Joe Harris

Class, Fri, 11/01

Workshops (Cont.)

Post-Workshop Memo

Please email me another memo, this one reporting on where you now stand with your piece after having received responses to it from your group. Use Post-Workshop Memo as your subject line. Tell me about:

What were the most important or useful responses you got to your draft?
What do you now plan to add, change, or cut? (Be as specific as you can.)
What questions do you have for me? (Be as specific as you can.)

I will reply to this memo next week. That will be how I respond to your first draft. (PS, and NB: Make sure you leave me with a print copy of your first draft!)

Revised Schedule for November

To Do

Mon, 11/04, class: Favorites: Published and from this class. Please post two very brief passages—no more than 100 words each—that you’d like to put forward as among your favorites so far this semester. Be ready to talk about them in class.
Wed, 11/06, Fri, 11/08, and Mon, 11/11: No class meetings! (I will be at a conference.) Spend this time developing your good first draft into an amazing second draft.
Tues, 11/12, 5:30 pm, Mitchell Hall: Please join me in listening to Tara Westover speak.
Wed, 11/13, class: Discuss Westover and your work on your projects.
Fri, 11/15, class: Bring your all-but-final draft of your project to class. We will work on it.

Revised Schedule (Nov)

Mon, 11/04, class

Favorites: Published and from this class. Please post two very brief passages—no more than 100 words each—that you’d like to put forward as among your favorites so far this semester. Be ready to talk about them in class.

Wed, 11/06, Fri, 11/08, and Mon, 11/11

No class meetings! (I will be at a conference.) Spend this time developing your good first draft into an amazing second draft.

Tues, 11/12, 5:30 pm, Mitchell Hall

Please join me in listening to Tara Westover speak.

Wed, 11/13, class

Discuss Westover and your work on your projects.

Fri, 11/15, class

Bring your all-but-final draft of your project to class. We will work on it.

Mon, 11/18

Final presentations of your projects. We will discuss their form, and begin to work on them.

Wed, 11/20, and Thurs, 11/21

Conferences. Please come with an annotated version of your final project, ready to ask me pointed questions about how you can improve it.

Fri, 11/22 through Fri, 11/29

No class: Thanksgiving Break!

Mon, 12/02, class

Presentations.

Wed, 12/04, class

Closing thoughts. Evaluations.

Mon, 12/09, 11:00 pm

Email me the final version of your semester project.

Class, Wed, 10/30

Grades: Some Questions to Have in Mind when working on Your Project

Project

How well does the writer articulate what they are trying to do or accomplish in this piece?
How well do they develop their line of thought?

Materials

Is this piece well-informed by archival research?
How well and fully does the writer represent their own experiences or those of others?

Voice

Is this piece fun or interesting to read? What could the writer do to make it more so?

Workshop

Writers

Given the responses you’ve received to your work so far, what questions do you have? Select a 750-1,000 word passage from your piece that you’d like to read aloud and get more feedback on. Tell your readers what sorts of feedback you’d like to get to this section.

You might also want to think about: Almost by definition, this draft is shorter than your final piece. How are you going to make it longer, develop it?

Readers

Try to add to what you’ve already said in response to the Writer’s Memo—and to what the other readers have said. What more advice can you offer the writer about their piece?

To Do

Friday, 11/01, class: We’ll continue the workshop. I’ll also ask you to send me a post-workshop email in which you: (a) summarize the responses you’ve received so far, (b) describe what you now know you want to do with your piece, and (c) ask me any questions you still have. I will reply to this email. That will be my response to your first draft.

Class, Mon, 10/28

Preparing for Your workshop

For Wednesday, I am going to ask each of you to read the drafts by the other members of your workshop, and to write a note to each of them in which you say:

Which sections of their current drafts you feel work well;
What you’d like to hear more about;
What you’d encourage the writer to rework or rethink; and
Your responses to the questions and concerns raised by the writer.

In class today I’d like you to write a note to the members of your group in which you raise those questions and concerns. What sorts of questions do you have right now about your piece? Which sections most worry you? (These might be sections that you have written, or that you have not yet written.) What kind of feedback do you hope to get?

