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These are some great sites for stealing ideas:

CUNY

UMN

ESC

Don’t forget, we have two forms to fill out by the end of the semester.

Click here.

In the spirit of making my work work for me, I’m posting the start of my syllabus in lieu of posting something else.  I stole the shape and sometimes the exact wording from both Sara Z. and Dr. Rice.  Remember, this is just the start.  The assignments will be more detailed after I work out the schedule.

Instructor: Allyson Miller
Day and Time: MWF 8:00-8:50 (Section 11)
Location: A&S 201
Office Hours: Friday 11:00-3:00 (If these hours conflict w/ other course, we can make arrangements to meet at another time.)
Office Location: Tate 1
Course Description:
English 1000, also known as English Composition, is a course designed to introduce first year students to college writing. That being the case, the course emphasis will be on production of texts (compositions) commensurate with college level writing.
Course Goals:
Since “college level writing” may seem like an ambiguous term at this point in your academic career, let me clarify a bit:
The papers that you write will engage complex questions in a clear, articulate, and logical manner. In order to engage, you will need information, which means research. In order to form complex questions you will need to learn how to synthesize and situate your research within your own ideas. In order to present your ideas in a clear, logical manner you will need to learn structure and form.
While we will be talking a great deal about writing, you will learn the most from the act of writing itself. Through writing we discover, and it’s my hope that your discoveries will be both personal and academic. In Internet Invention Gregory Ulmer coins the term “mystory” to refer to a process of discovery based on research drawn from a variety of influences in each person’s life. For Ulmer, mystory leads to an image of widescope, a unifying image that links all aspects of your life. For us, mystory will refer to something closer to my (his/her)story. We will draw from Ulmer’s theory of invention and discovery, but our goal will not be a unifying image; rather we will work towards a unifying text that unveils the depth of what we bring to bear on personal experience.
Course Model:
This is a workshop-model class, which is different from a lecture-model class in that it requires you to engage not only by actively listening but also by talking. Writers in the world do not create their work in a vacuum and neither will you: We will discuss ideas in small groups and as a whole class, we will read and critique one another’s work, and we will post ideas and projects online where they can be viewed by a larger community. Texts:
Best American Essays 2007, edited by …
Assignments:
Wiki Notes (? pts./10 pts. each)
Throughout the course we will use the wiki to post exercises that will contribute to your larger projects. On the schedule you will find specific assignments each of which will be worth ten points. These are all or nothing assignments, meaning you get full credit as long as you do the assignment. I strongly suggest, however, that you put time and effort into them – effort in wiki notes will save great amounts of time when working on the larger projects. The idea here is to break up a large project into nice manageable bites. Class Participation (100 pts.)
Come to class ready to participate. Take notes on readings and be prepared to discuss ideas. As previously stated, this is not a lecture course. Each person brings something valuable to the course and it is as much your responsibility to share your ideas as it is your responsibility to weigh and respect the ideas of others.
Wiki Feedback (150/50pts. each)
Every writer needs a reader to read their work, to talk to them about how their work is interpreted, where it is confusing, where it is especially clear and persuasive. You will provide feedback to one of your classmate’s for each of the three major projects. The feedback should be constructive and clear but worded gently. We will discuss in class how to read your classmates’ work critically and how to respond constructively, but keep in mind always that consideration is key.
Project 1: Personal Narrative (100 pts.)
The scope of this assignment is relatively broad. You may write about a place you visited, a memory, a broken bone, or what you had for dinner. The key point is that you employ the elements of personal narrative we discussed in class:
Setting
Character
Conflict
Theme
Your project will be 1500 words
Project 2: Research (150 pts.)
Your first assignment asked you to mine your own experience for material. For this assignment you will research three areas of inquiry relevant to your personal narrative and demonstrate how those areas tie together. The way you forge those links will dependent on the research itself, though you cannot use yourself or your personal narrative as the unifying principle.
Your project will be 1700 words
Project 3: My(his/her)story (200 pts.)
The areas of inquiry you chose for your second assignment were drawn directly from your personal narrative. Now it’s time to merge the narrative and the research, or, if you will, the soft and the hard writing. Remember David Foster Wallace’s Lobster Festival, the way in which the reader learned both of the festival, of the lobster, of the town, and of Wallace himself.
Your project will be 2000 words
Course Policies:
1. Attendance is mandatory. Class discussion depends on the entire class being present. Because this course meets three times a week, you are allowed three unexcused absences throughout the course. After that, your final grade will drop by one letter grade for each additional absence. Prolonged absences due to illness or absences due to having to attend a university sponsored event (athletics, theater, music, field trip) will be excused if you provide me with proper documentation from an appropriate authority. You are responsible for all work due for any missed class as well as for the readings and work for the following class. You are also responsible for any work covered during the class you missed. You should get the phone numbers of a couple of your classmates in case you miss a class. You can also contact me by e-mail.
2. Don’t be late to class. The class depends on your presence in order to conduct peer review and other in class activities. Three tardies will count as one unexcused absence.
3. Assignments are due on the class day they have been assigned for. Late work will not be accepted.
4. All assignments (unless otherwise noted) must be typed on white 8 1/2 X 11″ paper, be double spaced, have 1″ margins, and be according to MLA style.
5. All students are expected to honor the University’s Honor Code. All work must be your own. Copying work without giving credit is considered plagiarism. Evidence of plagiarism will be dealt with according to the university’s regulations.
6. Turn off your cell phones when you come to class. There is zero tolerance for cell phones going off in class and points will be deducted from your final grade if your phone does go off.
7. Many different opinions will be expressed in this class. Students are expected to respect the views of other students. Hate speech, whether race based, sex based, or sexual orientation based, will not be tolerated. A difference of opinion will naturally result and is expected and encouraged. But students must still respect the view points of the other students in the class.
8. The classroom is not a space for public grievances. If you are upset with a grade or some other class related issue, you should make an appointment with me so that we can discuss the problem. If you are not satisfied with the results of that meeting, you can then follow university procedures for grievances. Do not, however, make the class space or the email listserv a place for your complaints. Doing so will result in grade penalties. Anyone who uses the class listserv in order to complain about me, a grade, class, or other students will be removed from the listserv and given a 0 for email as well as a 0 for participation.

