English 738-001
Experimental Writing in the Academy
Instr: Mary Louise Buley-Meissner
Office: Curtin 492; 229-4533
e-mail: meissner@uwm.edu
Office hours:
Course Information: R; 4:30-7:10pm; CRT 468
Course Description
This course is designed for students who have well-defined research interests, students who would like to explore new ways of investigating and communicating those interests. Primarily, this course offers an opportunity to undertake reading and writing that integrates personal and intellectual concerns. While it is intended to expand our understanding and practice of scholarship, it is not a course in research theory or methodology. Instead 738 will be collaboratively constructed as an inquiry into the subjects, forms, and effects of writing that crosses traditional boundaries between narrating and arguing, personalizing and theorizing, historicizing and imagining. We also will address such questions as these: How can experimental writing reach an audience within the academy? Equally important, how can writing in the academy reach a wider audience? Given the various backgrounds that students across concentrations bring to this course, we have the opportunity to become co-investigators of what is possible.
Examples of appropriate writing projects for 738 include (but are not limited to) analytical autobiography that undertakes critical inquiry into the process of self-formation; revisionary history that questions the content and form of popular(ized) history; theory-practice integration in a personal narrative of teaching experience; student-teacher collaboration in a critical analysis of classroom practice; and reconceptualization of familiar disciplinary terms (e.g., "good writing," "good student," "critical thinking") in interdisciplinary contexts. Whatever your individual interests may be, I hope that together we can experience the extraordinary power of the written word in shaping who we are, what we believe, and why we reach for truth beyond the telling.
Course Books: The six required books (and one optional book) are available at the University Bookstore. You also may be able to find these books through half.com or other online used book dealers. Another possibility is to order your books through independent local booksellers such as People's Books (962-0575) or Broad Vocabulary (774-8384). We will read and discuss the books in this (tentative) order:
Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, bell hooks (Routledge, 1994)
Alt Dis: Alternative Discourses and the Academy, ed. Christopher Schroeder et al. (Heinemann-Boynton/Cook, 2002)
Rhetoric and Ethnicity, ed. Keith Gilyard and Vorris Nunley (Heinemann-Boyton/Cook, 2004)
Sentimental Attachments: Essays, Creative Nonfiction, and Other Essays in Composition, Janet Carey Elred (Heinemann-Boynton/Cook, 2002)
This Bridge Called My Back: Writing by Radical Women of Color, ed. Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua, 3rd ed.(Third Woman Press, 2001)
The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology that Breaks Your Heart, Ruth Behar (Beacon,1997)
Optional book: Personal Effects: The Social Character of Scholarly Writing, ed. Deborah H. Holdstein and David Bleich (Utah State UP, 2001)
Course Requirements: Regular attendance, careful preparation for class meetings, and constructive contributions to class discussion are expected of everyone. Other requirements are:
- Preparing discussion questions and related class activities for one of the course books (with questions to be distributed one week before the discussion);
- Developing a rhetorical analysis of the communicative context for your writing project;
- Developing an annotated bibliography of at least ten substantial sources related to your project (such as journal articles, book chapters, or writing similar to the kind you are attempting);
- Completing 15 pages of writing for a specific audience in the academy (and, if at all possible, a wider audience).
Your rhetorical analysis should describe the proposed audience's expectations of the content and form of your work. In addition, to clarify the specific ways in which your project is "experimental," you need to explain how - and why - you choose to meet/resist/subvert those expectations. In other words, you need to be a critical analyst of your own role as author, your audience's influence on your composing process, and the communicative context that brings you, your audience, and your writing together.
In connection with your project, you also are responsible for: 1) providing copies of your work-in-progress to your classmates for their comments; 2) constructively commenting on your classmates' work; and 3) giving an individual presentation (approx. 20 minutes) based on your project.
Please note: On the last day of class, final copies of your project, rhetorical analysis and annotated bibliography are due. Grades will be determined according to an overall assessment of your contributions to and accomplishments in the course. Incompletes will not be given except under the conditions specified by the University. If you need any special assistance, such as a sign language interpreter, please let me know soon.
