ENGLISH 354 |
| Points Value: | 15 points |
| Prerequisites: |
30 points including ENGLISH 121 or ENGWRIT 101, or 30 points in English, or 45 points passed |
Teaching staff
Anna Boswell (convenor)
Rm. 824, Arts 1
Office hour: Thursday 2-3pm or by appointment
Emma Blackett (tutor)
Rm. 303, Arts 1
Office hour: Friday 1-2pm or by appointment
Evija Trofimova
evija.trofimova@auckland.ac.nz
Stephen Turner
Class reps:
Stage two:
Anna Munro
Stage three:
Jessica Marshall
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1843684339238150/
Course description:
ENGLISH 263/354 throws the terms ‘self’ and ‘writing’ into question. Working with an expanded understanding of the forms and modes that writing may take, and drawing on social semiotic concerns, the course critically explores changing conceptions of the self and examines what ideas of personhood presuppose and entail. Among other things, we consider:
- the cultural distinctiveness and embeddedness of self-writing practices (e.g. biography/autobiography, self-portraiture, tattoo, scarification);
- socially and historically specific notions of identity, subjectivity and authorship;
- boundaries and slippages between species and categories (e.g. people, animals, places, genres);
- questions of gender, sexuality and reproduction;
- modelling, distortion, mutability and virtuality;
- the role of digital technologies and programming in the construction of para-selves;
- the importance of sites and locations in the production of written selves.
Films and critical and creative readings form the basis for lectures and tutorials. These set texts will be supplemented with materials dealing with a diverse range of objects – from selfies to sexbots to SMS-capable plants. Methodologically, the course seeks to apply concerns drawn from set texts to new objects of inquiry in order to problematise the self-writing practices with which we engage and within which we are immersed. Coursework will invite you to consider writing as a matter of relations that are social, environmental and technological, and to extend your critical-creative skills in reading and composition.
Competencies:
By the end of the course, you should have improved:
- your awareness of what writing and selves ‘are’ and the forms and modes they may take;
- your ability to see self-writing practices as material and situated;
- your ability to read and respond to a range of challenging academic and non-academic texts;
- your ability to mobilise a technical and theoretical vocabulary;
- your creative-critical and compositional skills;
- your ability to analyse and problematise objects of inquiry in nuanced and reflexive ways.
Teaching Format:
Lectures: Weeks 1-12
Thursday 12-2pm, 260-051 (Owen G Glenn, Room 051)
Tutorials: Weeks 2-11
Check SSO for times and locations
Workload:
As per Faculty of Arts guidelines, the workload for ENGLISH 263/354 should average 10 hours per week over the course of the semester.
Learning resources:
Learning resources will generally take the form of short critical or creative readings available via Talis. The feature films that we study in Weeks 3 and 6 are available in the Audio-Visual Library.
Assessment:
There is NO final exam for ENGLISH 263/354. Coursework weightings and breakdowns are as follows:
Stage Two
|
Writing Activity One |
1,250 words (20%) |
Due: Mon 10 April, by 4pm |
|
Writing Activity Two |
1,250 words (30%) |
Due: Mon 22 May, by 4pm |
|
Critical Essay |
2,500 words (50%) |
Due: Fri 9 June, by 4pm |
Stage Three
|
Writing Activity One |
1,500 words (20%) |
Due: Mon 10 April, by 4pm |
|
Writing Activity Two |
1,500 words (30%) |
Due: Mon 22 May, by 4pm |
|
Critical Essay |
3,000 words (50%) |
Due: Fri 9 June, by 4pm |
Syllabus
Classes, readings and assessments
|
Week 1 9 March // What is a self? Readings: Hito Steyerl, ‘A Thing Like You and Me’ James Franco, 'The Meanings of the Selfie' |
|
Week 2 16 March // NO LECTURE - Tertiary Education Union industrial action |
|
Week 3 23 March // Curation, fashioning, data Readings: Kenneth Goldsmith, ‘The Inventory and the Ambient’ Selina Tusitala Marsh, selected poems Laura Bennett, 'The First-Person Industrial Complex' Gay Hawkins, from The Ethics of Waste |
|
Week 4 30 March // Beyond humanism Viewing / reading: Cave of Forgotten Dreams (dir. Werner Herzog) Thierry Lenain, ‘What is a monkey painting?’ Paul Carter, from Parrot |
|
Week 5 6 April // The humanimal Readings: Donna Haraway, ‘Speculative Fabulations for Technoculture’s Generations’ Isabella Rossellini, from Green Porno Judith Halberstam, from The Queer Art of Failure |
|
Week 6 10 April: Writing Activity One due by 4pm [20%] 13 April // NO LECTURE - university closed down for cyclone warning |
|
Mid-semester break: 14-29 April |
|
Week 7 4 May // iPeople Viewing / reading: Catfish (dirs. Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman) Her (dir. Spike Jonze) Natascha Sadr Haghighian, ‘Parallax' |
|
Week 8 11 May // Plasticity Readings: Paul Preciado, excerpt from Testo Junkie Catherine Malabou, excerpt from Ontology of the Accident Susan M. Schultz, excerpt from Dementia Blog |
|
Week 9 18 April // Otherkin feat. Prosthesis (with Stephen Turner) Readings: Vilém Flusser, ‘The Emergence of the Vampyroteuthis’ Antti Salminen, 'Parasites: Fragments of the Non-human Ann Shelton & Stephen Turner, Wastelands |
|
Week 10 22 May: Writing Activity Two due by 4pm [30%] 25 May // Living/memory Readings: Lisa Samuels, ‘Flag Day’ A. W. & Pritika Lal, ‘U of I: The University as I Experience You’ Kathleen Stewart, ‘Atmospheric Attunements’ Stephen Muecke, ‘The Fall: Fictocritical Writing |
|
Week 11 1 June // Self + place / final assignment overview Reading: Philip Armstrong, ‘On Tenuous Grounds' Ani Mikaere, 'Some Implications of a Māori Worldview' Peter Brunt, 'The Portrait, the Pe’a and the Room' |
|
Week 12: 8 June // Targeted learning session 9 June: Critical Essay due by 4pm [50%] |
Attendance and participation
Lectures and tutorials will focus on developing contexts for understanding and framing the assigned readings and films, and developing strategies for applying these concepts to other objects of inquiry. The classes are also designed to help guide you in composing the essays and writing activities. You MUST ensure that you read the assigned texts and view any assigned films before your weekly tutorial.