Address these questions in an email to your writing group that runs at least 200 words. Copy me. Use “WRITER’S MEMO” as your Subject Line. I’ll assume that writing this note will take about half of our class time.

367-emails Download

In the rest of the class period, begin the work of responding to the other members of your group. Start reading their drafts, and write the sort of reader-response to each that I describe above. Hit REPLY All when you respond, so that the other members of your group and I can read your thoughts. (Doing so will count as part of your grade for Draft 1.) Please finish responding to all the members of your group by tomorrow evening.

Please try to read the responses to your own draft by the start of class on Wednesday. Bring your print copies with you. We will read, discuss, and work with them in class.

I do not plan to write responses directly to your draft. I will instead ask you to email me a post-workshop memo on Friday, and I will reply to that. This means that it is very important that you use the next few days both to offer helpful advice to your classmates, and to make sure that you get useful responses to your own work-in-progress.

To Do

Tues, 10/29, 11:00 pm: Email responses to the drafts of each of the members of your writing group. Do so by hitting REPLY All to their Writer’s Memo so that the other members of your group and I can read your comments.
Wed, 10/30, class: Read the responses to your draft. Be ready to ask questions about them. Come to class with your print copies of all your group members’ drafts.

Class, Fri, 10/25

Writing Groups

Ethnicity/Gender

Amanda C
Ashley
Kate
Kyle
Michael

Violence, Extremism

Anthony
Bridget
Jennifer
John
Tia

Generation, Occupation

Amanda Gen
Brook
Sara
Winston
Sam

Mapping Your Work-in-Progress

Read through your draft. Use the Insert Comments function to write a summary of the function of each of your paragraphs. You’ll want, thatis, to briefly state what you do in each paragraph. Most of your sentences should thus begin something like: “I argue that . . .” Or “I analyze the scene in which . . . ” Or “I develop this idea by . . .”
Once you have this running series of summaries, see if you can arrange them in a paragraph that maps or outlines the progress of your essay as a whole.
Think about what you might need to add to or change in this paragraph (and thus your essay). Revise your paragraph to reflect those changes. (You might also want to create a To Do list of work you need to do on your piece over the weekend—or beyond.)
Consider whether you might want to insert a version of this paragraph somewhere near the start of your piece. (It’s often the second paragraph.)

Identifying Keywords

Read through your draft once again. This time, use different colors to highlight the following kinds of terms (or phrases).

Titles and names of the texts and people you are discussing. This should list in short form what your piece is about.
Keywords and phrases that the writers or people you are discussing use to describe or interpret their experiences. This list should begin to suggest the issues or questions your writing is addressing.
Keywords or phrases that you introduce to explain what you see as going on. (If you don’t have many of these, then you need to generate some.) This list should begin to identify your perspective as an author.

As you work on your project, you will want to think of ways to highlight the words in categories 2 and 3 (particularly 3).

Of Interest

Loretta Ross, “Call-Out Culture Is Toxic“, New York Times, 8/17/2019.

To Do

Mon, 10/28, class: Bring five print copies of the first draft of your project. (Shoot for at least 1,500 words). You can single-space these copies, but leave extra space between the ¶s.
Wed, 10/30, and Fri, 11/01, class: We will workshop your drafts.

Class, Mon, 10/21, and Wed, 10/23

Projects

Questions and Comments
Working Titles

Project Readings

Let’s keep things simple and discuss the readings in the order they were posted. This means that on Monday we will talk about:

Ashley
Jennifer
Sara
Brook
Amanda C
Michael

And on Wednesday we will discuss:

Bridget
Kate
Amanda Gen
John
Winston
Kyle
Anthony

I’ll ask the author to get us started by reading their post, and then for the readers/commenters to point out some things they found interesting about the piece. If you weren’t a commenter, but you have a thought, or a question, about the piece, please feel free to jump in and ask it.

To Do

Fri, 10/25, class: Come with as full a draft of your project as you can on your laptop. We will work on them during class.
Mon, 10/28, class: Post your first draft to your Group Folder on Google Drive. Bring one print copy with you to class.
Wed, 10/30,class: Workshop first drafts.
Fri, 11/01, class: Continue workshop.