Finally, this syllabus functions as a non-negotiable contract. By choosing to take this course, you agree to the terms of the contract.

Anthony Gromley “Another Place”: “The sculptures do not take their belonging to the world for granted, they are trying to find their place in it and they do not take the act of standing as a given; they are learning to stand”(qtd. in Haynes 680).

“In their essay, ‘Jerusalem SKY,’ Natsios and Young propose a radical conjuncture of military and ecological topoi as a means of subordinating ‘pernicious surveillance to the knowledge-based act of seeing Jerusalem anew.’ […] They envision […] Jerusalem [that would] construct the city along the pilgrim’s spiritual horizon, a vertical axis whose vanishing points converge into sanctified sky”(689).

One of Libeskind’s visions.

Libeskind proposes that “‘S.S. buildings disintegrate over time […] in order to see the history, not as a simulation of the Third Reich, but to see what is there invisibly, the infrastructure between S.S. lands and the Sachenhausen concentration camp’ […] The planned site ’splits into two areas that are treated in two wholly different ways in order to displace the imagery of the past and to reconsecrate the land’”(693).

1.  I have no idea if I need a syllabus for 30 or for 45 class periods.

2.  I hate all textbooks.

3.  I’m fairly certain my students will hate me.

4.  My stress is triggering disconcerting cravings for mildly illegal substances.

 Anyway, if anybody is interested, I found a couple syllabus generators (as in syllabus templates) for the paper version:

Claremont Graduate University 

Washington State University

If Naomi isn’t going to use her brilliant idea of conspiracy theories as an overarching theme for her class, I might go with that if I can find a decent book to use.  It would be a fun way to explore how information is manipulated and would work perfectly with my plans for papers. 

First Paper: Personal narrative

Second Paper: Research on external bodies that influenced personal narrative

Third Paper: Your Own Personal Conspiracy Theory

Course Title:  You’re right, they are all out to get you!

Seinfeld source: 

1.  The curiously-coiffed Kramer (Michael Richards) rounds up the group as Jerry’s over-the-top imaginative and often-mysterious neighbor, who has no visible means of support and an uncanny knack for opening doors to opportunities he has no business being near.

2. His childhood best friend, George Castanza ( Jason Alexander), could be deemed the quintessential loser; he can never hold a job or keep a romance.. although he has more than enough schemes to make either happen.

3. Seinfeld earned a well-deserved reputation for generating water-cooler conversation with brilliantly spun storylines about Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer, oft-repeated conversation snippets… unapologetic glee for a revolving lineup of quirky friends’ relatives, dates and urbanities.

4.  ‘The Contest,’

Vegas

1.  Drove cross-country in a Uhaul truck where the CB wire draped over the seat, shorted out, smoked, reeked.

2.  My dad gave me silver dollars for every hour he gambled; I had 31 by the end of our first weekend there.

3.  There was a sphere suspended from the ceiling of the casino and someone was riding a bike around inside it, upside down, sideways, round and round.  (I don’t know if this is true and yet it is there in the memory nonetheless.)

