Course syllabus
ENGL 305: Modern Writing and Critical Thinking
Semester 1 2017, University of Auckland
Lecture: Tuesday 10-12, NOTE ROOM CHANGE to Clock Tower, T032/105-032
Tutorials: Tuesday 1-2 PM, NOTE ROOM CHANGE to OGGB 260-057 / Wednesday 11-12 AM, NOTE ROOM CHANGE to Clock Tower 018-105
Teacher: Lisa Samuels (l.samuels@auckland.ac.nz), Arts 1 room 631. Office Tuesday 2-3 PM and by appointment. Consultations are usually scheduled in advance: visitors are encouraged to knock on the door.
Windows Gallery 305 installation curator: Elle Loui
Course description
This course explores theories and practices of writing and criticality in academic, civic, and artistic contexts. We consider some of the scripts that organise literate social practices and how to perceive and extrapolate their principles. We explore how we are affected by, how we navigate, and how we transform our immersive world of signs. We explore how writing functions in paper, installation, and digital environments and how we construe and read literary and non-literary texts for different purposes. We’ll engage critically with your writing and reading practices and we will also practice creative alternatives for recoding what we encounter. This is a critical skills class as well as an opportunity to learn new writings and critical modes.
Readings are from multiple national and regional contexts: the U.S., Oceania, Canada, Japan, China, Aotearoa/New Zealand, Sweden, England, Russia, and explicitly contested border sites. Our transnational critical thinking blends Euro and Anglo-American-Australasian critical modes with Oceania and digital criticality. We are studying the “trans” (translingual, transgenre, translation, transformation) of writing: “liquid writing” that flows from one genre, place, identity, or time to another.
By semester’s end, your work in the course should have developed your ability to
- understand how writing and critical thinking creates and records individuals and societies;
- articulate underlying or unacknowledged assumptions about writing, mind, and identity in textual practices;
- perceive how texts reproduce, alter, or resist dominant discourses;
- perceive how becoming literate and making texts means more than acquiring a set of linguistic, technical, and genre skills;
- situate literary texts in other and wider fields of discourse;
- reflect on what being an active, critically aware writer and reader means for you as an individual, a collaborative maker, and a member of social groups.
Required texts
Course Pack (at UBS)
Stephanie Anderson, In The Key Of Those Who Can No Longer Recognize Their Environments (Horse Less Press 2013) (at UBS)
Supplemental online readings
Required assignments
40% 1 critical essay (2500 words) based on class discussions and readings. Required draft work (minimum 1000 words, worth 5% of final essay grade) workshopped in tutorial. Your essay is due on the date indicated below, except for documented emergencies or special circumstances approved in advance.
15% Window Gallery installation. 5% for Week 3 proposal for the class installation. 10% for your writing and group work in co-making the Window Gallery installation.
25% 1 in-class cumulative test (75 minutes, approximately 1250 words) on key terms and concepts from class discussions and readings. No makeups except in case of emergency.
10% 2 tutorial quizzes (5% each: 15 minutes, about 250 words each, total 500 words). No makeups.
10%. Informed and regular attention and participation in class discussions and writing activities. Writing activities undertaken in tutorials can expect to generate approximately 750 words across the semester.
Essay format
Assigned writings, unless directed otherwise, should be in this format:
- Type/word-process and print on clean paper.
- Use a 12 point easy-to-read font (e.g. Times New Roman, Garamond, Arial).
- Space your text at 1.5 or 2.0 and use regular margins (1” or 2.54 cm. at left, right, top, bottom).
- Indent or block your paragraphs.
- Number your pages.
- Identify clearly your name, course number, and date at top right- or left-hand corner of page 1.
- Include a descriptive title. Do not print a separate title page: simply include title and identity information at top of page 1.
Some course writing will be in other formats. All essays must be tendered in hard copy, with an ENGL 305 coversheet, to the labelled box at the ARTS 1 Level 3 Reception. Coversheets may be downloaded from Canvas Resources.
Attendance and participation
Lectures examine the differing assumptions, techniques, contexts, and implications of the assigned readings. The second lecture hour will typically include break-out and group work that responds to the considerations of the first hour. Tutorials pursue writing and reading activities indicated in the Schedule below.
To prepare for lectures and tutorials, read the assigned texts and compose any assigned writing before class. In addition to discussion during lecture hours, tutorials will be important times to review readings, participate in peer review and group projects, freely discuss your questions, and prepare for the in-class test.
Technology policies
On our Canvas site, you will find electronic copies of the syllabus and any paperwork distributed in lectures as required supplements to the course readings. All course announcements will be posted on the Canvas site and directed to your University email address.