Athlete Culture – The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

Posted by Joe Harris for Winston Allen

I found this article an interesting choice for selection because of the topic it pertains to – rape. I am sure that at least some of us in class have heard the name Clay Conaway. I also understand that some of you have not heard of him or what he is or has done. Before I get into that, I would like to note that my topic is athlete culture as a contact zone and how that takes away from and adds to the other subcultures that makes up the rest of the student body at UD. Obviously as a part of that is the stereotype of rape culture. I was a freshman in the fall of 2017 and Clay was a teammate of mine as a senior who had one more year of eligibility that he had planned on using. I was not fond of this guy, and for that matter no one else really was either, but nevertheless, he was our teammate and no one knew any better. Clay was arrested over a year ago on six accounts of rape, two of which being in the first degree. He is being tried separately for all of them and has already been found guilty for rape in the 4th degree for the first trial. He is awaiting sentencing of 15 years and still has to sit through an additional 5 more trials.

The reason that I bring this case up and include a decent piece about him is because of the myths surrounding student-athletes and rape culture. There are myths on both sides. No, not every major student-athlete is a rapist or is just out to have a good time with as many girls as possible. Yes, there are definitely student-athletes who cannot handle the attention and the publicity of it all and make very poor, life-altering decisions. No, not any one sport has more of these sick humans than any other. Yes, it happens more than you think. I brought up Clay Conaway as it hits home. Someone who walked our very campus and interacted with students of all kinds. I used him as an example of reading to go in to how serious athlete culture can be and to show that it is not all it is cracked up to be sometimes. It goes into depth about right before the trial began as evidence had started to come out. I thought that this would be an interesting read for both its proximity and relation to the university as well as it being an example of rape culture amongst student athletes.

The author is by the name of Brittany Shammas. She used to work multiple reporting jobs in Miami before becoming a full-time general assignment reporter for The Washington Post. She does good work and I like to believe that she is unbiased in her reporting so that both sides can be educated on what is going on. Moving forward, I will dive a little deeper into Clay and his tribulations but I will be swinging back in the direction of non-rape culture amongst student athletes and then from there move in to some of the positives of the athletic student-body.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/09/19/an-alleged-serial-rapist-met-victims-bumble-tinder-his-attorneys-say-women-were-there-hook-up/

Class, Fri, 10/18

Cognitive Egocentrism/Naming Documents

Questions About Projects

Discussing Project Readings

Please be ready to talk about three of the readings that have been posted to this site. Leave a brief comment on pieces that particularly interest you. (If you can, choose at least one or two readings that have received fewer rather than more comments.) We’ll discuss about half of these readings on Monday, 10/21,, and the other half on Wednesday, 10/23.

Project Drafts

Friday, 10/25, will be an in-class writing day. Bring a draft of your first draft with you to class on your laptop. I’ll have some exercises that I hope will help you develop and add to your work.

Conferences, Mon, 10/14, and Wed, 10/16

Class, Wed, 10/09

Of Interest

Sports as a Contact Zone: Tweeting in the NBA

Questions About Proposals

Conferences Next Week

We’ll have 15 minutes to talk together. I’ll have, maybe, a 3 or 4 minute response to your proposal. What else do you want to ask me about your project as you begin work on it? What other texts have you found to read or watch? How have you narrowed and define the sorts of field research (observation or memoir) that you hope to do?

Roxane Gay: Writing About Unruly Bodies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyUr_-jxWZA

Official Trailer, Shrill, Hulu (2018)

Fastwrite

I offer this trailer for the (I think, quite good) Hulu adaptation of Lindy West’s Shrill as a way of putting this question: We all know that fat-shaming is bad. So what else is Roxane Gay saying (or not)?

To Do

Mon, 10/14, or Wed, 10/16: Come to my office in 134 Memorial ready to make good use of your 15-minute conference with me. Bring any drafts, notes, books, or other materials you’s like to share.
Thurs, 10/17, 10:00 am: Post a text from your project that you feel will interest the other members of this class. Provide bibliographic info. Write a “teaser” summary that will entice other people in the room into reading or viewing it.