Writing

You’ll do two different kinds of writing in this class. First, you’ll use writing a tool to help you think through the readings for the course. This will take the form of brief responses and comments posted to this site. Second, you’ll develop, draft, and revise a longer piece on writing and diversity. Let me say a little more about both.

Responses and Comments

I’ll ask you write a series of brief and informal responses to the readings we do together and post them to this website. These are not pieces that I imagine you will go on to develop and revise. Their main use will be instead to help us think and talk about the texts we’re reading together. Here’s how it will work.

I’ll divide the class into three groups. For most of our classes in the first few weeks of the semester, I’ll ask the members of one of those three groups to post “first responses” to the reading we’re scheduled to discuss. The rest of us will then read their responses and post comments on at least two of them. What is perhaps a little unusual is that all this work will go on before we talk about the reading in class. For example,

• On Monday, 9/09, by 4:00 pm, the members of Group A will post responses to “From Outside, In”, by Barbara Mellix, which we are scheduled to discuss in class on Wednesday, 9/11.
• On Tuesday, 9/10, by 4:00 pm, the rest of us will read those responses and post comments on at least two of them.
• And all this will help jump start our class conversation about Mellix on Wednesday.

Responses should be about 400 words long, comments about 100 words long. (Don’t worry if you write more. Also, don’t worry if you haven’t used WordPress before; it’s easy, and we’ll go over the basics in class.)

In writing a response, your main task is to bring us to a specific moment in the reading that you would like us to talk about. You thus need to

• quote directly from the text, and
• explain what interests, amuses, provokes, troubles, or confuses you about it.

You should of course feel free to quote more than one passage.  Your goal in writing should be to spark comments and conversation. A well-written response should prompt smart and thoughtful comments in reply.

In writing a comment, your main task is to continue the conversation that a responder has begun. You thus have to do more than simply agree or disagree; you need to add an insight or idea of your own. You need to do two things in the short space of 100 words:

• Quote directly from the response you are commenting on, and
• Direct us to another passage in the text we are discussing (or to another text that seems relevant).

In other words, try to use your comment to notice something new, point us in a different direction.

I will comment on all of your responses, and track them with  a √ or √–.  To earn a √, a response must be thoughtful, well-edited, and on time. I won’t normally comment on comments. But I will ask you to keep a list of the comments you make, and I will collect that list around midterm. Keeping up with the responses and comments will raise your final grade for the course a step; falling behind with them will lower it. (See Grades for more details.)

Let me offer a few last bits of advice about writing responses: In past courses, the least effective responses have been ones that look like long text messages—single, unwieldy blocks of prose. Think instead in terms of at least two paragraphs—one in which you quote from the reading and restate its meaning, and another in which you raise questions and make points of your own. I encourage you to make the tone of your writing personal and informal, but that is not at all the same as unprofessional. Make smart use of italics, images, and links. Proofread. Edit. This writing represents you.

Project on Writing and Diversity

Perhaps oddly, I have less to say, at least at this point, about your main project for this course. As I noted in the plan for the semester, your task will be to compose a piece addressing an issue in writing and diversity. I imagine that this piece could address many issues and take many forms. As a rough guideline, I’d suggest that you should think in terms of working towards a final, 2,500 word essay. But you’ll have a proposal and three drafts to get there. And the word count is not crucial; what I mostly want you to think about is crafting a substantial project. I’m open to any form, or mode, that this piece might take—argument or narrative, print or online, video or podcast . . . . I look forward to talking with you early on about your ideas about what you might do—in terms both of subject and form.