4.  I bought a wooden heart-shaped box for my father.  On the top there was a black marble held in place by what looked like small gold leaves that clamped around it.  Written on the lid were the words “World’s Greatest Dad.”

The Hours by Michael Cunningham

1.  Highly crafted with use of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway as model along w/ her concepts of stream of consciousness, and choice of subject matter: a day, one day, any day, in the life of a woman.

2.  Fractured or rather almost superimposed narratives.  Cunningham takes Woolf’s idea of one day in the life of one woman and morphs it into one day in the life of three women, the same day though experienced in vastly different ways, and taking place in vastly different eras, and yet there is a universality to the experience.

3.  Made into a movie featuring Nicole Kidman w/ a prosthetic nose as Woolf.

4.  Novel quote:

“There’s just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we’ve ever imagined…. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more.”

Unifier: I deliberately tried to isolate my thinking for each area, meaning I worried about generating links instead of the links generating of themselves.  So, there are several links that cross between two genres but only one that crosses between all three: Odds.  (Contest in Seinfeld, gambling in the narrative, and “against all odds” in the novel.)

I suspect I might’ve screwed this up since I have a word and not an image, but maybe a word is my image since I experience printed words more intimately than I experience most things.  Visually, I suppose I could do this:

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1969

“for their discoveries concerning the replication mechanism and the genetic structure of viruses”

Max Delbrück	Alfred D. Hershey	Salvador E. Luria
1/3 of the prize	1/3 of the prize	1/3 of the prize
USA	USA	USA
California Institute of Technology (Caltech) Pasadena, CA, USA	Carnegie Institution of Washington Long Island, New York, NY, USA	Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Cambridge, MA, USA
b. 1906 (in Berlin, Germany) d. 1981UMmmm yeah…I’ll try this later…

Betsy Trotwood – best all time Dickens character. 

Trotwood: City in Ohio, my homestate.This website is dedicated to keeping Trotwood’s citizens, business owners and civic leaders well informed on City activities.  For the latest developments and items of interest please scroll down through the following list.

Swing Trot: A song by MGM Chorus that includes work by June Allyson

June Allyson starred in Opposite Sex and costarred by Glenn Miller. 

June Allyson also starred in Little Women by lesbian literary icon Louisa May Alcott.

Sorry about the lack of links…

This isn’t really an addendum, isn’t even remotely related to my earlier post, or if it is, only in terms of the way language sometimes thematically links, even if in some cases, or rather in my case, I’d rather it didn’t but can’t resist the urge to play with the fact that it does.

Anyway, box logic smacks of mystory.  Everything smacks of mystory, which perhaps is indicative of how foundational texts function in our minds.  George Maciunas says, “[T]here was no need for art.  We had merely to learn to take an ‘art attitude’ […] towards everyday phenomena”(Writing New Media 117).  This is the kind of attitude I’d like to foster in my comp class.

I’ve pretty much decided that I’m going to take a creative nonfiction approach to my class (assuming that’s legal) using much of the theory of invention found in mystory though adapting it entirely to my own inclination, which (conveniently :)) provides a means for me to meet comp expectations as stated on the department website. 

So far I’m thinking it’s going to look something like this:

Discussions on defining nonfiction

Nonfiction ethics, exploring the idea of truth (exercises in the manipulation of text/truth via tone, chronology, context etc)

Discussion on Janet Lounsberry’s 4 characteristics of nonfiction (though I’ll qualify number four)

First Assignment: Personal Narrative (Absolute freedom of choice on this one.)

Discussion of visual rhetoric

Second Assignment: Visual version of first assignment (The pupose of this is to push the students to think in terms of images, both abstract and concrete.)

Third Assignment:  Concrete Essay (Take one image from the visual essay and do research.  This will be broken up to include an annotated bibliography.  Students will be encouraged to look for the interesting fragments and facts.)

Discussion: Box Logic/Mystory-ish ideas

Fourth Assignment: Merge essay, the concrete I. 

 The text I’m planning on using (at this moment in time) is Best American Essays mainly so we can talk about craft and so students can see the spectrum of possibilities.

We’ll cover research, citation (both web and paper), evaluating websites, electronic composition (though I’m torn between websites and wikis), visual texts (lightly), and hopefully have some fun.

I found a free personal wiki, bLADE, that I’m using for my seminar paper this semester. The great beauty of it is that you can take notes on your various resources, each on its own page, or, for that matter, paste whole articles onto a page, and later, when the writing starts, rather than searching for this note or that note or where you read what, you can search the wiki and find every page that contains, say for example, “modernization.” Furthermore, the search feature can help you see connections that you might not have seen on your own.

The wiki can be stored on a jump drive thereby making it portable, or you can just keep it on your desktop. (I’d suggest both for the sake of safety.)