During the term, I will ordinarily be able to read an email message within 48 hours and to reply within 72. Occasionally I may be unable to respond that swiftly and frequently I may reply sooner, depending on the nature of the query. I extend the same email expectation courtesy to you.
Please do not use cell phones, ipods, or other such devices during class. If you have an emergency situation that requires you to be contactable on a given day, please let me know before class begins so that the class can be prepared for the possibility of a momentary interruption.
Students are permitted and encouraged to use laptop computers in class for taking notes and looking at prepared and online materials directly relevant to that class. It is vital that these computers NOT be used during class for matters external to our lectures and tutorials. If you repeatedly violate this policy, you will be asked to a meeting with your instructor and a University of Auckland official charged with overseeing classroom behaviour.
Disabilities Accommodation Statement
If you have a condition that impairs your ability to satisfy course criteria, please meet with me to discuss feasible instructional accommodation. Accommodation can be provided only for a documented disability. Please tell me about such circumstances by the second week of the semester or as soon as possible after a disability is diagnosed. Contact Student Disability Services for more information: <https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/on-campus/student-support/personal-support/students-with-disabilities/student-disability-services-staff.html> / email <disability@auckland.ac.nz> / phone 373 7599 ext 82936.
Required information from The University of Auckland
“The following text must be included in all course outlines in consequence of an Education Committee decision (2005): The University of Auckland will not tolerate cheating, or assisting others to cheat, and views cheating in coursework as a serious academic offence. The work that a student submits for grading must be the student's own work, reflecting his or her learning. Where work from other sources is used, it must be properly acknowledged and referenced. This requirement also applies to sources on the world-wide web. A student’s assessed work may be reviewed against electronic source material using computerised detection mechanisms. Upon reasonable request, students may be required to provide an electronic version of their work for computerised review.”
Weekly schedule
This schedule is subject to change, depending on our progress. Items listed for a given week are to be read before the lecture. Unless otherwise indicated, all readings are in our course pack. *Indicates relevant external events: not required, but potentially interesting for our course studies.
Week 1 (Tuesday 7 March)
Introduction. Self, other, object-event, and “liquid writing”
Charles Olson, “Projective Verse” (1950)
Epeli Hau‘Ofa, “Our Sea of Islands” (1993)
Nathalie Stephens, “Echoes Enough of Echoes of Enough of Me: In Favour of ‘Not Going Anywhere’” (2004)
Week 2 (Tuesday 14 March)
SELF: autography and proceduralism
Lyn Hejinian, My Life excerpts (1987)
Lisa Samuels, “Eight justifications for canonizing My Life” (1997)
TUTORIALS BEGIN THIS WEEK: field trip to nearby electronic readouts of liquid writing / soft text conversation / writing in public space.
Week 3 (Tuesday 21 March)
SELF: the digitas and the digi-self
Ni_ka, Hallelujah. (2004). <http://yaplog.jp/tipotipo/archive/236> & Electronic Literature <http://collection.eliterature.org/3/work.html?work=hallelujah>
Qianxun Chen, Shan Shui (2014), <http://collection.eliterature.org/3/works/shan-shui/ShanshuiV2/index.html> / Look at the source code
TUTORIALS: Bring a printed proposal (2 copies) for our class installation in the Window Gallery. This proposal requires you to visit the Window Gallery, observe its parameters, and check its digital component. You can visit prior installation records, e.g. from 2016: <http://windowgallery.co.nz/exhibitions/the-heart-is-deceitful-above-all-things>. Your proposal should be approximately 150 words and must include opportunities for language/writing/orality from all students in the course.
*Performance Writing Symposium, Wed 22 March 2-5 PM, Business School (bldg# 260) Room 040B: featuring John Hall, Kelly Malone, and Tru Paraha
Week 4 (Tuesday 28 March)
SELF: made-up self-body
Gloria Anzaldúa, “How to tame a wild tongue” (1987)
Alice Te Punga Somerville, “’If I close my mouth I will die’: Writing, Resisting, Centring” (2007)
Handout: Chad Faries, foreword to Drive Me Out Of My Mind (2011)
TUTORIALS: NOTE ASSIGNMENT: General Library Source Language Exercise for Window Gallery (WG) Installation. Worth 5% of the WG Installation work. Assignment sheet handed out in tutorials.
*LOUNGE Wed 29 March 530-7 PM
*Saturday 1 April 1 pm Auckland Art Gallery performance ‘The Physical Garden’
Week 5 (Tuesday 4 April)
OTHER: distributed centrality and remix
Stephanie Anderson, In The Key Of Those Who Can No Longer Recognize Their Environments (2013)
Stanley Fish, “How to recognize a poem when you see one” (1980)
TUTORIALS: Quiz 1
Week 6 (Tuesday 11 April)
OTHER: collaboration and neo-ekphrasis
Ann Shelton and Stephen Turner, Wastelands (2010)
TUTORIALS: NOTE CHANGE: Discussion of Essay assignment.
