Course syllabus

 

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ENGL 305: Modern Writing and Critical Thinking

2019 University of Auckland, Semester 1

Lecture: Friday 10-12 HSB North 370 (201N-370)

Tutorial (weeks 2-11 only): Friday 2-3 Biology 204 (106-204)

Professor Lisa Samuels (l.samuels@auckland.ac.nz), Arts 1/Humanities Bldg room 631

Office hour Friday 12:30-1:30

 

Well-being always comes first

We all go through tough times during the semester, or see our friends struggling. There is lots of help out there - for more information, look at this Canvas page, which has links to various support services in the University and the wider community.

 

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. Our overall frame is Identity, Alterity, and Context. Within that frame, 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 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 study new writings and modes.

Readings are from multiple national and regional contexts: the US, Oceania, Canada, Japan, China, Aotearoa/New Zealand, South Korea, Sweden, England, 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” (transgenre, translingual, transformation) of writing: “liquid writing” that flows among identities, genres, modes, codes, and places.

Your work in the course will develop your ability to:

1 understand how writing and critical thinking creates and records individuals and societies;

2 articulate underlying assumptions about writing, mind, and identity in textual practices;

3 perceive how texts reproduce and/or swerve dominant discourses;

4 perceive how becoming literate and making texts means more than acquiring a set of linguistic, technical, and genre skills;

5 situate literary texts in other and wider fields of discourse;

6 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, online readings, and Canvas material

 

Required assignments

35% Critical essay (2500 words). Required draft work (750 words, 5% of essay grade) peer reviewed in tutorial. Your final essay (30%) is due on the date indicated, except for documented emergencies or special circumstances approved in advance.

30% 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.

20% 2 tutorial quizzes (10% each: 15 minutes, about 250 words each). No makeups.

15%. Informed and regular attention and participation in class (10%) and in class writing activities (5%).

 

Essay format

Assigned writings, unless directed otherwise, should be in this format:

1 Type/word-process and print double-sided on clean paper.

2 Use a 12 point easy-to-read font (e.g. Times New Roman, Arial).

3 Spacing at 1.5 or 2.0 with regular margins (2.54 cm. at left, right, top, bottom).

4 Indent or block your paragraphs.

5 Number your pages.

6 Identify clearly your name, course number, and date at top of page 1.

7 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 specified assignment centre. 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 discussion and some writing and reading activities; they also serve as the time for the two quizzes and for peer reviewing the essay draft component.

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 work, and discuss your questions.

ROLL sheets are circulated for each lecture and tutorial. It is your responsibility to make sure you sign the roll sheet. In general, 2 absences during the 12 weeks of instruction are the maximum acceptable. If you have strong reasons for missing class, discuss them with me in person or via email.

 

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, let me know so that the class can be prepared for the possibility of an 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.”

 

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Weekly schedule

This schedule is subject to change, depending on our progress, and course pack reading order is not always sequential with the week’s assigned reading.

Items listed for a given week are to be read before the lecture.

Unless otherwise indicated, all readings are in our course pack and also in the ‘Reading lists’ on Canvas (** = not on Canvas).

 

Week 1 (8 March)

Identity, Alterity, and Context

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 (15 March)

Autography and proceduralism

Lyn Hejinian, My Life excerpts (1987)

Lisa Samuels, “Eight justifications for canonizing My Life” (1997)

TUTORIALS BEGIN THIS WEEK

 

Week 3 (22 March)

Digital selving

** Ni_ka, Hallelujah. (2012). <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>

 

Week 4 (29 March)

Symbolic bodies and translingualism  

Gloria Anzaldúa, “How to tame a wild tongue” and “La conciencia de la mestiza / Towards a New Consciousness” (1987)

Tutorials QUIZ 1

 

Week 5 (5 April)

Genre and transgenre

Don Mee Choi, excerpts from Hardly War (2016)

Stanley Fish, “How to recognize a poem when you see one” (1980 essay)

 

Week 6 (12 April)

Choi continued

Tutorials: bring 750-word draft of essay for peer workshop

 

Mid-semester break 15-26 April

Essay due Wednesday 17 April by 3 PM to Arts Student Centre

 

Week 7 (3 May)

Appropriation and intertextuality

Tom Phillips, A Humument excerpts (3rd edition, 1980)

Barry Barclay, “That Damnable Symbol” from Mana Tuturu (2005)

 

Week 8 (10 May)

Place history

** Ann Shelton and Stephen Turner, Wastelands (2010)

David Karēna Holmes, From the Antipodes (2002, excerpts)

 

Week 9 (17 May)

Extremity and gender

William Vollmann, from The Ice Shirt (1990)

Kathy Acker, “Seeing Gender” (1997)

Tutorials: QUIZ 2

 

Week 10 (24 May)

Place and the digitas

** High Muck a Muck Collective, High Muck a Muck: Playing Chinese, an Interactive Poem (2014), http://www.highmuckamuck.ca/

David Clark, “The Discrete Charm of the Digital Image” (2005)

 

Week 11 (31 May)

Collaboration and the object

** Johannes Heldén and Håkan Jonson, Evolution (2014), http://www.textevolution.net/ 

FINAL TUTORIALS

 

Week 12 (7 June)

Test, 75 minutes. 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.

 

 

Course summary:

Date Details Due