Attendance at lectures and tutorials is essential. Tutorial attendance and participation will be noted and may be a factor in determining your final grade.
Canvas and student email as course resources
The university’s Canvas electronic course assistance website is the location for all electronic communication within the course. On the Canvas website for ENGLISH 263/354 you will find electronic copies of the course outline, assignments, and links to course readings and supplementary materials. All course announcements will be posted on the Canvas course website and will also be sent to your university email address.
It is your responsibility to check the Canvas course website and your university email account in order to keep up with developments in the course.
Please ensure that any redirection or forwarding order from your student email address to your personal email address is up-to-date and correct. Contact the Canvas Help Desk or Arts IT for advice about redirecting messages sent to your university student email address to another email address.
Coursework format
Unless otherwise specified, you are expected to submit your coursework in a standard academic format:
- typed or word-processed
- 12-point easy-to-read font (e.g. Times New Roman, Cambria, Calibri, Arial)
- 1.15 or 1.5 line spacing
- 1” (2.5cm) margins (left, right, top, bottom)
- indented or block paragraph format
- numbered pages
- name, course number and date at top left- or right-hand corner of page 1
- title centered at top of page 1
- Chicago referencing (see English Department Essay Writing Guide)
- barcoded cover sheet
The instructions and assessment criteria for each essay and writing activity will be posted on Canvas prior to the due date.
Extension policy
Please note the English, Drama and Writing Studies extension policy for all undergraduate courses:
|
If you are unable to hand in your assignment by the due date, you must seek an extension via a face-to-face meeting with the tutor or lecturer concerned; an Extension Request Form, specifying the new submission date and signed by the staff member, or an email statement from your tutor granting the extension must be attached to the submitted essay. Extensions will only be granted for compelling reasons, such as illness, or other unforeseen emergencies, and a Doctor’s certificate (or equivalent) must be provided to the staff member concerned. An extension must be requested in advance of the due date for the assignment, unless there is a genuine cause preventing this, in which case the extension should be sought as soon as is practicable after the due date. Extensions will not be granted for reasons of time management, which is your responsibility. Any work handed in late without an extension will not be marked and will be awarded a “0”. |
Submitting assignments
All coursework should be submitted in hard copy format (complete with a barcoded coversheet) to the reception desk on level 3 of Arts 1 by 4pm on the due date. All coursework must ALSO be submitted electronically to Canvas by 4pm on the due date in order to receive a grade.
This course aims to assist in improving your creative-critical and analytical skills so you will receive written feedback on your writing activities and essays.
It is your responsibility to retrieve your marked work from your tutor or from the reception desk on level 3 of Arts 1. If you fail to collect your marked work in a timely manner, your tutor is under no obligation to continue supplying you with written feedback for subsequent coursework.
Plagiarism
The University of Auckland does not tolerate cheating or plagiarism or assisting others to cheat or plagiarise, and views cheating in coursework as a serious academic offence. The work that a student submits for grading must be the student’s own written work, reflecting his or her ideas and learning. Where other sources are used, as they should be used in academic writing, those sources must be properly acknowledged and cited. Referencing outside sources applies to all printed and digital materials, including the internet.
The working definition of plagiarism in this course is using the written work of others and presenting it as your own without explicitly acknowledging or referencing where the work originally appeared. It is plagiarism not to acknowledge using, paraphrasing, or directly copying from books, articles, webpages or other students’ work. Wherever you are using the writing or ideas of other people (whether published or unpublished), those ideas or writings must be properly acknowledged and cited. In academic writing, acknowledgement usually takes the form of endnotes or in-text parenthetical references to the materials used plus a bibliography. For more detailed information, see the university’s guidelines on the conduct of coursework at:
http://www.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/home/about/teaching-learning/policies-procedures
Except when this is explicitly sanctioned in the assessment rubric, work in ENGLISH 263/354 that is shown to be plagiarised will receive a zero grade and may lead to disciplinary action. Please note that you will not receive credit for duplicating coursework that you have completed for this (or for any other) course.
English Department Essay Writing Guide.pdf
Course summary:
| Date | Details | Due |
|---|---|---|