Mid-semester break 15-30 April
Week 7 (Tuesday 2 May)
OTHER: gender and genre crossing
William Vollmann, from The Ice Shirt (1990)
Kathy Acker, “Seeing Gender” (1997)
TUTORIALS: ESSAY DRAFTS: bring two printed copies (minimum 1000 words: 5% of essay grade). Peer workshop.
Week 8 (Tuesday 9 May)
OBJECT-EVENT: liquid writing object activation
Johannes Heldén and Håkan Jonson, Evolution (2014), http://www.textevolution.net/
David Clark, “The Discrete Charm of the Digital Image” (2005)
TUTORIALS: focus on Window Gallery installation
Week 9 (Tuesday 16 May)
OBJECT-EVENT: General Library Window Gallery LAUNCH: details TBA
TUTORIALS
Week 10 (Tuesday 23 May)
OBJECT-EVENT: writing over and across/writing as re-writing/writing out loud
Tom Phillips, A Humument excerpts (3rd edition, 1980) & online http://www.tomphillips.co.uk/humument / “listen to the artist-author reading the whole of the sixth and final version of his text”
Barry Barclay, “That Damnable Symbol” from Mana Tuturu (2005)
Optional: Marit J. MacArthur and Lee M. Miller, “Vocal Deformance and Performative Speech,” https://soundstudiesblog.com/2016/10/24/in-different-voices-vocal-deformance-and-performative-speech/
* TUTORIALS: Quiz 2
Week 11 (Tuesday 30 May)
OBJECT-EVENT: liquid writing in the public sphere/national treasure-traits
Michael Kurtov, Second Life (2015), http://collection.eliterature.org/3/work.html?work=kuryokhin
FINAL TUTORIALS
ESSAY DUE: 2500 words, by 3 PM Thursday 1 June to Arts 1 Reception
Week 12 (Tuesday 6 June)
Test 10:10 AM–11:25 AM. Cumulative and closed-book. Bring your own plain lined paper or exam booklet with your name and ENGL 305 indicated on each page or on the exam booklet cover. Turn in both the test paper and your written answers at the end of the test period.
*
ENGL 305 Course Pack Contents List (Required reading, available at UBS)
Including urls of material to be read online
Syllabus
Glossary
Charles Olson, “Projective Verse” (1950)
Epeli Hau‘Ofa, “Our Sea of Islands” (1993)
Nathalie Stephens, “Echoes Enough of Echoes of Enough of Me…” (2004)
Lyn Hejinian, My Life excerpts (1987)
Lisa Samuels, “Eight justifications for canonizing My Life” (1997)
ONLINE / Ni_ka, Hallelujah (2004), <http://yaplog.jp/tipotipo/archive/236> & Electronic Literature <http://collection.eliterature.org/3/work.html?work=hallelujah>
ONLINE / Qianxun Chen, Shan Shui (2014), <http://collection.eliterature.org/3/works/shan-shui/ShanshuiV2/index.html>
Gloria Anzaldúa, “How to tame a wild tongue” and & “La conciencia de la mestiza / Towards a New Consciousness,” from Borderlands/La Frontera (1987)
Alice Te Punga Somerville, “’If I close my mouth I will die’: Writing, Resisting, Centring” (2007)
ONLINE / <https://vimeo.com/67774661>, commentary and re-making of source material from Stephanie Anderson, In The Key Of Those Who Can No Longer Recognize Their Environments (2013)
Stanley Fish, “How to recognize a poem when you see one” (1980)
Ann Shelton and Stephen Turner, Wastelands (2010)
William Vollmann, from The Ice Shirt (1990)
Kathy Acker, “Seeing Gender” (1997)
ONLINE / Evolution (2014), by Johannes Heldén and Håkan Jonson, at http://www.textevolution.net/
David Clark, “The Discrete Charm of the Digital Image: Animation and New Media”
Tom Phillips, from A Humument (1980) & http://www.tomphillips.co.uk/humument
Barry Barclay, “That Damnable Symbol” from Mana Tuturu (2005)
ONLINE optional: Marit J. MacArthur and Lee M. Miller, “Vocal Deformance and Performative Speech” https://soundstudiesblog.com/2016/10/24/in-different-voices-vocal-deformance-and-performative-speech/
ONLINE / Michael Kurtov, Second Life (2015)
http://collection.eliterature.org/3/work.html?work=kuryokhin
Course summary:
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